1)Other than the well-known Comte de Paris, how many Pretenders to various thrones are there still left?
I include imperial thrones, such as those of the Roman Empire, the French Empire (Bonapartes), and the Russian Empire. 2) I am also concerned with the whole problem of the two dead Romanov corpses that were discovered missing from the lime pit where the rest of the imperial family of Nicholas II and Alexandra, including Nicholas and Alexandra themselves, were dumped by the communists on Lenin’s order.
(2.5 Where has Lenin been dumped, ha ha, or is he still on view?) The little haemophiliac tsarevich’s body was not found, or so I understand, and the body of one of the little grand-duchesses was not found either. Anastasia’s, they say, was found, so one of the following is still missing: Olga, Tatiana, Marie. 3) Finally, what is the latest research on whether the later Romanovs were really Romanovs or were they Orlovs? I have read that Catherine the Great didn’t produce the next Romanov with the assistance of her insane Romanov husband the tsar, but with the help of an Orlov officer.
This question hasn’t attracted any replies yet, so let’s see if we can kick-start a discussion. I’m afraid I can’t add much to (2) or (3), but I’m sure that there are others who can. I can however say something sensible about (1).
As should be obvious, almost all republics which had an hereditary monarchy at some point over the past few centuries still have someone who would be the legitimate claimant to that former throne. The main exceptions are those republics, such the Republic of Ireland or the U.S.A., which broke away from a monarchy to become independant.
Simply restricting oneself to Europe, the list includes France, Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Portugal. In the case of France, there are at least two competing Bourbon claimants. One could also arguably count all the smaller monarchies and principalities which were subsumed into either the German Empire or the Kingdom of Italy. There is no claimant to the Holy Roman Empire as that was an elective monarchy. The same applies to the Polish crown. A number of surviving monarchies also have alternative pretenders. There are several Jacobite claimants to the British throne.
Apart from a few who had hoped to benefit from the post-Communist upheavals in Eastern Europe (as yet without any obvious success), none of them have serious political ambitions. The usual formula is that they would happily return as constitutional monarchs if that was the wish of their former subjects.
Actually, it’s Saltykov, not Orlov. And chances are, we’ll never know, as CAtherine was married to Peter III at the time, and so Paul could very well have been her husband’s child-especially since he looked so much like Peter, and inherited many of his traits!
And even then, they would not be “pretenders”…persay.
THIS is the perfect site to check out, btw:
http://homepages.go.com/~lotma/Remains.html
Made by a VERY good friend of mine!
Are there really still living (direct) descendants of the Stuart Pretenders? Can someone expand on this?
Emperor Norton’s job is technically open, but it may be that SF Mayor Willie Brown has made a de facto claim on the gig.
The question of whether there are any direct descendants of Charles Edward Stuart (a.k.a. Charles III a.k.a. ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’) is the reason why there are several Stuart pretenders.
Charles Edward Stuart did leave a daughter, the Duchess of Albany, so most claimants seek to prove (1) that they are descended from her, and (2) that this descent is legitimate. None of the claimants has ever produced convincing proof for either assertion. All reputable historians agree that the Duchess was illegitimate. The best known of these pretenders is currently Prince Michael of Albany, who is clearly a fraud.
That there are no surviving legitimate descendants of James II does not mean that there are no other claimants, as other lines are also barred because they are Catholics. The closest legitimate heir to James II, irrespective of religion, is usually recognised as being the Duke of Bavaria.
The notion that there are descendants of Bonnie Prince Charlie, legitimate or otherwise, was so popular that Antonia Fraser (of Mary, Queen of Scots fame) wrote a mystery novel which centered around a fictitious woman who was claimed to be descended from BPC and a young Highlands girl he secretly wed. The novel is called The Wild Island.
Check out “Dagobert’s Revenge” magazine, at www.dagobertsrevenge.com. Remember “Holy Blood, Holy Grail,” that book from late '70s, by three BBC journalists, about the theory that Jesus of Nazareth not only had children, but those children were ancestors of the Merovingian kings of the Franks and the Austrian Hapsburgs? Sure you do! Well, apparently a lot of people have gotten interested in the idea – the magazine is about “Musick, Magick and Monarchism.” (It also pays a lot of attention to certain kinds of bands.) (Dagobert was a Merovingian king who was assassinated under mysterious circumstances – this, of course, was generations before Charlemagne.)
Apparently there are now several persons who publicly claim some connection with the “Grail Blood.” Only one, however, is an active royal claimant: Prince Michael of Albany! A Belgian who wants to be King of Scots! Website at www.royalhouseofstewart.org.uk. Prince Michael, or Michael Lafosse, claims he is the rightful heir of the Scottish Royal Stewarts (he spells the name in the original, Scottish way, rather than the Frenchified “Stuart”). His purported ancestor is Edward James Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s legitimate son (unknown to conventional history books) by his second marriage (likewise). Prince Michael claims to be descended from Jesus (or at least he has allowed his “historiographer royal,” Laurence Gardner, to make this claim for him, in Gardner’s book “Bloodline of the Holy Grail.”) However, he does not make much of this claim and seems to think being descended from Mary, Queen of Scots, is much more important to him than being descended from Jesus. He also claims, by the way, to be descended from the Prophet Mohammed.
Prince Michael’s claims are disputed by many, especially the more traditional “Jacobites” (at members.rogers.com/jacobite) who support the claim of Prince Franz von Wittelsbach, Duke of Bavaria (a collateral descendant of the royal Stuarts), to be the true and rightful king of England, Scotland, Ireland and (yes!) France. A cursory web search can also easily turn up Evangelicals who regard Prince Michael as the Antichrist, or at least a good candidate for the role.
If you read Laurence Gardner’s books, royalty and government were first established on earth by the Anunnaki (Annunaki?) gods of Sumer, who were extraterrestrial or extradimensional beings, or else humans genetically modified by such. Thus, true royalty are not merely the descendants of generals or pirates who got lucky, they are descendants of superhuman beings. A lot of the “Dagobert’s Revenge” crowd seem to share this view.
Monarchism is fun!
I thought Jeremiah or Ezekiel or whatever Sitchin was the one who believed in the Annunaki as coming from outer space and wrote manybooks about it. I mean Sitchin wrote the books, the Annunaki only came from outer space). Don’t tell me other people have this theory too! I wonder who he or they think the Igigi are?
Well, there is a difference between a “pretender” and a “heir in exile”. There are legit heirs to the Bourbon & Napoleonic “thrones”- just that there isn’t any throne for them to sit on. However, the “Stuart” pretenders are just that- not the legit heir.
There are two legit heirs to the Romanovs- the best (?) is a mayor of a town in Florida, who claims he is not interested in being “the heir”. Thus, rather than waiting for one of the “lost princesses” to show up, the “real” heirs are likely waiting for that guy to pass on so their will be a “real heir” The children of the last Czar are almost undoubtedly dead- hell, even if one survived, the’d likely be dead by now anyway.
Wait! I thought “Pretender,” often capitalized, was an official term that somebody who claimed to be the legitimate holder of the throne took upon himself.It doesn’t mean pretender in the usual sense, it means in the other,older, and more or less obsolete use of the word pretender to mean simply one who CLAIMS something. I thought it was a respectable title. The Pretender hoped to one day be united with the crown on his head.
This isn’t quite true. King Simeon II of Bulgaria, exiled in 1946, returned to Bulgaria in 1996. He set about forming a political party, the Simeon II National Movement, and the party won elections on June 17, 2001. Apparently he didn’t stand for election, he just lead the party to victory, claiming 120 of the 240 seats in the National Assembly.
The government of Bulgaria’s website states, “Having won a landslide victory for the National Movement, on July 24, 2001 Simeon Saxe-Coburg Gotha was sworn in as Prime Minister of the Republic of Bulgaria.” The country is still a republic, though, still having a president as the head of state. George Puranov was elected to that post in January 2002.
This article in The Economist reports that Simeon says he isn’t looking for the crown back:
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=666202
Well, yes, it does…a pretender claims a throne held by someone else. Kaiser Wilhelm’s grandson, for example, isn’t the pretender to the throne of Germany…he’s the person who would be Kaiser if Germany still had a Kaiser.
If I were to claim the throne of Britain, I’d be a pretender to the throne, because Britain already has a monarch.
The Pretender (capitalized), usually is used to refer to James Stuart (The Old Pretnder) or his son, Charles Stuart (The Young Pretender).
Guinastasia, your friend’s link won’t work for me.
Going by memory of Robert Massie’s book The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, the imperial family was positively identified by DNA comparison with living cousins. Two bodies were missing. The poor little boy was easily identified as one; the identity of the missing sister is unclear. There is controversy among forensic scientists; however, the remains of the girls are similiar to each other in height, while in life Anastasia was quite a bit shorter than her sisters. Thus, Anastasia is the best suspect for the missing sister.
The confusion over whether or not she had been found may stem from the fact that the best-known Anastasia claimant, Anna Anderson, has been disqualified through DNA testing. Anna has been identified as Polish-born Francisca Schankowski (I know this spelling is incorrect). Besides Anna, there were a ridiculous number of Romanov pretenders with a small p over the years.
Massie writes that one of the men responsible for disposing of the bodies later claimed that they had burned two of them: the Alexis and the hated Tsarina. The theory now is that since the bodies were decomposing and badly bloated, the men could not tell Alexandra from Anastasia and accidently burnt the wrong body. After decomposition, Alexandra’s age and bridgework made her easy to distinguish from her daughters.
An officer in the White Army, leading a party searching for the royal family, wrote that he found bone and ash in the woods and believed it to be remnants of the family or their loyal retainers. Massie had something about some mysterious relics in the Russian Orthodox Church in Brussels that the church will not allow anyone to examine.
Sorry this is all so vague. I’d be happy to dig out the book and double-check the names and dates if you want.
Actually, my comments were entirely correct when I originally posted them, which was long ago in September 2000. This is a dormant thread which, for some inexplicable reason, has only now been revived. The Simeon II National Movement did not exist before April 2001.
How strange. I didn’t even notice. My apologies.
Actually, there are descendants of Bonny Prince Charlie, just no legitimate ones, despite what Michel Lafosse (now calling himself “Prince Michael of Albany”) claims. BPC had an illegitimate daughter, who in turn had three illegitimate children of her own. Her two daughters have descendants, but as they are from a bastard line they have no claim to any throne.
There is a website listing heirs to former kingdoms here.
.:Nichol:.
Well, considering this thread is almost three years old, I’m not surprised! Go.com is no longer around!
Try www.livadia.org
Regarding France, there are the Bourbon claimants. There is also the Orleanist claimant. Finally, we have a Bonapartist or two claiming the Imperial throne.
I have come across a few claimants to an “American” throne, but none of them present themselves as heirs to the only Emperor of the United States of America (and sometimes Protector of Mexico), Norton I.
Not as learned as the rest of you on this subject, but one of my favorite obits of all time was in the NY Times in the 60’s. It annouced the death of “the illegitimate son of the Pretender to the non-existent French throne.”