• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Does King Charles III Really “Own” All The Dolphins In British Waters?

August 31, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

When King Charles III inherited the throne from Queen Elizabeth II back in 2022, he quite famously received the right to claim ownership of any unmarked mute swans found in open water on public land. It turns out, however, that’s far from the only curiously animal-related part of his inheritance – sea creatures make an appearance too.

Advertisement

To find out what we’re on about, jump in our handy time machine and travel back with us to 14th-century England – specifically, the year 1322, during the reign of King Edward II. While this time is primarily marked by conflict amongst the English nobles (not unusual), it also gives rise to a (very unusual) law that still stands to this day.

According to English Heritage, the statute, known as Prerogativa Regis, reads: “The King shall have throughout the Realm, Whales and great Sturgeons taken in the Sea or elsewhere within the Realm.”

At the time, whales and sturgeons made quite the valuable catch, and well, the King couldn’t have just anyone getting hold of one. 

As such, any catches of so-called “Royal Fish” had to be offered up to the King – the punishment for not doing so is unknown, but given this is Medieval England we’re talking about, we can’t imagine it was particularly pleasant.

The law still stands today, with Royal Fish taken to be all whales, porpoises, dolphins, and sturgeons found in the United Kingdom’s waters. So yes, technically King Charles III does have the right to claim ownership of any of those creatures. That being said, although King Charles III technically holds a historical claim to these marine animals, in reality, they are protected by conservation laws and are not regarded as the personal property of the monarch.

Advertisement

Furthermore, it doesn’t seem to be a statute that’s likely to be taken particularly seriously by today’s royals (though attempts to repeal it have been unsuccessful), if an incident back in 2004, when Queen Elizabeth II was on the throne, is anything to go by.

As reported at the time by BBC News, a fisher who caught a sturgeon off the coast of Wales ended up being investigated by the police, after it transpired that the fish was sold at an auction for £650 ($853) – despite being protected under UK law.

That was the true issue at hand in this case – the Crown didn’t seem too fussed about the other, medieval law that had been broken. “A fax was sent to Buckingham Palace and fairly quickly a return fax came saying the fisherman was free to dispose of it as he wished,” said a spokeswoman for Swansea Coastguard.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Venice prepares to charge tourists, require booking
  2. Welcome To Deal Days Where You Get Microsoft Office Professional For Only $35.99
  3. Who Exactly Owns Neil Armstrong’s Moon Poop? And Why Is It So Important We Get It Back?
  4. Shortly Before His Death, Carl Sagan Left A Message For The First Humans On Mars

Source Link: Does King Charles III Really "Own" All The Dolphins In British Waters?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Humans Are In The Middle Of “A Great Evolutionary Transition”, New Paper Claims
  • Why Do Some Toilets Have Two Flush Buttons?
  • 130-Year-Old Butter Additive Discovered In Danish Basement Contains Bacteria From The 1890s
  • Prehistoric Humans Made Necklaces From Marine Mollusk Fossils 20,000 Years Ago
  • Zond 5: In 1968 Two Soviet Steppe Tortoises Beat Humans To Orbiting Around The Moon
  • Why Cats Adapted This Defense Mechanism From Snakes
  • Mother Orca Seen Carrying Dead Calf Once Again On Washington Coast
  • A Busy Spider Season Is Brewing: Why This Fall Could See A Boom Of Arachnid Activity
  • What Alternatives Are There To The Big Bang Model?
  • Magnetic Flip Seen Around First Photographed Black Hole Pushes “Models To The Limit”
  • Something Out Of Nothing: New Approach Mimics Matter Creation Using Superfluid Helium
  • Surströmming: Why Sweden’s Stinky Fermented Fish Smells So Bad (But People Still Eat It)
  • First-Ever Recording Of Black Hole Recoil Captured During Merger – And You Can Listen To It
  • The Moon Is Moving Away From Earth At A Rate Of About 3.8 Centimeters Per Year. Will It Ever Drift Apart?
  • As Solar Storm Hits Earth NASA Finds “The Sun Is Slowly Waking Up”
  • Plate Tectonics And CO2 On Planets Suggest Alien Civilizations “Are Probably Pretty Rare”
  • How To Watch The “Awkward” Partial Solar Eclipse This Weekend
  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version