Let’s say that Queen Elizabeth II of England were to marry King Juan Carlos I of Spain (hypothetical). What would happen to their realms if these two sovereigns were to marry. What about their titles? Would their kids be in line to the Spanish throne, British throne, or both?
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I think people would be shocked considering she’s been dead for a while.
Mostly likely they’d take the title of Queen/King Consort, meaning that they had no Monarchial power of their own in their spouses country. Inheritance of the throne following the Regnant’s (the monarch in power) would be a massive pain in the ass following their death, which is why its pretty rare
that would all have to be worked out, most likely in treaty of some sort.
the default answer would be the two houses two be joined, and the child of the monarchs of United Kingdom and Spain would, assuming theirs no older claimants, be the new King (or Queen) of both the United Kingdom and Spain. this would be a personal union, “two crowns on one head”, so to speak.
if a prior claimant exists (ie prince Charles), then they would inherit the throne they are heir to, but the other throne would go to the child (ie, Charles would be king of england, but his younger brother/sister would be king/queen of Spain). If Charles died with no heirs of his own, then the throne of England would pass to next child of the late queen, and we have the personal union again. If charles had kids of his own (ie William and Harry), those would get the kingdom of england before our hypothetical monarch of Spain.
unless the rules of Spainish succession are different, it would be the same. that said, the spanish set their own rules for who becomes the next king. If they have something like male only inheritance, and the hypothetical child was a girl, it might skip them to the next claimant, or pass directly to the hypothetical persons own son, or to thier husband who rules as prince consort, etc. etc.
it can get messy. wars have been fought over this stuff.
Elizabeth would be queen consort in Spain, and Juan Carlos would be king consort in the UK. (“consort” meaning “person sleeping with the ruler” in this case.) Neither would have any power in the other’s country.
What happened to any children together would be the subject of intense negotiation. Historically the children may become sovereign of both countries, but that likely wouldn’t go over well today.
This has happened in history. Their child becomes monarch of both countries, but the countries are still legally separate. It’s called a “personal union”. Denmark and Norway were in person union for a lot of history. And the UK was in personal union with the Kingdom of Hanover in modern Germany until Queen Victoria couldn’t legally inherit the Hanover crown.
Prince Phillip of Spain married bloody Mary I in 1554. These were reigning monarchs after Phillip II’s acsension in 1556. There were huge constitutional issues about him being legally king of England, the Kingdom being his property as Mary’s husband under the English common law doctrine of [*jure uxoris*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jure_uxoris)*.* If there had been more than a false pregnancy possibly due to dropsy their issue would have been heirs to England, and Spain too if the presumptive heir Don Carlos had died without issue as he did historically, though it is very unlikely that England would have accepted this. As Liz 2 and Juan Carlos are constitutional monarchs it’s likely a solution would have been found such as 1 first child gets Spain 2nd England etc.
In the most simple example they’d be the heir to both thrones, but it wouldn’t magically mean that Spain and the UK are now the same country. The same person can occupy multiple thrones, and merging of the sovereignty/kingdoms could only happen with the agreement of the governments of the two countries.
Scotland and England had the same monarch for years but were separate kingdoms for a while before they finally merged into one kingdom/country
It hasn’t really happened in modern times but I suspect the relationship between the two kingdoms would work roughly how the relationship between commonwealth realms work–IE: Canada vs. the UK, where Charles is King of both, but they’re each separate and independent kingdoms at this point
There’s has many cases as there’s title inheritance rules.
One important thing to remember is that titles are *not* merged.
You can be King of Spain AND King of England for exemple, but it’s too different titles.
Historically, one of the major wars in Europe was the “War of the Spanish Succession”, where the future King of Spain, Philip of Anjou was also the grandson of French King Louis XIV.
The risk of that man controling at some point both France’s armies and Spain’s gold was seen as too big of a risk by Great Britain and Austria, hence 15 years of war.
It ended with a kind of draw, with Philip of Anjou still becoming King of Spain, but renouncing any claim on the French throne.
That’s a non issue in modern times where kings are just decoration, but it still illustrates that even then, legal inheritance rules were only as strong as the armies backing them.
Country of Spain was founded by marriage of Queen Isabela of Aragon & Catalunya with King Ferdinand of Castile & Leon, each of which was already a union of multiple kingdoms. They were called the Catholic monarchs.
If the heads of two royal households, or the direct heirs to their thrones were to get married today, it would all be worked out before the marriage as to what would happen.
And I suspect the most likely thing would be one of them would renounce their title if they really wanted to marry the other. I think it would be because if two such people were to plan to marry it would because they had fallen for each other, rather than the marriage being for political means
Historically, it could result in the union of two nations into one. This happened in the 15th century when Queen Isabella of Castile and Leon married king ferdinand II of Aragon. This joined their countries together to form Spain.
It was common/the norm for royals from one family to marry the royal of another family and maintain alliances through these marriages. It would also result in the different royal houses all being related to each other. For example during WWI, king George V of the UK, Kiaser Wilhelm II of Germany and the wife of Tzar Nicholas II were all grandchildren of Queen Victoria. The rulers of Austria and Bulgaria were also relations of Queen Victoria, but more distant.
Having said this, historically these were arranged marriages so you would never get the direct heir of one throne being married off to the direct heir of another throne.
In more modern times (a bit more modern), it happened when Queen Elizabeth II (then Princess Elizabeth) was to marry Prince Philip. He was in the line of succession for the greek throne (also had a line to the danish throne too). He had moved to the Uk when there was political upheaval in Greece and left Greece before he was 1 year old. In the lead up to his marriage to Elizabeth he became a naturalised British citizenship, gave up his Greek citizenship and renounced his Greek and danish titles. Although there is no law that required him to do this, it seemed that he and those around the couple agreed that fully integrating to Britain and loosing the connection to the other countries was best politically. It also meant that if political turmoil developed in Greece or Denmark, then the British royal family would not get involved.
This all got very rambling and I’ve now re-read it so many times I can’t work out if it makes sense, so please point out where it doesn’t make sense and I’ll unpick it
Monarchies are publicly sponsored theater.
In your scenario, more theater happens. An nothing else.
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