Why were there no queens for France?

[septimus]

@Little_Nemo

*Nitpick. Great Britain and Hanover both had a partial version of a Salic Law. Neither gave women equal inheritance to the monarchy and neither absolutely prohibited women from the monarchy. But the exact procedures differed and Victoria got in under British law but not under Hanoverian law.

Nitpick of Nitpick. England has Cognatic primogeniture: Younger brothers of Victoria had priority over her, but she had priority over her father’s younger brother. Hanover’s semi-Salic Law meant that females were ineligible unless there were no male agnates left in the entire dynasty, i.e. the original founding King dynasty had no legitimate male agnates left whatsoever. (Semi-Salic is distinct from Salic Law in which females are completely ineligible – a new King from a new dynasty must be selected when the old dynasty goes extinct.)

I’ve previously mentioned an application of semi-Salic law that I found astonishing. While Isabella and her son, King Edward III, were bypassed in favor of Isabella’s 1st cousin …

@septimus

… a very large estate once passed to an 18th cousin !

The event Polycarp refers to involves a genealogical inheritance that almost staggers my imagination. Netherlands then followed the semi-Salic inheritance rule, so Willem III’s daughter Wilhelmina was allowed to inherit the Dutch crown in 1890 only because the (legitimate) Y-chromosome of the dynasty’s founder [Willem III’s grandfather] had gone completely extinct.

Luxemburg also followed the semi-Salic inheritance rule, but it was an old heirloom of the Nassau family that predated their Kingship in Netherlands by many centuries. Actually, the entire House of Nassau was almost extinct … but not quite!

From Queen Wilhelmina, the patrilineal line was followed back 19 generations to Heinrich the Rich (died 1251) before finding a non-extinct line, then forward 19 generations to Wilhelmina’s 18th cousin, Adolf, who became the Grand Duke of Luxemburg. (Wilhelmina and Adolf were much closer relatives than this, of course, but 18th cousins using the patrilineal connection that was the only connection relevant for the inheritance.)

Ironically, the entire House of Nassau went extinct on the death of Adolf’s only son to reach adulthood, and Luxemburg, like Netherlands, passed to a Queen – a different Queen, since the criterion was kinship to the most recent Monarch.