The British Royal Family thought they had everything under control when they passed a bill through Parliament of the United Kingdom and each of the Commonwealth Realms that said the eldest child, regardless of sex, would be the heir apparent to the throne.
Unfortunately, it looks like Canada isn’t in love with the idea. Well – it isn’t actually the idea they have a problem with, more like the execution of the approval.
Apparently, Canadian government officials failed to seek approval from each of Canada’s 10 provinces, which makes the Prime Ministers approval of the bill – essentially – null and void.
In addition to doing away with primogeniture, the bill also does away with provisions that bar anyone in line from being any religion other than Anglican, and bars them from marrying a Catholic. Doing away with these provisions flys in the face of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which means it isn’t necessarily something that the Prime Minster can just agree to do away with without a formal vote.
It probably won’t be much of a problem for the bill to be correctly passed in Canada, but if Kate Middleton and her husband Prince William have a daughter, it could delay her being recognized as heir apparent for a while. However, that isn’t unheard of.
When Princess Victoria of Sweden was born, she was the heiress presumptive. However, when her younger brother was born a couple of years later, he became the heir apparent and she was relegated to third in line to the throne. Her parents had the laws changed shortly after Prince Carl-Philip’s birth, and Victoria became the heiress apparent, and officially recognized as Crown Princess.