There is much made in the press today of a change to the Clarence House website. A passage which explained that the Duchess of Cornwall plans to use the novel title Princess Consort, rather than Queen, when the Prince of Wales accedes the throne has been “quietly removed” (The Telegraph). The press extrapolates from this that Prince Charles “plans to go back on his word and make the Duchess of Cornwall queen” (The Times). This is certainly a reaching stretch of a journalistic conclusion, but the coverage has caused me to reflect a little on the situation.

Is there really a decent argument for the Duchess of Cornwall being anything other than Queen? Regardless of whether she chooses to style herself as such, Camilla will be Queen. In the same way, the Duchess is currently Princess of Wales, even if she chooses to style herself with a lesser title.

But let’s assume for a second that madness prevails, and someone wishes to make an argument for the Act of Parliament which would be required to stop the Duchess becoming Queen, and all the comparable legislation in the nations where Charles will be King. There appears to be no basis for doing this: the common argument mostly boils down to “the public won’t accept it” and “people disapprove of her private life”. The whole point of the monarchy is that such things don’t matter. We don’t get to choose our monarchs or their spouses: provided they are eligible to accede their positions, then accede them they do. If there were a public desire to be picky, then the problem is with the monarchal system, not the individual.

To me, the more persuasive argument is a constitutional one: now that the constitutional principle of primogeniture has changed to favour the firstborn regardless of sex, it’s no longer logical to assume that the role of King is superior to the role of Queen. There should, therefore, be gender equality in terms of the title given to the spouse of the monarch: either the spouse of a Queen should be called a King, or the spouse of a King should be called the Princess Consort (or Queen Consort). To my mind, the latter is the better solution, otherwise we would need to invent another adjective to distinguish the member of the royal couple with the inherited position and constitutional power. It would also be the clearer solution in the case of a monarch with a same-sex spouse acceding the throne.

The catch with my constitutional suggestion is that it really ought to have been sorted when the constitutional changes to primogeniture were approved by Parliament (and equivalent bodies in other nations). However, the problem was sidestepped, along with a host of other gender-related problems. For example, the honorary title bestowed to the spouse of somebody in receipt of a duchy is ‘Duchess’ if the recipient is male and the spouse is female, but zip if the recipient is female and the spouse is male. It’s therefore hard to argue that the status of duchies is equivalent between the sexes.

And the problem with sorting any of this out is that one quickly ends up questioning why such an archaic system survives at all. Only a minority of people may support abolishing the monarchy, but surely an even smaller minority would support creating one if it didn’t already exist.

No doubt harming my credentials as a liberal-leaning millennial, I have to admit that I don’t know my own mind on the future of the monarchy. I vacillate between thinking “of course the monarchy is anachronistic, undemocratic and should be abolished”, “of course the monarchy is anachronistic and undemocratic, but it’s mostly harmless, might do so some good, and no other option looks much better”, and “of course the monarchy is anachronistic and undemocratic, but it would be madness to abolish a long-standing and proven check/balance on our system of government”. In retrospect, I’m surprised to see how unequivocally positive I was about the wedding of Charles and Camilla at the time.

So, in order to avoid complicated and unpredictable questions, it seems to me that the most likely option is the fudge that has been already proven: Camilla will be Queen, but she’ll call herself something else… which is what the Clarence House website said all along.