If, for the sake of argument, it was determined that Victoria was illegitimate and she and her successors were not entitled to the throne, does anyone know who would be the claimant through the closest non-Victorian line?
It would appear the line would trace through Victoria’s uncle, Ernest Augustus, and his descendants. Ernest’s son George was the heir to the British throne until Victoria had children. Tracing the descendants, it appears the claimant would be Prince Georg of Hanover (who ironically, through another line of descent, is Prince Charles’ first cousin).
Not really. Again, Victoria was born within a marriage, and her paternity would have had to be challenged and bastardy declared in her lifetime for it to have any legal consequence.
Besides, the british throne isn’t, strictly speaking, hereditary. The monarch is whoever parliament says is the monarch, and they said she was, so there the matter rests.
Are we certain that Alice Keppel bore her only legal husband’s children, and not Edward VII’s, so that Charles and Camellia aren’t half-great, great grandchildren?
ETA: “I’ve spent enough on you to buy a battleship!”
"Yes, and you've spent enough *in* me to float one."
From a documentary I saw there were rumours that a British Royal living in the twentieth century had been diagnosed as a sufferer and Princess Margaret was considered the likeliest candidate. Her official biographer decided to put the question to her and her frank reply to him – “Oh no, that was William of Gloucester.” was convincing.
True, but I believe he was also a descendent through his mother.
While the idea of Queen Victoria being illegitimate is an interesting one, it’s unlikely. If her mother was going to conceive a child with another man, I doubt she’d have picked a hemophiliac. Not to mention she looked a lot like her father. However, I would definetly reccomend reading the book, as it explains a lot about how hemophilia effected the royal family, as well as the course of history.
True, although he did resemble Peter somewhat. I’ve read arguments for both sides. Springtime for Spacers, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, since the Prussian royal family were also descendents of the Hanovers. (The first sufferer is thought to be James V of Scotland, the father of Mary, Queen of Scots, who also had it)
I realize this an old thread, but no one has yet mentioned the intriguing case of Michael III, Basil I, and Leo VI, successive emperors of the Byzantine Empire in the late 9th and early 10th centuries.
Michael had a mistress Eudocia who he was unable to marry for political reasons. So he ordered his bodyguard Basil to leave his current wife and marry Eudocia instead. That way he could keep her around the palace and shag her all he wanted without creating a scandal
Basil was a bit of a thug. Born a peasant, he’d attracted the Emperor’s attention through his immense physical strength and skill with horses. Shortly after Basil’s marriage to Eudocia, she gave birth to a son, Leo, who probably was actually fathered by Michael. Although Leo was ostensibly his own offspring, he hated the lad – exactly the sort of attitude you’d expect from someone forced into a sham marriage by his boss.
Basil had his revenge, however. He murdered Michael and seized the throne. And he actually turned out to be a really effective emperor.
Basil tried to set up his firstborn son Constantine to succeed him, but unfortunately Constantine died before his father. So when Basil finally did die, the throne of Byzantium passed to Leo, his second son, who was almost certainly illegitimate, having been fathered by the Emperor Michael instead of the Emperor Basil … .
For one thing, the world has changed since 1818. At the time Queen Victoria was conceived, it wouldn’t have been possible for her mother, the Duchess of Kent, to have been left alone for even a minute with a man not her husband, father, or sibling - not even a clergyman - and especially not on her honeymoon, when Victoria was conceived. At the time, too, the Kents were living at Kew Palace and she knew nobody there except her husband. For another, Victoria bore a striking resemblance to the Duke of Kent, so much so that the gossip writers of the day commiserated with the young princess!
But most importantly, there are two other likely possibilities. The most likely is that Victoria’s mother actually was a carrier of Hemophilia B. This possibility is often wrongly dismissed by those who short-sightedly point out that the Duchess of Kent’s two children by her first husband weren’t carriers of the gene. This means nothing, though: of Victoria’s own first three children, only one inherited the mutation. In fact, since the children known to have inherited the gene were Victoria and Albert’s third, eighth, and ninth, had they stopped at seven we’d never have known that Victoria herself was the carrier, and would be wondering if her third child, carrier daughter Princess Alice, were illegitimate! (And, interestingly, had they stopped at two, nobody would ever have known Victoria was a carrier.)
The second possibility is of course whether there was a spontaneous mutation. This was a more credible hypothesis before it was discovered that the form of hemophilia handed down to the Tsarevich was Hemophilia B, as the Hemophilia A gene is one of the most frequent mutations (a full 50% of Hemophilia A sufferers get it from a mutation, either in themselves or in their mothers). Hemophilia B is known to occur via spontaneous mutation, but it’s much less common.
Returning to the subject of illegitimacy, it is possible that Victoria’s mother was illegitimate. She was the seventh child of the duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saafeld and his wife. He was a noted connoisseur of art and patron of artists, many of whom cluttered his court. It seems plausible to me that his wife, living under much fewer restrictions than her eventual daughter would (after all, she’d already borne the heir and the spare and Saxe-Coburg-Saafeld was then a minor duchy) and surrounded by dozens of young, handsome artistic types, would cheat on her husband. Her daughter would never have had the opportunity.
As for Prince Harry being not Charles’s son - I’m sorry, but discount the hair colour and look at the face: Harry looks like Charles. The rumours aren’t that surprising, I guess, given that James Hewitt was the spitting image of Diana’s father, but still…
In the 1700-hundreds and all the way up to queen Victorias on time, it was quite common for noble and rich women to take lovers after giving birth to a few of her husbands children. No-one minded much, as long as there was no scandal, and everyone was discrete.
So Victoire (Victorias mother) being fathered by someone else I can actually see as more likely.
Actually—do they take DNA samples from new recruits in the British military? It’s procedure in the US, at least (for identifying remains, if necessary).
Exactly. The idea that a Victorian noble woman would have been watched like a hawk every second of her life, lest she stray, is really quite ridiculous. They could and did cheat on their husbands all the time (and their husbands cheated on them, of course). As for why, you really don’t need to look far to realize why: they were stuck in a marriage of convenience, most likely with a person they never really loved in the first place, because mom & dad thought it would be just sooo cool to have a daughter married into the royal family.
Queen Victoria’s hemophiliac gene could have been in her family for generations, as long as it was only passed on to females. Or it could have been a spontaneous mutation.
[QUOTE=Diceman]
Exactly. The idea that a Victorian noble woman would have been watched like a hawk every second of her life, lest she stray, is really quite ridiculous. They could and did cheat on their husbands all the time (and their husbands cheated on them, of course). As for why, you really don’t need to look far to realize why: they were stuck in a marriage of convenience, most likely with a person they never really loved in the first place, because mom & dad thought it would be just sooo cool to have a daughter married into the royal family.
[/QUOTE]
Well, things tightened up considerably by the mid-victorian period. At that point, even the whisper of scandal would have been ruination to any woman (not that “ruination” wasn’t fixable, but you’r rather not have to). But in 1820? Go for it (assuming you had already produced an heir and a spare of course).
I posted a thread about thema few years ago. This is definitely one of my favorite historical soap operas! It really has it all.
Another example:
King Kálmán of Hungary divorced his second wife, Eufemia of Kiev, in 1112 after catching her with another man. She was packed off back to her father’s court in Kiev, where she gave birth to a son, Boris. Eufemia insisted that Boris was Kálmán’s legitimate son but Kálmán refused to acknowledge the child. As an adult, Boris tried several times to seize the Hungarian throne from his alleged half-brother István II (the son of Kálmán from his first marriage) and István’s successor, Béla II (son of Kálmán’s brother), to no avail. Boris married a Byzantine noblewoman, had children, and died in battle fighting for the Byzantines against the Pechenegs.
