For a British royal, the line of succession is just one set of the many rules that come with the crown. It turns out that being a member of the royal family isn’t as easy as it looks. The royal family has a lot of holiday traditions, the most bizarre of which is that they must be weighed both before and after Christmas dinner. If they gain weight, it signals that they truly enjoyed themselves at the table. Princess Diana, however, expressed her distaste over the entire debacle. One of the more ridiculous rules is that the royals are banned from playing the board game Monopoly. The reason? The game made the family a little too competitive. This one might not be surprising, but the royals are not allowed to vote. They are expected to remain politically neutral at all times. As you might imagine, royals need permission for everything, and that includes marriage. According to the Succession to the Crown Act of 2013, the first 6 people in line for the crown cannot marry without the consent of the reigning monarch. Failure to obtain approval would immediately disqualify them and their descendants from ever ascending to the throne. Then there are the fringe rules that include the requirement to wear only black when attending funerals and when traveling, nude pantyhose must be worn to formal events, women must wear hats to formal events, tiaras must only be worn at indoor formal events and only after 6 p.m., no wearing fur, no dark nail polish, shellfish must never be ordered at a restaurant, no signing autographs, and…..well….you get it, you can’t do much of anything.
