AHC: "Fake King"-style coup

Basically, is there any point in history (or any nation that has existed) where a group of conspirators could successfully commit a coup by assassinating the existing head of state and replacing them with an impostor? Or would people pick up on the differences between the original and the fake too quickly for the coup to really succeed?
 
Basically, is there any point in history (or any nation that has existed) where a group of conspirators could successfully commit a coup by assassinating the existing head of state and replacing them with an impostor? Or would people pick up on the differences between the original and the fake too quickly for the coup to really succeed?

Why bother? If you have the means to take them down and replace them with an imposter then you have the means to take power in your own right anyway.
 
Basically, is there any point in history (or any nation that has existed) where a group of conspirators could successfully commit a coup by assassinating the existing head of state and replacing them with an impostor? Or would people pick up on the differences between the original and the fake too quickly for the coup to really succeed?
Like "Man in the Iron Mask" conspiracy
 
Why would they rule through someone weak impostor instead taking power themselves?

And problem is even on Middle Ages that there is enough people who knows what king/prince/duke look like if then impostor not be doppelganger. And him should be able to talk similar way as real one.
 
Basically, is there any point in history (or any nation that has existed) where a group of conspirators could successfully commit a coup by assassinating the existing head of state and replacing them with an impostor? Or would people pick up on the differences between the original and the fake too quickly for the coup to really succeed?

Supposedly, something like this actually happened in Achaemenid Persia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaumata
 
You certainly had cases of people claiming to be a dead king, but usually after an intermission of rule by someone else.

Pugachev claiming to be Peter III and rebelling against Catherine the Great is one example.

People have already mentioned the False Dmitriys, but it's worth remembering that not only did the first False Dmitriy claim to be the dead prince Dmitriy, the second False Dmitriy claimed to be both the dead prince and the same person as the first False Dmitriy.

But generally, if you wanted to usurp the throne, it was easier to either claim it yourself or install a different claimant (real or imposter) rather than trying to impersonate the king.
 
For a similar (but not the same idea), the Malet Coup of 1812 during the French Revolution just had a fake death- in the hopes that the conspirators would be able to secure enough power before Napoleon returned or that he would die on campaign.

Realistically, in many early medieval states, the amount of people who would be in contact with a monarch was relatively low. Your ideal scenario would probably be something similar to the Shogunate- with the Emperor-to-be-replaced socially cut off for reasons of tradition/political security.
 
That happened in Serbia before the great war

You're probably thinking of Albania, actually. And apparently that one hadn't really happened either.

(I'm surprised to see the Wikipedia article being what it is though - the version I remember seeing described it as a true story, but there's nothing like that in version history either.)
 
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