Kate Middleton and Prince William are having a royal baby, who will be third in line for the British throne – boy or girl. A new law, recently passed, makes clear a firstborn girl now precedes her younger brother. But the automatic titles have not kept up with the times, reports Daily Mail on Wednesday, Jan. 9. To solve that problem, Queen Elizabeth has formally issued a Letters Patent decreeing a girl born to her grandson and his wife will be a princess.
Kate Middleton, herself, is not a princess, even though her husband was born a prince. When William assumes the title of Prince of Wales, she will become Princess of Wales, but never Princess Catherine. The broader law, set in 1917, had decreed that only a sovereign’s children and the sons of other heirs to the throne could have the HRH title of prince. While all of the Queen’s four children bear the title, only children of her three sons do, according to the law. Princess Anne’s children do not, although Anne’s own personal choice refused titles for her children anyway, and Prince Edward similarly bumped down the titles of his own family a notch, to give them a more “normal life.”
Kate Middleton and Prince William may be having a girl or a boy. They do not yet know. But the baby’s royal great grandmother wants to be sure a granddaughter is not slighted. The baby, if she is a girl, will now be heir to an old and proud monarchy, and she will follow in the footsteps of some amazing women who wore the crown. She should certainly be born a princess.
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