Royal Visit to the USA

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

I think McClef is on to something here. If one follows the traditional rules of male primogeniture as practiced by the British then there are clearly 4 individuals with a stronger claim than Edward to the title Edinburgh.

1) Charles
2) William
3) Harry
4) Andrew

This is true only insofar as succession to the throne is concerned. Setting aside Princes William and Henry who have been given no subsidiary titles, Andrew has been given the dukedom of York, previously the property of his grandfather King George VI, Duke of York. This did not pass to his elder brother, who was passed over as the nearest heir male, but rather the title "Duke of York" was settled upon Prince Andrew at the time of his marriage.

In addition I also offer the situation with Edward VIII. He was already involved with Mrs. Simpson prior to George V's death, and Mrs. Simpson was clearly an impediment with 2 strikes against her (American and divorced). If his younger brother York was clearly preferable; married, father, by all accounts a decent man, then why was E-VIII allowed to become King?

Edward VIII wasn't married to Mrs. Simpson at the time his father died, hence he automatically became king. Had he married Mrs. Simpson while still Prince of Wales then several possibilities existed, the two most likely being:
(1) The king could have declared the PoW out of the line of succession and the crown would have passed to the king's second son, the Duke of York;
(2) The marriage could have been declared morganatic, and Mrs. Edward Windsor (or, perhaps, Mrs. Edward Wales), much like the morganatic wife of William IV, would have had no role in the royal family.

Why didn't G-V skip over the playboy with the unpleasant girlfriend for the more palatable younger brother?

George V seems to have been a strong willed, rather domineering individual, who, by some accounts, was disappointed in all four of his sons: Edward, Prince of Wales, was seen as overly self-indulgent; Albert (the Duke of York and future George VI) was painfully shy, suffered from a very bad stammer, and wanted nothing more than to be more-or-less left alone; George, Duke of Kent, led a very louche existence which many would have found totally unsuited to a monarch, while Henry, Duke of Gloucester, was-- it is perhaps uncharitably said-- thick as two planks nailed together. Also, and this is important to remember, the issues surrounding Mrs. Simpson only came to be of cataclysmic importance after HRH the Prince of Wales became king.

I think the simple answer is that the British royal family doesn't behave like the Arabs and appoint heirs and crown princes willy-nilly. They follow the rules and traditions of male primogeniture and pass titles father to eldest son.

Solomonic succession, where by the reigning monarch chooses his successor from a qualified group of closely related males-- which is very similar to the ancient Scots-Irish system of tanistry-- may be different than the custom of primogeniture of Western Europe, but I don't think it can accurately be characterized as "willy-nilly".

MoR, are there precedents for skipping legitimate male heirs in the succession to a title within the British nobility?

Yes. Two immediately come to mind regarding the Stuart succession to the British crown, when the legitimate heir-male was passed over for reasons of religion. If that's not "willy-nilly" I don't know what is!

I'm not trying to be pr*ck*sh in asking this question, it just seems that the current Edinburgh/Wessex situation seems to be far outside the normal parameters.

Well, in one regard it is outside the norm, because royal titles are different than ordinary titles. That said, there are many examples of British titles passing from father to daughter (Mountbatten), passing to a junior cadet of a family through the female line (Antrim) and skipping generations (Kildare). Some of these may have involved some sort of jiggry-pokery, but most were accomplished by petition to the sovereign, who, as the font of all honours, can assign titles to whomsoever she pleases, by her own mere motion.