Once, long ago, the Brits ran out of royalty. They then sent out for an order of Queen Victoria of Hanover, in Germany.
Today, we are lucky enough to have Princes Andrew and Edward, but… what if something horrible happened? Where would you get a King or Queen from, these days?
And Victoria was the daughter of the Duke of Kent and the granddaughter of George III! How would that make her ‘free agent’ royalty?
In a pinch, there’s always King Ralph. And he can marry the princess of Finland, and they’ll live happily ever after.
European aristocracy has been great at inbreeding for centuries (OK, nowadays they’re often marrying non-nobles just as well). If the entire royal family became extinct, they’d surely find some distant cousin umpteen times removed in one of the other European nobilities. There wouldn’t even be legal problems, for the line of succession is regulated in detail, and you can assign every relative a certain rank in it.
(General rule [IIRC - correct me if I’m wrong]: First the monarch’s sons, beginning with the eldest; then the eldest son’s sons, then the eldest son’s daughters, then the monarch’s second son, then the second son’s sons, then the second son’s daughters, then the monarch’s next son, and so on).
You can have ours.
If we lost the Royals, I’d say “oops”.
Then I’d say “Oh well, they had their fun at our expense. Let’s call it a day.”
Viva la Repubic!
Wasn’t Carl a free agent, or at least one of his anscestors?
If you look at the list out to 100 instead of 50, you start getting some people who aren’t British subjects, but are royalty of other countries. There may be non-Brits on that first 50, too, I suppose, but I’m not going to chase biographies to figure it out. On the “100” list, the current king of Norway comes in at 58:
I’d put money on a lot of them not being British Subjects.
Carl who?
Do don’t have to be British to be allowed to ascend the throne?
HM Carl XVI Gustaf King of Sweden.
Shame on me (that’s the risk if you type a phrase and re-formulate it without paying too much attention): Do they have to…?
In order to be eligible for the throne to the United Kingdom one must be descended from Sophia, the Electress of Hanover. There are over 8000 people alive today who fit that description and are not otherwise disqualified (by either being Catholic or married to one).
I don’t think we’ll run out of potential British rulers anytime soon.
Zev Steinhardt
I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand what you’re aiming at (but I’d rather get rid of him and his family).
As Jonathan says, there’s not much chance of it happening. This is the order of succession calculated to the 4,583rd place. (And, yes, you don’t have to be a British subject to have a claim - if you think about it, the person with the best claim cannot be a British subject.)
http://members.aol.com/eurostamm/succession_2001.html
Now, as the page explains, some of those are Catholics who are ineligible. Personally, I think that that rule will be repealed if it ever threatens to make any real difference, so the full list may not be that misleading. Of course, if we’re saying that Catholics are eligible, then we could turn to all those other descendants of James I who were barred by the Act of Settlement. That’ll be several thousand more at the very least.
It is only if you want to wipe all them out as well that things become complicated. To find the next heir would require one to go back to the fifteenth century and, er, England fought the War of the Roses over that issue. The Tudors got the throne pretty much because most of the other possible claimants had been eliminated. (There would also be a separate claimant for the Scottish throne.) That’s the point at which the crown gets offered to Posh and Becks.
I was told that the line for the Swedish royalty ended so, for want of a better phrase, members of other Royal Families could apply for the job.
Ah, just found this:
“Note: Carl XIV Johan’s was born Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, a French soldier from Pau in France. He was a commoner that had been brought to power in the French army during the revolution. Jean Baptiste was offered to inherit the throne of Sweden in 1810, as the present king’s marriage was without a heir. Jean Baptiste succeeded to the throne of Sweden in 1818, but his wife Désirée, who he married in 1798, was not crowned before eleven years later. She disliked the swaggering Royal Court of Sweden, so she went back home to France in 1811. She returned in 1823 and were crowned as Queen of Sweden and Norway, which she on the contrary very much famed, in 1829.”
( http://www.medsca.org/royals/frameset.html )
You may ignore me now. I thought it was the current King, but it was one of his ancestors.
Can I point out, again, that the majority of people are not “British Subjects”, as that term is reserved for something else. Read the link about about the 1981 Nationality Act.
If you really need to make some comment about the relationship between the British people and the Queen, something like “Subject of the British Monarchy”, although many would argue that that is not the case so much anymore apart from a few minor technicalities (note: I am not trying to enter a debate into this. In fact, I am more likely to be going home now).
There’s been an unbroken sequence of descent since William the Conqueror, but sometimes they’ve had to “go shopping” to find the next person in line. The Hanover thing (which predates Victoria by about 100 years) is the biggest such case. Sequence is as follows:
[ul][li]William I (conquered England 1066)[/li][li]William II, second son of William I, died childless[/li][li]Henry I, third son of William I[/li][li]Stephen, son of William I’s daughter Adela[/li][li]Henry II, son of Henry I’s daughter Matilda[/li][li]Richard I, second (eldest surviving) son of Henry II, died childless[/li][li]John, fourth (and eldest surviving) son of Henry II[/li][li]Henry III, son of John[/li][li]Edward I, son of Henry III[/li][li]Edward II, son of Edward I[/li][li]Edward III, son of Edward II[/li][li]Richard II, son of Edward III’s son Edward (the Black Prince), who died the year before his father[/li][li]Henry IV, son of Edward III’s third son John of Gaunt[/li][li]Henry V, son of Henry IV[/li][li]Henry VI, son of Henry V[/li][li]Edward IV, lineal descendent of Edward III on both sides – his mother was the daughter of the Earl of March whose mother was the daughter of Edward III’s second son, and his father (Richard Duke of York) was the son of the son of Edward III’s fourth son[/li][li]Edward V, son of Edward IV, died childless[/li][li]Richard III, third son of Richard Duke of York[/li][li]Henry VII, son of the only daughter of the eldest son of John of Gaunt’s third marriage[/li][li]Henry VIII, son of Henry VII[/li][li]Edward VI, son of Henry VIII, died childless[/li][li]Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII, died childless[/li][li]Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII, died childless[/li][li]James I of England and VI of Scotland, son of James V of Scotland and Margaret, daughter of Henry VII[/li][li]Charles I, son of James I[/li][li]Charles II, son of Charles I, died without legitimate children[/li][li]James II of England and VII of Scotland, second son of Charles I. When he attempted to return the country to Catholicism, he was forced into exile.[/li][li]Mary II, daughter of James II, and her husband and co-ruler [/li][li]William III, son of a daughter of James I[/li][li]Anne, daughter of James II, whose children all predeceased her. During her reign England and Scotland were joined into one kingdom, Great Britain, and an Act of Succession passed that required the throne go to a Protestant next in the line of succession, bypassing a number of Catholics, including Mary and Anne’s brother[/li][li]George I, son of the daughter of a daughter of James I[/li][li]George II, son of George I[/li][li]George III, son of George II’s son Frederick, Prince of Wales[/li][li]George IV, eldest son of George III, died without legitimate surviving children[/li][li]William IV, eldest surviving son of George IV, died without legitimate surviving children[/li][li]Victoria, daughter of George III’s son the Duke of Kent, who had died some years before[/li][li]Edward VII, son of Victoria[/li][li]George V, son of Edward VII[/li][li]Edward VIII, eldest son of George V, abdicated in order to marry contrary to the laws of the church at the time[/li][li]George VI, second son of George V[/li][li]Elizabeth II, elder daughter of George VI[/ul][/li]
It’s interesting to note that Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, is in the line of succession in his own right as a descendent of Queen Victoria, though he’s well past the 100th-in-line mark of yabob’s list.
Regarding the Swedish royalty, Marshall of France Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte was adopted by King Karl XIII, there being no legitimate sane heir to the Vasa royal house to succeed him, and became King Karl XIV Johan on Karl XIII’s death. The present royal house is descended from him. Bernadotte was born of petit bourgeois stock in Pau, in extreme southern France near the Spanish border, and rose under Napoleon to an army command.