Fox2! wrote:Jonathan_S wrote:The heir to the throne is required to marry a commoner; there have been references in the books to the fact that individuals who were not the heir at the time of their marriage and married someone from the nobility is not required to divorce his/her current spouse and marry again. The Constitution accepts that there will/may be occasions upon which the heir dies without producing an heir of his/her own with a commoner spouse but does not require someone who isn't heir to defer his/her marriage until the heir marries "just in case."
Though despite his last sentence I'd suspect that if you were the firstborn of the current Heir, there would be social pressure to not marry a noble.
While the legalities are apparently clear, I think the "optics" are bad if they marry a noble because it looks like they violated the spirit of the law in a way that a second born doesn't when they marry a noble. And the issue is likely to come up more often thanks to Prolong
I would suspect that the "social pressure" to marry a commoner would apply to anybody in the direct line of succession (the oldest child of the oldest child of the oldest child of the Monarch's oldest child). QE II (Windsor) might live long enough to see Charles' grandchildren. With prolong, it would be almost certain to happen, absent regicidal maniacs and accidents. And with 'cats soon to enter the picture, regicides must become even more careful in their planning.[/quote]
I believe George & Charlotte are Charles' grandchildren.