In 1955, when Queen Elizabeth's younger sister Margaret turned 25, she was due to marry her beloved, Group Captain Peter Townsend

In 1955, when Queen Elizabeth's younger sister Margaret turned 25, she was due to marry her beloved, Colonel Peter Townsend. But the marriage did not take place, by the decision of the Queen: as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, she could not countenance the marriage of a member of the royal family to a divorced man while his former spouse was still living. The prohibition was extremely painful to Margaret. She was offered permission to marry only on condition that she renounce her title, give up her rights to the throne, forfeit her allowance and lose the possibility of living in England. It was in precisely this way that King Edward VIII had been obliged to give up the crown on account of his marriage to Wallis Simpson in 1936.

Yet when in 2005 Prince Charles resolved to marry the divorced Camilla Parker Bowles, whose former husband was still alive, neither the cabinet, nor the bishops of the Church of England, nor the Queen, who is the defender of the faith and of the crown, found it possible to stop the Prince of Wales. Do you know why?

Just in time for the occasion, in 2002 the General Synod of the Church of England repealed the rules that forbade the marrying in church of people whose former spouse was still alive. Most convenient, that.

In the end, Prince Harry, too, took a divorced woman to wife.