POD: A successful 1745 return to the throne for the Jacobite cause.
James III of Great Britain (b.1688: d.1766)
While ostensibly reigning from his father's death in 1701 to his death in 1766, the man of James the Third, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc. was not either much of a policy maker or a King. His early years were spent in exile and, when his son won his throne on a bloody battlefield in England, he simply trotted onto London on his favourite horse, holding his wife's favourite fan as a way to bring her with her, despite her death 10 years previously. When he arrived in the esteemed St. James Palace, he was greeted by the men and women of a court that had displaced him and his family years prior, to his disgust. His decision in regards to his rivals was seen as both overly merciful and oddly brutal. He allowed the former Prince of Wales, who had, in the final days of the end of his father's reign, actually turned against him and bowed to the new regime, to take his family back to Hanover, where he became the Elector in his father's place. The Princesses Amelia and Caroline of Hanover (as the new King called them) were both married at the Stuart King's demand to his sons. Amelia, the elder, married the new Prince of Wales, while the new Duke of York was married to Caroline of Hanover. While these marriages took place, the girls' father was tried and convicted of treason, and after 2 attempts to escape, was executed. Beside him were the bodies of his younger sons, who the new King also had executed. The bodies were conferred to the same tomb of Caroline of Ansbach. After this flurry of activity, the new King left much of the ruling to his eldest son, particularly after the Duke of York had his marriage annulled a year later to joined the clergy, leaving his bride to live at court with her lover. He died in 1766 and left the son who had ruled for him for many years to step up to the throne, creating a peaceful and easy transtion, a rarity in Great Britain.
Charles III of Great Britain (b.1720: d.1788)
The new King, at 46 years old, brought with him a family of many children, ensuring the succession. Having won the throne for his father 21 years previously and having acted as a de facto king, Charles the Third, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc. brought with him stability and peace, although no real charm. The stress of ruling and a nagging, bitter bride had taken their toll on the former Bonnie Prince Charlie and he became known as Cheery Charles, a mocking name over his perpetual frown. However, he was an effective monarch and a man who could be could be exceedingly kind to his family, shown by his decision in 1769 to allow his Queen to leave for the Hanoverian Court to live with her nephew, despite warnings that she might help that rival house usurp his throne. Ultimately, she did nothing of the sort and died a year after him, leaving all her belongings and incomes to her youngest, unmarried daughter.
The royal couple had gone through 6 pregnancies, ending with 5 living children. The eldest two, the Princesses Mary and Anne Stuart, were twin daughters born 3 years after their parents marriage. They had been followed by two stillbirths, a son and daughter, until the birth of a third daughter in 1754, named Louisa Theresa Stuart. Finally a son in 1757, named James for his grandfather, had been born. A final daughter in 1759, named Caroline Stuart, was born when her mother was at the age of 42. The pregnancies seem to have brought the couple no close as individuals, although Amelia of Hanover seems to have been a maternal woman who, even after she deserted her children in 1769, kept up with their educations, in particular the Princess Caroline. Ultimately, however, the Queen of England had a negligible influence on her court and was sidelined for most of it by her husband and eldest daughters, who managed to gain the popularity that evaded her throughout the entirety of her reign, possibly due to her continual grief over her father.
The eldest Princesses, due to abnormalities in their birth, would never marry. The elder, Mary, died in 1770 after a surprise pregnancy by her lover, Sir Richard Knollys, killed her due to issues with the birth. Her sister, the other Princess Twin, would in 1778 meet her own end at the age of 30, following her sister to the grave after falling from a horse. The next daughter, Louisa Theresa Stuart, would marry in 1769 to Christian VII of Denmark, with whom she had one son, dying in the process. The Prince of Wales, in 1780, married the 16 year old Elisabeth of France, with whom he would have 2 sons and a daughter: Henry Edward Stuart, the Duke of York, Edmund Thomas Stuart and the Princess Elizabeth Margaret Stuart. The youngest Princess would, in 1790, shortly after her mother's death and thus the windfall of money in addition to her already high allowance, marry Charles Lennox, the 4th Duke of Richmond, giving birth to 6 daughters, of which only one would have children.
The King would die in 1788, leaving his son to rise to the throne as James IV of Great Britain. He would die a prematurely ancient man, far from the vigorous, handsome youth who'd taken England by story 42 years prior. But in his wake, he had left the English Throne firmly in his son's hands, renewed the standing of the Stuarts throughout the courts of Europe.
James IV of Great Britain (b.1757: d.1819)
The King who came to the throne in 1788 was the first for the second Stuart regime to have grown up in the privilege of court and thus the biggest test of their survival. And his was a reign that, as James the Fourth, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc., the man who would become known as Our New Tudor, was one that looked backwards in most ways. A sort of court of nostalgia, the King looked to emulate his Tudor ancestors in style rather than substance, and the aesthetics of both clothing and celebrations were frequently designed to copy the looks of the past. Despite his insanity in this regard, the King would also manage to update the tax system and, throughout the 1790s, diplomatically save the French Royal family thrice over, until the unfortunate beheading of the King in 1795, which led to his wife's nephew being pushed as a puppet monarch, while the Princess Marie Therese Charlotte would be sent to Austria in 1800, from which they actually traveled to London.
His concern with his French wife's family earned him much unhappiness, particularly after he arranged the double marriage of his heir and his only daughter to Marie-Therese Charlotte and Louis XVII of France, which meant they could not marry elsewhere. This, however, meant the new King had a lifeline to England and, in 1804, after a second rebellion began in France to once again topple the monarchy, the King and his bride fled to England, where they stayed until 1810, when they returned to Paris with James IV of Great Britain, who rode in, at 53, on a bright white horse, tall and not looking much older than his late 30s, side by side with his son-in-law and her husband, where behind them sat the proud Prince and Princess of Wales, and their only child, the Prince Charles of Wales, behind them. Finally, in the rear, came the recently married Maria Carolina of the Two Sicilies, with whom he would have three sons before his death in 1822. The parade of royalty seemed too much for some and one rebel managed to shoot into the parade at the last moments, wounding the Prince of Wales' son. His cousins, the Prince and Princess Charles and Anne-Charlotte of France, were thankfully in the carriage the French King had borrowed from the King of Great Britain.
After his actions in France, the King would spend most of his life reveling in tournaments and his grandchildren. In particularly, his favourite would always be Charles of Wales, who he nicknamed Mine Own Hercules, a name made due to the young man's athleticism, which made him able to life his grandfather over his head in a way that, if somewhat unseemly, was also apparently a great deal of fun. Of course his death in 1819 was not that of a healthy man, but smallpox destroying those who had never been inoculated. The King himself had evaded the needle as a child, as had his elder son and his grandson. His wife too would suffer the pox, although her death came several years later in 1823. With this misfortune, his throne would never go to his elder son but his second son, while the Dowager Princess of Wales would, in 1825, return to France and lived the remaining 26 years of her life in her brother's and nephew's court, barely missing the end of the monarchy completely in 1853, at the Final Rebellion, which took their lives all at once.
Edmund I of Great Britain (b.1784: d.1822)
The second son of the well remembered Our New Tudor came to the throne amidst the mourning for not only the old King, but the Prince of Wales and his son, leaving the fairly popular Duke of York in an uncomfortable position as Edmund the Unwanted. To make his reign seem even more uncomfortable than that of his father's before him, it would only last 2 and a half years and he would only enact one piece of major law, granting his brother's bastard son the title Duke of Wiltshire and, in 1821, beginning a major project of building a new London Bridge, having the old one torn down for the fantastical idea of a triple bridge. His death in 1822, aged 36, due to cancer was not unforseen and his son, the Prince of Wales Henry Christian Stuart, would rise to the throne just turned 10. Thus the reign of Edmund the First, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc., would end just as disappointingly as the first, with a sudden regency and no real leader to it.
Henry IX of the United Kingdom, Emperor of the Commonwealth (b.1812: d.1883)
After becoming King at just 10 years old, the man who was known as Henry the Ninth, by the Grace of God, Emperor of the Commonwealth, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc., would make two major changes to policy in his 61 year reign. The first would be the changing of his shortened title from King of Great Britain to King of the United Kingdom in 1835, which he felt more accurately represented the British Isles. The second was his non-involvement policy in France, which led to the direct death of his cousins and the end of a monarchy. Despite his own married to a Frenchwoman, the King would not agree to send even a minor force into the country and, in 1852, as the events began getting uncomfortably close to the end moments of the Bourbon Monarchy, he famously wrote in a letter to the then King, Charles X of France (who was his cousin and brother-in-law):
"I must have my back turned so that, when the time comes, we are prepared not to fight. War is unequivocally a bad position for my country and if we waste men on the cause of a country so much a traditional enemy to our own (even if as of late they have been our ally) then we would be justly critisied, a fate as bad as death..."
Of course, his brother-in-law would die in 1853, along with his wife and their daughters, as the King had recently managed to have the rule of Salic Law changed from that point on, so his eldest child, Marie-Anne de Bourbon, could inherit his throne. Unfortunately, with the death of the nobility in almost their entirety, France had finally become a Republic, although it would not be until the late 1880s that they received recognition from any major countries that were not their own.
His married to Anne-Charlotte de Bourbon in 1830, when he was 18 and his bride was 21. They grew to loath each other for various reasons, one of which was the King's discomfort with marrying a double 1st cousin. The marriage ended in 1859, with an annulment due to childlessness. After that, he would marry another, more distantly related cousin in Wilhelmina Lennox, a descendant of the Princess Caroline Stuart. The lady in question was a 31 year old widow, with 2 daughters of her own. They married in 1862, and would go on to have 2 sons: the Prince of Wales William Charles Stuart and the Duke of York, James Frederick Stuart. This marriage was much happier than his French marriage and would be much more popular at court, if just for Queen Wilhelmina's popularity prior to her marriage. He died in 1883, actually collapsing during his elder son's wedding to Victoria of Baden, during the time in which he was trying to negotiate the acceptance of his title of Emperor of the Commonwealth.
William IV of the United Kingdom, Emperor of the Commonwealth (b.1864: d.1919)
The man who came to the throne in 1883 was not a man who wanted the throne. Nicknamed The Farmer King by his subjects, the young man, age 19 at the beginning of his reign, would rule until his death at 55, leaving a country as disinterested in him as he was in it. As William the Fourth, by the Grace of God, Emperor of the Commonwealth, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc. put it himself in his memiors in 1916:
"I am not a King who has set out to earn respect. I am a man who, on certain occasions, wears a robe and pointy hat."
His reign was so unremarkable that the biggest event of it all was the funeral of his brother in 1894, during a visit to the just completed London Bridge. He would fall with 117 others as the bridge collapsed beneath them, killing them all. With this loss, the success seemed much less secure, although the King did finally have a child on the way that very year. This pregnancy ended in 1895 with the birth of a daughter, named Charlotte Stuart. This girl was made the Princess of Wales in 1904 and, in 1910, was married to Thomas Churchill, Earl of Kent. Not a royal in any way, this match was with the greatest landowner in England and the Americas. His daughter would give the King 7 grandchildren, 5 boys and 2 girls, before his death in 1919.
Charlotte I of the United Kingdom, Empress of the Commonwealth (b.1895: d.1973)
The Lady of Queen Charlotte, born in 1895, was that of a woman who loved every small element of statecraft. While her father would hate every moment with the crown on his head, the new Queen would be known not just as Charlotte the First, by the Grace of God, Empress of the Commonwealth, Queen of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc. but also as Mama Charlotte by her children and Mrs Queen by the press, due to her matronly figure and habit of sending cakes to the reporters who surrounded St. James Palace every Friday afternoon for her weekly address to the public. She would bring out whichever children were at the Palace at the time and, in a famous event in 1950, brought out her grandchild, her heir, on her hip while she asked the press to keep quiet while the other children slept just two rooms down.
Behind this overly feminine persona stood a woman who had 7 men beheaded for treason during her reign. This was a woman who, in 1928, had rebellious leaders in India hung, despite the previous policy of simply beggaring them. She would even, in May of 1931, have her elderly cousin, the Lady Martha Lennox (the younger of her grandmother's daughters before her marriage to the King/Emperor) exiled to Spain for the crime of keeping in touch with her son, who in 1927, had joked that he would be King should the royal family all die. A distasteful joke, but the man in question was 30 years old and had spent his entire life sickly and would die not 6 months after his mother's exile, from which she was not allowed to return for his funeral. She was known by her daughters-in-law as That Spiteful Old Hag for her monopoly on her grandchildren and even great grandchildren.
Her reign was notable for it's movement to fill parliament with Royalists, men who adored and feared the Queen and would do her bidding. Cousins and friends filled it seats and, in addition to that, the Queen held the greatest personal wealth of anyone in the United Kingdom. She was also notable for marrying her son's to subjects rather than foreign Princesses. This was for a number of reasons, the biggest of which being that she desperately needed to control her son's lives. The Prince of Wales, Duke of York, Duke of Gloucester, Duke of Clarence and Duke of Albany would all marry beautiful, eligible Ladies of the Court. Meanwhile, her elder daughter would marry the King of Denmark, Christian XX, in 1938, while her youngest would marry President of the French, Robert Moreau in 1940.
At her death in 1973, it was not her son but grandson who rose to the throne. She died surrounded by her grandchildren, who each received a pound by their grandmother in seeds to plant as a garden in her memory, a plan that never was completed. Instead, her young grandson would rise to the throne as a playboy king, a man so infamous for his sexual endeavors that it became commonplace for the wives of powerful men to hide, if just to make it harder for him to find them. However, his days as the Playboy Prince were over.
Richard IV of the United Kingdom, Emperor of the Commonwealth (b.1945: d.2007)
After his accession in 1973, the Playboy Prince as he was known took a 180 turn. Dropping his image as a sexual deviant, he married his latest conquest in 1974 and in 1975 welcomed his first son, Charles James Churchill, Prince of Wales. Three daughters followed and then, in 1980, the King was left a widower as Queen Catherine Turner, daughter of an oil baron, died of breast cancer at age 29. Deeply mournful, the King would never remarry and in 1990 had a marble statue of his Queen erected in the King Henry Park in York.
Charles V of the United Kingdom, Emperor of the Commonwealth (b.1975: d.2029)
The most recent King of the United Kingdom, Charles Churchill, married in 1999 to Eleanor Thompson, a model best known for her series of nude photographs in 1989 at the tender age of 17, a year before the age of consent had been raised to 18. the 27 year old new Queen would be known as the first "Asian Queen", due to her grandmother's Japanese heritage. The King is known as a a solid family man, who enjoys taking time off from ruling with his wife and son, James Isaac Churchill, to spend time in the park with their family dog, Bronson.