History has it that if the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have a daughter, she could make the royal history books.
There’s currently a centuries-old law which states that only sons can inherit peerages.
The outdated rule dictates that only a son can be bestowed with a dukedom. This means that if Prince Harry and Meghan Markle welcome a daughter in the future, she would not be given a royal title.
But the law is currently being challenged in the European Court of Human Rights. The recent challenge to the law was brought about by pressure group, Daughter’s Rights. Despite being made up of daughters of peers, they are not permitted to sit in the House of Lords due to the lack of an official title.
Head of the organisation, Charlotte Carew Pole, told The Times: “It is 100 years since women got the vote and it is outrageous that women still don’t have the right of election to our upper house.”
She added: “This is the last state-sanctioned sexual discrimination and it needs to be eradicated from the statute book.”
If this law is eradicated soon, it means that any daughter the Duke and Duchess of Sussex give birth to will go into royal history books as the first to inherit the peerage.
This will not be the first time recently that royal laws are being changed. When Prince Louis was born on 23 April 2018, Princess Charlotte made history after becoming the first female member of the royal family to retain her place in line to the throne regardless of gender. This was made possible because, shortly after the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge tied the knot in 2011, the Succession to the Crown Act ruled that a member of the family’s sex could no longer determine their place in the line of succession.
