A series of fake news articles are claiming that Queen Elizabeth II is planning on abdicating her throne and passing the crown to her grandson, Prince William, skipping the first in line of succession, Prince Charles.
Such stories have been circulating since 2016 when a number of related fake news articles falsely claimed that the Queen had announced her retirement during February 2017 when she would make Prince William her successor.
Of course this was completely untrue, but stories of the same ilk have persisted and other fake news sites have also made similar claims.
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However the story really gained momentum again in 2017 when a now removed article published on the popular Life and Style Magazine website on August 11th 2017 claimed that the relationship between Prince Charles and his son Prince William had been “strained” by the Queen’s decision to skip Charles in the line of succession. That article carried the headline “Prince Charles’ Relationship With Son Strained By Queen’s Decision to Make Prince William King (EXCLUSIVE)”
Life and Style Magazine claimed to have used anonymous insider sources to break the story. However it just wasn’t true.
The story on Life and Style Magazine wasn’t true.
Despite that, the story was soon picked up by other websites who used Life and Style Magazine as a source, including CloserWeekly and Yahoo Finance A portion of that Yahoo article reads –
Take a look at your newest soon-to-be King and Queen of England! Today, Queen Elizabeth officially announced that she will be passing down her crown to her grandson Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton. This, of course, means that the Queen has skipped over her own son, Prince Charles, in the British monarchy’s line of succession. Bummer.
All of these articles have now been removed, but not before a number of smaller websites and blogs picked them up and the story went viral on social media.
The reality is that even if the Queen really did want to bypass her own son in the line of succession, she couldn’t. The entity in control of the line of succession is British Parliament, not the monarchy itself.
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British Parliament could theoretically rewrite the laws pertaining to the line of succession under a doctrine known as Parliamentary supremacy that states no current parliament can write laws that cannot be changed by a future parliament. However the likelihood of this happening is small.
If Prince William were to become King, it would have to happen after Prince Charles. Of course Prince Charles could voluntarily give up his place in the line of succession or abdicate immediately, but there are no reports or any reason to suspect that this would happen at the time of writing.
