A Question: German noble house best suited to American monarchy?

...but how about somone Dutch or Danish?

Both are protestant, both a seafaring, mercantile nations and match the Americans better IMHO. Especially the Dutch have a certain historical connection (New Amsterdam) - maybe already too much for the British to accept.

Meh. If someone Danish is possible, you might as well look at Sweden too, which is also a protestant, seafaring and mercantile nation, plus they sided against the British in the Seven Years' War. Still, I don't think someone Swedish or Danish is very likely anyway.

Though it maybe you should note that the Swedish royal house was Holstein-Gottorp, part of the house of Oldenburg.
 
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For those of you who think that any American monarchy should be a homegrown monarchy think for a second. Why is it that Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and the Mexicans for their second empire all elect to pick a member of royalty from Europe to be their king? It all comes down to a question of international legitimacy. The 1700s wasn't an age where any old warlord could take a crown. The age where one could become noble on the battlefield was over for centuries and lineage was the deciding factor to nobility. True, commoners were from time to time raised to nobility, but that was only to lowest ranks of nobility.

An American who can't trace his bloodline back to at least some sort of nobility assuming a crown will infuriate people in Europe making it hard to do business over there. Even if America doesn't want to form alliances in Europe, they still need to keep relations amicable in order to trade. This is something that ALL states will agree upon. New England doesn't want its sailors out of work and the southern plantation owners don't want their farm goods rotting on the docks.

Having a commoner for a "president" isn't that big of a deal for the Europeans of the age. They had dealings with republics of a sort in Italy, and Switzerland to not be troubled. But if the American's want a king, he'd better be able to show the proper credentials if the country is to do business in Europe. Remember a lot of people in Europe hated Napoleon because he dared to assume the title of Emperor.

Besides bringing in a royal family form outside has some useful side benefits. First, the local politicians don't have grudges against him just because he voted against them or came from a section of the country they don't like. Second, it doesn't show any favoritism or hint of favoritism because the king came from state X instead of state Y. Finally, it's easier to build a cult of personality to enhance the new government's domestic creditability if you can't easily find a dozen people in the guy's home town who remember the time he chopped down his father's cherry tree.
 
This is unlikely to be a factor in the decision at the time.
You're misunderstanding me. I'm talking about process and how reality works. Reality's seriously a votingwank - a big reason we beat your aristocratically chosen officer corps. It's also how Rome and the Caliphate and America all won and prospered.

o As I wrote before, the people rarely - under 10% of the time - make choices that bad, especially not for President, and

o In this case, it probably would've SOME general, even if not Washington, whom would've already faced that same process that usually produced the ept.

o I'm still waiting for an answer to why Americans'd - even if we were crazy enough to have one - want a king that had anything in common, like, say, hmm, nationality, with King George III?

HistorianofAlt wrote
An American who can't trace his bloodline back to at least some sort of nobility assuming a crown will infuriate people in Europe making it hard to do business over there.
Yeah, lacking a kingie IOTL, we couldn't do any European business atall - oh, wait, wasn't there that French alliance? Plus, most actual aristocrats've been a burden to their countries' diplomacy because most don't have the trick of putting themselves in others' shoes; they have a way of threatening instead of being friendly.

And, speaking of France and Mexico, didn't the Nappies come to be on top via the battlefield AFTER the period in question?
 
lacking a kingie IOTL, we couldn't do any European business atall - oh, wait, wasn't there that French alliance? Plus, most actual aristocrats've been a burden to their countries' diplomacy because most don't have the trick of putting themselves in others' shoes; they have a way of threatening instead of being friendly.

And, speaking of France and Mexico, didn't the Nappies come to be on top via the battlefield AFTER the period in question?

The problem is not an issue of no king = no business in Europe. I stated further down in the post that you quoted that Europe can do business with a republic. After all, they did business in Italy which had several small republics.

The problem lies in the title of king. This title is very loaded and has almost religious connotations (divine right ring a bell?). An 'ordinary' American receiving a crown would infuriate the European royalties and aristocracies a.k.a the people with wealth and power to either buy our goods or boycott us. If the United States had actual noble houses then it could raise someone within to the throne. Since that's obviously not the case, importing a royal family is the least annoying thing America can do to get a crown. After all, it wouldn't be the first time a nation enticed a noble to assume the throne after their old royal house died out.
 
I wonder why it's always the German princes who are picked to be kings of every country in real history and Alternate History. We Americans demand a King that had some doing in the creation of this country, all hail King Joseph the First, of the house of Lafayette.
 

Krall

Banned
What about the House of Hesse for the irony of it? :D

Hm. Absolutism was pretty pervasive in Germany at the time. A noble withr espect for the constitutional institutions? Always possible of coruse, but hardly a typical trait. And the only major country where absolutism hadnt taken hold, Mecklenburg, was so ridicously reactionary - they werent absoutist because they had pre-absolutist politics there!

Of course, that Bayreuth guy could work. Dont know too much about him, though. Seeing the way he basically didnt care for ruling as Margrave, though, he cant have been too much on about rule by the grace of god and all that, so why not...

I'm not actually planning for it to be Frederick Christian of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, but a son of his. IOTL he had no male issue, but he and his wife did have two daughters, so they were evidently capable of having children, so he could have a son in an alternate timeline.

I rather like the option because it means the noble can cut his ties in Europe by selling the relatively worthless margravates of Bayreuth and Ansbach to Prussia (which is exactly what happened historically).
 
It's split between Catholic and Protestant as far as I can tell, and the Saxon elector is in the weird position of being catholic as king of Poland but protestant as duke-elector of Saxony.

The other minor houses in Germany could be considered, I guess: that gives four branches of counts of Reuss, the princes of Leiningen, two branches of dukes of Mecklemburg, the counts of Bentheim, etc. Of course none have that significant ties that they make a good pick for political standing but obviously also come with the advantage of no entangling alliances. If entangling alliances are still acceptable: Oldenburg, Hohenzollern, younger Wettin.
I'd like to see someone from either the Mecklenburg or the Oldenburg. The Oldenburg's particularly have a history of ending up all over the place. I wouldn't like the Reuss because we'd just have a long line of King Henry's throughout history. *boring*
 

archaeogeek

Banned
I wonder why it's always the German princes who are picked to be kings of every country in real history and Alternate History. We Americans demand a King that had some doing in the creation of this country, all hail King Joseph the First, of the house of Lafayette.

I think it's partially a situation where they had more freedom of political action than the french, british or spanish high nobility: lacking a strong central power in the empire, the Italian and German upper nobility was basically all princes, and while it could be possible to described french/british/spanish upper nobility as prince-ish if you go far enough, at this point in time it's heavily dependent on the crown. So it's easier to just pick a family that doesn't come with the baggage of a great power getting involved.
 

Susano

Banned
I think it's partially a situation where they had more freedom of political action than the french, british or spanish high nobility: lacking a strong central power in the empire, the Italian and German upper nobility was basically all princes, and while it could be possible to described french/british/spanish upper nobility as prince-ish if you go far enough, at this point in time it's heavily dependent on the crown. So it's easier to just pick a family that doesn't come with the baggage of a great power getting involved.

That. They were not just dukes, marquises and counts - they were souvereign dukes, marquises and counts, and thus naturally a notch more more senior and noble than their French, British etc. counterparts.

And of course, in the 19th century the reason became the Almanac de Gotha, which divided nobility into three categories, which was used as THE standard to determine egilibility for marriage. And German nobility was ranked higher (second volume) than nobility from elsewhere, or even royalty from countries at the European fringe (third volume).
 
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