Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The British Line of Succession

Episode Date: July 21, 2020

The British Crown is unquestionably the best-known monarchy in the world. As with all monarchies, there is a strict line of succession featuring many names you’ve probably heard of: Prince Charles, Prince William, and little Prince George. However, the rules regarding succession are more elaborate than most people realize, and the number of people in the line of succession now goes into the thousands.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The British crown is unquestionably the best-known monarchy in the world. As with all monarchies, there's a strict line of secession featuring many names you've probably heard of, Prince Charles, Prince William, and Little Prince George. However, the rules regarding secession are more elaborate than most people realize, and the number of people in the line of secession now goes into the thousands. Moreover, the current line of secession isn't the only one out there. If history had gone down a different path, the current British monarch might very well be someone else entirely. Learn more about how they determine who becomes the king or queen of the United Kingdom on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from End. This episode is sponsored by G Adventures. These are very troubled times. Even though things are starting to get better and more countries are opening up, people are still hesitant to travel, and that is totally understandable.

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The Travel with Confidence tours are available for booking today and we'll be departing from October 2, 2020 to the end of 2021. For more information and to book your tour, click on the link in the show notes. The current British Monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, can trace her roots back over 1,200 years to the reign of Alfred the Great, whose reign began in the year 871. Alfred was the first true king of England. Since then, over 32 generations have passed, and the crown has managed, mostly, to be handed down from one successive generation to the next. I'd guess most people listening to this, regardless of where they reside, probably

are aware of the next in line to the British throne. Prince Charles is the heir apparent, Prince William is his son is next in line, and Prince George, great-grandson of the queen, is third in line. The list beyond those three is very long, but to be totally honest, nothing else really matters. The person who is 19th in line will statistically never come anywhere close to the crown unless there's some sort of improbable event that happens, and the plot of the movie King Ralph happens to play out. Nonetheless, while the rest of the list is pretty much irrelevant for actual secession to the throne, it's a pretty fascinating list. list, and the rules for the list deserve some diving into. There are several laws that dictate the rules of secession. The Bill of Rights of 1689 and the Act of Settlement of 1701 restricts secession to the throne

to the legitimate descendants of Sophia of Hanover who are in communion with the Church of England. So who is Sophia of Hanover, and why is the entire British monarchy set up around her? Sophia of Hanover was born in 1658 and was the daughter of Elizabeth Stewart, the granddaughter of James the 6th of England and James I of Scotland. That's the same person, by the way. It was just that they had different names for James in England and James in Scotland, so he got two numbers.

She was also notably the mother of King George I of Great Britain. King James was the person who unified the kingdoms of Scotland and England by birth after the death of Queen Elizabeth I. After the death of James, they had a whole bunch of problems in Britain. He was succeeded by King Charles I, who was overthrown in the English Revolution and was beheaded. Charles was Protestant, but had married a Catholic wife. After 11 years of being a republic, they restored the monarchy with Charles's son and heir to the crown Charles II. Charles II was well liked by the people, but unfortunately he had no legitimate children.

He had a lot of children, at least 11 of them that we know of, but none of them were born in wedlock. After his death, the crown passed to his brother James II slash the seventh, again with the two numbers. James unfortunately was Catholic, and unlike his father, was not at all popular, especially with Parliament. He was especially unpopular after the birth of his son, James, in 1888, who was baptized as a Catholic. He was basically pushed out of office by the Parliament in what was known as the glorious revolution, and replaced by his daughter Mary, who was a Protestant.

Please remember James, as we will be be coming back to him soon. The crown was given to Mary and her Protestant husband William of Orange from the Netherlands who ruled jointly. Mary died in 1694 and William in 1702. The problem was they didn't have any children. The crown then passed on to her sister Anne, who ruled as Queen Monarch until 1714. She also had no surviving descendants when she died. The British had a problem. They had run out of children from James II, so they had to go back up the family tree. And, and and they went down the line from James' second sister, Elizabeth, who was married off and became the queen of Bohemia.

Elizabeth had a daughter, Sophia, who was the highest-ranking Protestant in the secession line, at the time the act of settlement was passed in 1701, which codified all these rules. Sophia was the heir-presumptive to the crown, and that is why she was picked as the legal starting point for the line of secession to the crown today. Unfortunately, Sophia died about two months before Queen Anne. So when Anne died, they selected Sophia's son, George, to be the king of Great Britain. George, it should be noted, didn't speak any English, and he was the elector of Hanover in the Holy Roman Empire. Hence, all the monarchs from George I to Queen Victoria were in the House of Hanover.

Since it's been 290 years since Sophia of Hanover was born, she's had a lot of descendants, and the number grows every year. With royal marriages all over Europe and various branches of the family tree, there are currently over 5,000 people on the list for secession to the British crown. The highest-ranking non-British person is King Harold V of Norway, who is currently 80th in line. Actress Catherine Oxenberg, who is on the TV show Dynasty in the 1980s, is somewhere around number 4,000 on the list. She's probably the biggest non-royal celebrity on the list.

The best claim, however, is by one Karen Vogel, a therapist who lives in the town of Rostock, Germany, who is dead last on the list of secession. She's on the list, but she's the last one. Someone has to be the youngest of the youngest of the youngest, and she's it. The rules of secession recently changed in 2013. Prior to that, the practice was male preference primogenitor. That means any son of a monarch would take precedence over a daughter, regardless of age. As it turns out, Britain has had a lot of queens in the last 500 years, including three of the five longest-serving monarchs in Elizabeth I, Victoria, and Elizabeth II. The new act changed the rule to absolute primogenitor for anyone in the line of secession born after October 28, 2011. That means whoever is the oldest child from now on

will get preference regardless of sex. The new law was applied for the first time with the birth of Prince William's first child in 2013. Regardless if it was a boy or a girl, the child was going to be next in line after William. The 2013 Act also removed the prohibition against someone being in the line of secession from marrying a Catholic. Now I have to get back to King James, the 2nd slash 7th that I told you to remember. When he was removed from office, he didn't just disappear. There were many people in the country who still recognized him as the rightful king and were none too pleased with Parliament just giving him the boot. Those who were loyal to James became known as Jacobites.

James' second fled to France, where he eventually died, but his children kept on as claimants to the British throne. There were several unsuccessful attempts at trying to retake the throne, but none of them worked, and by the mid-1700s, the Jacobite cause was mostly dead, save for the Scottish islands. James' line kept on going in Europe and is still going today. The current Jacobite heir to the British crown is Franz, Duke of Bavaria. Franz is 87, and the next in line is his brother Max, who is 83. This is where it starts to get interesting. Max only had daughters, and his oldest daughter is Sophie, hereditary princess of Lichtenstein. She's the wife of the heir apparent to the principality of Lichtenstein. That means the Jacobite claim to the British throne will soon be merged with the

House of Lichtenstein. I think the Jacobite cause should be renewed just to see a takeover of the United Kingdom by Lichtenstein. There are also some other claimants to the throne which date back even further than James II. One such claim is that Edward V. Fourth, born in 1442, was not actually the son of Richard of York. If this was the case, then the entire line of secession would have gone down a different branch of the family tree almost 600 years ago. One documentary filmmaker actually set it to determine who the monarch of the United Kingdom would be if this were the case. Through extensive genealogy, they actually found the person. The current king, according to this line, would be Simon Abney Hastings, the 15th Earl of Loudon. While that sounds really

impressive, Simon is just a middle-class guy, the son of a farmer, who works in a fabric company in Wengaretta, Australia. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James Smackala. Special thanks to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Please remember to leave a review over on Apple Podcasts. Even a simple review can really help the show get discovered in the sea of other podcasts that are out there.