WI: Morganatic Marriages in England

"Well, Mr Baldwin, this is a pretty kettle of fish" - these were reportedly Queen Mary of Teck's words on hearing that her son, Edward VIII wished to marry Wallis Simpson.

The topic had been broached, unsuccessfully of attempting to have Edward marry Wally in a morganatic wedding - much like Queen Mary's own branch of the house of Württemberg - but there was no precedent for this in English law, and the CoE apparently refused to recognize such a marriage if it took place.

Now, England has a history of it's monarchs marrying (in many cases) against dynastic tradition - Edward IV and Henry VIII being two such cases (well Henry counts for at least four cases on his own, while Edward gets two). What if the concept of a morganatic marriage had been introduced in England? How might this affect things?
 
Wasn't the fact that morganatic marriages not a concept in Britain due to the fact that the monarch did NOT need to marry a scion of noble stock, unlike the continental monarchies?
 

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Well, Harold Godwinson was married to two women, one by Mare Danico.
 
Depends when it was sort of imposed in the 18th century which is when you could argue that the concept of equal marriage reached its heights spreading from Germany etc - legally the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain continued to respect their german tradition in marital terms - marrying equally - the Royal Marriages Act of 1772 explicitly stated that any marriage without royal consent was invalid with any issue being illegitimate - which was a step further than a morganatic situation where the children were legitimate but not dynasts. In both England and Scotland monarch's had married commoners (even if they were rather aristocratic ones), likewise the French monarchs had frequently married outside royal circles (to high ranking noble women for example) however if the difference in rank was so severe then they opted for so called private or secret marriages under the Bourbons.
Impact wise it would have barred numerous monarch's from the succession - the entire House of York, the house of Beaufort, the house of Tudor and almost every Stuart King of Scots - even if it was only imposed as an idea in the 17th century it would have barred Queen Mary II and Queen Anne. In modern terms unequal marriages would include George V's (his wife was Mary of Teck although a royal on her mother's side on her father's she was a morganatic offshoot of the Royal House of Wurttemburg), would have rendered the marriages of George VI, Princess Mary and Henry Duke of Gloucester morganatic and in the more recent generation - Princess Margaret's, all the Kent's, all the Gloucesters and all the current monarch's children.
 
Well, I'm sure Warwick was wishing he could say that because Edward had married Elizabeth Wydeville, their kids had no claim. Next batter up, George of Clarence, marry Bona of France
 
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