Climbing the royal ladder

Prince William and Kate Middleton are getting married on April 29th, 2011. This is only significant to me because the media (and all of England) will be focusing all their coverage and attention on this royal wedding instead of my birthday. I guess this means Queen Elizabeth won't be coming to my birthday party...

I recently updated my bucket list (1. Eat at a Gordon Ramsay restaurant in London 2. Buy a really nice bucket) and added a new item: gaining the throne of England. After many tireless days of drawing giant family trees stemming back to the days of Adam, Eve and Cain (sorry Abel), I have determined that I am 4539780345th in line to succeed the British throne. Unfortunately for me this number grows daily because of the rules of succession.

The rules favor eldest boys and their offspring, so if you are a younger brother or any kind of sister, you're basically screwed. The only way to have any chance of moving up the line is if the next-in-line sibling dies, along with all their progeny. It's even worse as an eldest daughter with no brothers, because if the royal parents decide at any point to have a boy, she is bumped down no matter how much older she is.

So how do I plan to move up to the top of the list? One cannot simply marry their way up the line of succession. (So much for my plan to send flowers to Prince Harry.) I can't be adopted because only children born in wedlock to the royal family are added to the top of the list. Scar from the Lion King had it easy. All he had to do is betray his brother and convince his nephew to run away in guilt. I, on the other hand, have a much more daunting task ahead of me. The only thing going for me is that I'm the eldest boy in my family and my dad is the eldest boy in his family. Other than that, it seems my only hope to move up the line quickly is a potential pandemic or an ironic Hong Kong takeover of England. Until then, I can only dream of the potential titles I plan to give to my offspring as king:

The Prince of Whales
The Duke of North Carolina
The Earl of Grey Tea
The Countess of Bennigan's Monte Cristo

Maybe I'll just stick with getting a reservation at a Gordon Ramsay restaurant in London.

Update: The queen just had a new great-granddaughter. Now I'm 4539780346th on the list.

Update 2: There's talk of changing the rules so that it's not gender-discriminatory anymore. The slide down the list continues...