If Edward VII and his four brothers had died before having children, Kaiser Wilhelm II could have become King of England.
This thread is absolutely fascinating; but UDS raises a question for me that is probably best suited for another thread. More to follow. . .
Tripler
Archduke of Triplerstadt
The Crown Prince of Norway (the future Olav V) was 12th in line for the British throne at the time of the coronation of George V in 1911, just behind his mother Queen Maud of Norway, George V’s youngest sister. Even today, the King of Norway, the Queen of Denmark, the King of the Netherlands, and arguably the King of Sweden remain in line for the British throne (and several of the other reigning European monarchs would be except they’re Catholic). However, Elizabeth is not in line for any of their thrones. (All of the other European thrones have much more restrictive inheritance lists: often fewer than a dozen people are in line for them, while the last full British list I saw had well over four thousand names.)
Is that because they have more restrictive rules of succession, or because they didn’t have an extremely fertile Queen a century and a half ago, whose many children in turn married into royal houses all across Europe?
They do have much more restrictive rules. Either there’s a much more recent progenitor, or a floating window around the reigning monarch. For example, when Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands abdicated, her sister’s sons automatically lost their place in line because they went from being the monarch’s nephews (three degrees of kinship) to the monarch’s first cousins (four degrees of kinship). They would only be put back in if their mother happened to become queen; once she dies, they’re out for good.
I’m not sure Elizabeth II was ever in line to any other thrones under previous rules, though. The most obvious candidate would be Denmark, by descent from Christian IX, but women were ineligible when she was born, and the law that changed that also trimmed eligibility to descent from Christian X.
Prince Charles may have been in line to the Greek and Danish thrones when he was born; I don’t know what exactly his father officially renounced, or if it that renunciation was valid under Greek or Danish law.
When Philip married Elizabeth he had been made a British citizen, so presumably, although I do not actually know for sure, he had given up his rights to another throne. He was not really Greek anyway.
More restrictive rules. Most of them were strict male primogeniture only until quite recently; Denmark, for example, did not allow females to inherit or pass on inheritance rights until 1953, Norway did not until 1971, and Sweden did not until 1980.
Victoria’s contemporary Christian IX of Denmark was known as the “father-in-law of Europe”; his six children included his successor Frederick VIII of Denmark, George I of Greece, Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom, Czarina Maria Feodorovna of Russia, Crown Princess Thyra of Hanover, and Prince Valdemar of Denmark, who married a French princess, while his grandchildren included the Margravine of Baden, the Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, a Swedish princess, and both the King and Queen of Norway.
Sometimes it’s also a matter of probability cutoffs. Some of Felipe VI’s cousins would be eligible heirs to the throne of Spain if there was a catastrohpe involving him, his daughters, sisters and nephews, but we don’t bother list them. At most, sometimes an article in the glossies will be talking about Cousin Thisandthat and mention that he’s not eligible due to his dad having renounced his own succession rights. Before we needed to start calling in foreigners we’d have whole slews of N-cousins on the Borbón side who are already Spanish citizens (the Greeces aren’t eligible for the Spanish throne as our laws currently stand).
In the 19th century, the Greeks didn’t care. Their first modern king was a Bavarian prince. They got rid of him and then got a Danish prince.
In the 20th century they had off and on kings. King-less since 1973. I think they’ve finally given up on the whole thing.
Only one king married a native Grecian woman and then had only one child. If several of them had married natives and had lots of kids then there’d be quite a few “royal” Greeks running around that pro-royalists might get people to be interested in. But by basically being a small group of outsiders, the ex-Greek royal family is far from popular.
In Britain, the Act of Settlement 1701 settles the crown on “the said most Excellent Princess Sophia and the Heirs of Her Body being Protestants”; Sophia died in 1714, and there have been a LOT of heirs of her body (descendants) in the intervening three centuries.
By contrast, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 settles rights to the crown on “the successors of H. M. Juan Carlos I de Borbón” but doesn’t actually define ‘successors.’ If that term is interpreted as synonymous with ‘descendants,’ then there are only ten people in line for the throne, and the list ends with the youngest child of Felipe VI’s younger sister. If ‘successors’ is broader than descendants, however, then there are other cousins who might or might not be in line. For example, Juan Carlos’s sisters both renounced their succession rights before 1978; are those renunciations still relevant under the 1978 constitution or not?
Then, too, even when other countries have allowed females to inherit and pass along inheritance rights, they haven’t done so without conditions. For example, the two sisters of the present Queen of Denmark were both granted inheritance rights under the 1953 reforms. However, Princess Benedikte’s children received rights only on the condition that they be raised in Denmark (they weren’t), and Princess Anne-Marie was compelled to renounce all of her rights at the time of her marriage to the then-reigning King of Greece. Moreover, both of their male cousins, the sons of Hereditary Prince Knud, were excluded for marrying “unsuitable” (i.e., non-royal) women. While the Danish succession is limited to the descendants of Christian X, the majority of those descendants are not actually included.
The British, meanwhile, have been far more expansive, as the many female descendants of Queen Victoria carried succession rights to those foreign families.
Well, as matters stand, that’s so. But only because of statutory intervention.
At common law, an owner of land or other real property couldn’t bequeat it by will. It went to his heir-at-law, identified by common-law rules, and there wasn’t much he could do about it. It took statutory intervention to give landowners freedom to dispose of their land by will, and it’s a development that wasn’t completed, IIRC, until well into the nineteenth century.
Conversely, while the present Queen can’t dispose of her land by will, Parliament has intervened in the past to allow at least one of her predecessors to do so - an Act of Parliament allowed Henry VIII to provide in his will as to which of his children should succeed him. I think Edward VI also attempted to nominate his own successor by Will, but the attempt was not successful.
The first is missing one detail: that while a domain can’t (usually) be divided unless current legal systems, EII actually has multiple domains. In theory, any of them could have different succesion laws from the others and end up being inherited by a different person. It’s happened before with other rulers’ lands (see: EI’s husband).
And the second, varies by location / legal system. In Spain we have fourteen different inheritance systems, but under any and all of them you need to formally disinherit your natural heirs before you can leave everything to your next-door neighbor.
Yes, and yes. So’s the renunciation of his uncles Alfonso due to hemophilia and Jaime due to congenital deafness (1933), which placed JC’s father Juan as the heir-apparent of Alfonso XIII (that is, as first in the line of succession). Alfonso XIII’s daughters Beatriz and María Cristina never renounced their rights: they were after Juan due to their sex, but in theory their descendants could inherit.
Both Beatriz and Maria Cristina did indeed renounce their rights; like JC’s sisters Pilar and Margarita, they were compelled to do so in order to marry non-royal spouses. However, none of their renunciations were approved by the Cortes, and the current constitution specifies that renunciations “shall be settled by an organic act.” If JC’s descendants die out, it will be up to the Cortes to decide where the crown settles, and that body may decide to ignore any, all, or none of these renunciations.
I think you mean Mary I’s husband? Elizabeth I was unmarried.
Primogeniture is relatively recent. Titles of nobility and titles of property were once more similar (and sometimes the same). They could both be divided or co-owned. Famously, Charlemagne split his kingdom among three sons. Anglo-Saxons sometimes had co-kings. Eventually, those in power switched to primogeniture in order to better maintain their power across the generations.
It’s funny England / GB had to get a king from Germany because of religion. (George I in 1714) There were over 50 people closer to the throne in line than him but they were all Catholic.
Yeah, sorry. Too many Es.
Victoria (ERII’s great great grandmother) inherited the crown of the United Kingdom upon the death of her father, William IV, but not that of Hanover since the latter operated under Salic law which excluded women from the succession.
Nitpick: William IV was her uncle.