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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to capture legitimising principles of recent successions to the throne through narrative time. Further, this study considers leaders’ sense-giving to succession. Design/methodology/approach This research applies a “temporal narrative analysis” to explicate legitimising principles of narrative time in three recent case studies of royal succession: the kingdoms of Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands. Findings The findings show that royal successions in three modern European constitutional monarchies are legitimised through giving sense to narrative time. The legitimacy of timing succession is embedded in multiple temporal narratives, in which heirs apparent are brought forward as the new generation who will modernise the monarchy. Originality/value The paper presents an innovative conceptual framework of sense-giving to succession through narrative time. This framework will be helpful to scholars who aim to grasp legitimising principles of temporal narration in leadership succession.

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