[HPforGrownups] Re: Harry and the Phoenix

[Pen Robinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 43530


On Tuesday, September 3, 2002, at 03:40 , bboy_mn wrote:
>
> Many people have said that after 1,000 years in the small wizard
> world, there must be drops of Gryffindor blood all over the place. So,
> let's look at the Royal Family of Britain as an example. There are
> cousins and uncles and all kinds of people who can trace the heritage
> back to the roots of the Windsor family, but they are neither the
> descendants of the Royal Family nor the heir to the Royal Family.
> Right now Prince William, the first born, is the crown prince and heir
> to the throne, his younger brother, Prince Henry (Harry) is nothing
> 'to the throne'. The next heir will be the son or daughter of William.
> So even as close as Prince Henry/Harry is, he and his children will
> never be the 'heirs' to the throne. The only exception is, if Prince
> William's blood line dies out, although it would have to die soon or
> their would be too many descendants directly under William who could
> claim the throne. Poor Prince Henry/Harry, him and his descendants
> forever doomed to be second best, although filthy rich, which is not
> so bad.

Sorry, I've got a compulsive urge to nitpick here.

Right now, Prince William is second in line to the throne.  The heir is 
Prince Charles, his father - unless the Queen died and nobody told me.  
Prince Harry, Charles' second son, is third in line.  After him comes 
Prince Andrew (the Queen's second son), then his two daughters, then 
Prince Edward, then Princess Anne followed by her children.  Then it 
hops over to the children of Princess Margaret (the second child of King 
George VI), and so forth.

It is perfectly possible for Prince Harry to become the heir to the 
throne.  If Prince William predeceases him without producing any 
offspring, Harry will be next in line after Charles.  If Prince William 
becomes King before he has any children, Harry will be the heir - I 
think the 'heir presumptive' - until such time as William's firstborn 
comes along.

However, it is also clear that there are lots of descendants of, say, 
George V, who will never actually be called upon to reign.  The further 
back you go (try Victoria - eep!) the vaster the net of descendants is, 
and although they will all, in theory, be somewhere in line for the 
throne (746th, or whatever), in practice it doesn't matter.    This is 
where you get your 'people who can trace the heritage back to the roots 
of the Windsor family'.

However, the direct line is what counts.  The direct line is not, 
necessarily, a straightforward father-to-son descent.  It can be 
broken - the king before George VI (Elizabeth II's father) was his 
brother, Edward VIII, who abdicated.  And of course, the present Queen 
was daughter to the previous King, who had no sons.  In the case of 
Queen Victoria, the previous generation of kings went from brother to 
brother among George III's sons, few of whom managed to produce any 
legitimate offspring, before reaching Victoria who was the daughter of, 
er, one of the junior brothers.

But there is a strong 'fantasy' tradition that the direct line is a 
direct line - and that only the sons count (cf Aragorn, son of Arathorn, 
etc, in LotR, or Eddings'  Belgariad, for examples), so that a 
daughter's children don't count as being in the direct line.  In this 
tradition, it would be reasonable for those descended from Godric 
Gryffindor's daughters not to be in the running for the 'Heir of 
Gryffindor' tag.

Pen
<who very much hopes this 'Heir' stuff is a red herring anyway>