How likely is it for there to be a Queen regnant ?

A question.

Say Richard I had had a son, and his son had had a son and his son had had a son etc, how long do you think this could go on for? Is it inevitable that at some point there would be a Queen regnant?
 
Likely, but not inevitable: the House of Savoy always managed a male heir, as did Denmark after Margarethe I up to Margarethe II.
 
Likely, but not inevitable: the House of Savoy always managed a male heir, as did Denmark after Margarethe I up to Margarethe II.

Okay interesting. I mean there is always the chance of remarrying until one has a male heir no?
 
True, not to mention large families: The Austrian Hapsburgs were almost always able to "dig" somebody up while the Spanish seemed to have a problem having healthy boys. A direct descent son to son isn't as rare as it seems- it didn't happen in England because of the Wars of the Roses though...not really down to Richard and Berengaria.
 
True, not to mention large families: The Austrian Hapsburgs were almost always able to "dig" somebody up while the Spanish seemed to have a problem having healthy boys. A direct descent son to son isn't as rare as it seems- it didn't happen in England because of the Wars of the Roses though...not really down to Richard and Berengaria.

Very true, very true. If they have a son, the chances of a war of the roses happening later on is perhaps butterflied?
 
Korea managed to avoid having a queen regnant for roughly a thousand years, though it might be chalked up to the king having concubines and thus more chances for a male heir.
 
Let's remember that succession rules are largely issued from two features :

- The first is precedent : more succession are made from father to son, and from male to male, more likely is that male succession becomes an unprincipled rule.
- The second is political convenience : if it happens that a succession is disputed between two candidate, but one manages (partially because of the first factor) to have more support, male succession becomes a law.

It's not, as CKII may have us think, a pre-made set of customs and rules that are applied like some sort of constitutional order; but fitting with the medieval law/custom system, a legalisation/formalisation of historical precedent modified by balance of power.

That's basically what happened with French succession, the whole interpretation on Salic Law (while influential) is not as much the cause than the consequences (would it be only trough rationalization trough precedent). In the case of a Capetian Miracle-like Plantagenet succession, you may end with a male-only succession rule/law at the end.
 
Lets look at it in reverse: every man has a father who has a father... all the way back to Adam.

Seems to me that its not inevitable when you look at it that way.
 

Deleted member 97083

Lets look at it in reverse: every man has a father who has a father... all the way back to Adam.

Seems to me that its not inevitable when you look at it that way.
Not sure if you're serious, but that relation only works one way.

By definition, a man is the son of his father. However, not every man is a father, and not every father has a son.
 
Not sure if you're serious, but that relation only works one way.

By definition, a man is the son of his father. However, not every man is a father, and not every father has a son.

My point is that, from a certain point of view, you ultimately have a 50/50 shot of being able to maitain an unbroken lime of male progeny, to infinity.
 

Deleted member 97083

My point is that, from a certain point of view, you ultimately have a 50/50 shot of being able to maitain an unbroken lime of male progeny, to infinity.
It would be much lower than that. Many kings were infertile, or only had daughters, or their sons died before reaching adulthood, or they were deposed before their sons could inherit.
 
It would be much lower than that. Many kings were infertile, or only had daughters, or their sons died before reaching adulthood, or they were deposed before their sons could inherit.

Empirically, you're certainly correct. However, there's currently 3 billion lines of unbroken male descent, stretching back over somewhere over ~100 thousand years. Thats pretty good odds, overall.
 

Deleted member 97083

Empirically, you're certainly correct. However, there's currently 3 billion lines of unbroken male descent, stretching back over somewhere over ~100 thousand years. Thats pretty good odds, overall.
If your starting point is in 100,000 BC or earlier, then all male lines are unbroken because all men have a y-chromosome. But medieval people didn't know or care about chromosomes. It's irrelevant to the days of kings and dynasties.

If a man, in this case the King of England, has only daughters, then his daughters marry a different male line, in a different royal family. That breaks the previous king's direct male line, and thus also breaks the agnatic succession for the kingdom.

Also, there are not 3 billion lines of unbroken male descent even if you stretch back 100,000+ years. If you stretch back far enough, there is only one male line--the patrilineal descendants of y-chromosomal Adam, which includes all 3.7 billion living men. In order for there to be 3.7 billion distinct male lines, there would have to be at least 3.7 billion men at any possible time for the past 100,000+ years, to be descended from.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
If your starting point is in 100,000 BC or earlier, then all male lines are unbroken because all men have a y-chromosome. But medieval people didn't know or care about chromosomes. It's irrelevant to the days of kings and dynasties.

If a man, in this case the King of England, has only daughters, then his daughters marry a different male line, in a different royal family. That breaks the previous king's direct male line, and thus also breaks the agnatic succession for the kingdom.

Also, there are not 3 billion lines of unbroken male descent even if you stretch back 100,000+ years. If you stretch back far enough, there is only one male line--the patrilineal descendants of y-chromosomal Adam, which includes all 3.7 billion living men. In order for there to be 3.7 billion distinct male lines, there would have to be at least 3.7 billion men at any possible time for the past 100,000+ years, to be descended from.

I don't think you're getting what I'm getting at. So, lets just make a hypothetical scenario:

I am a male. I could, in theory, trace an unbroken string of male ancestors back as far as I want (ironically, the branch of my ancestry I know the best is my maternal grandmother's). Therefore, if a patrilineal ancestor of mine had been a king, and had passed on his crown in agnatic fashion, generation after generation, he clearly would have plenty of male descendants all the way up to the present (again, ironically, I do have plenty of royalty, on my maternal side). I'm not the only male on the planet. Our species is, for all intents and purposes 50/50. Therefore, of all the possible lines of inheritance, 50% of them could result in an unbroken line of male heirs.
 
Assuming all children live to adulthood and have children, the following will occur:

There is a 1/(2^x) chance that all children will be daughters, where x being the number of children that any person has (assuming x>0). This means that there is a 1-(1/2^x) chance that any one person has at least one son.

On average, a medieval king would have approximately 6.7 children, rounded to 7. For this number I took the numbers of all English kings 1066-1399, including those without children and the French claimant in 1217.

:. 1-(1/2^7) = 63/64 chance that a king has one or more sons, on the condition that he has children.

From my above sample of English kings, 3 from 13 had no sons.

10/13 * 63/64 = 75.7% has one or more sons.

Also, there is a 1-(1/2^(x-1)) chance that a king has a brother (including half-brothers in this definition), so 31/32 will.

= 3/13 * 31/32 = 22.2% chance a king has no son but a brother.

Assuming the crown will go to a queen if there are no sons or brothers, there is a 97.9% each generation will have a male heir.

Extending to 10 generations (about 2 and a half centuries worth), there is an 80.8% chance all succeeding rulers will have a male heir.

Or very simply, after 10 successions there is about a 20% chance of a queen, assuming all kings are fertile. While this is not the case exactly, it gives a decent approximation.

- BNC
 
True, not to mention large families: The Austrian Hapsburgs were almost always able to "dig" somebody up...

The Austrian Habsburgs, following the Sallc Law, could bring in nephews and cousins as needed. However, even they ran into trouble in the 1700s, when Charles VI had no sons. His only brother, his two paternal uncles, his two paternal grand-uncles, and his three paternal great-grand-uncles had died childless or without sons. So he issued the Pragmatic Sanction to pass the Habsburg dominions to his daughter and son-in-law.



A direct descent son to son isn't as rare as it seems - it didn't happen in England because of the Wars of the Roses though...

???

The Wars of the Roses happened because there was no direct male-line inheritance. the House of Lancaster (descending from John of Gaunt) could usurp the throne from Richard II because the line descending from Lionel, John's older brother, passed through a female heir (Phillipa) who was dead, and a male heir (Roger Mortimer), also dead, to four minor children, the oldest only eight years old.
 
At what point, by your calculations, do you reach 50/50?
33 generations, or about a millennium's worth.

However this assumes that all kings are fertile and all sons survive to adulthood, neither of which is quite true. So I would expect say 20 successions, or 1 every 500 years, for a more realistic estimate.

- BNC
 
Top