An heir apparent is a person who is first in an order of succession and cannot be displaced from inheriting by the birth of another person.

The Heir during succession of rule is usually the first born son (or daughter) of reigning king. However, when there is no direct heir, it is maybe passed onto the wife, or other close relatives of the king or nobility. When Edward had no son, and after his wife died, Edward adopted the knight as his son and heir.

A female can be heir apparent to such title if her father was the heir apparent who died leaving no sons. When succession follows matrilineal primogeniture, only females are entitled to inherit the throne and thus only females can be heirs apparent.

According to Royal Central, the royal line of succession is fixed in order to keep the monarchy in check — meaning, the queen (and any other monarch) cannot choose her successor.

1 : an heir whose right to an inheritance is indefeasible except by exclusion under a valid will if he or she survives the ancestor.

If a king has only daughters, then the crown passes first to his surviving brothers, in order of age, or to their sons, or to the king’s surviving uncles or an uncle’s sons. Crowns have passed to second or third or even more distant cousins on occasion.

It was considered imperative that the king had sons; a daughter, at best, could be married off to a neighbouring kingdom to forge alliances. King Henry the VIII had daughters but he desperately wanted sons. His habit of choosing new wives was his fear of not getting sons.

A King’s daily life: A medieval King would wake up early in the morning. He would start his day by going to the chapel and praying. He then ate a light meal. Throughout the day, he would attend meetings, discuss laws to be passed, hear petitions and so on.

A male heir was crucial to continuing the royal line and securing the kingdom. It was probably the queen’s most fundamental responsibility. Henry was only the second Tudor monarch, and it was a dynasty founded primarily on conquest rather than heritage.

The changes mean that, regardless of gender, any first-born child of Prince William, second in line to become king after his father, would eventually become the monarch. “If the royal couple have a girl rather than a boy, then that little girl would be our queen,” British Prime Minister David Cameron told the BBC.

Yes, a princess can become a queen without a king (or consort, if unmarried). A classic example is Queen Elizabeth I who reigned without a spouse or Queen Elizabeth II whose husband a mere Royal Duke at the time of her Ascension.

A queen regnant (plural: queens regnant) is a female monarch, equivalent in rank and title to a king, who reigns in her own right over a realm known as a “kingdom”; as opposed to a queen consort, who is the wife of a reigning king; or a queen regent, who is the guardian of a child monarch and rules temporarily in the …

The most common version of this takes the trope name literally (a female monarch titled as “King” instead of “Queen”), but there are many other gender-specific titles that can be used instead, one of the more common ones being “Queen-Regnant”.

Kate has no royal blood, so will be Queen consort. This means that Kate will also actually be crowned, just in a smaller ceremony when compared to William’s.

An empress is the ruler – or the wife of the ruler – who has an empire. A queen has a kingdom. An empire is supposed to be bigger than a kingdom. Thus, traditionally, an empress has a higher rank than a queen.

Emperor

Both emperors and kings are monarchs, but emperor and empress are considered the higher monarchical titles. In as much as there is a strict definition of emperor, it is that an emperor has no relations implying the superiority of any other ruler and typically rules over more than one nation.

She is the queen of sixteen Commonwealth Realms, including the UK, and holds various lesser titles, but isn’t an empress. Because there is no more Empire. And she would have been Empress of India, not Empress of Britain.

In other words, the word queen can either mean “female monarch” or “the wife of a monarch,” whereas king can only mean “monarch.” It’s a vestige of a historically patriarchal system of government that used to value sons over daughters (and it also sheds light on why kings rank higher than queens in a deck of cards).

Queen Victoria

Six most famous Indian Queens

• Rani Lakshmi Bai. Image: Wikimedia Commons.
• Rani Padmini. Image: Wikimedia Commons.
• Rani Chennamma. Image: Wikimedia Commons.
• Razia Sultana. Image: Famous People.
• Ahilyabai Holkar. Image: Wikimedia Commons.
• Meera Bai. Image: Wikimedia Commons.