How to Become British Royalty
As literally everyone now knows, Britain’s Prince Harry is betrothed to Meghan Markle of USA Network’s Suits , continuing the House of Windsor tradition of marrying outside of their league. Markle is not British nobility and not British at all, because she was born in Los Angeles of two Americans. But she grabbed the closest unmarried heir to the throne, which was a big setback for anyone hoping to join the royal family. Here are your remaining options.
Buy a title (don’t do it)
Several companies will sell you a tiny piece of land and let you call yourself Lord So-and-so. But under UK law, this does not give you any legal rights or privileges . And it certainly won’t like the existing nobility. For example, Richard, 7th Earl of Bradford, commissioned an entire website to refute the sale of fake titles . Whether it’s respect for tradition or simple snobbery, it’s a killer if you really want to play in the Major Leagues with real royals.
There is one exception; You can buy the hereditary title of Scottish Baron for six or seven figures, with or without a matching parcel of land. But even if you do this to substantiate some legitimate claim to Scottish descent, it will not give you any role in government as a purely hereditary peerage might. And it no longer looks like the members of the royal family only communicate with the nobility. Save your money and spend it on a more legal method.
Get married in
Previously, this option was only available to members of the royal family from other countries, but as the British monarchy became less political and more ceremonial, marriage with it became the most popular modern method of family reunification. Technically, any adult can marry within a family, although at higher levels you will need Queen’s approval.
Currently, the largest number of married vacancies belongs to Prince Andrew, Duke of York (57 years old, divorced since 1996), or his first daughter Princess Beatrice (29 years old, single). You can shop in turns ; you might also consider breaking off someone’s engagement or marriage, but then you’ll never become a friend of the British press, which is tough enough for the well-mannered royals.
Since you don’t share DNA with the current royals, it doesn’t put you in the line of succession, but it does make you a royal family (“royal consort”), and (thanks to some reforms) it even works. if you were born a commoner, foreigner or Catholic.
While your spouse is in line for the throne, so will your offspring. But they will move further and further down the list as the Queen’s sons and their families continue to produce offspring. The Queen’s daughter, Princess Anne, was born third in line to the throne, but her sibling families’ growing families raised her to twelfth place and also crowded out everyone else. Given enough time and fertility, the Prince Charles line alone is likely to expand to fill the first hundreds, thousands, or even millions of places. This is how the population works. We’ll come back to this later.
To marry royalty, you first have to get to know them the way you date anyone: go to school together, make mutual friends, attend the same social events. You are probably starting a few degrees away from real royals, so you may need to change your friendship chain a little, starting with friends of friends or friends of royals. You can start with some minor members of the House of Lords. Just take your time and remember that you are competing with all the other social climbers in the Commonwealth.
Marry your child in
Or play a long game of looking after your child to meet and marry one of the younger or future royal family members. Move to the UK, or at least send them to boarding school there. You will not be a royal family, but your child will be, and your grandchildren will be in line to the throne.
So you can send your child to Prince George’s Daycare at Thomas School in Battersea , although by now you will be too far in line. Better to look further down the road to Eton or apply for whatever school you’d expect from Princess Charlotte. Of course, try to hide your disqualifying lust for royalty.
Wait for everyone to die
You can trace your ancestry back to the royal family and then wait for everyone in line in front of you to die, like John Goodman in 1991 in King Ralph .
Unfortunately (as stated earlier), for a fairly long period of time, everyone had the same ancestors. A full 80% of England’s population is descended from King Edward III. That’s four times more than King Ralph ‘s Rotten Tomatoes . So even those of you who are of British descent are for the most part still several million away from the throne. (There’s a story for that too: “We can get them for you in bulk” by Neil Gaiman). By the time the line of succession reached you, you would have nothing to rule.
Rebel against the crown
You can, of course, lead a revolution against the monarchy and then start a new royal bloodline yourself. This is indeed the oldest way to do it, but has become less popular in recent centuries. The overlap between “people who don’t like the current monarchy” and “people who would welcome a new monarch” has been significantly reduced.
You can always join the UK Republican movement that plans to hold a public referendum on the monarchy after the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Then no one else will become more royal than you (except for all the other members of the royal family in all other countries). Of course, this referendum has no chance, even in our strange post-Brexit world. And if that happened, imagine how the public would feel when the Queen dies, and then imagine how they would vote.
You can join the royal family of another nation and conquer the United Kingdom. It used to be a popular method too, especially in the beginning. But again, it became quite difficult to pull off, and the last leader who came close to pulling it off ended up shooting himself in a Berlin bunker.
Expand your search
Have you thought about casting a wider net? Maybe marry one of a couple of dozen other surviving royal families? Agree to a date with the dictator? Lower your gaze even further and run for president? There are a couple of elective monarchies, but we are talking about hereditary council elections, not some kind of public campaign. The monarchy is not what it used to be; there are only seven absolute monarchies left, and one of them is the Vatican. Good luck marrying this one.
Or think about this: like everything on earth, you definitely descended from several historical kings and queens. And if anything is inherited from all that royal blood, it is ambition that forces you to evaluate your chances of moving up the career ladder.