Independent Ireland was a kingdom, but not much of one . . . Often there was no High King at all, and nobody seemed to notice (that’s how the English were able to take over, they could always play off one independent local prince against another) . . . The “Kingdom of Ireland” generally refers to the English/British-dominated state that existed from 1542 to 1800.
She is styled QEII in Scotland, even though Scotland never had an earlier Queen Elizabeth. It turns out that monarchs have some leeway in how they are styled. If you visit The Honours, you will see QEII.
Deciding exactly which particular Habsburg line would get its crotchspawn on the European throne would be a hoot though. Aren’t like 80% of European royal families part Habsburgs by now ? Talk about herding cats.
PS: count me out at least, last time we had that particular kerfluffle it lasted a Thirty Years
Rules for succession are generally clearcut. People in line to be Head of the House of Hapsburg definitely keep track of details like birth order. AFAIK, there is no doubt that the present Sovereign of the Order of the Golden Fleece would be Heir to Austria (were Austria to accept that it had an “Heir” :smack: ).
OTOH, Austria follows the German practice that noble titles follow agnatic lines, so the present House of Hapsburg may be regarded as a genealogical fiction! The “real” House of Hapsburg went extinct (due in part to the bad effects of inbreeding) and the last Hapsburg Empress was able to pass her surname and possessions to her husband and children because of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, which affirmed “semi-Salic” inheritance (inheritance by a daughter when there are no living male agnates of a dynasty’s founder) for the Empire.
Right, but if we posit that this Sanction is valid and applicable, wouldn’t other branches of the family get a retroactive claim because, way back when, the title was passed from Father King to Son King to Grandson King even though Son King still had a living sister, for example ?
Don’t forget that semi-Salic inheritance allows inheritance of or through a female only when there are zero male agnatic descendants of the dynasty founder.
I’ve previously mentioned on SDMB the amazing case of King Willem III of the Netherlands, whose daughter inherited Netherlands in 1890. (Netherlands was a new Kingdom and there were no legitimate male agnatic descendants of Willem I, the dynasty founder.)
But Luxemburg was an ancient heirloom of the House of Nassau, and had to be split off from Netherlands and given to a male member of the House. Under the rules, the closest cousin (using only pure-male links) of Willem III inherited Luxemburg but the common ancestor of Willem III and Adolphe (the new Grand Duke) was Henry II the Rich, deceased more than six centuries earlier in 1251.
(Ironically, the House of Nassau went completely extinct after another generation, so a woman inherited and the Monarch of Luxemburg now bears, like so many Western European nobles, the Bourbon Y-chromosome.)
