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An heir or heiress presumptive is the person entitled to inherit a throne, peerage, or other hereditary honour, but whose position can be displaced by a subsequent birth or recognition of a person with a better claim to the position in question. [1] [2] This is in contrast to an heir apparent, whose claim on the position cannot be displaced in this manner.
Depending on the laws controlling succession to the monarchy (or the rules of the peerage) in question, the heir presumptive might be:
The subsequent birth of a legitimate child to the monarch may displace the heir presumptive by creating an heir apparent, or a more eligible heir presumptive. It is not usually assumed that the monarch and his or her consort are incapable of producing further children, even despite their age or infirmity. To take an example from the United Kingdom, on the day before Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne, her father George VI was gravely ill and her mother was 51 years old: additional, male children were thus unlikely, but Elizabeth until her actual accession was still the heir presumptive rather than heir apparent.
An heir presumptive's position may not be secure even after they ascend their throne, as a posthumous child, born after the death of his or her parent the late monarch, could have a superseding claim. Following the death of the UK's King William IV in 1837, himself at that point childless, he was succeeded by his niece Victoria. Per the Regency Act 1830, however, Victoria's accession was only permanent so long as a child of William (of either sex) was not born in the following nine months to his widow, Adelaide. The possibility of such an event was even mentioned in Victoria's accession proclamation, even though Adelaide was 44 years old and had last been pregnant 17 years earlier. Had a child been born, he or she would have replaced Victoria on the throne. [3] [4] Such a situation occurred in Spain in 1885, when King Alfonso XII died and left behind his widow who was three months pregnant. His five-year-old daughter and heir presumptive, María de las Mercedes, was not declared queen because she would be displaced if a son was born; instead, there was a six-month interregnum until the birth of her brother Alfonso XIII, who assumed the throne as king immediately upon birth. Had the pregnancy been lost or resulted in another daughter, Mercedes would have become queen regnant and been retroactively recognized as having become queen upon the death of her father (which would have obviated the need for an interregnum, though only in hindsight). [5] [6]
Heir presumptive, like heir apparent, is not a title or position. Rather, it is a general term for a person who holds a certain place in the order of succession. In some monarchies, the heir apparent bears, ipso facto , a specific title and rank (e.g., in Denmark, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom where Prince of Wales is used to denote the heir apparent). This also is sometimes the case for noble titleholders (e.g., in Spain and the United Kingdom), but a mere heir presumptive does not bear—or is not traditionally given—that title. In other monarchies (e.g., in Monaco, Spain) the first in line to the throne always bears a specific title (i.e., "Hereditary Prince/Princess of Monaco", or Spain's "Prince/Princess of Asturias") by right, regardless of whether she or he is heir apparent or heir presumptive.
In Scots law and in the English and Welsh common law of inheritance, there is no seniority between sisters; where there is no son to inherit, any number of daughters share equally. Therefore, certain hereditary titles can have multiple simultaneous heirs presumptive. These are called, in Scotland for example, heirs portioner presumptive. Since most titles cannot be held by two persons simultaneously, two daughters (without a brother) who are to inherit in this way would do so as co-parceners; before they inherit, both are heirs presumptive. In these circumstances, the title would in fact be held in abeyance until one person represents the claim of both, or the claim is renounced by one or the other for herself and her heirs, or the abeyance is ended by the Crown. There are special procedures for handling doubtful or disputed cases.
The list is limited to heirs presumptive who did not succeed due to death (heirs predeceasing their monarch parent), births of younger brothers, abolitions of monarchies, or changes in succession laws.