Last week, Victoria greeted a new prince into our midst. He was born healthy and happy, with soft fluffy hair and four strong legs. I’m speaking, of course, of the Beacon Hill petting zoo’s new baby donkey, named “Prince George.”
Though the foal doesn’t quite share a birthday with the royal prince (that honour goes to my roommate — Happy Birthday, J!) it’s still a fun, friendly tribute.
Despite the slow but persistent waning of popular support for the monarchy in Canada, we went a little baby crazy in July. While this week’s question has been, “When’s Kate going to lose the baby weight?” (correct answer: none of our business), two weeks ago it was all about “Boy or girl?”
It was an interesting question for many reasons, but my favourite part of the royal-baby hullabaloo was the anxiety that the birth of a girl would herald an Age of Anarchy for the Commonwealth.
In 2011, the prime ministers of the 16 Commonwealth countries signed on to the Perth Agreement, which agreed to change royal succession laws and abolish male primogeniture. This meant that Kate and Will’s baby would be the (eventual) heir to the throne, regardless of sex. The Perth Agreement also got rid of some other niggling anachronisms, such as the royal offspring’s inability to choose a Catholic spouse.
In 2011, I’m not sure if this change is worthy of celebration, or contempt that it took them this long.
Canada — like all the other Commonwealth nations — readily assented to the change ... in theory. To change the laws governing the succession to the throne of Canada, we need to dig deep into the documents that make up our constitution, and that’s a royally cumbersome job.
Robert Hazell of University College London explains that smaller Commonwealth nations just aren’t bothering to change their laws: “It is not that they disagree, it’s just that it is pretty low on their list of priorities. [And] the two largest countries, Australia and Canada, have constitutions which are notoriously difficult to change.”
In a nightmarish situation of succession laws run amok, some constitutional experts argued that it was possible for Will and Kate’s daughter — if they had had one — to become Queen in the United Kingdom, while the Commonwealth nations would only be able to recognize her younger brother — if she had had one — as their King.
The fact that the child is third in line to the throne meant this wasn’t a pressing concern, notwithstanding any embarrassment we might feel that male primogeniture is still on the books as governing Canada’s rules of succession — and since George is a George, we won’t need to worry about it for another generation. Thanks to the accident of birth, we can avoid changing our succession laws for another 80 years or so.
Yet while I like the idea of the Commonwealth going rogue with a second royal sibling, it sounds less like a community of 21st-century nations and more like Rumble in Westeros.
The monarchy-gone-mad silliness of this potential constitutional kerfuffle is a gentle reminder that what many of us think of as a quaint, mainly symbolic relationship with the British Crown is rooted deeply in our country’s fundamental documents.
This relationship can take the form of primarily symbolic gestures, such as the recent re-re-branding of our military as “Royal,” but it can also lead us to more substantive and troubling iniquities.
It’s not simply a question of what’s in a name: It’s a question of how we move forward into the future with this weird, anachronistic, sometimes-positive, sometimes-harmful relationship between our country and our Crown. Naming a donkey Prince George? Delightful and whimsical, and I can’t wait to go see him!
Forcing new immigrants alone of all Canadians to pledge allegiance to the Queen? Problematic.
And while I’m excited for the birth of a princess to usher in the Age of Anarchy for the Commonwealth, I also think it’s just a little bit asinine.
(I’m sorry — my roommate wanted me to include that pun. It was her birthday, after all.)
