Princess Eugenie’s third child will cause a shift in the royal family’s line of succession. When the royal baby is born this summer, he or she will be fifteenth in line to the throne, taking Prince Edward’s current spot. The Duke of Edinburgh and everyone behind him, including his older sister Princess Anne, will each move down one place.
The Princess Royal, 75, was born third in line to the throne in 1950, but fell behind her younger brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in 1960 and again her youngest brother Prince Edward in 1964. The King’s sister, who is a working member of the royal family and a Counsellor of State, is currently eighteenth in line to the throne, but will be pushed down to nineteenth following the arrival of baby Brooksbank in 2026.
Decades after Anne’s younger brothers were born, an Act of Parliament changed the line of succession from male-preference primogeniture to absolute primogeniture, meaning younger sons would no longer take precedence over older daughters. Unfortunately for Queen Elizabeth’s daughter, the change in the UK only applied to royals born after October 28, 2011.
A retroactive change like the one in Sweden would have benefited Anne. In 1979, Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden was briefly displaced by her younger brother, Prince Carl Philip, until legislation on full cognatic succession was introduced in 1980.
Although Anne is further down in the line of succession in the UK, she has been crowned the hardest-working member of the royal family over the years – even the royal family’s website notes she “has one of the busiest working schedules of any member of the Royal Family.” Her older brother Charles recently joked that he “can’t keep up” with her.
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