Kate and Will’s baby will be heir to the throne, girl or boy
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge
The Commonwealth nations have agreed to push forward with a bill that will stop the discrimination against women in determining successors to the British throne.
That means that whether William and Kate's baby is a boy or a girl, they'll be third in line to rule the monarchy, right after Prince Charles and William, BBC News reported.
"The Government will soon introduce the Succession to the Crown Bill which will make our old fashioned rules fit for the 21st century," said Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, ITV reported. "It will write down in law what we agreed back in 2011 – that if the Duke and Duchess Cambridge have a baby girl, she can one day be our Queen even if she later has younger brothers."
The law also seeks to end the ban on succession of those royals who marry non-Roman Catholics, according to ITV.
The changes will alter the 300-year-old rule of primogeniture, which states that woman in the line to the throne is automatically bumped down in favor of a younger male sibling, the London Evening Standard reported.
The bill will go into effect in all of the Queen’s Realms, AKA the 16 nations where the Queen is head of state. The leaders of those countries agreed to the changes in principle at a summit in Perth, Australia last October, but will now be put before parliament, the Telegraph reported.
This isn't the first attempt at changing the succession laws: since 1981, there have been 11 efforts to allow women to take the throne, but all failed due to lack of support from the British government, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.
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