London: Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II has given her official seal of approval for grandson Prince Harry to marry his American actress fiancee Meghan Markle. Buckingham Palace released the ornate ‘Instrument of Consent’ today to mark nearly a week before the couple are to be married at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle next Saturday.
The document, signed by the 92-year-old monarch earlier, incorporates some symbols of America onto traditional vellum to represent the bride’s origins. The first six people in line to the British throne must seek the Queen’s formal approval to marry, without which Prince Harry – the sixth in line – would have been disqualified from the line of succession. “Now know ye that we have consented and do by these presents signify our consent to the contracting of matrimony between our most dearly beloved grandson Prince Henry Charles Albert David of Wales KCVO and Rachel Meghan Markle,” the instrument reads.
It also includes a Commonwealth emblem, reflecting the couple’s commitment as youth ambassadors of the 53-nation organisation including India. The Instrument of Consent began after the UK’s Royal Marriages Act of 1772. It required descendants of King George II to get the sovereign’s consent before they wed, otherwise their marriages would be invalid. It reportedly came in after King George III’s younger brother, the Duke of Cumberland, secretly married Lady Anne Horton, deemed to be the highly disreputable widow of a commoner. The law was replaced with the more recent Succession to the Crown Act 2013, which allows a member of the British royal family to marry a Roman Catholic but a Roman Catholic cannot become King or Queen. The act also removed male bias from the line of succession.
