Thanks for picking up on that, Cap’n – I’d intended to mention the Spanish-Portuguese union (which, it might be noted, came only 88 years after the Kingdoms of Aragon and Castile had united for form Spain in the first place, and only 67 years after they’d added Spanish Navarre to the mix, to unite all the non-Portuguese Iberians. But for Ferdinand and Isabella, the Iberian peninsula would have been made up much as Germany and Italy were for some centuries thereafter – there were at least seven different kingdoms there at one point around AD 1200.
BTW, it was the House of Aviz that died off in 1580, and the cadet branch was the House of Braganza, which held the Portuguese throne until 1910 (the penultimate king was monarch for only 15 minutes, and spent his reign bleeding to death from having had his throat cut in the attack that killed his father), and also provided two Emperors of Brazil separately from 1822 to 1889.
All this means that the Habsburgs would also have a claim on Portugal, Brazil, half of Timor, Goa, Damao, Diu, Havar Nageli (which sounds like it ought to be an Israeli folk dance!), Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and most Atlantic islands.
On the other hand, if we start validating historical claims, Mongolia and Macedonia may have something to say!
We must also consider the Romanovs, Paleologi, and the House of Bourbon (?). I’m pretty sure they’ve all still got some heir extant, no matter how twisted the lineage.
The heritage of the House of Romanov is disputed – the unquestionable heir died a few years ago, having by ukase revoked a ruling by one of his predecessors that only men could succeed, to allow his sole child, his daughter Marina, to be his successor. To say that she is not well liked by her family is something of an understatement. The argument made by the Romanovs who oppose her is that only an enthroned Tsar can issue that sort of ruling, so it passes to the nearest male heir – who is, or was, Mayor of Palm Beach, and not interested in being pretender to the Russian throne.
The Bourbons do have a French heir, who is from the House of Orleans (remember that the last member of the House of Bourbon was the Comte de Chambord, who died childless in the 1870s). I believe that he too is disputed, thanks to Louis Philippe. The House of Bourbon, however, is alive and well in another branch – the King of Spain is a member of the Borbons, the house descended from Philip V of Spain, Louis XIV’s grandson.
Anyone want to get into the Hohenzollerns and Wittelsbachs?
Is Peter of Yugoslavia still alive? Plus you have the Dutch tradition of abdication-as-retirement; I believe Juliana is still alive. And is Henry Pu-Yi still alive? He’d be the all-time champion – having been monarch of two separate countries, non-sequentially, at different times.
No-Peter died during a liver transplant in 1970-after years of alcohol abuse. His son, Aleksandar, is the Crown Prince of Serbia and highly respected in the international community. He and his wife, Princess Katherine, now live in the palace that belonged to his family, and do a lot of humanitarian work:
Peter’s brother, Prince Andre, the youngest son of King Aleksandar I committed suicide in oh, 1990. His wife at the time was the woman who had been Peter’s mistress, and Andre’s third wife.
Prince Tomislav, the middle brother, died in 2000. I would say that none of them really had a happy life after their father was assasinated in 1934. All of them ended up having marital problems and such.
He died in 1967. Zahir Shah of Afghanistan is still alive. So is Leka I of Albania (maybe…the monarchy wasn’t formally abolished until 1946, even though Leka never actually ruled…) I think Mohammed Farid, king of the Maldives, is still alive (but am not sure), and I’m not sure about the Imam/king of Yemen. The Dalai Lama of Tibet is still alive.
Yep. Though the most well-know claimant to the french throne is the self appointed count of Paris, indeed from the house of Orleans and descending from Louis-Philippe, there’s a contestant, who descend from Louis XIV, and his grandson Philippe who became king of Spain (he’s not the heir of the Spanish crown, since contrarily to France, women can inherit the throne in Spain…check the carlist wars for more about this).
The issue goes this way : Had Louis XIV the right to exclude Philippe and his descendants from succession to the throne of France? According to the fundamental laws of the kingdom, he didn’t. So, the Bourbon pretendants would be first-in line, since the death of the count of Chambord. There are various other arguments like : are foreign (in this case : spanish) princes allowed to become kings of France? Since the last french king was an Orleans, should his descendants be considered as the rightful heirs, or should Louis-Philippe just be considered as an usurpator? Etc…
Not that it’s a topic people are very interested about. Only in the micro-society of the royalists (there are still some out there…for some mysterious reason, all of them come from noble families) this issue is discussed. For the average frenchman, the claimant to the throne is the count of Paris (the Orleans pretender). Not that he himself is very famous, but his father (who lived a long live and died quite recently) was, for various reasons.
Anectodically, I saw once on TV the current count of Paris and he’s…err…I mean I think he has a rather limited IQ. He was essentially unable to articulate any sensible answer to the questions asked, though they were only revolving about the usefulness of monarchy (roughly, it was a debate about reinstituing monarchy in countries where it doesn’t exist anymore, or at the contrary supressing it in countries where it still exists), an issue he should be very familiar with given his position as a pretender to the throne.
Oh I don’t know . . . this stuff seems to be discussed on this board with remarkable regularity!
Interesting thing about the Bourbons–had Charles X of France not been deposed in 1830, he would have been succeeded by his son and then his grandson Henri. When Henri died in 1883, his proper biological successor, by the strict principles of Salic Law, would have been his fifth cousin, the Carlist pretender to the throne of Spain.
Except, as discussed above, that Louis XIV’s grandson Philip of Anjou had renounced the right of French succession for himself and his descendants when he assumed the Spanish throne in 1700. If this renunciation is regarded as binding, then Henri’s proper successor was his seventh cousin Louis Philippe, grandson of the usurper king of the same name.
