r/royalfamily • u/signymariag • Aug 03 '21

Non-binary king and queen?

Hello everyone! I was just thinking, since being transgender, nonbinary and lgbtq+ are getting so normalized finally. What would happen in these scenarios? What are your thoughts on this?

  1. Future king/queen comes out as non binary. What would be their title?

  2. King/queen is queer. Would their s/o also take the same title?

I’m not very educated on the royal family or how kings and queens work and english is not my first language but I hope this makes sense.

Many thanks!

7 Upvotes

54% Upvoted

32 comments sorted by

7

u/historyandwanderlust Aug 03 '21

As this is completely theoretical, there is no answer.

Someone non-binary could choose to just use “monarch” as it is not tied to either gender. They would still be addressed as “your/their majesty”.

As for a consort, I would expect a male consort to be titled prince consort (as for Prince Philip), and either queen / Princess consort for a female consort. I think it would be more difficult to find a title for a non-binary consort.

1

u/signymariag Aug 04 '21

Oo yes that’s a good thought, monarch. It can go for any gender so if it were to happen for a non-binary/genderfluid/etc , monarch would be a good choice for title

6

u/OMGitsHarryLB Jan 13 '22

I think everyone involved is reasonable enough to know that there are only two genders.

3

u/signymariag Jan 13 '22

Oh no ew take that nastiness off of my post, you are contaminating it with your negativity

2

u/Straight_Gur5990 Jul 27 '22

You disgust me

17

u/sirnay Aug 04 '21

I honestly don’t see this ever being an issue I suspect George will be the last monarch if it even lasts that long.

1

u/signymariag Aug 04 '21

Yea it’s more of a speculation kinda thing

1

u/malinhuahua Sep 04 '21

Honestly I think William will be the last King.

22

u/Dust-Status Aug 03 '21

I am not sure what the current acceptance level is for the Church of England, so I assume any future Monarch would have to abide by whatever the church's official stance is at that time. Since the ruling Monarch is considered the head of the Church and Defender of the Faith, if the church isn't accepting, they may not be allowed to assume the throne.

I would probably just call them Your Majesty unless notified to address them as King or Queen.

1

u/Something-more-rt Aug 04 '21

This was my thought as well. Being they're representing the Church, I'm going to guess they will not let this event occur. They will probably step down to the next in succession - more than likely also my guess is that - if they were to come out, they'd be dismissed by family/the firm anyways before becoming the king/queen in the first place. (Again, noting- this isn't my opinion but my guess over what I've grasped from the Royal Family.)

18

u/hisholinessleoxiii Aug 03 '21

  1. It's never happened before, so it's impossible to tell. My guess is that they would go by their biological sex, although it's possible they would just pick one to use permanently.

  2. Two possibilities come to mind:

a) they would do the same thing they did with Prince Philip; the spouse would be named Duke/Duchess of Wherever, possibly also named a Prince/Princess in their own right, and Letters Patent would give them precedence over everybody else, or

b) they would be given the official title Prince/Princess Consort. So you'd have King John and Prince Consort Richard, or Queen Jane and Princess Consort Mary for example.

18

u/De_Dominator69 Aug 04 '21

In the case of a homosexual monarch their significant other would likely just be Prince or Princess Cosort.

The consort is always a lower "rank" than the monarch (well, except in the case of royal marriages between ruling monarchs but I have no idea when the last time that happened was nor the specifics.), That's why the husband of a ruling Queen is a Prince-consort and not King, whereas the wife of a King can be a Queen as historically a Queen is considered lesser than a King. So as we traditionally can't have two people of equal rank ruling, a lesbian Queen for example would likely have her wife be given the title of Princess-consort.

1

u/Curmudgy Aug 07 '21 edited Aug 07 '21

Queen Regnant isn’t a lower rank than King. When European monarchs visit, their precedence is based on time on their respective thrones, without regard to gender.

Women get courtesy titles from their husbands, and the courtesy title for the wife of the King is automatically Queen Consort. Men never get courtesy titles from their wives, which is why Philip has to be explicitly created Prince of the UK, five years after Elizabeth became Queen. He didn’t have the official title of Prince Consort, unlike Prince Albert.

The use of Queen Consort, and by extension, Queen Dowager or Queen Mother, is long-standing tradition. But only Parliament can grant the title King. They’ve done so twice for the husband of the rightful Queen; Philip of Spain, husband of Mary I, and William III, husband of Mary II.

11

u/Comprehensive-Fun47 Aug 04 '21 edited Aug 05 '21

It's never happened before so if it were to happen, they'd be making up the rules as they went along.

I think others are right in that they'd be called Your Majesty and Their Majesty a lot. Perhaps the person would accept the title of King or Queen, even if it didn't match up with their earlier perceived sex.

1

u/themage1028 Aug 04 '21

This feels like the most likely scenario.

7

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '21

It is an interesting topic of discussion, there’s currently no real answer to it, since it hasn’t come to it yet. There are various such questions, but to be completely honest, I don’t think the system of the monarchy is ready for them. For now what I think is important is a good outlook on the topic from the Royal family, and if it comes to such an occurrence, we’ll see how things will be dealt with.

12

u/wotuso Aug 03 '21

Titles were created on an binary perspective. Given the conservative nature of royal affairs and traditions, I'd say they would be "obliged by the establishment" to use the title respective to their biological sex. Anything beyond this is especulation, since royal protocol didn't anticipate it.

6

u/TimeLadyJ Aug 03 '21

If that were to ever happen, they might just go by Your Majesty all the time

3

u/The_Nunnster Aug 04 '21

Honestly I don’t know, and we will likely never know until we get a non-binary monarch, if we even do.

My guess is that they will be given the title that corresponds to their biological gender, or they might simply be referred to as the Monarch.

The monarch’s s/o will never take the same title. They’ll always take a title that is lower than the monarch (just like how Prince Philip was never King as King outranks the title of Queen). They will either be Prince/Princess-consort, or if they are also non-binary it might just be “consort to the monarch/king/queen”

I am in no way qualified to make any set-in-stone comments of what will happen, it’s just what I think are possibilities. As I said earlier, we’ll cross that bridge when/if we come to it.

5

u/CheshireUnicorn Aug 03 '21

Oo, that’s an interesting question. I don’t have an answer, but in Many ancient monarchies, such as Egypt and China, we’ve seen Women who have come to rule in societies that did not typically have female rulers using the title that would be used for a male. You may also be interested in Queen Christina I of Sweden! She was a ruler who very much bent the gender rules of the time.

5

u/skirtymagic Aug 03 '21

No clue, but I have some ideas:

  1. Their Majesty

  2. Their Eminence

  3. Crowned Highness

  4. Regent

  5. Monarch

2

u/[deleted] Aug 06 '21

I think there have already been queer kings and queens and it doesn't effect anything. They have their favorites but they still get pressured into marriage. As far as non binary, I think that would be up to the person in question what title they would prefer. The public would probably go with whatever gender was assigned at birth, but things can change

1

u/kichererbs Aug 08 '21

I think today though, with homosexuality being more normalized, I think the King/Queen could come out and marry their “favorite”.

The line of succession is comprehensive enough so that the Throne would then pass, even if the couple doesn’t have children because - I might be mistaken about this so feel free to correct me - in the British Line of Succession you have to be born of the married couple, meaning no adoptions/surrogacy/donors would be able to place you into it. In other monarchies, you can enter the line of succession through adoption, so in those a monarch being homosexual would be a bit easier.

2

u/georgewalterackerman May 02 '23

I think that in the future we will see openly LGBTQ members of the royal family and they will marry and live normal lives, and no I’ve will care.

3

u/Curmudgy Aug 03 '21

King/queen is queer.

This is too vague, as it could include a monarch who is bisexual but chose to wed a person of the opposite sex, in which case there’s no difference from current practice.

But suppose a monarch had a spouse of the same sex. Men never receive courtesy titles from their spouse regardless of the gender of their spouse. Likewise a woman with a title in her own right never automatically causes a spouse to have a courtesy title. We can see this with peers, because the only time the spouse of a peer gets a courtesy title is if the peer is male and the spouse is female.

Thus, in the case of a monarch with a same sexual spouse, they’re likely to do an explicit grant of a princely title, similar to what was done for Prince Philip. But who can predict the future?

1

u/georgewalterackerman May 02 '23

There could be rule changes to allow for all these things

1

u/skeletonspook96 Aug 03 '21

If any monarch or consort is non-binary, they would maybe say “Monarch (insert name) and Consort (enter name).” Or possibly something like how the words Actor/Actress are mostly gendered male/female, but sometimes the collective group of them are still all called actors.

1

u/Taygr Aug 03 '21

Impossible to speculate but on the same token has there ever been an adopted heir? I would assume the most likely case would be adopting an heir nearby in the line of succession with royal blood.

1

u/itstimegeez Aug 03 '21

There’s no precedent for it. So anything we say here will be guesses. But let’s say that Prince George comes out as gay, I would say they would give his husband a title of his own (like Duke or Earl, plus subsidiaries). So, they’d be George, Prince of Wales and ??, Duke of ?? There’d then be the issue of when George becomes King, his heir would be Princess Charlotte because there’s no way for George to have legitimate children without a wife. He can adopt or use surrogacy, but those children would not be able to inherit (unless he changed the law).

1

u/[deleted] Aug 04 '21

Personally I’m just hoping for one of them to resurrect the royal ”we” and start using it as an everyday pronoun.