King Charles expands the Counsellors of State list instead of removing Harry

Pretty much as soon as Prince Harry moved to America with his wife and son, Salt Island has been ripping out their hair over a million different things. They’ve been searching for a cudgel, or something to hold over Harry’s head. They settled on the “counsellors of state” issue. That was one of their big worrystones for years – whether Harry would ever be “removed” as Counsellor of State. Under QEII, Harry was made one of the counsellors simply because of his place in the line of succession and his age – while George and Louis are higher in the line of succession, they’re still children, obviously. So this worrying and panicking over Harry’s position was still happening up until the day QEII passed away. She never changed or updated diddly squat. King Charles began to make his moves to change the counsellors of state a few months ago, and on his 74th birthday, there was an update in the House of Lords.

King Charles has begun the process of increasing the number of royals who can stand in for the monarch for official duties – proposing Princess Anne and Prince Edward as additions. At present the “counsellors of state” are Camilla, the Queen Consort, plus four other senior royals. But two of these are Prince Andrew and Prince Harry, who are no longer available as “working royals”.

The King’s requested change was read to the House of Lords on Monday. It’s expected that the Lords will reply on Tuesday – and the same day could see the government introducing legislation in the House of Commons, with a Counsellors of State Bill paving the way for the King’s proposal for two extra working substitutes. This rapid move in Parliament is intended to resolve an awkward constitutional problem about who could deputise for the King if he was overseas or unwell and could not carry out his duties as head of state.

At present two of the five eligible to act as counsellors are effectively ruled out. Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, withdrew from royal duties in the wake of his association with US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, lives with his family in the United States and has stepped back from being a “working royal”.Rather than remove them from the list of counsellors of state, the proposal is to widen the pool of eligible royals, so that the availability of Prince Andrew and Prince Harry would cease be an issue.

In the House of Lords, Lord Parker of Minsmere delivered a statement from the King which called for Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, and Prince Edward, the Earl of Wessex, to be added as extra counsellors of state. The statement said that adding the extra counsellors would “ensure continued efficiency of public business when I’m unavailable, such as while I’m undertaking official duties overseas”.

[From BBC]

While I’m loath to give Charles credit for anything, I think this was a somewhat elegant solution to the issue, which probably will come up at some point. It was actually an issue last year, when QEII was hospitalized overnight, her staff covered up her hospitalization and then-Prince Charles was out of the country, as was Prince William (he was on vacation, big surprise). If there had been a constitutional emergency, Prince Andrew would have been the only counsellor of state in the country who could have acted on QEII’s behalf. Now Anne, Edward, William and Camilla can step in as the primary counsellors of state on KC3’s behalf. Meanwhile, they’re not even going to formally remove Degenerate Andrew from the list, nor Harry.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.