pretender

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"The Young Pretender", Charles Edward Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie, pretender to the Scottish, Irish and English thrones

A pretender is one who claims entitlement to an unavailable position of honour or rank. Most often it refers to a former monarch, or descendant thereof, whose throne is occupied or claimed by a rival, or has been abolished.^[1][2]

Although "claimant" is sometimes preferred, the term in itself is not pejorative. The original meaning of the English word pretend, from the French word prétendre (from the Latin praetendo lit. "to stretch out before"^[3]) means "to put forward, to profess or claim"; this predates today's more common English meaning of "pretend", which is to claim falsely.

The term "pretender" applies not only to claimants with arguably genuine rights to the throne (as the various pretenders of the Wars of the Roses) who regarded the de facto monarch as a usurper, but also to impostors with wholly fabricated claims (as pretenders to Henry VII's throne Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck). People in the latter category often assume the identities of deceased or missing royalty, and are sometimes referred to for clarity as false pretenders or royal impersonators. A Papal pretender is instead called an Antipope.^[4]

Modern pretenders

Pretenders in the Roman Empire

Ancient Rome knew many pretenders to the offices making up the title of Roman Emperor, especially during the crisis of the Third Century.

These are customarily referred to as the Thirty Tyrants, which was an allusion to the Thirty Tyrants of Athens some five hundred years earlier; although the comparison is questionable, and the Romans were separate aspirants, not (as the Athenians were) a Committee of Public Safety. The Loeb translation of the appropriate chapter of the Augustan History therefore represents the Latin triginta tyranni by "Thirty Pretenders" to avoid this artificial and confusing parallel. Not all of them were afterwards considered pretenders; several were actually successful in becoming Emperor at least in part of the Empire for a brief period.

Greek pretenders

The claimant to the throne of the last Greek kingdom is Constantine II, who reigned as king from 1964 to 1973, of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (a branch of the House of Oldenburg), whose designated heir is his son Pavlos, Crown Prince of Greece. There are pretenders to other Greek thrones:

The Byzantine Empire

Disputed successions to the Roman (Byzantine) Empire long continued at Constantinople. Most seriously, after the fall of Constantinople to the Fourth Crusade in 1204, and its eventual recovery by Michael VIII Palaeologus, there came to be three Byzantine successor states, each of which claimed to be the Roman Empire, and several Latin claimants (including the Republic of Venice and the houses of Montferrat and Courtenay) to the Latin Empire the Crusaders had set up in its place. At times, some of these states and titles were subjected to multiple claims.

Cypriot pretenders

Following the defeat and death of King James III of Cyprus in 1474, his younger and illegitimate brother, Eugène Matteo de Lusignan, also styled d'Arménie (died 1523) removed to Sicily, then to Malta. He was acknowledged as rightful heir to the thrones of Cyprus, Armenia, Jerusalem, and Antioch, although he never made serious efforts to pursue the claims. The title of "Barone de Baccari" was created in 1508 for Jacques Matteo (sives Eugene Matteo) d'Armenia with the remainder to his descendants in perpetuity. Eugene, illegitimate son of King Jacques II of Cyprus, had, when his family were exiled, first gone to Naples, then Sicily, then settled on Malta, marrying a Sicilian heiress, Donna Paola Mazzara (a descendant of the Royal House of Aragon of Sicily and Aragon), with issue.^[5]

French pretenders

The establishment of the First Republic and the execution of Louis XVI in 1793 led to the king's son becoming pretender to the abolished throne, styled as Louis XVII. As Louis XVII was a child and imprisoned in Paris by the revolutionaries, his uncle, the Comte de Provence, proclaimed himself regent in his nephew's name. After Louis XVII died in 1795, the Comte de Provence became pretender himself, as Louis XVIII.

Louis XVIII was restored to the throne in 1814, and was succeeded by his brother Charles X in 1824. Charles X was, however, forced into exile by the July Revolution. Charles X and his son, the Dauphin Louis-Antoine, abdicated their claims in favor of Charles's grandson, the Duke of Bordeaux; however, their cousin the Duke of Orléans, a descendant of Louis XIV's younger brother, mounted the throne as Louis Philippe I.

For most of the July Monarchy, the legitimists, as supporters of the exiled senior line came to be known, were uncertain of whom to support. Some believed the abdication of Charles and his son legal, and recognized the young Chambord as king, while others maintained that abdication was unconstitutional in France of the ancien régime, and continued to recognize first Charles X and then Louis-Antoine, until the latter's death in 1844. On his uncle's death, Bordeaux proclaimed himself king as "Henry V", but remains known to history by his title of pretense, the "Count of Chambord".

In 1848, Louis Philippe was himself overthrown by the February Revolution, and abdicated the throne in favor of his young grandson, the Philippe, Comte de Paris. However, a republic was proclaimed, leaving Paris, like his cousin Chambord, merely a pretender to a no longer existing crown. Over the next several decades, there were several attempts at a so-called "fusion", to unite both groups of monarchists in support of the childless Chambord as king, who would recognize the Count of Paris as his heir. Those efforts failed in the 1850s, but after the establishment of the Third Republic in 1870, when a royalist majority was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, fusion again became the royalist strategy. As a result, in 1873 the Count of Paris withdrew his own bid for the throne and recognized Chambord as legitimate pretender to the French crown. In spite of this apparent unity among royalist forces, restoration of the monarchy was not to be; Chambord refused to accept the Tricolour flag, which rendered him unacceptable to most Frenchmen as a constitutional king. The monarchists hoped that after Chambord's death they could unite behind the Orléanist candidate. Chambord died in exile in 1883. But France's royalists had lost their majority in parliament by 1877. The erstwhile Orléanist Adolphe Thiers called Chambord "The French Washington", i.e. the true founder of the Republic.

In 1883 the majority of French monarchists accepted the Count of Paris as rightful pretender to the French throne. A minority of ultra-reactionaries, the so-called Blancs d'Espagne ("Spanish Whites"), continued to withheld support from the House of Orléans and chose instead Juan, Count of Montizon, the Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne, who also happened to be the senior male descendant of Louis XIV.

The arguments are, on one side, that Louis XIV's younger grandson, Philip de Bourbon, Duke of Anjou renounced any future claim to the French throne when he left France to become king of Spain as Philip V in 1700 (ratified internationally by the Treaty of Utrecht), leaving the Dukes of Orléans as heirs to the throne of France in the event of extinction of descendants of Louis XIV's elder grandson, Louis, Duke of Burgundy, which occurred in 1883. On the other side, Anjou's renunciation is held to be invalid because prior to the revolution it was a fundamental tenet of the French monarchy that the crown could never be diverted from the rightful heir of Hugh Capet. Moreover, although the Orléans volunteered to defer their rival claim to the throne after 1873, the regicidal vote of their ancestor Philippe Égalité in 1789 and the usurpation of Louis Philippe in 1830 are alleged to have extinguished all rights to the throne for the Orléans branch. The schism has continued to the present day, with supporters of the senior line reclaiming the title of Legitimist, leaving their opponent royalists to be known, once again, as Orléanists. The current representative of the senior line is Louis Alphonse, Duke of Anjou, the senior living descendant of Hugh Capet (and of Philip V d'Anjou of Spain) who was born and raised in Spain. The Orléanist line, which returned to live in France when its law of banishment was repealed in 1950, is represented by Henri, Count of Paris, Duke of France, senior male-line descendant of King Louis Philippe.

In addition to these two claims to the historic royal throne of France, there has also been a pretender to the imperial throne of France, created first by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804 and recreated by his nephew Emperor Napoleon III in 1852. This claim is today disputed between Jean Christophe, Prince Napoléon and his own father, the self-avowed republican Prince Charles Napoléon (likewise deemed to be excluded from the succession due to a non-dynastic marriage), both descendants of Napoleon I's youngest brother, Jérôme Bonaparte.

German pretenders

The Hohenzollern of Prussia

Since the abolition of the German monarchy in 1918, the heads of the House of Hohenzollern have claimed to be the titular Kings of Prussia and German Emperors. These claims are linked by the Constitution of the former (2nd) German Empire: according to this, whoever was King of Prussia was also German Emperor, although that Empire was abolished, making the link somewhat tenuous.

Hohenzollern pretenders to the Prussian and German Thrones
Image	Name	Titular Reign	Comments
	Prince Georg Friedrich	since 1994

The Habsburgs of Austria & Hungary

Habsburg pretenders to the Austrian throne
Image	Name	Titular Reign	Comments
	Otto von Habsburg	1922-2011	renounced all claims in order to enter Austria and so cannot be said to be a true pretender.

The Wittelsbachs of Bavaria

The Welfs of Hanover

Russian pretenders

There is much debate over who is the legitimate heir to the Russian throne, and bitter dispute within the family itself.^[6] Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna is considered by some to be the legitimate heir.^[7] She is the only child of Grand Duke Vladimir who died in 1992, a great-grandson of Tsar Alexander II, whom some considered the last male dynast of the House of Romanov. Some of her opponents believe she is ineligible to claim the throne because she was born of a marriage that would have been deemed morganatic under Russia's monarchy, which was abolished in 1917.^[6] Others oppose her for reasons similar to those of anti-Orleanists: her father's and grandfather's perceived disloyalty and dynastic ambition are seen as vitiating any rights which might otherwise have belonged to her branch of the former dynasty.

Still others maintain that the severe, pre-revolutionary marital rules of the Romanovs leave no one who can claim to be rightful heir to the dynasty's legacy. Others recognize Nicholas Romanov, Prince of Russia as head of the family.^[8] A descendant of Emperor Nicholas I, he is the elected president of the Romanov Family Association, which consists of most living descendants of the Romanov emperors.

Anna Anderson attempted to prove she was Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, the lost daughter of Nicholas II, but DNA testing on her remains eventually proved her to be an impersonator.^[9] Although she did not claim the throne, per se, as women could not succeed to the Russian throne so long as any male dynast survived, she became more famous than any of the various Russian pretenders.^[9]

English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh and British pretenders

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

England, Scotland and Great Britain

Pretenders to the thrones of the United Kingdom and its predecessor realms, as well as the other historical jurisdictions that are modernly England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, have existed from time to time.

Lambert Simnel (ca. 1477 – ca. 1525) was a pretender to the throne of England. His claim to be the Earl of Warwick in 1487 threatened the newly established reign of King Henry VII (reigned 1485–1509). This was just after The Wars of the Roses. He was just a boy but was used to try to take over the Kingdom.
After the execution of Charles I in 1649, his son Charles II became pretender until his restoration 11 years later. In modern times, the chief claim was that of the Jacobites. After the overthrow of the Catholic James II and VII in the Glorious Revolution in 1688, many refused to accept the legality of the new regime of William and Mary, James's Protestant daughter and son-in-law, and continued to recognize James as king. James made a significant effort in 1690 to recover Ireland, but was defeated by William at the Battle of the Boyne. After James's death, his supporters recognized his son,

• James Francis Edward Stuart, the Roman Catholic son of the deposed King James VII and II. James was barred from the succession to the throne by the Act of Settlement 1701. Notwithstanding the Act of Union 1707, he claimed the separate thrones of Scotland, as James VIII, and of England and Ireland, as James III, until his death in 1766. In Jacobite terms, Acts of Parliament (of England or Scotland) after 1688, (including the Acts of Union) did not receive the required Royal Assent of the legitimate Jacobite monarch and, therefore, were without legal effect. James was responsible for a number of conspiracies and rebellions, particularly in the Highlands of Scotland. The most notable was The Fifteen, which took place in 1715-16
• Charles Edward Stuart, James' elder son, the would-be Charles III, known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, led in his father's name the last major Jacobite rebellion, the Forty-Five, in 1745-46. He died in 1788, without legitimate issue.
• Henry Benedict Stuart, younger brother of Charles Edward, a Roman Catholic Cardinal, best known as the Cardinal-Duke of York, took up the claim to the throne as the would-be Henry IX of England, though he was the final Jacobite heir to publicly do so. He died unmarried in 1807.

After 1807, the line of James II and VII became extinct. As the Jacobites had ceased to have much political significance after the failure of the Forty-five, the movement became essentially completely dormant after Henry's death. Genealogically, the next most senior line to the English and Scottish thrones was through James II's youngest sister, Henriette Anne, whose daughter had married into the House of Savoy. To the very limited extent that Jacobitism survived the death of Cardinal York, they supported the claims of this line. Its current representative is Franz, Duke of Bavaria, though he himself does not claim the title.

Wales

Owain Glyndŵr (1349–1416) is probably the best-known Welsh pretender, though whether he was pretender or Prince of Wales depends upon one's source of information. Officially, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, who died in 1282, was the only Prince of Wales whose status as ruler was officially recognised by the English Crown, though three of the four men who claimed the throne of Gwynedd between the assumption of the title by Owain Gwynedd in the 1160s and the loss of Welsh independence in 1283 also used the title or similar. Madog ap Llywelyn also briefly used the title during his revolt of 1294-5. Since 1301, the title of Prince of Wales has been given to the eldest living son of the King or Queen Regnant of England (subsequently of Great Britain, 1707, and of United Kingdom, 1801). The word "living" is important. Upon the death of Arthur, Prince of Wales, Henry VII invested his second son, the future Henry VIII, with the title. The title is not automatic, however, but merges into the Crown when a prince dies or accedes to the throne, and has to be re-conferred by the sovereign.

Nevertheless, it is Glyndŵr whom many remember as the last native Prince of Wales. He was indeed proclaimed Prince of Wales by his supporters on 16 September 1400, and his revolt in quest of Welsh independence was not quashed by Henry IV until 1409. Later, however, one of Glyndŵr's cousins, Owain Tudor, would marry the widow of Henry V, and their grandson would become Henry VII, from whom the current British monarch is descended (through his daughter Margaret Tudor, who married James IV of Scotland).

The various minor kingdoms that came together to form what is today known as the Principality of Wales each had their own royal dynasty. The most important of these realms were Gwynedd, Powys and Deheubarth. After 878 the ruling dynasties in these kingdoms each claimed descent from the sons of Rhodri Mawr who had conquered them or otherwise achieved their thrones during his reign. Merfyn Frych, the father of Rhodri Mawr, had come to power in Gwynedd because the native dynasty, known as the House of Cunedda had expired. Merfyn was descended from royalty through his own father Gwriad and claimed ancestors from among the rulers of British Rheged (in particular Llywarch Hen). It was acknowledged by all of the realms of Wales after the time of Rhodri Mawr that the House of Gwynedd (known as the House of Aberffraw) was senior and homage should be paid by each of them to the king of Gwynedd. After the reign of Owain ap Gruffudd of Gwynedd the realm began to merge with the concept of a Principality of Wales. This was realised by Owain's descendant Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in 1267. It was not to last and this new Wales was invaded by England and dismantled between 1277 and 1284. All of the descendants of Llywelyn "the last" and his brothers were either imprisoned or killed. Surviving members of the House of Aberffraw descended in the male line from Rhodri ab Owain Gwynedd in the guise of the Wynn and Anwyl families. Other surviving cadet branches of the Aberffraw and other Welsh princely houses have also survived into the modern age.

Ireland

The business of Irish pretenders is rather more complicated because of the nature of kingship in Ireland before the Norman take-over of 1171. In both Ireland and Scotland, succession to kingship was elective, often (if not usually) by contest, according to matrilineal descent. That is, the head of state of any kingdom, sub-kingdom, high kingdom, etc., was always a king, but the king always inherited the crown through his mother, as a ranking princess royal, not through his father. (See, e.g., The Lion in the North: A Personal View of Scotland's History, by John Prebble ISBN 0-14-003652-0; among other works.)

Thus, a king would not be succeeded by his own son but would normally be succeeded by his mother's other sons; then by his sisters' sons; then his maternal aunt's sons; and so on, traveling through the female line of the royal house. This combination of male succession through matrilineal descent produced a cumbersome system under which the throne passed cyclically from brother to brother, then uncle to nephew, and then cousin to cousin, before starting over as brother to brother, uncle to nephew, etc. {See, e.g., The Lion in the North: A Personal View of Scotland's History, by John Prebble; among other works.} In Ireland, however, the high king from the time of Maelsheachlainn I (died 862) exercised a measure of control over the country. He belonged to the Ui Neill dynasty and under the Brehon laws, succession was open to any kinsman up to and including second cousin.

In Scotland, Malcolm II tried to get around this system by killing off all of the heirs between himself and his grandson, Duncan; except for Prince Lulach of Moray, who was just five years old at the time and - more importantly - was successfully rumoured to be half-witted (thus, he survived). Duncan I did become king, but Lulach's stepfather, Maelbeth - rendered "Macbeth" in English - successfully claimed the throne in his own right and on Lulach's behalf.

Duncan I's son, Malcolm III 'Canmore', ultimately returned from exile in England and took the throne from Maelbeth and Lulach (the latter reigning 1057-1058, after the death of Maelbeth in battle against Malcolm). Malcolm was succeeded by his brother, as Duncan II, but then by four of his own sons - one of whom, Edgar (1097–1107), changed the official language of Scotland from Gàidhlig (then, still a Scottish dialect of Old Irish) to Scots (then, a language similar to English but missing the Saxon element that has always been part of standard English). Gaelic dominance of Scotland ended during the reign of Alexander I (1107–1124), and the old Celtic system of matrilineal kingship finally ended and was replaced by a system of primogeniture.

Such a transition never happened in Ireland, but civil war and the imposition of Anglo-Norman rule intervened. Although Ireland had been culturally unified for centuries, it was not politically unified, even as a tribal nation.

The High King of Ireland was essentially a ceremonial, pseudo-federal overlord (where his over-lordship was even recognised), who exercised actual power only within the realm of which he was actually king. In the case of the southern branch of the Uí Niall, this would have been the Kingdom of Meath (modernly the counties of Meath, West Meath and part of County Dublin). High Kings from the northern branch of the family ruled various kingdoms in what eventually became the province of Ulster.

Nevertheless, the Uí Niall were apparently powerful in ceremony if not in politic, so that political unification of Ireland was not aided by the usurpation of the high kingship from Mael Sechnaill II and the southern Uí Niall in 1002 by Briain ‘Boruma’ mac Cennédig, of the Kingdom of Munster. This was the third of the so-called "Three Usurpations of Brian Boru."

Brian Boru was a strong king who could have unified Ireland politically, and there is some suggestion he intended to make himself High King of Scotland as well. But he was killed in the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, and twelve years as High King was not long enough to unify the island politically. Mael Sechnaill II was restored to the High Kingship but he died in 1022, too soon to undo the damage done by Brian's "coup." From 1022 through the Norman take-over of 1171, the High Kingship was held by "Kings with Opposition" - that is, whoever was strong enough to overthrow the High King of the day and take the Hill of Tara simply did so. This 150-year period of regnal unrest between families now called O'Brian, O'Conner, McLoughlin/O'Melaghlin, and others, was eventually immortalised in the children's game called "King of the Hill". The game is still popular among American children, who take turns trying to push each other off a low stool, chair, or other makeshift hill while arguing, "I'm king of the hill!" "No! I'm king!"

Because the native Irish high kingship never transitioned to a system of nation-state kingship primogeniture but simply faded into an oblivion of civil war between competing Irish royal families, there are literally as many as a million or more people^{[citation needed]} who can make a claim to the ancient high kingship of Tara that is as equally valid as anybody else's under the old system disrupted by what may be called Brian Boru's "coup de tribe." Indeed, as a reputed descendant of Brian Boru and of the Uí Niall Dynasty both through his late grandmother, the current heir to the statutory throne that includes Northern Ireland, Prince Charles, could be considered a viable pretender^{[citation needed]} to the high kingship of Ireland, especially as he would be making the claim through the female line of his ancestry. (The British Royal Family has publicly claimed descent from Brian Boru through the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and from other ancestors associated with the Ui Niall Dynasty - usually via marriage through the Royal Family's Scottish ancestry; see the history section of the Royal Family's website for bloodlines and timelines.) But see the remarks above regarding existing native dynasties, whose claims are more valid than those of the current British royal family.

Interestingly, some Irish rebels discussed offering the Irish throne to Prince Joachim of Prussia (son of Kaiser Wilhelm II) before the 1916 Easter Rising. This was obviously anti-English sentiment following the execution of the leaders of the rebellion. After the failure of the Rising (whose leaders established an Irish republic; the royalists were a minority among the rebels), the offer was, of course, never made. But had he been crowned, and Ireland had subsequently became a republic, Joachim's son, Franz Wilhelm, would be an Irish pretender; and, afterward, his son, George of Russia, would be an Irish as well as a Russian pretender.

Ottoman pretenders

Cem Sultan, eldest son born during the reign of his father, Mehmet the Conqueror claimed the Sultanate although he was defeated in battle months later by his eldest brother (by birth) Bayezid II. He fled to Rhodes Island then eventually to the Papal Territories. His descendants claimed Cem Sultan rights until Malta defeated the Ottomans in the 16th century. After the Ottoman empire was abolished, and the Republic of Turkey came into power, the successive heads of the Ottoman family claimed the throne of the Turkish empire.

Kingdom of Jerusalem

The Emperors of Ethiopia held the title of "King of Zion" through their claim of descent from the Biblical House of David through his son King Solomon. Menelik II dropped the use of this title. The Ethiopian Emperors continued to use the honorific of "Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah" up until the monarchy ended with the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974.

Since the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, many European rulers have claimed to be its rightful heir. None of these, however, have actually ruled over a part of the former Kingdom. Today there are several potential European claimants on the basis of the inheritance of the title. None of the claimants have any power in the area of the former Kingdom. See the article Kings of Jerusalem for a list of potential claimants.

False pretenders

A number of individuals have claimed to be princes who disappeared or died under somewhat mysterious circumstances:

• Anna Anderson, who was one of several persons who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia^[9]
• Bertrand of Rais, who claimed to be Baldwin I of Constantinople
• Lambert Simnel, who claimed to be Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick
• Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York
• Yemelyan Pugachev, who claimed to be Peter III of Russia
• Two of the three false Dimitris of Russia:(False Dmitriy I actually reigned as Czar for over a year prior to his execution):
  • False Dmitriy II
  • False Dmitriy III
• Karl Wilhelm Naundorff, who was one of over thirty persons who claimed to be Louis XVII of France
• Kaspar Hauser, who was claimed to be the stillborn son of Karl, Grand Duke of Baden
• False Margaret, who claimed to be Margaret, Maid of Norway

Claimant descendants of royalty

There have also been individuals who claimed to be descendants of royalty:

• Eugenio Lascorz, who claimed descent from the Lascaris of Byzantium
• Alexis Brimeyer, who claimed connections to various European royal houses
• Pierre Plantard, who claimed descent from Merovingian king Dagobert II
• Michel Roger Lafosse, who claims descent from Charles Edward Stuart
• Kumazawa Hiromichi (so-called "The Kumazawa Tenno"), who claimed descent from the last Tenno of Nancho (the Southern Court) of Japan
• Obren Christic, the acknowledged illegitimate son of Milan I of Serbia.
• Maria Pia de Saxe-Coburgo-Bragança, claimed adulterine (illegitimate) daughter of Charles I of Portugal.
  • Rosario Poidimani, designated heir of Maria Pia de Saxe-Coburgo-Bragança (above indicated).

Japanese descendants of Chinese emperors

Japanese clans like the Hata clan were descended from the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. See the article within Japanese clans for other descendants of Chinese emperors in Japan.

See also

• List of current pretenders
• List of Indian princely states
• List of royal houses
• Royal house
• Micronation
• Monarchism
• Order of succession

References and notes