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Succession to the British throne
Succession to the British throne is determined by descent, sex, legitimacy, and religion. Under common law, the Crown is inherited by a sovereign's children or by a childless sovereign's nearest collateral line. The Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701 restrict succession to the throne to the legitimate Protestant descendants of Sophia of Hanover who are in "communion with the Church of England". Spouses of Catholics were disqualified from 1689 until the law was amended in 2015. Protestant descendants of those excluded for being Roman Catholics are eligible.
King Charles III has been the sovereign since 2022, and his heir apparent is his elder son, William, Prince of Wales. William's three children are next, in order of birth: Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis. Fifth in line is Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, the younger son of the King; sixth is Harry's elder child, Prince Archie. Under the Perth Agreement, which came into effect in 2015, only the first six in line of succession require the sovereign's consent before they marry; without such consent, they and their children would be disqualified from succession.
The United Kingdom is one of the Commonwealth realms, which are sovereign states that share the same person as monarch and the same order of succession. In 2011, the prime ministers of the then-16 realms agreed unanimously to amend the rules of succession. Male-preference (cognatic) primogeniture was abandoned, meaning that males born after 28 October 2011 no longer precede females (elder sisters) in line, and the ban on marriages to Catholics was lifted. The monarch still needs to be in communion with the Church of England. After the necessary legislation had been enacted in accordance with each realm's constitution, the changes took effect on 26 March 2015.
No official, complete version of the line of succession is maintained. The exact number, in more remote collateral lines, of the people who would be eligible is uncertain. In 2001, American genealogist William Addams Reitwiesner compiled a list of 4,973 living descendants of Electress Sophia of Hanover, in order of succession without omitting Roman Catholics. When updated in January 2011, the list included 5,753. The final person in both lists, number 4,973 and 5,753, was Karin Vogel (born 1973), a therapist from Rostock, Germany.
The annotated list below covers the first part of this line of succession, being limited to descendants of the sons of King George V, King Charles III's great-grandfather. People named in italics are unnumbered either because they are deceased or because sources report them to be excluded from the succession.
The line of succession was governed by the common law rule of primogeniture until the fourteenth century, when Parliament first began to legislate on the subject. However, this was not invariably followed. The sons of William the Conqueror contested each other for the throne, and his granddaughter Matilda was passed over for his grandson King Stephen, even though Matilda's father had been king, and Stephen's claim was only that his mother had been William's daughter. After the death of Richard I in 1199, the throne should have gone to his nephew Arthur, the son of his next brother Geoffrey, but as Arthur was still only a child, Richard's youngest brother John was able to take the throne for himself, under the pretext that he was a closer relative to the late king than Arthur, who was one generation removed. John bolstered his claim to the throne by having his nephew secretly killed.
When Richard II was deposed in 1399 by Henry IV, Henry also usurped another relative with a better claim, Edmund, Earl of March. Richard and Henry were the grandsons of Edward III by, respectively, Edward's first and fourth sons; Edmund was descended from Edward's third son, and so was placed ahead of Henry in the line of succession. However, as Edmund was only seven at the time, and Henry's position would not have been secure with any lesser title than king, Henry took the throne for himself, with the endorsement of Parliament. Decades later, the rival House of York, which was descended from Edmund's sister Anne de Mortimer, seized the throne from Henry's grandson during the Wars of the Roses.
In 1485, Henry Tudor, a female-line descendant of a legitimated branch of the royal house of Lancaster, the House of Beaufort, assumed the English crown as Henry VII, after defeating and killing Richard III in battle. Richard had been the last king of the House of York, and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. Henry declared himself king retroactively from 21 August 1485, the day before his victory over Richard at Bosworth Field. Sir William Blackstone called Henry's hereditary claim "the most remote and unaccountable that was ever set up," and said that his subsequent marriage to Richard's niece Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV, was "his best title to the crown." Henry caused Richard's Titulus Regius (Parliament's recognition of his own claim) to be repealed and expunged from the Rolls of Parliament. After Henry's coronation in London in October that year, his first parliament, summoned to meet at Westminster in November, enacted that "the inheritance of the crown should be, rest, remain and abide in the most royal person of the then sovereign lord, King Henry VII, and the heirs of his body lawfully coming."
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Succession to the British throne
Succession to the British throne is determined by descent, sex, legitimacy, and religion. Under common law, the Crown is inherited by a sovereign's children or by a childless sovereign's nearest collateral line. The Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701 restrict succession to the throne to the legitimate Protestant descendants of Sophia of Hanover who are in "communion with the Church of England". Spouses of Catholics were disqualified from 1689 until the law was amended in 2015. Protestant descendants of those excluded for being Roman Catholics are eligible.
King Charles III has been the sovereign since 2022, and his heir apparent is his elder son, William, Prince of Wales. William's three children are next, in order of birth: Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis. Fifth in line is Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, the younger son of the King; sixth is Harry's elder child, Prince Archie. Under the Perth Agreement, which came into effect in 2015, only the first six in line of succession require the sovereign's consent before they marry; without such consent, they and their children would be disqualified from succession.
The United Kingdom is one of the Commonwealth realms, which are sovereign states that share the same person as monarch and the same order of succession. In 2011, the prime ministers of the then-16 realms agreed unanimously to amend the rules of succession. Male-preference (cognatic) primogeniture was abandoned, meaning that males born after 28 October 2011 no longer precede females (elder sisters) in line, and the ban on marriages to Catholics was lifted. The monarch still needs to be in communion with the Church of England. After the necessary legislation had been enacted in accordance with each realm's constitution, the changes took effect on 26 March 2015.
No official, complete version of the line of succession is maintained. The exact number, in more remote collateral lines, of the people who would be eligible is uncertain. In 2001, American genealogist William Addams Reitwiesner compiled a list of 4,973 living descendants of Electress Sophia of Hanover, in order of succession without omitting Roman Catholics. When updated in January 2011, the list included 5,753. The final person in both lists, number 4,973 and 5,753, was Karin Vogel (born 1973), a therapist from Rostock, Germany.
The annotated list below covers the first part of this line of succession, being limited to descendants of the sons of King George V, King Charles III's great-grandfather. People named in italics are unnumbered either because they are deceased or because sources report them to be excluded from the succession.
The line of succession was governed by the common law rule of primogeniture until the fourteenth century, when Parliament first began to legislate on the subject. However, this was not invariably followed. The sons of William the Conqueror contested each other for the throne, and his granddaughter Matilda was passed over for his grandson King Stephen, even though Matilda's father had been king, and Stephen's claim was only that his mother had been William's daughter. After the death of Richard I in 1199, the throne should have gone to his nephew Arthur, the son of his next brother Geoffrey, but as Arthur was still only a child, Richard's youngest brother John was able to take the throne for himself, under the pretext that he was a closer relative to the late king than Arthur, who was one generation removed. John bolstered his claim to the throne by having his nephew secretly killed.
When Richard II was deposed in 1399 by Henry IV, Henry also usurped another relative with a better claim, Edmund, Earl of March. Richard and Henry were the grandsons of Edward III by, respectively, Edward's first and fourth sons; Edmund was descended from Edward's third son, and so was placed ahead of Henry in the line of succession. However, as Edmund was only seven at the time, and Henry's position would not have been secure with any lesser title than king, Henry took the throne for himself, with the endorsement of Parliament. Decades later, the rival House of York, which was descended from Edmund's sister Anne de Mortimer, seized the throne from Henry's grandson during the Wars of the Roses.
In 1485, Henry Tudor, a female-line descendant of a legitimated branch of the royal house of Lancaster, the House of Beaufort, assumed the English crown as Henry VII, after defeating and killing Richard III in battle. Richard had been the last king of the House of York, and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. Henry declared himself king retroactively from 21 August 1485, the day before his victory over Richard at Bosworth Field. Sir William Blackstone called Henry's hereditary claim "the most remote and unaccountable that was ever set up," and said that his subsequent marriage to Richard's niece Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV, was "his best title to the crown." Henry caused Richard's Titulus Regius (Parliament's recognition of his own claim) to be repealed and expunged from the Rolls of Parliament. After Henry's coronation in London in October that year, his first parliament, summoned to meet at Westminster in November, enacted that "the inheritance of the crown should be, rest, remain and abide in the most royal person of the then sovereign lord, King Henry VII, and the heirs of his body lawfully coming."