One day I've got to write that essay about monarchic succession in relativistic inertial frames
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These two observers, one having observed the throne to pass to William and one having observed the throne to Andrew, would then meet up and have a relativistic royal succession crisis
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One way to resolve this dispute would be to recognise an official neutral legal relativistic frame of reference, and take the observations from this frame of reference as authoritative, rather than those of any subjective observer
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Another is to extend the concept I mentioned earlier where no two legal events may happen "simultaneously" to mean that no two legal events may be separated by a spacelike curve
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This second solution seems less practical in a scenario where the Queen and Prince Charles might be on separate starships journeying to or from distinct distant stars at relativistic speeds
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If the neutral frame of reference is Earth, the first solution is also impractical because, if you were near Elizabeth at the time she died, it would be impossible to know who was the new monarch without consulting Earth, a round trip of potentially years
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So I guess what you'd do is pick the *current monarch*'s frame of reference as authoritative?
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So it doesn't matter if, in your frame of reference, Charles died first. In Elizabeth's frame of reference, Charles was her successor in her forward light cone and that's what counts
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This leads to a scenario where, in a relativistically colonial fashion, Charles was only ever monarch over a tract of spacetime which he was unable to ever visit or actively rule, due to being spacelike-separated from it
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Ah, it looks like succession doesn't work in the way I described, William ends up monarch no matter what
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Okay, instead imagine a new scenario where William is *being born* right at the same instant that Charles dies, so the question is how the line of succession gets juggled
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End of conversation
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This is definitely the approach the law would take. It's full of stand-in "reasonable person" rules already, so it would be little surprise to add a default reference frame to resolve this ambiguity. My guess is it'd be the reference frame with Buckingham Palace stationary.
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Or perhaps the crown jewels, as the symbolic representation of the monarch's power.
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