Has any monarchy ever applied a rule of inheritance that prohibits any succession through females?
A complicated question to answer. For Europe the answer would be pretty much, ‘Not in principle, but in practice sometimes yes.’ Succession customs in Europe are mostly inspired by the Salic Law from the time of Clovis (476-96) King of the Salian Franks. The law establishes male primogeniture as a base for inheriting land, and this was used as a precedence to settle the inheritance of the Crown. All that being said the application of said law has been rather opportunistic over the centuries. Often enough it was applied as custom and the Law had been forgotten for centuries, only to reappear ‘when needed’.
In some cases succession was codified in law or ‘House Rules’ that dictate primogeniture within a certain house of nobility of royalty. In others such as France the rules of succession were never codified as law, although the customs pretty strictly adhered to as long as it suited the powers that were.
France never had a lone female regent, but this had mostly to do with politics, especially clear when one considers that there were heirs that should have ascended according to Salic Law who were passed over in favor of someone lacking male primogeniture due to political maneuvering.The idea of male ascendance was very strong though, which is reflected in the practice that the Dauphin (crown prince) had to be a ‘Prince du Sang’ (Prince of the Blood) and as such a Prince by one of the Dukes was preferable to the son of a Royal Princess or for that matter a Royal Princess. This article gives a brief overview of how succession worked in France with vassal kingdoms.
In modern days emancipation laws and conventions are creating real headaches for the monarchies that try to stick to male primogeniture. For instance; Lichtenstein, UK, Morocco, Luxembourg, Spain Lesotho and a few more hade to enter caveats as to exempting ascendance to the throne from discriminatory practice when ratifying the ‘United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women’ in 1979.
Several European kingdoms are going the opposite direction and doing away with male primogeniture altogether, but as long as the situation is not at hand there is no need to haste, right? (note that a third of our monarchies already have female heads of state by male primogeniture). Sweden has had to face the situation what with King GXIG first born being a girl and the constitution has been changed to give Victoria precedence over her younger brother Carl Phillip
If you just can’t get enough of the minutiae of ascendance and succession practices heraldica.org has a pretty good page with overviews for several houses.
Sparc
I think you got it wrong about France :
Actually, the rules of succession were considered as part of the the “lois fondamentales du royaume” (fundamental laws of the kingdom), which means they couldn’t be modified by the law or by the current king. They weren’t just “customs” but at the contrary above the law…they would be the equivalent of the modern constitutionnal level, sort of, except that a constitution can be changed while these fundamental laws (including the succession rules) couldn’t. For instance, Louis XIV will was cancelled by courts because he wanted to change the succession rules.
Actually, once they were clearly fixed (around the XIV° century), thesuccession rules always were scritly applied. The only two exceptions I can think of are Charles VI (or more exactly his cousin, allied to the king of England and de facto regent of the french kingdom since the king himself was crazy) choosing the king of England Henry V as heir during the one hundred years war (but eventually, the legitimate heir Charles VII became king) and the last french king Louis-Philippe, who wasn’t the legitimate heir, but was put in power after a revolution in 1830. Apart from these two peculiar situations, the succession rules were always followed.
Untrue. Out of my head, I can cite the most recents : Catherine de Medicis, Marie de Medicis, Anne of Austria. And there were others before. A woman couldn’t be queen in France, but she could be regent.
It never happened in France since the capetians rose to power during the IX° century. The first capetians all had direct male heirs, so the succession never was an issue during 350 years or so (actually the first capetian kings were in theory elected or approved by the nobility, but I’m not going on detailling that). When a king died for the first time without a male heir in 1328, the successions rules had to be drafted.
It’s at this time that someone dug up the now famous but then forgotten “Salic Law” . The thing was extremely unclear, and it wasn’t even obvious it was relevant to the succession rules to the throne. Since there never was a ruling queen in France since the V° century, everybody agreed on the idea that women couldn’t reign. The issue was : could they “transmit” the rights to the throne? (in other words : if the former king had no sons, his daughter couldn’t become queen. But could the son of this daughter become king?). It was decided that they couldn’t for various reasons (which would be later a minor cause of the one hundred year war). So, not only the women couldn’t reign in France, but their lines were excluded from the throne.
And as stated above, I can’t think of any exception in the way this rule was later applied. Never an heir was “passed over in favor of someone lacking male primogeniture due to political maneuvering”, as you wrote.
So, this answer ascenray question : France did apply a rule which totally excluded females from succession.
Thailand has a king and a royal family, but no nobility. So do Malaysia, Nepal, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and quite a few others. Of course in countries like Saudi the network of princes runs so wide that it becomes a defacto nobility. Then again, Saudi isn’t a republic so never mind.
Incidentally, Thailand and Nepal both still have lese majeste laws, and the Crown Prince of Thailand is such a bastard that in the absence of legal recourse to criticize him, Thai people often talk about simply “ending the monarchy” when the king dies. A few months ago an issue of the Economist was banned from sale here because it mentioned that the king’s daughter was more popular than his son, and that Thailand has never been led by a woman.
I obviously managed to confuse things thoroughly as I rather than be clear in my own post directed the readership to lengthier and more complete writings elsewhere.
Then again this all was confusing enough as it was going on to result in a number of wars, murders, rebellions and what-not.
clairobscur pretty much cleared the mess I left behind up, to which I shall add some little and expound where I mildly disagree.
Which should have been understood the same way, had I not expressed myself so clumsily (mea culpa).
True, but still not lone regent. To continue on clairobscur’s examples:
Catherine de Medici ruled as regent for her second son, Charles IX.
Marie ruled as regent for her eldest son Louis XIII.
Anne ruled for her son Louis XIV, to boot Mazarin was coregent and dominated politics pretty heavily.
Actually I’m confused by this argument, but maybe I was the one being confusing first. I said that Salic Law was not followed except in some notably exceptional cases. (Salic Law does not exclude female lines from succession). clairobscur pointed at the best example I know of as well, being Henry V’s son Edmund, which eventually led to Henry VII of England – which lent legitimacy to the English claim on the French throne. This goes back to the mess with the Capetian succession which begins in 1316 and started the whole debate. Salic Law was not formally rejected in 1328, but it was in practice when the Parlement of 1328 recognizes the royal first cousin Philippe de Valois as king in favor over the living daughters of the previous two kings, but strict male primogeniture is still not formally made law. Salic Law was neglected and future heirs with closer male primogeniture were passed over. The direct claimants were women, but nevertheless according to Salic Law their male descendants would have had stronger claim to the throne, through the male primogeniture of their direct ancestors when in 1481 Charles VIII dies without leaving a heir and yet another royal first cousin Louis XII ascends the throne.
As this summary on the application of Salic Law in France shows, the 1328 solution was not an uncontested move and did in fact lead to the mess that would prevail more or less through the Valois’ reign, since both Navarre, Champagne, Bourgogne and England rejected the legitimacy of the move at various points through the centuries to come.
To fully appreciate how opportunistic all of this is I think one has to look at all the claims these guys themselves made right and left arguing male primogeniture as laid down in Salic Law. Phillippe VI’s father Charles de Valois for instance tried to claim the Holy Roman Empire through his wife’s somewhat dubious primogeniture. One should also not forget that it will be another 230 years at this time before any European country accepts a female monarch in her own right.
Salic Law was formally rejected only in 1410 when Jean de Montreuil uses it in its first known mention since hundreds of years in an official document as a refutation of Henry IV’s claim to the throne. Strict male primogeniture is upheld. Yet it is not codified as law, but remains tradition, that clairobcur correctly notes as being considered ‘above the law’.
However…
The “lois fondamentales du royaume” only pass through any legislative body in 1788, when the Parlement make the somewhat less than popular restructuring of the courts in order to secure the continued power of royal edict and issue the ”Déclaration du parlement de Paris
3 mai 1788”(sorry, but it’s in French). Three years later the 1791 constitution (French again) incorporates the succession rights as one of the few remaining rights of the royal family, but by that time it is rather redundant by reason of imminent use of the guillotine on grounds republican.
I once again apologize for sowing confusion.
Sparc
Did you mean his first born was a girl, or HE was born as a girl first and had a sex change? 
Heh heh. Ahem! Obviously I have to take more care as to my clarity in general.
Actually there are two errors in that sentence as pertains to His Majesty.
Pro primo he is supposedly number 16 in the line of Swedish kings by the name Carl
Pro secundo I missed the possessive s at the end of his initials.
Hence it should read:
[ol]Sweden has had to face the situation what with King GXVIG’s first born being a girl and the constitution has been changed to give Victoria precedence over her younger brother Carl Phillip.[/ol]
(obviously I didn’t bother to correct my miserable grammar - to think that I supposedly use this craft to earn my living, eh? Thank God for editors!)
BTW HM’s initials spelled out in full make Carl XVI Gustaf.
Sparc
denmark i believe has the oldest continuous nobility in europe (that’s what they told me when i was there). also monaco i believe have a prince/princess or king/queen. japan has an emperor and empress. all those countries are democratic.
Originally posted by matt_mcl
** Japan lacks a nobility. An unofficial, but quite thorough, website provides the following:
Monaco is a principality, not a kingdom.
Sparc,
The confusion seems to come from the fact that in my understanding, “Salic law” refers to the rules which exclude the female lines from the succession, while your definition is apparently different.
Sivalensis,
I read somewhere that the oldest “noble” families were in any case royal families :
-The French Capetians (since around 850, proven genealogy)
-The Georgian Bagrations, older but dubious genealogy
-The Japanese emperors, even older but legendary genealogy
There are in France alone several noble families older than the Grimaldi. I assume what they meant was that the Grimaldi was the family still in power which had reigned for the longest time, or somesuch…
That does indeed explain something. Obviously none of us are right or else we wouldn’t have had to quibble about it on this continent for so many hundreds of years.
In fact Salic Law as per Clovis doesn’t even touch on ascendance, but deals with inheritance of land - boys first girls second and only when there are no boys. When applied to bloodlines this obviously gets a little hairy to weed out. You take the ancient French definition, while I apply the modern definition. As we were speaking of France I think I should have better been clearer from the get go. Mea Culpa.
Sparc
Apologies for the belated hijack, but are you sure on this one? I’m no expert (yes, really) and I don’t want to cast aspersions on your knowledge, but the few Hungarians I either know or have heard of have always used firstname lastname.
Yes, I’m sure. Take a look, for example –
http://www.englishlearner.com/personalm.html
http://www.transparent.com/languagepages/hungarian/overview.htm
With regard to the Hungarians you know, I would wonder in what context you encountered them. It is very common, for example, for Japanese adn Koreans to switch around the order of their names when they are dealing with Americans in order lessen the risk of “confusion” (frankly, I think it’s arrogant for any American to demand that people from other cultures do things our way and it’s condescending for them to think that we are unable to deal with such differences).
Yes, I’m sure. Take a look, for example –
http://www.englishlearner.com/personalm.html
http://www.transparent.com/languagepages/hungarian/overview.htm
With regard to the Hungarians you know, I would wonder in what context you encountered them. It is very common, for example, for Japanese adn Koreans to switch around the order of their names when they are dealing with Americans in order lessen the risk of “confusion” (frankly, I think it’s arrogant for any American to demand that people from other cultures do things our way and it’s condescending for them to think that we are unable to deal with such differences).
Yes, I’m sure. Take a look, for example –
http://www.englishlearner.com/personalm.html
http://www.transparent.com/languagepages/hungarian/overview.htm
With regard to the Hungarians you know, I would wonder in what context you encountered them. It is very common, for example, for Japanese adn Koreans to switch around the order of their names when they are dealing with Americans in order lessen the risk of “confusion” (frankly, I think it’s arrogant for any American to demand that people from other cultures do things our way and it’s condescending for them to think that we are unable to deal with such differences).
Just like to add, when we’re discussing naming traditions, the use of a term like firstname lastname is not necessarily very useful. Most people who deal with name issues would probably use something like givenname familyname. That tends to remove someo f the ambiguities.
Norway also had strict male primogeniture until recently. Discussion about changing this started already in the 1930s before the present King Harald was born - his two sisters are several years older than him and for a while it looked like there might not be a male heir - but the change was finally made when Harald’s own children were in their teens. The constitutional amendment, written with input from the royal family, places Crown Prince Haakon in the line of succession ahead of his older sister Princess Märtha Louise, but Haakon’s first child will be next in line after him regardless of sex.
(And yes, I’m baaaaaack.)
Interesting. The people I knew were either travelling abroad (Petra ____ and Jozsef _____) or are football players known in Europe (Zsolt Petry, Emil Lorincz etc). Maybe they used givenname familyname to ‘fit in’ but it seemed odd given that the given names were recognisable even to a non-linguist like me. Thanks for the information!
As a followup, EVERY culture with two names goes Firstname Lastname.
Think about it. 