By Molly Claire Goddard
12:31am PDT, Sep 5, 2025
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Queen Elizabeth II was not keen on changing royal protocol. According to one author, the late monarch did not fully support the Succession to the Crown Act 2013, which ended male-preference primogeniture…
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Valentine Low claims in his new book, Power and the Palace: The Inside Story of the Monarchy and 10 Downing Street, that Queen Elizabeth II and King Charles III were skeptical about the progressive change brought forward by former Prime Minister David Cameron. “Crucially, the palace was not against it. But they said that the government had to ensure the backing of the other 15 realms,” he wrote. A source reportedly told him, “I always thought that the signals from Buckingham Palace were that if it was the wish of the duly elected prime minister of the day and the realms can be sorted out, we will not stand in its way. I didn’t get the sense there was any great enthusiasm from the palace and the queen herself.”
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Elsewhere in the tell-all, Valentine Low claimed that King Charles III was concerned before Prince William and Kate Middleton welcomed Prince George that their first-born child would be a girl and that the family name would die off as a result. What would become of the House of Windsor, he worried, if a potential granddaughter ascended the throne, then tied the knot and adopted her husband’s last name?
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While Prince George is years away from taking over as king of England, Prince William and Kate Middleton have already started preparing him for his leadership role. “It’s all part of a slow, incremental move towards his destiny. They’ve always been very clear about pacing it, not making the children do anything that puts them off the idea of being royal in the future. It’s a case of including him in things that he’ll enjoy, but that also touch on his life to come,” biographer Robert Hardman said.