Who will be the next Queen? Will Princess Charlotte be Queen - Royal family tree and succession explained

The term ‘royal consort’ is used to refer to the spouse of the reigning monarch.

The wife of a king automatically becomes a queen consort and only a change in legislation will prevent her from doing so.

This is because the throne can only be inherited, and members who are married into the Royal Family cannot take the throne.

So when will we see the next Queen of England and the UK? Who is the next female in line to the throne who will automatically become Queen, as opposed to ‘Queen Consort’?

Here is everything you need to know.

Who will be the next Queen of England?

Currently, the next female in line to the British throne - and therefore the next person who could outright become Queen of England as opposed to ‘Queen Consort’ - is Princess Charlotte of Wales.

The second child and only daughter of William and Catherine, Prince and Princess of Wales. Charlotte is also a granddaughter of King Charles III.

She is third in the line of succession to the British throne after her father and elder brother, following Elizabeth II’s death.

Should her older brother - Prince George - have children later in life, the line of succession will fall to them.

Were George to have a daughter first, they would become most likely to be the next Queen of England, but it doesn’t matter whether they are male or female: the line of succession will fall to George’s offspring.

Until then, we will likely see another Queen Consort in Catherine when the current Prince of Wales becomes King William V, and when Prince George becomes King George VII, any future wife of his will also be Queen Consort.

Though the Prince and Princess of Wales have another son in Prince Louis, due to the implementation of the Perth Agreement in 2011, which altered the rules on male-preference succession, Charlotte did not move down the line when he was born in April 2018.

This makes her the first British princess to rank above a brother in the line of succession.

Why won’t Princess Anne become queen?

The reasons Princess Anne wouldn’t become Queen in the event of King Charles’ death is because the line of succession always continues with the offspring of the current throne-holder.

Hence why William is next in line to the throne after Charles, being the current King’s eldest child.

When will we see the next Queen of England?

Obviously, there are a lot of factors that could come into play to upend the above predictions, and predicting when we might see the next Queen of England is arguably more difficult than predicting who that person may be.

Let’s assume that the current successors to the throne were to live to the ripe old age of Elizabeth II’s 96; were the future King George VII to reach that age (and not have any children of his own), it could be another 87 years until we see a Queen of England.

At that time, Charlotte would be 94 years old herself.

Of course, that’s assuming it’s plain sailing for the line of succession between now and then, with no abdications, health complications or other

It could be significantly less time until we see the next Queen, but it will still be a way off yet, and could be even longer than the timeframe above still.