Slightly less chance of this one being removed at source, but Harry's book "Spare" is coming out next week.
If you don't get the reference, it's a phrase used to mean that monarchs need to produce "an heir, and a spare" - one kid to succeed them, and some others in case that one... didn't.
Which is an astonishingly self-pitying title; the implication is that William is the kid they wanted, and he's just there as a backup and therefore not wanted. I wonder what his aunts and uncles think about this concept that they're not wanted since they are, after all, spares for your own father, Harry. Do you see Anne/Andrew/Edward flopping about in misery because they won't be Queen/King (thanks to William and Harry), or their kids who are spares of spares? Princess Margaret didn't exactly wallow in self-pity, and come to think of it what will your daughter, Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor, feel about being a "spare" for her brother Archie?
It's also pretty ignorant because... he's the great-grandson of a spare. He wouldn't be anywhere in the line of accession if his great-great-uncle Edward VIII hadn't, after years of carrying on with married women, suddenly decided he wanted to marry the most recent one got (an American celebrity, although this one was a socialite) now he was King. Forced to abdicate, it passed to his "spare" brother George VI.
That got me wondering, just how often spares get the job.
So I looked it up and it turns out that Charles is only the fourth ever first child of a monarch who was first child of a monarch - and should William acceded to the throne, he would be the first ever British or English monarch to be the first child of a monarch who was first child of a monarch who was first child of a monarch. There's never been primogeniture for four successive generations in the entire history of unified monarchs of England or Britain going right back to William I.
Going back 300 years we get one of the biggest messes ever (outside of Middle Ages wars), with the accession of George I; he was great-grandson of James I/VI, but there were six monarchs between them mostly down the side of James's eldest children, which at one point had married first cousins William IV/Mary jointly invited to the throne. Neither George's parents, nor grandparents, were ever on the throne.
His son, George II, succeeded him, but then George III was George II's grandson - Prince Frederick, George II's eldest son, died before his father, and III took the throne.
Two of III's kids became King - George IV and William IV - breaking primogeniture again, but none of them had legitimate heirs so it went back up the tree, along to George III's fifth kid Edward and, since he was also dead, down to his daughter Victoria.
She produced George V, and both his kids became King, taking us back to Edward VIII and George VI above.
By my count that's a spare every 100 years over the last 300 (which includes the three longest-reigning monarchs of all): George VI (second son of George V), Victoria (daughter of fourth son/fifth child of George III), William IV (third son of George III).
Before that, George I was a turbospare (great-grandson of James IV, via 12th child [Sophia] of second child [Elizabeth]), William & Mary were hyperspares (son of eldest child of Charles I and daughter of third son [James II] of Charles I), Anne was a spare (second daughter of James II), and James II was a spare (third son of Charles I); and technically Charles II was a spare as he had an older brother who might have been stillborn but I won't count that. Before that we're into all kinds of mayhem with the interregnum, various internal wars, princes in the tower, and so on).
I think that brings us up to seven in 400 years - 1625-2022 - or one every 57 years. We're 86 years (and a couple of weeks) from the last one.
