Posted on 09/04/2017 11:29:59 AM PDT by Eddie01
Queen Elizabeth II, 91, is the longest reigning monarch and allegedly held a meeting as recently as two weeks ago to begin the process.
Her Majesty is said to have decided that if she is still on the throne at the age of 95 then she will request the Regency Act to come into force.
The Regency Act would make Charles a Prince Regent and a King in all but name.
Under the Act, the Queen would remain head of state but would have reduced duties without abdicating the throne.
[snip]
The longer Elizabeth II lasts, the better for him--if he is in his 80s when his mother dies, the public might be willing to endure him figuring that he won't last very long. He's 68 now, will be 69 in a couple of months.
In the old days it was pretty much taken for granted that kings had mistresses. Henry VIII had a problem only because he wanted a son and the son could only inherit the throne if born to his lawful wife. Charles II was notorious for having numerous mistresses...Princess Diana was descended from one of his illegitimate children. James II was driven out not for having mistresses but for other reasons.
Deeply christian doesn’t match with his adulterous activities.
Well, I'm the person who has made this claim, so let me address it. I have a friend of the Prince of Wales and I do speak with personal knowledge of the man.
Yes, he was an adulterer. He isn't currently in my view - he has no living ex-wife and is married to his current wife - but yes, he was an adulterer. That does not preclude him from being a practicing and devout Christian.
For a start, sometimes Christians sin. None of us are perfect and none of us always live up to the ideals of our faith. HRH sinned when he was committing adultery - no doubt about it. But that was decades ago now. I do not know if the Prince was a devout Christian at that time - while I did know him back then, I did not know him very well - he did attend my school and I did meet him when we were both boys but he was one of the oldest boys in the school and I was one of the youngest and we only exchanged a few sentences. I wound up eventually serving alongside his younger brother, the Duke of York and became his friend, and through was reintroduced to the Prince of Wales but we really just acquaitances until only around ten years ago. It's since then I would call the Prince a friend who I know well. And that is the man I know to be a devout Christian but I don't know when that happened. My feeling is he rediscovered his faith in the late 1990s, possibly only after Diana, Princess of Wales had died. I think for most of his life until then he only paid lipservice to the Church - but as was inside the Church of England, which often only seems to pay lipservice to Christianity itself, that isn't that surprising. I was much the same way - raised in the Church of England, my faith wavered as that Church wavered. I eventually rediscovered my own faith and I left to become Roman Catholic. In the case of HRH, I believe it is fair to say he has embraced the Greek Orthodox faith of his father's family. This is somewhat politically sensitive as he will be Supreme Governor of the Church of England, so he doesn't make a song and dance about it, and he hasn't formally converted, but the fact that he is a regular visitor to a Greek Orthodox monastery is not a secret and does occasionally get into the press.
As for the videos you have seen - that is the version of Diana, Princess of Wales. Why do you assume her version of events is an honest and true one? She was also committing adultery. Repeatedly. And while she may have had some reason for it, depending on who you ask, she also had obvious grudges to deal with. I do not want to speak ill of the dead, but she has been virtually canonised by many, particularly those on the left, and what she was was just a woman. A normal human being. As flawed herself as any other human.
He was very jealous of the adoration Diana drew no matter what country or what event they were at. He is a prissy & unhappy person. I don’t trust him to be King.
Fair statements in my view - although I disagree on the last one. I'm not trying to canonise the Prince either. He's not a perfect man. He's a fairly ordinary man, who by an accident of birth, is expected to take on an extraordinary position. And he has his flaws. Yes, I think he was jealous of Diana. Prissy? Yes, and no. He does have some of those characteristics, but at times, especially in private, he can tend to the opposite. Unhappy? He certainly has been, but I actually feel he's largely happy with his lot in life today.
I will trust him to do his best as King. I do wonder how good his best will be. As I say, he's just an ordinary man. But he has a very strong sense of duty, and I know he intends to do his best.
Charles sux.
And QE2 knows it.
Honorable testimony from a loyal friend. Well done.
Do stupidity, ugliness, unpopularity, count as reasons he cannot discharge duties of office? Ought to be. Charlie has all of those in spades.
Actually, I can tell you exactly what that is. It is the badge of the Gordon Highlanders, a British Army regiment of which the Prince of Wales was Colonel-in-Chief until it was amalgamated into a new regiment in 1994 (he is also Colonel-in-Chief of that new regiment). He is also wearing the badges of a number of other regiments of which he is Colonel-in-Chief (the Welsh Guards, 7 Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland (current incarnation of what was historically the 51st Highland Regiment), and the Mercian Brigade (now part of the Princes of Wales' Division), as well as the badge of the UK Veterans Association (which is entitled to wear as a former serving officer).
The medals he is wearing are also not fake medals - he has the qualifying service to wear each one of them. None of them are particularly impressive medals - five of them are ceremonial medals awarded to thousands of British or Commonwealth servicemen who participated in certain royal events (in his case, the Coronation of his mother, and her silver, golden, and diamond jubilees), one is a New Zealand medal of the same type, and three are service medals for service in the British, Canadian and New Zealand forces (in the case of the second and third, his service as honourary Colonel of some Canadian and New Zealand regiments are held to qualify). The only one he has really been deemed to have done anything unusual to wear in the first one - which marks him as a Companion of the Queen's Service Order, New Zealand, which he was given for his patronage of various New Zealand charities.
He also has the Order of Merit around his neck which his mother gave him.
Thank you for the biggest laugh I've had all day!
The crown doesn’t have that kind of power anymore. Haven’t had for quite some time.
I have posted at this point - somebody drew the discussion to my attention this morning, my time.
It has actually happened during the Queen's reign in 1974, she commissioned Harold Wilson Prime Minister even though he didn't have a majority. In 2010, David Cameron, and it's the situation now as well where she recommissioned Theresa May without a majority.
In all cases, they had the basic support of enough MPs outside their party to hold on. But at any time, the House of Commons could have chosen to have a vote of no confidence and remove them and in that case, the Queen would have to appoint a new Prime Minister who had the confidence of the House, or call an election - in practice, the last act of the outgoing Prime Minister should be to ask the Queen for an election, rather than put her in the position of having to act without his or her advice.
The type of scenario I think you are talking about here is one that would be very unlikely to arise except in a situation of crisis or on a temporary basis until an election can be held (we had this situation in Australia in 1975, which shares the same basic system - the Governor General faced with a Prime Minister (Gough Whitlam) who was trying to act illegally in the face of the Senate (our upper house) blocking his budget, sacked the Prime Minister and the entire government and commissioned the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Fraser, as Prime Minister, even though he did not have a majority in the House. But he did so on the condition that Fraser would act as caretaker Prime Minister only until an election could be held (which the Fraser lead coalition went on to win in a landslide confirming him in the Prime Ministership, which he held for seven years after that). But that was to resolve a constitutional crisis that a competent Prime Minister would not have allowed to develop. It really shouldn't happen. In Fraser's case, the House of Representatives did immediately pass a motion of no confidence in him, but as he'd already advised the Governor General to dissolve Parliament and call an election at that point, it was largely moot.
In a true crisis situation in the UK, the House of Commons might well accept a Prime Minister without a majority appointed by the Queen at least until the crisis was dealt with - as an extraordinary situation requiring an extraordinary solution - the precise reason the Reserve Powers of the Crown still exist. For use, basically in an emergency.
And what would happen if she didn’t commit the armed forces to something already approved by Parliament?
The Army is actually under the control of Parliament (although the Queen is Commander-in-chief) - that's why it's the British Army, not the Royal Army (as the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force). But again, unless there was some extraordinary reason, the Queen would not do this, and if there was an extraordinary reason, in the end, it would come down to who the armed forces chose to obey, and why, and who the people chose to support. If the Queen was blocking actions of a tyrannical government out of control, it could work. If she wasn't, it would likely lead to the end of the monarchy and a British republic.
The constitutional monarchy is based on the idea that a constitutional monarch acts to protect the constitution of the nation. A good government shouldn't make that necessary.
I have never met him but saw him once from a distance. I was studying on the fourth floor of a university library when he visited the campus, and I heard a commotion outside. He was being escorted from one point to another while being heckled by a noisy group of pro-IRA protesters. Must come with the territory. This was 35 or 40 years ago.
It goes through the eldest bloodline. So it would be Charles, then William, then William’s children, then Harry, then Charles oldest sibling, (then through his oldest child and his heirs and so on)
Thanks for the lesson in British government.
Of course all the kings and queens of the Hanoverian line are usurpers. The rightful heir (on strict genealogical grounds) is a member of the Wittelsbach family of Bavaria. But since Culloden the adherents of the Stuarts seem to have thrown in the towel.
I may have known some of that history at one time but I certainly don’t know it now! I’ll take your word for it though!
Thanks for your long and really interesting and heartfelt post.
Long live the queen.
Thanks for the info. We Yanks are quite confused as to what the Queen can and cannot do. From your post, it seems like the Queen is the last line of defense against an illegal act (and - no offense meant - that’s about the extent of her powers).
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