Alternative Successions of The English Crown

Alternative Successions Of The English Crown

The succession to the Crown of the United Kingdom is determined by the Act of Settlement 1701, which enacted that, should William III and Anne both die without issue (as, in the event, they did), the crown would be settled on Sophia of Hanover (a granddaughter of King James VI and I ) and her Protestant heirs. The Crown has passed according to this law ever since, save an amendment passed in 1936 that any descendants of Edward VIII would have no claim whatsoever to the Crown. History has rendered this amendment academic, as the abdicated King Edward VIII died without issue in 1972; if he had not abdicated and the amendment had not been passed, at that point his niece (the present Queen) would have succeeded anyway as Elizabeth II.

Concomitantly, British history provides several opportunities for alternative claimants to the Crown to arise, and historical scholars have on occasion traced to present times the heirs of those alternative claims (although such historical speculation necessarily assumes that all parties involved would still have married the same people and had the same children).

Throughout this article, the names of the historical monarchs appear in bold and the names of "would-have-been" monarchs are in italics.