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Monday, June 04, 2007

Divorced monarchs

It is unclear to me whether Prince Charles is divorced, since his former spouse is dead. But he would by no means be the first divorced monarch: George I of Great Britain was divorced from his wife Sophia Dorothea of Celle in 1694, 20 years before he became king in 1714. Sophia died in 1726, Wikipedia tells us.

He may well be the first UK monarch to be married to a divorcee, however: Camilla's former husband remains alive, and Edward VIII abdicated in order to marry a divorcee, although legally Edward could have married Mrs. Simpson and remained king. This latter was, however, a very different case: there were religious reasons (the C of E did not then allow remarriage of divorced persons, and Edward would have been both supreme governor of the C of E and married to a divorcee) and legal grounds (her first husband was still living (he did not die till 1950) and not validly divorced from her under English church law).

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