Meaning:
An `accident of birth' is the consequence of the circumstances into which a
person is born. For example, a prince will probably have a different life to
a pauper or an Inuit to a Kalahari bushman. The term may also be applied to
some innate talent that a person has by virtue of the DNA they inherited from
their parents. For example, "LeBron James' success at basketball was, in
part, due to the accident of birth of growing to 6 feet, 8 inches tall".
Background:
The phrase `accident of birth' isn't a recent coinage; people have been using
the expression since at least the 17th century.
Of course, how much the circumstances of one's parents at the time of your
birth has varied across the generations and differs from one culture to
another.
Soon after his election as US President in 2020 Joe Biden inscribed on the
wall with "From this house to the White House". Other cultures have more
prescriptive limits on who can become head of state.
While accidents of birth apply to us all and no one is immune to the effects
that our parents and our culture pass to us, those effects are no better
demonstrated by the consequence of being born into a royal or noble
household.
Had an accident of birth intervened such that Biden had been born in
Scarborough, Yorkshire rather than Scranton, Pennsylvania, he would have had
little chance of becoming King Joe I of the United Kingdom.
When `accident of birth' was coined in England in the 1600s the system of
primogeniture was unquestioned. That decreed that hereditary titles, and the
wealth and power that goes with them, are passed to the eldest male
offspring. For instance, Henry VIII had three children before Edward VI, the
child who succeeded him to the throne. These were: Mary Tudor, Henry FitzRoy
and Elizabeth Tudor. The two girls were superseded by Edward because they
weren't male and Henry FitzRoy because he was illegitimate. Those accidents
of birth had repercussions in English history that continue to resound today.
Even now, while primogeniture as applied to royal succession in the UK was
abolished in 2011, it will take many years to become inconsequential.
Princess Anne, who is Queen Elizabeth's second child is only 15th in line to
the throne.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Britain has converted to curry from fish and chips, I was told by a colleague
from that corner of the world. They must've also been dabbling in reincarnation
and as a result no longer feeling surefooted, which could explain their ditching
primogeniture, an idea as old as their hills.
In the new framework, birth can be anything but accidental. It's the result of a
person's deeds, each carefully weighed, in the previous life, plugged into some
arcane formula of logic and math. Delivery, however royal or gentle, is misnamed
as it just kicks off another round of suffering for a soul on its journey to
nirvana. Enlightenment, however, might still be a long shot. Some hardened
criminals could take forever to arrive.
