List of monarchs III

Asharella · Sep 12, 2019

Scottish North America in Green
USA in Red

Shiva · Sep 13, 2019

What if James IV of Scotland (House of Stewart) had married Maria of Aragon instead of Margaret Tudor of England, daugher and sister to kings. Thus the crowns of Scotland and England would not eventually unite, nor Scotland and England eventually become the United Kingdom?

1488 - 1513: James IV (House of Stewart)
1513 - 1566: James V (House of Stewart) [1]
1566 - 1568: Alexander IV (House of Stewart) [2]
1568 - 1584: Charles I (House of Stewart) [3]
1584 - 1621: Matthew I (House of Stewart) [4]
1621 - 1690: Duncan III (House of Stewart) [5]
1690 - 1753: Alexander V (House of Graham) [6]
1753 - 1763: William II (House of Graham) [7]
1763 - 1801: James VI (House of Graham) [8]
1801 - 1817: Duncan IV (House of Graham) [9]
1817 - 1889: Malcolm IV (House of Graham) [10]
1889 - 1902: James VII (House of Graham) [11]

James V

[1] In the year 1500, King James IV of Scotland, House of Stewart, married the Infanta Maria of Aragon, daughter of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile. She was 18 and he was 27. Therir firstborn, named after his father, was born in 1501. He was partially raised in the Higlands by Alexander Gordon, 3rd Earl of Huntly, and Sherrif of Inverness, which he was made in 1500. Gordon was the righthand man of the King in securing the north and west and he was trusted with helping raise the Prince. James IV wanted to insure that his son was not seen as Spanish, but as a true Scotsman, and thus the sending him to Inerness every summer from the age of four until his majority. When the King died in 1513 in battle with England, Gordon became co-Regent with Queen Maria, and sole regent when shortly after that she married Manuel of Portugual.

James V, House of Stewart, always considered himself a Highlander and was beloved by the clans. In 1519 he ended the regency and married Gordon's granddaughter, Jean Campbell, keeping Gordon as an advisor until the older man's death five years later.

Scotland was constantly at war with England during the reign of James, both during the Regency of the Earl of Huntly and when James came of age. Border skirmishes and outright wars breaking out were common. Finally in 1543 the Scottish forces won a decisive victory against the English at the Battle of Solway Moss. Afterwards a peace was enacted between James and his young cousin, King Henry IX, of England. The borders that were negotiated remain the borders between the two British kingdoms until this day. (Yep, Mary I Tudor is instead male and succeeds his father sooner.)

The final battle between England and Scotland was noteworthy in that England was securely Catholic with King Henry IX continuing his father's role as "Defender of the Faith," that is the Catholic Faith, while Scotland was more and more becoming Presbyterian and James himself 'reformed' in 1542 becoming Presbyterian. Quickly after that the entire country converted. James identified with the Highlander Presbyterians over the lowland Catholics. The battle was an attempt by England to force Scotland to at least remain Catholic in the lowlands. Many of those lowlander Catholics fled to England after the victory of Solway Moss and the realization that Scotland was not going to give up the Reformation.

James died in his sleep at the age of 65 after complaining of headaches the night before He was survived by his wife, his children, and a country secure in its Independence, its Presbtyerianism, and its Gaelic heritage.

Alexander IV

[2] James would be succeeded by his second son Alexander, after the death of the Duke of Rothesay one year earlier. Rothesay and his wife, Barbara of Hesse, would only have three daughters before James's death: Anna, Mary, and Jean. Many feared war would break out over the princesses rights to the succession, particularly given the unpopularity of Alexander and his wife, the young Catherine Vasa.

Catherine was an almost fanatic devotee to Lutheranism and attempted to convert the Scottish court to the faith. Many reformers saw the faith as too Catholic in its traditions and saw Catherine as ruining all their hard work. However, the Queen was popular among the Catholic south, who saw Lutheranism as more tolerable. Alexander himself had the opposite problem, being accused of "having only one concern: his own enrichment". His ascension was bemoaned by the nobility, who believed his nature was antithetical to Kingship. The King's constant covert meetings with ambassadors "taking bribes and other such things".

The birth of a daughter, called Catherine for her mother, became the last straw. There were rumors that King Alexander planned on selling his young nieces to the highest bidders, which was met with revulsion due to their ages, given the eldest only recently turning 7 at the time. These rumors caught the ears of Robert McDonald, a young courtier of the Dowager Duchess of Rothesay. Fearing for his beloved mistress and her daughters, he took up vigilante justice. While the King was out riding with one of his many foreign friends, looking for new streams of private revenue, stopped at Cadzow Castle. McDonald covertly followed him in and, when the King went off alone for some heir, stabbed the King, reportedly screaming "Die you bastard". The news of McDonald's actions shocked the court, not least his former mistress, who called it "a ghastly thing". The short reign of King Alexander IV would be followed by that of his uncle, Charles.

Charles when he converted

[3] If his older brother was his father's son, raised to be a True Scotsman, by fostering him to the north, Charles was his mother's son, sharing the same name as his more illustrious cousin, Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, the House of Hapsburg, and as Charles I was the King of Spain. Charles did not spend time in the Highlands or among the north. When most of Scotland became Presbyterian, including his brother the king, Charles remained Catholic. However, after the Battle of Solway Moss and the clear reality that from this point on Scotland and Presbyterianism were from now on one and the same, Charles had three options. He could, like so many of his wife's relatives from the south, decamp to England, or perhaps to the Continent and the court of his cousin. He coud remain in Scotland and convert to remain a part of the Court and a True Scotsman. Finally he could choose to reject the new conditions of the kingdom, unite the southern aristocracy who were Catholic, and go to war with his brother.

Charles became Presbyterian. Like many of the other southern nobility, Charle's converion was not a deep one, but his children were still young as he'd married late in life in his early 30s, the oldest, Prince Henry, Duke of Albany, was only ten at this point. They were raised in the new Presbyterian faith and they were sincere by adulthood.

By the time of his nephew's assassination, Charles was 61, had been officially Presbyterian for over two decades, and had children and grandchildren all in this faith.

Some of the still leaning towards Catholicism in their hearts among the souther nobility, hoped that Charles would on taking the throne avenge the death of his nephew, and perhaps take up the 'compromise' of becoming Lutheran- that is Protestant in Theology but Catholic in style, especially Bishops instead of elected councils of Elders (Presbyters) governing the church, a parallel to Parliament having shared governing responsibiity with the monarch.

But Charles knew that would lead to civil war and eventually intervention by Catholic England, which would easily destroy Scotland's independence if they had allies.

So Charles remained Presbyterian, demanded that Queen Catherine convert and raise Princesess Catherine within the Covenant, and did not include the Dowager Duchess nor her daughters in the arrests that eventually led to the trial and execution of McDonald for regicide.

Charles unified Scotland after the fears of civil war and then turned its attention to overseas. He found common cause with France, despite their religious differences, in that both were threatened by the alliance between Catholic England and the Catholic Hapsburgs. This gave Scotland the breathing room to explore trade with the Indies of the Far East and the Indies of the Carribean. He also hired Jacques Cartier to explore North America for Scotland and conceived of a Scottish Colony somewhere in North America, which didn't happen until after he'd died and his heir, his grandson, Prince Matthew, Duke of Albany, and as heir, the Duke of Rothesay, succeeded him.

Charles died at the ripe age of 77, still a robust man, when he was riding his horse and it tripped. He fell and broke his leg. While recovering it became infected and he did from the infection.

Matthew I in his old age.

[4] Matthew I was born the second son of Prince Henry, Duke of Albany, Duke of Rothesay, and his wife, Princess Hedwig of Anhalt, being 'the spare' to his brother Prince Charles, Prince Matthew was educated for the possibility of one day wearing the crown, in addition to being tutored in the faith of the Scottish Kirk along side his older brother and their younger siblings.

As the Prince became older he fell in with the clique of popular young noblemen that flocked around Prince Charles, this group of young men became notorious all throughout Scotland for their epic drinking binges, wild hunting parties, and an ever changing cast of young, beautiful women. The King was dismissive of complaints from the authorities about his grandsons behavior, seeing it as part of their growing up with their peers.

The death of Charles and Matthew's father, Prince Henry, Duke of Albany, and as heir, the Duke of Rothesay, in one of the last outbreaks of the Sweating Sickness bumped Matthew up in the succession, and forced the King to consider the marriages of his grandchildren.

A prestigious continental match was made for Prince Charles, for Matthew his first wife was chosen from the Scottish nobility, Barbara Hamilton, a daughter of the prestigious Hamilton family, with whom he had two children before Barbara died in a miscarriage with what would have been their third child.

King Charles began to consider a new marriage for his second grandson when another tragedy struck the House of Stewart with the unexpected death of Prince Charles, Duke of Albany, and as heir, the Duke of Rothesay, when he fell out of a tower window while drunk, crashing onto the ground below.

Prince Matthew was then made Duke of Albany and as the heir to the Scottish throne, the Duke of Rothesay, and his second marriage was not with a Scottish lady but with a German Princess, Anna Magdalene of Brandenburg with whom Matthew would have three children.

Prince Matthew's partying ways slowed down considerably after the death of his first wife, and ended by the birth of his third child with Anna Magdalene, it was his second wife who encouraged his maturity, even encouraging regular church attendance, which earned the Prince (and his wife) the love of the ministers in the Church of Scotland.

The 'long-wait' for the throne ended with the death of King Charles and the rise of King Matthew I to the throne.

As the continent continued to convulse with the growing number of Protestant churches, internal schisms, Catholic Reformation, war and violence bloomed like flowers in spring. Scotland being relatively peaceful became a haven for various Calvinist and Presbyterian preachers.

Problems for Scotland began when members of other groups within Protestantism found their way to Scotland, the various branches of Lutheranism, and more radical groups such as the Anabaptists and Nontrinitarian Christianity, these groups were not officially welcomed into the Kingdom but never the less they did gain small followings, particularly on the borderlands with England, which did allow these groups to slip between the border to preach in England and flee to the 'relative' safety of Scotland.

This did anger the English authorities, however King Matthew was able to plead ignorance of the matter to King Henry XI of England, who also had to deal with rebellion in Ireland due to England's 'Plantations' in Ireland. Keeping England distracted with internal problems would prove to be King Matthew I's main policy of dealing with the English Kingdom.

King Matthew I also served as a patron of literature and the arts in Scotland, seeing the rise of the 'Scottish Renaissance' that would outlast Matthew's reign, in addition to this King Matthew established a number of schools and two universities to promote education amongst the nobility and merchant classes.

The King also considered a colonial project in the New World, however the costs at the time were seen as too high and Scotland's low population meant that there were a lack of volunteers to risk it all in a strange new land.

However when Queen Anna Magdalene died at age 53 in 1619, it broke the King's heart, the remaining few years of his reign were spent in a gloomy court in perpetual mourning until King Matthew I was found to have passed in his sleep at age 58 in 1621, passing the crown to his son, James.

Duncan III

[5] Duncan Charles Stewart was born May 29, 1588, the eight child of then Prince Matthew, the sixth with his second wife, Anna Magdalene, and his third son and second son to survive to adulthood. He was 32 when he took the throne, a vibrant man and soldier, who'd fought in the wars of Religion on the Continent, alongside his mother's relatives, fighting for the Protestants of Brandenburg against the Holy Roman Empire and Poland. (OOC: the War known as the Thirty Years War in OTL is the Forty Years War in TTL, starting in 1609 instead of 1618. /OOC) His older brother, Prince Robert James Stewart died in 1620 only months before his father, and Prince Duncan became the heir and the Duke of Rothesay and recalled from the wars on the Continent.

Prince Robert was Duncan's senior by 7 years, the child that had led to their father settling down into a devout life. Robert had continued in that vein, becoming a devout man of art, literature, and science. He married his mother's cousin's daughter, Katrina of Brandenburg and had many children, but only daughters who survived past infancy. Robert never was a robust man, he was a thin, frail man, who started balding in his early twenties and often would be bedridden for a week or more with an illness. Finally one of those illnesses took him when he was not yet 40 years old.

Prince Duncan, on the other hand, was a robust man, who as a child had loved the hunt, the Highlands, where the family had kept the Inverness Castle as a second home in the north, and revered his ancestors, Charles I and James V. Against his father's wishes, he'd gone to the continent to soldier as soon as the Wars of Religion began in the Forty Years War in 1609. There the little bit of German he'd learned from his mother became a second tongue for him. He was reknown for his courage and prowess in battle.

It was a blow to him to have to return to Scotland while the war raged on. He not only grieved his older brother, whom he loved dearly, but also having to cease to be a soldier. He'd never married or even courted a woman. Now a friendship over the death of Robert led him and Katrina to become quite close. After the death of King Matthew, it was clear the wisest thing for Dunan was to marry the Princess. They did marry in 1622 and he became the stepfather of his nieces. However, he and Katrina were never able to conceive a child. It was clear they loved each other and neither one was ever unfaithful.

Duncan remained robust throughout his life, an outdoors king. His long life amazed his contemporaries, living to the age of 102, being on the throne for yearly 70 years. By then his Queen, Katrina, and step daughters had all died, even some of his step-grandchildren who'd survived childhood had also died. It was said Duncan at age 100 resembled another man in his 80s; he still had all his mental facilities, all his teeth, a full head of hair, good eye sight and hearing, and stood strong and tall. He only declined in his last year of life.

Duncan pursued colonies in North America, estabishing New Albion in the lands south of the St. Lawrence River Gulf (New Brunswich and Nova Scotia in OTL). He also established a colony in the East Indies in Timor, with the Dutch taking the rest.

Scotland remained a devout land steeped in Presbyterianism, but this faith was one very open to the developing Science and drew men of learning in the new leaning from all over Europe to Scotland, where a Royal Academy was developed by Duncan and the Universities of Edinburgh and of Glasgow became among the most prestigious centers of learning in the world.

Even though it was expected when the King's health began to turn as he entered his second century, it was still difficult for the kingdom to lose their long reigning king. He was suceeded by his great step-grandson, Prince Charles.

Alexander V

[6] Affectionately known as Sandy by close family and friends, from a childhood nickname due to his older brothers, being unable to say his name properly at a young age as the third son of the Prince James, Duke of Ross (1649–1688), and his wife Maria Katharina of Denmark and Norway, a daughter of Frederick III, King of Denmark and Sweden.
Prince James was the son of Elizabeth, (eldest daughter of Prince Robert and Queen Katrina) and her husband, James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, bringing the mighty clan Graham, into the royal family.

Alexander was born in Mugdock Castle on 11 May 1682 and he was named the Earl of Dundee. The possibility of his becoming King seemed very remote; the King's oldest niece and heir, Princess Elizabeth, Alexander's father and his elder brothers Duncan and Robert were ahead of him in the succession. However, Princess Elizabeth died of pneumonia on 29 December 1682.
On 11 February 1684, his father, Prince Robert, was stricken with measles and died, followed on 15 February by his second brother.
On 19 February, it was found that both Alexander and his remaining older brother, Duncan, had the measles. The two brothers were treated in the traditional way, with bleeding.

By the morning of the 20th, Prince Duncan died from the combination of the disease and the treatment. Fearing for her last child, Princess Maria, would not allow the doctors to bleed Alexander any further, pleading that if God was to take him from her, he would do so peacefully; he was very ill but survived.

When Duncan III died, Alexander, at the age of eight, inherited the throne and would see his mother rule as regent along with his father’s cousin, Malcolm, Earl of Glasgow.

Following his age of majority in 1698, Alexander became known as the Enlightenment King.

He was the earliest opponent of capital punishment, abolishing the act in 1725, he would set about some of the greatest minds in Scotland to bring about an improved and reformed government.

His marriage in 1702 to Henriette Albertine, Princess of Nassau-Dietz, (1686-1754) was seen as an unusual choice to ally with, but over time, the alliance between the Dutch Republic and Scotland, would be financially and militarily beneficial to both nations, with their joint naval knowledge, matching those of England, France and Spain.

He modernized the Scottish bureaucracy and civil service and pursued religious policies throughout his realm that ranged from tolerance to segregation.

He reformed the judicial system and made it possible for men not of noble status to become judges and senior bureaucrats.

Alexander encouraged immigrants of various nationalities and faiths to come to Scotland and their colonies.

He supported arts and philosophers, he favored as well as allowing complete freedom of the press and literature.

Most modern biographers agree that Alexander, was primarily homosexual, and that his sexual orientation was central to his life and character, although he did his duty producing a male heir.

Many modern historian, including Dean of Edinburgh University, Nicola Sturgeon, has called him "one of the most shrewd and sensible monarchs ever to wear a crown".
As well as this, on his tomb is inscribed with this quote, “With the massive shoes left to him by his great-grandfather, a lesser man would have tripped and stumbled, whereas Alexander, proudly picked them up and carried on the legacy.”

William II

[7] William II was the only son of Alexander V, named after William the Lion due to his birth cries sounding like a lion's roar, William II would ultimately prove a far cry from the legendary warrior-king of old.

The then Prince was raised surrounded by an army of nannies, courtiers, his mother, and two sisters the Princesses Anne and Eleanor. While many expected the royal children to emerge hopelessly spoiled, their mother the Queen Henriette Albertine proved a formidable figure in their lives, holding her children to a strict standard of behavior and in their education. At times members of the court found the Queen too harsh, however the King usually sided with his wife, and so the royal children emerged high educated, but social awkward with all but each other.

As the future King became older, he began to rebel at his mother's controls, attaching himself to a group of young noblemen that came to be called 'the Young Bucks', like many such groups of young men before them, they became known for their wild ways, which led to the fighting between the Queen and the Prince to become worse and worse until the King was forced to intervene by separating the pair the only way he could and still save face.

The King hurriedly arranged a marriage for his son at the age of 16 to an English noblewoman, Lady Mary Catherine Howard, the daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, this allowed the King to grant his son the rights to his own household away from court, and away from his mother.

The forced seperation of Prince William from his sisters however would leave William forever bitter at both his parents, however his first marraige to Mary Catherine would prove a happy one, but would only produce a single child.

It was in his twenties that Prince William was able to return to court, however his sisters has been married off, leaving the Prince with few true allies. This narrowness in his social circle grew more pronounced when the Prince's first wife, Mary Catherine Howard died of pnemonia.

Once again the King hurriedly arranged a new marriage for his son, this time out of fear of an uncertain succession since so few members of the House of Graham remained. William's second wife was a continental match, the Princess Eleonora Maria of Sardinia, one of the daughter of the King of Sardinia. The match was controversial due to Eleonora Maria being Roman Catholic, however it went forward and the marriage would prove more fruitful than William's first, seeing the birth of four children in quick succession, though two died in infancy.

Tragedy nearly struck when Prince William became deathly ill with smallpox in his thirties, while he did survive (albeit heavily scared), William's health never fully recovered.

Upon the death of Alexander V, sickly William II took the Scottish throne at age 41. Within a year the Queen Eleonora Maria died in a riding accident, the King initially decided to remain single for the remainder of his life, however a number of advisors convinced him that having more heirs would be to Scotland's benefit.

So the King got to choose his own wife, this time selecting Princess Christine Augusta of Prussia, a woman with a surprisingly dynamic personality and a female painter in an era when it was rare for women to do so. This marriage would see the birth of two more children, and Queen Christine Augusta would become popular with the Scottish commoners, though the nobility was more divided in it's views on King William II's third wife.

Despite his poor health, William II would prove an effective administrator, and was more involved in his children's lives than his father was, and became known for being a loving, doting father to all of his children.

The sickly King's health gave out on him in 1763, having spent the unusually warm autumn day out and about enjoying his gardens, reading in the shade of his favorite tree, and spending his evening enjoying a dinner with the royal family and their friends. William II's successor was his first born child, James.

James VI

[8] James Stewart Graham, was the only child of his father's first marriage to Lady Mary Catherine Howard, born in 1731, when Prince William was only 19 and the Princess was only 17. His parents were married when they were young and she was only 14. However, for the first two years of their marriage, the marriage was only in name only, due to the youth of both. After the wedding the new Princess returned to her own family in Arundel Castle in Sussex, to live with her father, Thomas, the 8th Duke of Norfolk, her mother, Catherine nee Graham, a granddaughter of Malcolm, Earl of Glasgow, her older brother, Henry, her father's heir (he'd become the 9th Duke in 1732,) and her younger sister, Sophia, who was 13. On the Princess's 16th birthday she joined her husband and their marriage was finally consummated. Prince James was only 9 months old when his mother died of pneumonia. The small family had only returned to the Court a few months previously.

Quickly the baby Prince's maternal aunt, Sophia, now 18, took the child to raise him. She had married her own distant cousin, Angus Graham, the son of the current Earl of Glasgow, also named Malcom like his grandfather, who'd been regent during King Alexander's childhood. Sophia and Angus lived with William at the Court and fostered the baby for him. Later when his father married a second time, Sophia and Angus had the primary responsibility in raising Prince James.

His two half siblings by his father's second marriage who survived infancy were both sisters, Princess Louisa Maria and Princess Theresa Maria, born in 1737 and 1743. The Prince and these half-sisters were never close due to Princess Eleonora Maria severely disliking the Lady Sophia Graham and her jealously of Prince James as the heir. She had hoped that her own third child, Robert, born in 1740, would be made the heir, but of course Robert died before his first birthday. Her first child, also a girl, Regina Maria, was born in 1736 and lived to be two, dying in 1738. On the Duke of Rothesay's marriage in 1736, Sophia and her husband returned to Glasow, as Angus now became the Earl upon his father's death. Angus and Sophia convinced the Duke that Prince James was not really safe at court and so he was raised by them in Glasgow.

James never felt close to his father, especially after the illness of his father in 1742, the Duke no longer was well enough to visit the boy in Glasgow, and his aunt and uncle did not want him visiting Edinburgh for extended stays. The Prince was 21 when his father became King and he became the Duke of Rothesay. When the new Queen died a year later, James finally moved into quarters in court, along with his cousin, the Earl of Glasgow's heir, also named Malcolm, who was only a year younger than James and like a brother to him.

To James and Malcolm, James newest half siblings were more like nieces and nephews. James especially took a liking to his youngest sibling, Prince William, affectionally known as Billy, born in 1758. (Billy's older sister, Princess Ilse, was born in 1756.) The two older princesses, Louisa Maria and Theresa Maria, were 17 and 11, when their mother died. Louisia Maria had already been married to the Count of Savoy and her younger sister joined her there. (At this point their secret Catholicism became evident. Later Therea Maria would take orders as a Poor Claire.)

As Duke of Rothesay, James represented his sickly father to the kingdom, traveling throughout it, always accompanied by his cousin, Malcolm. It was while visiting Ulster, which had been part of the Scottish Kingdom since the days of Duncan III, that he met the eldest daughter of Andrew MacMurray, the Earl of Belfast, Briggitte. It was a whirlwind romance. James intended on marrying the girl and was returning to Court to speak to his father when the King died.

The Dowage Queen, Christina Augusta, was quite a bit younger than her late husband, in fact she was younger than her step-son! She'd been born in 1733, having married the King at the age of 21. She'd been a dutiful wife, popular with the people, a good mother, and a good friend to James and Malcolm, as well as Malcolm's parents. But the marriage was loveless and the King had only visited her bed a few time, but enough to sire her two children. A secret romance had grown between the Queen and Macolm, but it had remained chaste due to their mutual devotion not only to the King, but to the morals of their faith.

Two marriage occured in 1763 after the coronation of King James. First was his marriage to Lady Briggitte of Belfast. Some months later, after an appropriate time of morning, Lord Malcolm and Christina Augusta also married. Both marriages were love matches and were long, fruitful, good matches.

Queen Briggitte

It was during the reign of King James that Scotland joined the Industrial Revolution. Also the Scottish Colonies in both North America and the East Indies expanded. Besides New Albion, New Caledonia was established alongside the southern shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the St. Lawrence River up to Lake Champlain, taking these lands from France in the brief War of 1769. In the Indies, Scotland established a colony on the north coast of Austraila south of Timor, known as Kingsland.

Scotland continued to be a land of learning and science, attracting the best minds of the world to study there. In 1770, the King proclaimed the Edict of Toleration, allowing all Scottish citizens in both Scotland, Ulster, the North American Colonies, and the Indies, to practice whatever faith their conscience demanded. Learned Jews flocked to Scotland, French Catholics in New Caledonia practiced their faith openly, and Muslims and Hindus were received fully in the Indies. However, the Kingdom remained officially Presbyterian with the King and Queen required to be members in good stand of the Kirk and raise ther children in the Covenant.

King James and Queen Briggitte had many children, as did his former step-mother and Malcolm. The King died at the age of 70 after he choked on a piece of meat he was eating. His Queen, his cousin, now the Earl of Glasgow, his former Step-mother, his two youngest half-siblings, and his children and grandchildren survived him. He was succeeded by his third son, Prince Duncan, Duke of Rothesay.

Duncan IV

[9] Duncan IV, born Prince Duncan, Duke of Rothes was the third son of James VI and Queen Briggitte, he was preceded in birth order by his older brothers Prince James, Duke of Rothesay and Prince Malcolm, Duke of Aberdeen (who died at age 7), and his eldest sister the Princess Catherine (later married to the King of Sweden). With little expectation of becoming King, Prince Duncan grew up in his father's splendid court alongside his younger siblings and many children of the Scottish peerage in relative ease, and while his education wasn't neglected, the Prince didn't put much focus on it, instead his interests were in sports like golf, horse racing, and of course the pastime of many court, gambling and drinking.

It was during his brother Prince James's marriage to Princess Louise of England and Ireland that James VI began to negotiate a marriage for his third, somewhat disappointing son. After a few months the King selected the Princess Caroline of Denmark for Prince Duncan, hoping that his new daughter-in-law could be a positive influence on his son.

While Prince Duncan accepted the marriage with good grace, he didn't seem to have much feeling for his plain-looking, religiously devout Danish bride, and continued with his wild ways, much to his father's anger.

This anger became more acute when Princess Louise died giving birth to a sickly girl (Princess Mary Louise), leaving Prince Duncan still close in the line of succession to the Scottish throne.

A mere six months after the death of Princess Louise, Prince James, Duke of Rothesay was poisoned by an unknown assailant, dying a week later. Thus his hedonistic brother Prince Duncan became the heir to the throne.

The death of his brother did cause Duncan to moderate some of his excesses, but he continued enjoying a series of mistresses, up until this point having only bothered to father a single child on his wife Princess Caroline. James VI was able to convince his son to return to his wife's bed to father an additional two more children to help bolster the succession, and try and distract him a bit.

Having gained the Duchy of Rothesay as heir, Prince Duncan made a tour of Scotland's colonies in North America in 1787, making him the first Scottish royal to visit the New World when his wife was pregnant with their third child. Duncan noticed a number of intellectual trends being imported from the English Colonies to the south, ideas of liberty, democracy, and freedom of faith. Things that Scotland already practiced to various degrees, but the English under their autocratic monarchy was the antithesis of.

Duncan noted his concerns to his father, but was ignored, which many historians considered to be one of James VI's greatest mistakes.

Upon the death of James VI, Duncan IV became king at age 38 at the dawn of a new century, one that would prove a bumpy ride for the monarchies of Europe. The reason was that Duncan's worries in the 1780s bore fruit with the American Revolution in the English Colonies against the tyrannical rule of King Henry XVII in 1802 to 1808, a bloody war that saw English expend massive amounts of resources, however the new republican government in the United States of America had many problems, however it's first President Hugh Jackson (the eldest of the infamous Jackson Brothers) had territorial ambitious and a desire to expand the new nation 'from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with only the American banner of Republic on the soil', setting the stage for future conflict between America and Scotland.

The American Revolution would not be contained in the New World, having lost to 'mere colonists' and angry at the decades of repression by the Tudor monarchy, much of Ireland and many in England rose against their King, detonating the War of Irish Independence and the First English Civil War in 1810, with revolutionary ideas (and violence) spreading throughout much of continental Europe.

Duncan IV was thankful that Scotland was spared the internal troubles, with only a few malcontents to deal with, the problem was the violence south of the border. Duncan IV did not like Henry XVII, however he could not condone the overthrow of an anointed King, and so Scotland sided with the Tudor Monarchy against the Revolutionaries, and while the Scots were able to aid the English Monarchists against the Revolutionaries in 1814, in Ireland the intervention failed at the Battle of Dublin (1815) that saw the Irish drive out the Anglo-Scottish Alliance and establish the Republic of Ireland.

The war was exhausting, and a mere year after the First English Civil War, Henry XVII was assassinated, plunging England into a messy regency under Henry XVIII and setting the stage for further war in the 19th century.

For Duncan IV, it was heartbreaking to see so much of Europe burning, and Scotland having been forced to fight to prevent a worse conflict at home. While Scotland celebrated it's victory in England, the failed Irish Intervention pushed Duncan IV to the breaking point.

After a night with his latest mistress, Anne Crawford (a beautiful commoner actress) the King was found to have died in his sleep at age 54 after a 16 year reign, much of which was dominated by war.

Duncan IV was succeeded by his grandson, Malcolm, the Duke of Albany.

Malcolm IV

[10] Duncan IV's sickly niece, Princess Mary Louise, had died not much longer after her father's death. When Duncan and his wife had a child, also a daughter, they were deeply concerned as she was sickly also. This was part of the reason that Duncan's father was so adamant he have more children.

Thus it was ironic that of all the grandchildren of James VI, it was this firstborn girl who surived to adulthood. She was named Briggitte, in honor of her grandmother. She was born in 1782. Her siblings were Prince James (1785-1793), who died of a broken neck he got while climbing on the walls of the Inverness Castle when the Prince's famiy was visiting there, and Princess Caroline (February 2, 1788- February 6, 1788) who died in infancy.

Princess Briggitte didn't remain sickly long. By her first birthday she was fully healthy. By the time she was ready to start learning her letters, she was beyond healthy, she was a robust child and what later came to be called a Tomboy. She wanted to learn how to ride like a man, use a sword, and wear trousers. But as a young lady she was willing to act ladylike, wear the dresses, wigs, makeup and jewelry that befit a princess.

On her 16th birthday she wed her own cousin by some degrees, James Graham, the heir to the current Duke of Glasgow, a descendent of Queen Christina. James had always been friends with the Princess due to their close family connections and as children they had played together, rode together, and sparred together. He was a year her senior and deeply in love with her. The Princess within a year became pregnant and their son, named after not only the kings, but the husband of Queen Christina, was Malcolm Graham, born on Christmas Day 1799.

It was known from his birth that Prince Malcolm would become King. His great grandfather granted him the title that had been part of the crown for generations, and he became the Duke of Albany.

Upon the death of King James, Malcolm's grandfather, King Duncan, declared that from this point on the first born child, whatever their gender, would be the heir of the King and that Princess Briggitte was now the Duchess of Rothesay, and her husband was the Earl of Rothesay. Upon her acension to the throne he would retain that title and also gain the title of Prince. Of course one day he would also be the Duke of Glasgow. Duncan also declared that the Duchy of Glasgow would not pass to Prince Malcolm, but to the next born son of Briggitte and James, which in due course of times turned out to be Prince Alexander, born in 1803.

By 1812, the Princess and the Earl had three more children, all surviving infancy. Princess Eloise, born in 1805, Prince William, born in 1809, and Princess Adelaine, born in 1811. It was shortly after Adelaine's birth that the Princess and the Earl went horseback riding. Several in the court thought it was too early after giving birth, but the Princess assured them she was healed.

She was healed. But that didn't save her from the horse throwing her when it was scared by a skunk. She was impaled on a broken branch and died almost immediately, only enough time for the Earl to get to her side and for her to say the mysterious words, "Seven ravens destroy the crown." As soon as this was known, many believed she was prophesying and started specualting on the meaning of her last words.

Prince Malcolm, the Duke of Albany, now became the Duke of Rothesay and the heir to the throne. He was only 12 years old. He was the true son of his parents, an outdoorsman like his ancestors, and a lover of everything Scottish and Scotland. But Malcolm had a new passion that was not the usual passion of a Scot Royal- he loved the sea and sailing. As a small boy that only meant small boats on the lochs that were oared. By the time he was 10 he was sailing small boats on the lochs. As a teenager, the young man insisted he be able to go to sea and be a member of the Scottish Navy- not staying home in Edinburgh waiting to take the crown some decades in the future, but to serve the Kingdom then.

It was common for aristocratic boys who wished to serve in the Navy to start at age 14 serving as the Captain's Cabin Boy. This was what Malcolm insisted on, but his grandfather the King denied this to him. Instead the boy was allowed to sail as a guest on limited voyages on a ship but only a few hours out into the North Sea and then back. However, once at sea, Malcolm insisted by his royal privilege that he be allowed to work as a member of the crew.

Malcolm over time convinced his grandfather to let him take a commission when he was 18. His father, the Earl, and now the current Duke of Glasgow, was an advocate for his son on this and it is said whispered in the King's ears that with the current rules of succession, that there were four more heirs besides Malcolm. It was known the Earl had spoken to the King on this, but unknown what he said. Speculation arose that he said that the seven ravens his wife spoke about were the King, the late Duchess of Rothesay herself, who was alive when she said the prophesy, and the five children- but that by letting the current Duke of Rothesay go to sea he became a gull instead of a raven, and the prophesy was undone. In reality Earl James said nothing of the sort.

Prince Malcolm did not take his commission, for by the age of 18 he was King. For a little less than a year there was a regency and the Duke of Glasgow, James Graham, the Earl of Rothesay, was the regent until the King's 18th birthday. But he never gave up on the sea. He made his priority as King be that the Scottish Navy was the biggest, best, and pre-eminent navy of the world. Every new ship commissioned was first captained by him on it's maiden voyage. A few leagues out to sea, he would turn over command and depart in a smaller boat back to shore.

Although the state of England and the rest of Europe, in war and chaos, was a very big disappointment to his predecessor, the new King saw it as an opportunity. England was caught up in internal problems and had just lost Ireland (But not Ulster, which had never been English, but Scottish.) England's American colonies had gained independence except for it's Canadian province further up the St. Lawrence Seaway, Ontario. Quebec, the French colony north of the St. Lawrence Seaway as well as New Caledonia and New Albion were all targets of American expansionism- but it was Ontario and the Spanish territories of Florida and Louisiana that were the first goals- as Quebec was protected by the Scottish colonies to its south and they were strong.

Scottish explorers commanded by Captain Horace McPherson in the 18th Century under King James and then in the early 19th under King Duncan had sailed up the Pacific Coast of North America, exploring the lands between Spanish California and Russian Alaska, claiming them for Scotland and giving them the name Briggittania, which they also named the great river there (OTL Columbia R). McPherson had been the one who'd worked with the King when he was a prince to sail on small voyages. King Malcolm now made McPherson the Admiral of the Pacific and the South Seas and sent him back to further explore Briggittania, establish permanent settlements on the Briggittania River and in the Prince William Sound (OTL Puget Sound). But also to explore the vast Pacific and the continent that Kingsland was on, and any lands surrounding it.

That continent had gained the name Antipodes, but it was unexplored beyond the north coast where Kingsland was. During this long voyage from 1819 to 1827, Admiral McPherson discovered the Sandwich Islands, where he established a treaty of friendship between the two Kingdoms, many of the South Seas Island, The New Skye Islands (OTL New Zealand), and explored the West Coast and South Coast of Antipodes- estabishing the settlements of Malcolmville (OTL Sydney), Duncan (OTL Melbourne), and Adelaine (OTL Adelaide.)

In Briggittania, McPherson established on Prince Alexander Island (OTL Vancouver Island) the settlement of Eloise (OTL Victoria), in Prince William Sound the settlement of Queen Christina Town (OTL Seattle), and further up the inland waters the settlement of Sophia Town on the river named Sophia River (OTL Vancouver, B.C. & the Fraser River.)

This establishment of the Scottish Colony on the west coast of North America was only part of Malcolm's plan. The other part was to unite the northern colonies into one Scottish realm of Canada to counter the American attempt to domiate the continent. While McPherson was rounding the Horn, Malcolm was convincing France and England that their colonies in North America were more trouble than they were worth. Scotland had become rich from the spice trade using the East Indies colony of Timor and Kingsland as the base for this. England and France had wanted to get into this too, but their problems early in the 19th Century interferred in this and so the Dutch and the Scots continued to dominate it. Now Malcolm offered large sums to both kingdoms for their North American colonies with promise that in each colony their language and culture would be preserved and not replaced with Scots or Gaelic and that a special relationship would be established with their original mother countries- anyone from France who wanted to immigrate to Quebec or to do busines in Quebec was welcome and the same with England and Ontario.

Malcolm was not the only one buying colonies. The United States also did this with Spain, who was still in possession of its North American Colonies but was dealing with revolution and rebellion in Central America and South America. Spain was happy to sell Florida, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and California to the United States.

By 1823 this was complete on both sides and the stage was set for Scottish-American War. On one side were Scotland, France, England, the Scottish Colonies of New Albion, New Caledonia, Quebec, Ontario, and Briggittania, with the neutral Dutch giving logistics and trade support. On the other side was the United States of America, which now stretched to the Pacific, Spain, and Ireland, which saw this as a chance to take Ulster. There was also conflict in the East Indies as Scotland sought to take the Philipines away from Spain.

It was a brutal and harsh war. But there was little doubt who would win- as the Scottish Navy was too strong, surrounding the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States, imposing an embargo, and destroying the economy of the South of the USA that depended on the cotton trade. The US was dominated by the North which desired Industrializatin and was driven by this vision of dominating the entire continent, thus pushing out the Scots, English, and French. The result was the US side fell apart into a civil war. This led the US to seek peace as quickly as possible.

In the Treaty of 1826 the United States, while still fighting its own rebels, negotiated the borders with Scottish North America by dividing the yet settled Louisiana at the 42nd Latitude, which already had been negotiated as the northern border of California, New Mexico, and the furthest western part of Texas. This woud run to the Mississippi River, which would be the border up until its headwaters. From there the border would be a straight line to the extreme southwest corner of Lake Superior. The previous borders in the east would continue.

Standing alone, Spain was no match for Scotland and sued for peace, yielding the Philipines and several western northern Pacific island to Scotland. Engand and France, as junior partners, took advantage of this too. France took Indochina and England took islands in the Gulf of Canton.

Ireland fought to a standstill. Malcolm made peace with a bold idea. All the northern counties on the island of Ireland would hold plebiscites and decide themselves which nation they wanted to be part of, the Scottish Kingdom with voting rights to send members to Parliament in Edinburgh, or the Irish Republic. Both nations would honor the decision of the people from then and forever. Also the people could move from one to the other, instantly having full citizenship where they lived.

It was no surprise to the Scots that all of Ulster chose to be part of the Scottish Kingdom, although it was a bit of a shock to many in the Republic. Humiliated by this result, the Republic Army had to retreat from the territory they'd taken in parts of Ulster before the stalemate.

Scotland had won on all fronts.

Malcolm was only 26 and was the king of a robust world power. But he was still single. It was time for him to marry. He had the choice of a thousand princesses from across the world. He spent a year meeting and spending time with various princesses sent to Edinburgh for his consideration. She wasn't the most political choice, that would have been an English or French princess, or even the rising powers of Prussia or Russia. Instead he chose a Dutch princess of the House of Orange, a nation that was seeing its power as the dominate spice trading nation being surplanted by Scotland itself. Sabrina Vander Mall was a minor princess in the House of Orange, the third daughter of the fifth daughter of the Prince of Orange. If she had not married royalty her own children would no longer have been considered royalty. But when Malcolm met her he was instantly in love and so her chidren were royalty, Scottish royalty.

Queen Sabrina Vander Mall de Orange Graham

Three great events marked the year 1827:

1) The grand wedding of the King: it was a lavish affair with visiting royalty and dignitaries from around the world.

2) The return of Admiral McPherson's Fleet from its circle of the world and establishment of settlements around the world. With him were chidren of tribal chieftains from Briggittania, children of the King & Queen of the Sandwich Islands, children of the Sultan of the Philipines, and children of Aboriginal chiefs from Antipodes. All of them were in their native dress and treated as visiting dignitaries and royaty. They attended the Royal Wedding in their native attire and returned to their homes the following year with many immigrating to the new colonies.

3) The signing of the peace treaty previously negotiated with Spain, Ireland, and the United States.

Malcolm could now turn his attention to uniting Canada, building the colonies in Antipodes, and expanding the Scottish government into more democratic and constitutional directions. The power of Parliament was expanded, the right to vote was extended to all men whatever their race, color, or religion, and Ulster, the Canadian Provinces, and the Antipodes Provinces all were considered to be full parts of the Scottish Kingdom and would elect members to Parliament on and equal footing to Scotland proper. This required logistics for the distant provinces (the term colony was removed from usage) as it might take up to a year for their members to arrive in Ediburgh- so their elections would be in advance of Parliament.

In part to unite the worldwide Kingdom, Malcom became an advocate of railroads and Parliament was fully behind him on this. Two major railroads were built in the middle of the 19th Century. The Canadian transcontinental to unite Briggittania with the eastern provines was the biggest and most difficult needing to transverse the Rocky Mountains. The much shorter Sinai Railroad was difficut in that the land was owned by the Ottoman Empire.

The solution was the independence of Egypt under the Mamluks, helped to establish this with Scottish pressure and war ships off Istanbul. First a railroad was built. Then a canal was begun.

Scotland, including its overseas provinces, prospered during Malcolm's long reign. In midlife he grew a beard, the first Scots King in centuries to have a full beard. He and Queen Sabrina had many chidren and those children had many children. A middle class developed and literacy reached very high levels. An interest in Scottish history as expressed in historical novels, especially about the Stewarts and Grahams, developed.

Later in life when Malcolm was in his early 80s, a new colonization push was happening in Africa. Scotland joined in from its base in Madagascar, which it had colonized right after the Scottish-American War. Mozambique, Tanzania, Zanibar, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe all became Scottish colonies (the term was reintroduced to usage.)

In previous provinces the indigenous peoples had been made full Scottish citizens, a multicultural approach was taken with multilingualism, and local governments were established. In the new provinces the growing business oriented middle class of non-aristocrats dominated Parliament and had no interest in following Malcolm's previous policies. Malcolm had reformed away much of the royal power he'd had as a young King with his democratic reforms and now he was powerless to stop the new Imperialism that treated the native Africans as subjects not citizens.

In an effort to raise awareness, Malcolm did something never done before by a European monarch. He and the Queen left Scotland and journed to the southern African colonies, which he insisted on calling 'provinces.' They toured the African provinces, finding themselves loved by the native people, who understood this foreign King and Queen were here to extend to them the same freedom and privileges their own peope had. The tour was a success and the new telegraph made sure everyone in the Kingdom knew.

Malcolm was convinced that on returning home that his message of equality and inclusion would carry the day in the next elections and sweep into power those who would extend the franchise and citizenship to the Africans.

But Malcom didn't live long enough to see this. He died at sea, a fitting end for him. He had contracted Malaria on his tour and while at sea it overwhelmed him. He died on deck in the arms of his beloved Sabrina. His elderly son, Prince James, Duke of Rothesay, who had fulfilled his royal duties while he was in Africa, succeeded him.

James VII, at the time of his coronation.

[11] James VII was born on 7th February 1828 to Malcolm IV and his wife Queen Sabrina, at a time when the Kingdom of Scotland had defeated all of it's enemies and had begun to enter a new golden age of exploration, colonization, and domination in Europe. Being both the first born child and the male heir, many in Scotland breathed a sigh of relief that the alterations to the Scottish Succession made by Duncan IV wouldn't be put to the test, at least for one more generation.

The young Duke of Rothesay was quickly joined by his siblings Prince William Alexander, Duke of Albany (1829-1891), twins Princess Briggette, Empress of Scandanavia (1830-1879) and Princess Eloise, German Empress (1830-1891), Prince Duncan, Duke of Edinburgh (1831-1842), and Prince John, Duke of Montrose (1834-1906).

The heir to the Scottish throne would quickly prove to be a strong-willed child, full of energy and enthusiasum for a growing number of interests, and while he did inherit his father's love of the outdoors, sport, and hunting. Prince James, Duke of Rothesay also had a deep passion for literature, reading several books a day if he was allowed too, but unlike his father, the Prince had little interest in sailing, though he did travel as duty demanded of him, he had no real passion for voyages in of itself.

What many commentators noted was that unlike many monarchs and their heirs, Malcolm IV and Prince James did not feud or quarrel very much, they had a stable, happy relationship with only one or two disagreements in their lives.

At age 14 the Prince suffered his first family loss, the death of Prince Duncan, Duke of Edinburgh at age 11. Prince Duncan had been born with epilepsy and had suffered a series of seizures that grew worse the older he got, to protect him the lad was kept away from the public eye as much as possible by the King and the Queen, and his death wounded the royal family deeply.

The first major disagreement between Malcolm IV and Prince James came about when James was 17 and began taking an interest in Freemasonry under the guidance of a relative, Leo, Duke of Glasgow (the son of Prince Alexander, Duke of Glasgow) who was a member of the Grand Lodge of Scotland. However to avoid a public scandal, the King ultimately agreed to look the other way, something that Malcolm IV would come to regret.

When Prince James reached the age of 20, the King began to consider possible candidates to wed his son and heir, due to the great upheavals in Europe, new nations had emerged. In the former Holy Roman Empire now stood two great Empires. In the south was the Catholic, Austro-Hungarian Empire ruled by the Habsburg-Wittelsbach's, the Protestant north of the HRE was now dominated by the German Empire ruled by the Hohenzollerns. The Italian states of the HRE had been united into a United Kingdom of Italy under a Habsburg-Wittelsbach King (the Papal States had been recently annexed), Naples was still an independent Kingdom under it's Bourbon King (many expected an invasion by the UKI soon). Meanwhile in the region of Scandinavia, Denmark-Norway and Sweden had once more entered into a personal union that had just seen the creation of the Empire of Scandinavia, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1845 had seen the rise of several new Kingdoms and Republics as well.

Of these new states, along with the old nations as well, King Malcolm IV made a series of strategic decisions, he decided that his two daughters would marry the future Emperors of Scandinavia and Germany respectively (when their ages were right of course), but for his eldest son he needed a Princess, and since legally the Scottish royals were still barred from marrying Catholic, Malcolm IV began to consider the usual Dutch and German families for candidates when a different offer came to him.

The Russian Empire had undergone extensive Westernization since the reigns of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and of course Peter IV the Wise, and had expanded it's power deep into Asia, and had also seized much land from the now dead Ottoman Empire, and under Alexandra I was making overtures into newly liberated Eastern Europe.

Seeing the rise of Scotland as a major power in Europe, Alexandra I wanted to stay on Malcolm's good side, and was hoping that an alliance sealed by a marriage would allow her a 'free hand' in asserting Russian domination in the Balkans and the new Kingdom of the Greeks (RL Greece, Cyprus, and the European parts of RL Turkey including the whole of Istanbul/Constantinople), she proposed a marriage between Prince James and one of her daughters, Alexandra's preferred choice was her third eldest daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Mikhailovna.

The only sticking point was personal religion, as the Grand Duchess was Eastern Orthodox and her mother was hesitant at allowing any of her children to convert, even for the sake of marriage. However the Scottish courts ruled that while the royal family was still barred from marrying (or becoming) Catholic, an Eastern Orthodox marriage was allowable. The ban on leaving the Church of Scotland was still binding, and any children of Prince James's marriage had to stay in the faith to retain their rights to the throne.

So on 7 June, 1850, Prince James, Duke of Rothesay and Grand Duchess Maria Mikhailovna were married in a Presbyterian ceremony, the groom was 22, the bride had turned 18 three days prior.

The marriage would see the forming of a powerful friendship between Prince James and his Russian wife, a friendship that would eventually become love, and see the birth of a grand total of eight children, but the premature deaths of the two youngest would affect the couple greatly.

During what Prince James realized would be a lengthy wait as heir, he oversaw a number of responsibilities on behalf of his father, such as major restorations and renovations of the major royal residencies, some of which hadn't been repaired since the 18th century. Prince James's work on making the royal castles and palaces better would see the Scottish court become among the most splendid in Europe, though his proposal to construct several new palaces was reject by Malcolm IV as needlessly expensive.

Prince James's personal tragedies began when his seventh child, Princess Rosemond died of scarlet fever at age three, then a month later his eighth and last child, Prince John Constantine died a few hours after he was born, his head full of water (the modern term being Hydrocephalus). The deaths of his youngest children plunged Prince James into deep grief, setting the stage for the Prince's newest obsession, the occult.

In the late 19th century, a growing popular movement of Spiritual mediums and the sale of new devices promising to allow the user to communicate with the dead had emerged, this Spiritualism movement first began in England as a reaction to the brief, Second English Civil War (1853-1855) due to the extinction of the House of Tudor and a disputed succession. Spiritualism quickly spread across the western world and into the new world as well, and now Prince James began to try and contact the spirits of his dead children.

His wife, initially joined the Prince in his seances before becoming more skeptical of the subject, the King and much of polite society was horrified, however others in the gentry shared the Prince's interest in the growing popularity of Spiritualism and other aspects of Occultist lore.

The second major dispute between the King and the Prince came about due to the Prince's growing obsession with magic, the Prince even writing a series of books on the subject (albeit under the pseudonym, Jacob Rothes) that would become staples of the Occultism movement well into the modern era, ultimately earning Prince James his nickname of 'James the Sorcerer'.

Despite the Prince's 'new hobby', he did not allow himself much distraction from his work, it was the other thing that helped him cope with the loss, the Prince served as an advisor to his father, handling several matters of state that the King delegated to him, making several royal appearances on his father's behalf, and serving as Regent during those times that his father was traveling abroad.

The final time as regent would see the death of Malcolm IV on his ship and the ascension of James VII to the throne at age 61.

James VII's reign was expected to be brief, despite his good health, he had one of the longest terms serving as heir to a throne in recorded history. However James VII was King of a nation at the absolute height of it's Golden Age, the Scottish Colonial Empire was beginning to expand into India and China by establishing important trading ports in Bombay and Shanghai respectively, and Malcolm IV's wish of improving the rights of those in the African colonies was granted when the Conservative Party lost the Parliamentary elections of 1890 and were replaced by the Liberal National Party.

James VII's reign was a time of peace and continued prosperity for Scotland, in 1891 the LNP Prime Minister, John Andrew Carnegie convinced the King to make a royal visit to Scotland's colonies in Antipodes, New Skye Islands, and the new colonies in India and China, and to have the royal heir make a visit to Canada as well. The trip was long, even with the new technologies that made travel via the ocean much quicker, however the 1893-1895 tour of Asia and the Pacific was a huge success.

In 1896 the King suffered severe bronchitis (most likely from his heavy smoking habit) and was bedridden for six months, a regency under the heir was formed and the nation waited and prayed, however James VII made a miraculous recovery that astonished everyone.

James VII continued his prosperous reign, semi-secretly writing about mysticism, freemasonry and talking to the deceased, and enjoying time with his remaining children and grandchildren, being very much a doting, loving grandfather.

James VII surprised everyone by living to see the dawn of a new century, however on December of 1901 the King was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in his throat, he died on 8 March of 1902 at age 74, leaving the throne to his ____, _____.

Asharella · Sep 13, 2019

I claim the next Stewart-Graham line.

Asharella · Sep 13, 2019

What if James IV of Scotland (House of Stewart) had married Maria of Aragon instead of Margaret Tudor of England, daugher and sister to kings. Thus the crowns of Scotland and England would not eventually unite, nor Scotland and England eventually become the United Kingdom?

1488 - 1513: James IV (House of Stewart)
1513 - 1566: James V (House of Stewart) [1]
1566 - 1568: Alexander IV (House of Stewart) [2]
1568 - 1584: Charles I (House of Stewart) [3]
1584 - 1621: Matthew I (House of Stewart) [4]
1621 - 1690: Duncan III (House of Stewart) [5]
1690 - 1753: Alexander V (House of Graham) [6]
1753 - 1763: William II (House of Graham) [7]
1763 - 1801: James VI (House of Graham) [8]
1801 - 1817: Duncan IV (House of Graham) [9]
1817 - 1889: Malcolm IV (House of Graham) [10]
1889 - 1902: James VII (House of Graham) [11]
1902 - 1907: James VIII (House of Graham) [12]

Emperor of the Scottish Empire

1907 - 1936: James VIII (House of Graham) [12]

James V

[1] In the year 1500, King James IV of Scotland, House of Stewart, married the Infanta Maria of Aragon, daughter of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile. She was 18 and he was 27. Therir firstborn, named after his father, was born in 1501. He was partially raised in the Higlands by Alexander Gordon, 3rd Earl of Huntly, and Sherrif of Inverness, which he was made in 1500. Gordon was the righthand man of the King in securing the north and west and he was trusted with helping raise the Prince. James IV wanted to insure that his son was not seen as Spanish, but as a true Scotsman, and thus the sending him to Inerness every summer from the age of four until his majority. When the King died in 1513 in battle with England, Gordon became co-Regent with Queen Maria, and sole regent when shortly after that she married Manuel of Portugual.

James V, House of Stewart, always considered himself a Highlander and was beloved by the clans. In 1519 he ended the regency and married Gordon's granddaughter, Jean Campbell, keeping Gordon as an advisor until the older man's death five years later.

Scotland was constantly at war with England during the reign of James, both during the Regency of the Earl of Huntly and when James came of age. Border skirmishes and outright wars breaking out were common. Finally in 1543 the Scottish forces won a decisive victory against the English at the Battle of Solway Moss. Afterwards a peace was enacted between James and his young cousin, King Henry IX, of England. The borders that were negotiated remain the borders between the two British kingdoms until this day. (Yep, Mary I Tudor is instead male and succeeds his father sooner.)

The final battle between England and Scotland was noteworthy in that England was securely Catholic with King Henry IX continuing his father's role as "Defender of the Faith," that is the Catholic Faith, while Scotland was more and more becoming Presbyterian and James himself 'reformed' in 1542 becoming Presbyterian. Quickly after that the entire country converted. James identified with the Highlander Presbyterians over the lowland Catholics. The battle was an attempt by England to force Scotland to at least remain Catholic in the lowlands. Many of those lowlander Catholics fled to England after the victory of Solway Moss and the realization that Scotland was not going to give up the Reformation.

James died in his sleep at the age of 65 after complaining of headaches the night before He was survived by his wife, his children, and a country secure in its Independence, its Presbtyerianism, and its Gaelic heritage.

Alexander IV

[2] James would be succeeded by his second son Alexander, after the death of the Duke of Rothesay one year earlier. Rothesay and his wife, Barbara of Hesse, would only have three daughters before James's death: Anna, Mary, and Jean. Many feared war would break out over the princesses rights to the succession, particularly given the unpopularity of Alexander and his wife, the young Catherine Vasa.

Catherine was an almost fanatic devotee to Lutheranism and attempted to convert the Scottish court to the faith. Many reformers saw the faith as too Catholic in its traditions and saw Catherine as ruining all their hard work. However, the Queen was popular among the Catholic south, who saw Lutheranism as more tolerable. Alexander himself had the opposite problem, being accused of "having only one concern: his own enrichment". His ascension was bemoaned by the nobility, who believed his nature was antithetical to Kingship. The King's constant covert meetings with ambassadors "taking bribes and other such things".

The birth of a daughter, called Catherine for her mother, became the last straw. There were rumors that King Alexander planned on selling his young nieces to the highest bidders, which was met with revulsion due to their ages, given the eldest only recently turning 7 at the time. These rumors caught the ears of Robert McDonald, a young courtier of the Dowager Duchess of Rothesay. Fearing for his beloved mistress and her daughters, he took up vigilante justice. While the King was out riding with one of his many foreign friends, looking for new streams of private revenue, stopped at Cadzow Castle. McDonald covertly followed him in and, when the King went off alone for some heir, stabbed the King, reportedly screaming "Die you bastard". The news of McDonald's actions shocked the court, not least his former mistress, who called it "a ghastly thing". The short reign of King Alexander IV would be followed by that of his uncle, Charles.

Charles when he converted

[3] If his older brother was his father's son, raised to be a True Scotsman, by fostering him to the north, Charles was his mother's son, sharing the same name as his more illustrious cousin, Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, the House of Hapsburg, and as Charles I was the King of Spain. Charles did not spend time in the Highlands or among the north. When most of Scotland became Presbyterian, including his brother the king, Charles remained Catholic. However, after the Battle of Solway Moss and the clear reality that from this point on Scotland and Presbyterianism were from now on one and the same, Charles had three options. He could, like so many of his wife's relatives from the south, decamp to England, or perhaps to the Continent and the court of his cousin. He coud remain in Scotland and convert to remain a part of the Court and a True Scotsman. Finally he could choose to reject the new conditions of the kingdom, unite the southern aristocracy who were Catholic, and go to war with his brother.

Charles became Presbyterian. Like many of the other southern nobility, Charle's converion was not a deep one, but his children were still young as he'd married late in life in his early 30s, the oldest, Prince Henry, Duke of Albany, was only ten at this point. They were raised in the new Presbyterian faith and they were sincere by adulthood.

By the time of his nephew's assassination, Charles was 61, had been officially Presbyterian for over two decades, and had children and grandchildren all in this faith.

Some of the still leaning towards Catholicism in their hearts among the souther nobility, hoped that Charles would on taking the throne avenge the death of his nephew, and perhaps take up the 'compromise' of becoming Lutheran- that is Protestant in Theology but Catholic in style, especially Bishops instead of elected councils of Elders (Presbyters) governing the church, a parallel to Parliament having shared governing responsibiity with the monarch.

But Charles knew that would lead to civil war and eventually intervention by Catholic England, which would easily destroy Scotland's independence if they had allies.

So Charles remained Presbyterian, demanded that Queen Catherine convert and raise Princesess Catherine within the Covenant, and did not include the Dowager Duchess nor her daughters in the arrests that eventually led to the trial and execution of McDonald for regicide.

Charles unified Scotland after the fears of civil war and then turned its attention to overseas. He found common cause with France, despite their religious differences, in that both were threatened by the alliance between Catholic England and the Catholic Hapsburgs. This gave Scotland the breathing room to explore trade with the Indies of the Far East and the Indies of the Carribean. He also hired Jacques Cartier to explore North America for Scotland and conceived of a Scottish Colony somewhere in North America, which didn't happen until after he'd died and his heir, his grandson, Prince Matthew, Duke of Albany, and as heir, the Duke of Rothesay, succeeded him.

Charles died at the ripe age of 77, still a robust man, when he was riding his horse and it tripped. He fell and broke his leg. While recovering it became infected and he did from the infection.

Matthew I in his old age.

[4] Matthew I was born the second son of Prince Henry, Duke of Albany, Duke of Rothesay, and his wife, Princess Hedwig of Anhalt, being 'the spare' to his brother Prince Charles, Prince Matthew was educated for the possibility of one day wearing the crown, in addition to being tutored in the faith of the Scottish Kirk along side his older brother and their younger siblings.

As the Prince became older he fell in with the clique of popular young noblemen that flocked around Prince Charles, this group of young men became notorious all throughout Scotland for their epic drinking binges, wild hunting parties, and an ever changing cast of young, beautiful women. The King was dismissive of complaints from the authorities about his grandsons behavior, seeing it as part of their growing up with their peers.

The death of Charles and Matthew's father, Prince Henry, Duke of Albany, and as heir, the Duke of Rothesay, in one of the last outbreaks of the Sweating Sickness bumped Matthew up in the succession, and forced the King to consider the marriages of his grandchildren.

A prestigious continental match was made for Prince Charles, for Matthew his first wife was chosen from the Scottish nobility, Barbara Hamilton, a daughter of the prestigious Hamilton family, with whom he had two children before Barbara died in a miscarriage with what would have been their third child.

King Charles began to consider a new marriage for his second grandson when another tragedy struck the House of Stewart with the unexpected death of Prince Charles, Duke of Albany, and as heir, the Duke of Rothesay, when he fell out of a tower window while drunk, crashing onto the ground below.

Prince Matthew was then made Duke of Albany and as the heir to the Scottish throne, the Duke of Rothesay, and his second marriage was not with a Scottish lady but with a German Princess, Anna Magdalene of Brandenburg with whom Matthew would have three children.

Prince Matthew's partying ways slowed down considerably after the death of his first wife, and ended by the birth of his third child with Anna Magdalene, it was his second wife who encouraged his maturity, even encouraging regular church attendance, which earned the Prince (and his wife) the love of the ministers in the Church of Scotland.

The 'long-wait' for the throne ended with the death of King Charles and the rise of King Matthew I to the throne.

As the continent continued to convulse with the growing number of Protestant churches, internal schisms, Catholic Reformation, war and violence bloomed like flowers in spring. Scotland being relatively peaceful became a haven for various Calvinist and Presbyterian preachers.

Problems for Scotland began when members of other groups within Protestantism found their way to Scotland, the various branches of Lutheranism, and more radical groups such as the Anabaptists and Nontrinitarian Christianity, these groups were not officially welcomed into the Kingdom but never the less they did gain small followings, particularly on the borderlands with England, which did allow these groups to slip between the border to preach in England and flee to the 'relative' safety of Scotland.

This did anger the English authorities, however King Matthew was able to plead ignorance of the matter to King Henry XI of England, who also had to deal with rebellion in Ireland due to England's 'Plantations' in Ireland. Keeping England distracted with internal problems would prove to be King Matthew I's main policy of dealing with the English Kingdom.

King Matthew I also served as a patron of literature and the arts in Scotland, seeing the rise of the 'Scottish Renaissance' that would outlast Matthew's reign, in addition to this King Matthew established a number of schools and two universities to promote education amongst the nobility and merchant classes.

The King also considered a colonial project in the New World, however the costs at the time were seen as too high and Scotland's low population meant that there were a lack of volunteers to risk it all in a strange new land.

However when Queen Anna Magdalene died at age 53 in 1619, it broke the King's heart, the remaining few years of his reign were spent in a gloomy court in perpetual mourning until King Matthew I was found to have passed in his sleep at age 58 in 1621, passing the crown to his son, James.

Duncan III

[5] Duncan Charles Stewart was born May 29, 1588, the eight child of then Prince Matthew, the sixth with his second wife, Anna Magdalene, and his third son and second son to survive to adulthood. He was 32 when he took the throne, a vibrant man and soldier, who'd fought in the wars of Religion on the Continent, alongside his mother's relatives, fighting for the Protestants of Brandenburg against the Holy Roman Empire and Poland. (OOC: the War known as the Thirty Years War in OTL is the Forty Years War in TTL, starting in 1609 instead of 1618. /OOC) His older brother, Prince Robert James Stewart died in 1620 only months before his father, and Prince Duncan became the heir and the Duke of Rothesay and recalled from the wars on the Continent.

Prince Robert was Duncan's senior by 7 years, the child that had led to their father settling down into a devout life. Robert had continued in that vein, becoming a devout man of art, literature, and science. He married his mother's cousin's daughter, Katrina of Brandenburg and had many children, but only daughters who survived past infancy. Robert never was a robust man, he was a thin, frail man, who started balding in his early twenties and often would be bedridden for a week or more with an illness. Finally one of those illnesses took him when he was not yet 40 years old.

Prince Duncan, on the other hand, was a robust man, who as a child had loved the hunt, the Highlands, where the family had kept the Inverness Castle as a second home in the north, and revered his ancestors, Charles I and James V. Against his father's wishes, he'd gone to the continent to soldier as soon as the Wars of Religion began in the Forty Years War in 1609. There the little bit of German he'd learned from his mother became a second tongue for him. He was reknown for his courage and prowess in battle.

It was a blow to him to have to return to Scotland while the war raged on. He not only grieved his older brother, whom he loved dearly, but also having to cease to be a soldier. He'd never married or even courted a woman. Now a friendship over the death of Robert led him and Katrina to become quite close. After the death of King Matthew, it was clear the wisest thing for Dunan was to marry the Princess. They did marry in 1622 and he became the stepfather of his nieces. However, he and Katrina were never able to conceive a child. It was clear they loved each other and neither one was ever unfaithful.

Duncan remained robust throughout his life, an outdoors king. His long life amazed his contemporaries, living to the age of 102, being on the throne for yearly 70 years. By then his Queen, Katrina, and step daughters had all died, even some of his step-grandchildren who'd survived childhood had also died. It was said Duncan at age 100 resembled another man in his 80s; he still had all his mental facilities, all his teeth, a full head of hair, good eye sight and hearing, and stood strong and tall. He only declined in his last year of life.

Duncan pursued colonies in North America, estabishing New Albion in the lands south of the St. Lawrence River Gulf (New Brunswich and Nova Scotia in OTL). He also established a colony in the East Indies in Timor, with the Dutch taking the rest.

Scotland remained a devout land steeped in Presbyterianism, but this faith was one very open to the developing Science and drew men of learning in the new leaning from all over Europe to Scotland, where a Royal Academy was developed by Duncan and the Universities of Edinburgh and of Glasgow became among the most prestigious centers of learning in the world.

Even though it was expected when the King's health began to turn as he entered his second century, it was still difficult for the kingdom to lose their long reigning king. He was suceeded by his great step-grandson, Prince Charles.

Alexander V

[6] Affectionately known as Sandy by close family and friends, from a childhood nickname due to his older brothers, being unable to say his name properly at a young age as the third son of the Prince James, Duke of Ross (1649–1688), and his wife Maria Katharina of Denmark and Norway, a daughter of Frederick III, King of Denmark and Sweden.
Prince James was the son of Elizabeth, (eldest daughter of Prince Robert and Queen Katrina) and her husband, James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, bringing the mighty clan Graham, into the royal family.

Alexander was born in Mugdock Castle on 11 May 1682 and he was named the Earl of Dundee. The possibility of his becoming King seemed very remote; the King's oldest niece and heir, Princess Elizabeth, Alexander's father and his elder brothers Duncan and Robert were ahead of him in the succession. However, Princess Elizabeth died of pneumonia on 29 December 1682.
On 11 February 1684, his father, Prince Robert, was stricken with measles and died, followed on 15 February by his second brother.
On 19 February, it was found that both Alexander and his remaining older brother, Duncan, had the measles. The two brothers were treated in the traditional way, with bleeding.

By the morning of the 20th, Prince Duncan died from the combination of the disease and the treatment. Fearing for her last child, Princess Maria, would not allow the doctors to bleed Alexander any further, pleading that if God was to take him from her, he would do so peacefully; he was very ill but survived.

When Duncan III died, Alexander, at the age of eight, inherited the throne and would see his mother rule as regent along with his father’s cousin, Malcolm, Earl of Glasgow.

Following his age of majority in 1698, Alexander became known as the Enlightenment King.

He was the earliest opponent of capital punishment, abolishing the act in 1725, he would set about some of the greatest minds in Scotland to bring about an improved and reformed government.

His marriage in 1702 to Henriette Albertine, Princess of Nassau-Dietz, (1686-1754) was seen as an unusual choice to ally with, but over time, the alliance between the Dutch Republic and Scotland, would be financially and militarily beneficial to both nations, with their joint naval knowledge, matching those of England, France and Spain.

He modernized the Scottish bureaucracy and civil service and pursued religious policies throughout his realm that ranged from tolerance to segregation.

He reformed the judicial system and made it possible for men not of noble status to become judges and senior bureaucrats.

Alexander encouraged immigrants of various nationalities and faiths to come to Scotland and their colonies.

He supported arts and philosophers, he favored as well as allowing complete freedom of the press and literature.

Most modern biographers agree that Alexander, was primarily homosexual, and that his sexual orientation was central to his life and character, although he did his duty producing a male heir.

Many modern historian, including Dean of Edinburgh University, Nicola Sturgeon, has called him "one of the most shrewd and sensible monarchs ever to wear a crown".
As well as this, on his tomb is inscribed with this quote, “With the massive shoes left to him by his great-grandfather, a lesser man would have tripped and stumbled, whereas Alexander, proudly picked them up and carried on the legacy.”

William II

[7] William II was the only son of Alexander V, named after William the Lion due to his birth cries sounding like a lion's roar, William II would ultimately prove a far cry from the legendary warrior-king of old.

The then Prince was raised surrounded by an army of nannies, courtiers, his mother, and two sisters the Princesses Anne and Eleanor. While many expected the royal children to emerge hopelessly spoiled, their mother the Queen Henriette Albertine proved a formidable figure in their lives, holding her children to a strict standard of behavior and in their education. At times members of the court found the Queen too harsh, however the King usually sided with his wife, and so the royal children emerged high educated, but social awkward with all but each other.

As the future King became older, he began to rebel at his mother's controls, attaching himself to a group of young noblemen that came to be called 'the Young Bucks', like many such groups of young men before them, they became known for their wild ways, which led to the fighting between the Queen and the Prince to become worse and worse until the King was forced to intervene by separating the pair the only way he could and still save face.

The King hurriedly arranged a marriage for his son at the age of 16 to an English noblewoman, Lady Mary Catherine Howard, the daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, this allowed the King to grant his son the rights to his own household away from court, and away from his mother.

The forced seperation of Prince William from his sisters however would leave William forever bitter at both his parents, however his first marraige to Mary Catherine would prove a happy one, but would only produce a single child.

It was in his twenties that Prince William was able to return to court, however his sisters has been married off, leaving the Prince with few true allies. This narrowness in his social circle grew more pronounced when the Prince's first wife, Mary Catherine Howard died of pnemonia.

Once again the King hurriedly arranged a new marriage for his son, this time out of fear of an uncertain succession since so few members of the House of Graham remained. William's second wife was a continental match, the Princess Eleonora Maria of Sardinia, one of the daughter of the King of Sardinia. The match was controversial due to Eleonora Maria being Roman Catholic, however it went forward and the marriage would prove more fruitful than William's first, seeing the birth of four children in quick succession, though two died in infancy.

Tragedy nearly struck when Prince William became deathly ill with smallpox in his thirties, while he did survive (albeit heavily scared), William's health never fully recovered.

Upon the death of Alexander V, sickly William II took the Scottish throne at age 41. Within a year the Queen Eleonora Maria died in a riding accident, the King initially decided to remain single for the remainder of his life, however a number of advisors convinced him that having more heirs would be to Scotland's benefit.

So the King got to choose his own wife, this time selecting Princess Christine Augusta of Prussia, a woman with a surprisingly dynamic personality and a female painter in an era when it was rare for women to do so. This marriage would see the birth of two more children, and Queen Christine Augusta would become popular with the Scottish commoners, though the nobility was more divided in it's views on King William II's third wife.

Despite his poor health, William II would prove an effective administrator, and was more involved in his children's lives than his father was, and became known for being a loving, doting father to all of his children.

The sickly King's health gave out on him in 1763, having spent the unusually warm autumn day out and about enjoying his gardens, reading in the shade of his favorite tree, and spending his evening enjoying a dinner with the royal family and their friends. William II's successor was his first born child, James.

James VI

[8] James Stewart Graham, was the only child of his father's first marriage to Lady Mary Catherine Howard, born in 1731, when Prince William was only 19 and the Princess was only 17. His parents were married when they were young and she was only 14. However, for the first two years of their marriage, the marriage was only in name only, due to the youth of both. After the wedding the new Princess returned to her own family in Arundel Castle in Sussex, to live with her father, Thomas, the 8th Duke of Norfolk, her mother, Catherine nee Graham, a granddaughter of Malcolm, Earl of Glasgow, her older brother, Henry, her father's heir (he'd become the 9th Duke in 1732,) and her younger sister, Sophia, who was 13. On the Princess's 16th birthday she joined her husband and their marriage was finally consummated. Prince James was only 9 months old when his mother died of pneumonia. The small family had only returned to the Court a few months previously.

Quickly the baby Prince's maternal aunt, Sophia, now 18, took the child to raise him. She had married her own distant cousin, Angus Graham, the son of the current Earl of Glasgow, also named Malcom like his grandfather, who'd been regent during King Alexander's childhood. Sophia and Angus lived with William at the Court and fostered the baby for him. Later when his father married a second time, Sophia and Angus had the primary responsibility in raising Prince James.

His two half siblings by his father's second marriage who survived infancy were both sisters, Princess Louisa Maria and Princess Theresa Maria, born in 1737 and 1743. The Prince and these half-sisters were never close due to Princess Eleonora Maria severely disliking the Lady Sophia Graham and her jealously of Prince James as the heir. She had hoped that her own third child, Robert, born in 1740, would be made the heir, but of course Robert died before his first birthday. Her first child, also a girl, Regina Maria, was born in 1736 and lived to be two, dying in 1738. On the Duke of Rothesay's marriage in 1736, Sophia and her husband returned to Glasow, as Angus now became the Earl upon his father's death. Angus and Sophia convinced the Duke that Prince James was not really safe at court and so he was raised by them in Glasgow.

James never felt close to his father, especially after the illness of his father in 1742, the Duke no longer was well enough to visit the boy in Glasgow, and his aunt and uncle did not want him visiting Edinburgh for extended stays. The Prince was 21 when his father became King and he became the Duke of Rothesay. When the new Queen died a year later, James finally moved into quarters in court, along with his cousin, the Earl of Glasgow's heir, also named Malcolm, who was only a year younger than James and like a brother to him.

To James and Malcolm, James newest half siblings were more like nieces and nephews. James especially took a liking to his youngest sibling, Prince William, affectionally known as Billy, born in 1758. (Billy's older sister, Princess Ilse, was born in 1756.) The two older princesses, Louisa Maria and Theresa Maria, were 17 and 11, when their mother died. Louisia Maria had already been married to the Count of Savoy and her younger sister joined her there. (At this point their secret Catholicism became evident. Later Therea Maria would take orders as a Poor Claire.)

As Duke of Rothesay, James represented his sickly father to the kingdom, traveling throughout it, always accompanied by his cousin, Malcolm. It was while visiting Ulster, which had been part of the Scottish Kingdom since the days of Duncan III, that he met the eldest daughter of Andrew MacMurray, the Earl of Belfast, Briggitte. It was a whirlwind romance. James intended on marrying the girl and was returning to Court to speak to his father when the King died.

The Dowage Queen, Christina Augusta, was quite a bit younger than her late husband, in fact she was younger than her step-son! She'd been born in 1733, having married the King at the age of 21. She'd been a dutiful wife, popular with the people, a good mother, and a good friend to James and Malcolm, as well as Malcolm's parents. But the marriage was loveless and the King had only visited her bed a few time, but enough to sire her two children. A secret romance had grown between the Queen and Macolm, but it had remained chaste due to their mutual devotion not only to the King, but to the morals of their faith.

Two marriage occured in 1763 after the coronation of King James. First was his marriage to Lady Briggitte of Belfast. Some months later, after an appropriate time of morning, Lord Malcolm and Christina Augusta also married. Both marriages were love matches and were long, fruitful, good matches.

Queen Briggitte

It was during the reign of King James that Scotland joined the Industrial Revolution. Also the Scottish Colonies in both North America and the East Indies expanded. Besides New Albion, New Caledonia was established alongside the southern shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the St. Lawrence River up to Lake Champlain, taking these lands from France in the brief War of 1769. In the Indies, Scotland established a colony on the north coast of Austraila south of Timor, known as Kingsland.

Scotland continued to be a land of learning and science, attracting the best minds of the world to study there. In 1770, the King proclaimed the Edict of Toleration, allowing all Scottish citizens in both Scotland, Ulster, the North American Colonies, and the Indies, to practice whatever faith their conscience demanded. Learned Jews flocked to Scotland, French Catholics in New Caledonia practiced their faith openly, and Muslims and Hindus were received fully in the Indies. However, the Kingdom remained officially Presbyterian with the King and Queen required to be members in good stand of the Kirk and raise ther children in the Covenant.

King James and Queen Briggitte had many children, as did his former step-mother and Malcolm. The King died at the age of 70 after he choked on a piece of meat he was eating. His Queen, his cousin, now the Earl of Glasgow, his former Step-mother, his two youngest half-siblings, and his children and grandchildren survived him. He was succeeded by his third son, Prince Duncan, Duke of Rothesay.

Duncan IV

[9] Duncan IV, born Prince Duncan, Duke of Rothes was the third son of James VI and Queen Briggitte, he was preceded in birth order by his older brothers Prince James, Duke of Rothesay and Prince Malcolm, Duke of Aberdeen (who died at age 7), and his eldest sister the Princess Catherine (later married to the King of Sweden). With little expectation of becoming King, Prince Duncan grew up in his father's splendid court alongside his younger siblings and many children of the Scottish peerage in relative ease, and while his education wasn't neglected, the Prince didn't put much focus on it, instead his interests were in sports like golf, horse racing, and of course the pastime of many court, gambling and drinking.

It was during his brother Prince James's marriage to Princess Louise of England and Ireland that James VI began to negotiate a marriage for his third, somewhat disappointing son. After a few months the King selected the Princess Caroline of Denmark for Prince Duncan, hoping that his new daughter-in-law could be a positive influence on his son.

While Prince Duncan accepted the marriage with good grace, he didn't seem to have much feeling for his plain-looking, religiously devout Danish bride, and continued with his wild ways, much to his father's anger.

This anger became more acute when Princess Louise died giving birth to a sickly girl (Princess Mary Louise), leaving Prince Duncan still close in the line of succession to the Scottish throne.

A mere six months after the death of Princess Louise, Prince James, Duke of Rothesay was poisoned by an unknown assailant, dying a week later. Thus his hedonistic brother Prince Duncan became the heir to the throne.

The death of his brother did cause Duncan to moderate some of his excesses, but he continued enjoying a series of mistresses, up until this point having only bothered to father a single child on his wife Princess Caroline. James VI was able to convince his son to return to his wife's bed to father an additional two more children to help bolster the succession, and try and distract him a bit.

Having gained the Duchy of Rothesay as heir, Prince Duncan made a tour of Scotland's colonies in North America in 1787, making him the first Scottish royal to visit the New World when his wife was pregnant with their third child. Duncan noticed a number of intellectual trends being imported from the English Colonies to the south, ideas of liberty, democracy, and freedom of faith. Things that Scotland already practiced to various degrees, but the English under their autocratic monarchy was the antithesis of.

Duncan noted his concerns to his father, but was ignored, which many historians considered to be one of James VI's greatest mistakes.

Upon the death of James VI, Duncan IV became king at age 38 at the dawn of a new century, one that would prove a bumpy ride for the monarchies of Europe. The reason was that Duncan's worries in the 1780s bore fruit with the American Revolution in the English Colonies against the tyrannical rule of King Henry XVII in 1802 to 1808, a bloody war that saw English expend massive amounts of resources, however the new republican government in the United States of America had many problems, however it's first President Hugh Jackson (the eldest of the infamous Jackson Brothers) had territorial ambitious and a desire to expand the new nation 'from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with only the American banner of Republic on the soil', setting the stage for future conflict between America and Scotland.

The American Revolution would not be contained in the New World, having lost to 'mere colonists' and angry at the decades of repression by the Tudor monarchy, much of Ireland and many in England rose against their King, detonating the War of Irish Independence and the First English Civil War in 1810, with revolutionary ideas (and violence) spreading throughout much of continental Europe.

Duncan IV was thankful that Scotland was spared the internal troubles, with only a few malcontents to deal with, the problem was the violence south of the border. Duncan IV did not like Henry XVII, however he could not condone the overthrow of an anointed King, and so Scotland sided with the Tudor Monarchy against the Revolutionaries, and while the Scots were able to aid the English Monarchists against the Revolutionaries in 1814, in Ireland the intervention failed at the Battle of Dublin (1815) that saw the Irish drive out the Anglo-Scottish Alliance and establish the Republic of Ireland.

The war was exhausting, and a mere year after the First English Civil War, Henry XVII was assassinated, plunging England into a messy regency under Henry XVIII and setting the stage for further war in the 19th century.

For Duncan IV, it was heartbreaking to see so much of Europe burning, and Scotland having been forced to fight to prevent a worse conflict at home. While Scotland celebrated it's victory in England, the failed Irish Intervention pushed Duncan IV to the breaking point.

After a night with his latest mistress, Anne Crawford (a beautiful commoner actress) the King was found to have died in his sleep at age 54 after a 16 year reign, much of which was dominated by war.

Duncan IV was succeeded by his grandson, Malcolm, the Duke of Albany.

Malcolm IV

[10] Duncan IV's sickly niece, Princess Mary Louise, had died not much longer after her father's death. When Duncan and his wife had a child, also a daughter, they were deeply concerned as she was sickly also. This was part of the reason that Duncan's father was so adamant he have more children.

Thus it was ironic that of all the grandchildren of James VI, it was this firstborn girl who surived to adulthood. She was named Briggitte, in honor of her grandmother. She was born in 1782. Her siblings were Prince James (1785-1793), who died of a broken neck he got while climbing on the walls of the Inverness Castle when the Prince's famiy was visiting there, and Princess Caroline (February 2, 1788- February 6, 1788) who died in infancy.

Princess Briggitte didn't remain sickly long. By her first birthday she was fully healthy. By the time she was ready to start learning her letters, she was beyond healthy, she was a robust child and what later came to be called a Tomboy. She wanted to learn how to ride like a man, use a sword, and wear trousers. But as a young lady she was willing to act ladylike, wear the dresses, wigs, makeup and jewelry that befit a princess.

On her 16th birthday she wed her own cousin by some degrees, James Graham, the heir to the current Duke of Glasgow, a descendent of Queen Christina. James had always been friends with the Princess due to their close family connections and as children they had played together, rode together, and sparred together. He was a year her senior and deeply in love with her. The Princess within a year became pregnant and their son, named after not only the kings, but the husband of Queen Christina, was Malcolm Graham, born on Christmas Day 1799.

It was known from his birth that Prince Malcolm would become King. His great grandfather granted him the title that had been part of the crown for generations, and he became the Duke of Albany.

Upon the death of King James, Malcolm's grandfather, King Duncan, declared that from this point on the first born child, whatever their gender, would be the heir of the King and that Princess Briggitte was now the Duchess of Rothesay, and her husband was the Earl of Rothesay. Upon her acension to the throne he would retain that title and also gain the title of Prince. Of course one day he would also be the Duke of Glasgow. Duncan also declared that the Duchy of Glasgow would not pass to Prince Malcolm, but to the next born son of Briggitte and James, which in due course of times turned out to be Prince Alexander, born in 1803.

By 1812, the Princess and the Earl had three more children, all surviving infancy. Princess Eloise, born in 1805, Prince William, born in 1809, and Princess Adelaine, born in 1811. It was shortly after Adelaine's birth that the Princess and the Earl went horseback riding. Several in the court thought it was too early after giving birth, but the Princess assured them she was healed.

She was healed. But that didn't save her from the horse throwing her when it was scared by a skunk. She was impaled on a broken branch and died almost immediately, only enough time for the Earl to get to her side and for her to say the mysterious words, "Seven ravens destroy the crown." As soon as this was known, many believed she was prophesying and started specualting on the meaning of her last words.

Prince Malcolm, the Duke of Albany, now became the Duke of Rothesay and the heir to the throne. He was only 12 years old. He was the true son of his parents, an outdoorsman like his ancestors, and a lover of everything Scottish and Scotland. But Malcolm had a new passion that was not the usual passion of a Scot Royal- he loved the sea and sailing. As a small boy that only meant small boats on the lochs that were oared. By the time he was 10 he was sailing small boats on the lochs. As a teenager, the young man insisted he be able to go to sea and be a member of the Scottish Navy- not staying home in Edinburgh waiting to take the crown some decades in the future, but to serve the Kingdom then.

It was common for aristocratic boys who wished to serve in the Navy to start at age 14 serving as the Captain's Cabin Boy. This was what Malcolm insisted on, but his grandfather the King denied this to him. Instead the boy was allowed to sail as a guest on limited voyages on a ship but only a few hours out into the North Sea and then back. However, once at sea, Malcolm insisted by his royal privilege that he be allowed to work as a member of the crew.

Malcolm over time convinced his grandfather to let him take a commission when he was 18. His father, the Earl, and now the current Duke of Glasgow, was an advocate for his son on this and it is said whispered in the King's ears that with the current rules of succession, that there were four more heirs besides Malcolm. It was known the Earl had spoken to the King on this, but unknown what he said. Speculation arose that he said that the seven ravens his wife spoke about were the King, the late Duchess of Rothesay herself, who was alive when she said the prophesy, and the five children- but that by letting the current Duke of Rothesay go to sea he became a gull instead of a raven, and the prophesy was undone. In reality Earl James said nothing of the sort.

Prince Malcolm did not take his commission, for by the age of 18 he was King. For a little less than a year there was a regency and the Duke of Glasgow, James Graham, the Earl of Rothesay, was the regent until the King's 18th birthday. But he never gave up on the sea. He made his priority as King be that the Scottish Navy was the biggest, best, and pre-eminent navy of the world. Every new ship commissioned was first captained by him on it's maiden voyage. A few leagues out to sea, he would turn over command and depart in a smaller boat back to shore.

Although the state of England and the rest of Europe, in war and chaos, was a very big disappointment to his predecessor, the new King saw it as an opportunity. England was caught up in internal problems and had just lost Ireland (But not Ulster, which had never been English, but Scottish.) England's American colonies had gained independence except for it's Canadian province further up the St. Lawrence Seaway, Ontario. Quebec, the French colony north of the St. Lawrence Seaway as well as New Caledonia and New Albion were all targets of American expansionism- but it was Ontario and the Spanish territories of Florida and Louisiana that were the first goals- as Quebec was protected by the Scottish colonies to its south and they were strong.

Scottish explorers commanded by Captain Horace McPherson in the 18th Century under King James and then in the early 19th under King Duncan had sailed up the Pacific Coast of North America, exploring the lands between Spanish California and Russian Alaska, claiming them for Scotland and giving them the name Briggittania, which they also named the great river there (OTL Columbia R). McPherson had been the one who'd worked with the King when he was a prince to sail on small voyages. King Malcolm now made McPherson the Admiral of the Pacific and the South Seas and sent him back to further explore Briggittania, establish permanent settlements on the Briggittania River and in the Prince William Sound (OTL Puget Sound). But also to explore the vast Pacific and the continent that Kingsland was on, and any lands surrounding it.

That continent had gained the name Antipodes, but it was unexplored beyond the north coast where Kingsland was. During this long voyage from 1819 to 1827, Admiral McPherson discovered the Sandwich Islands, where he established a treaty of friendship between the two Kingdoms, many of the South Seas Island, The New Skye Islands (OTL New Zealand), and explored the West Coast and South Coast of Antipodes- estabishing the settlements of Malcolmville (OTL Sydney), Duncan (OTL Melbourne), and Adelaine (OTL Adelaide.)

In Briggittania, McPherson established on Prince Alexander Island (OTL Vancouver Island) the settlement of Eloise (OTL Victoria), in Prince William Sound the settlement of Queen Christina Town (OTL Seattle), and further up the inland waters the settlement of Sophia Town on the river named Sophia River (OTL Vancouver, B.C. & the Fraser River.)

This establishment of the Scottish Colony on the west coast of North America was only part of Malcolm's plan. The other part was to unite the northern colonies into one Scottish realm of Canada to counter the American attempt to domiate the continent. While McPherson was rounding the Horn, Malcolm was convincing France and England that their colonies in North America were more trouble than they were worth. Scotland had become rich from the spice trade using the East Indies colony of Timor and Kingsland as the base for this. England and France had wanted to get into this too, but their problems early in the 19th Century interferred in this and so the Dutch and the Scots continued to dominate it. Now Malcolm offered large sums to both kingdoms for their North American colonies with promise that in each colony their language and culture would be preserved and not replaced with Scots or Gaelic and that a special relationship would be established with their original mother countries- anyone from France who wanted to immigrate to Quebec or to do busines in Quebec was welcome and the same with England and Ontario.

Malcolm was not the only one buying colonies. The United States also did this with Spain, who was still in possession of its North American Colonies but was dealing with revolution and rebellion in Central America and South America. Spain was happy to sell Florida, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and California to the United States.

By 1823 this was complete on both sides and the stage was set for Scottish-American War. On one side were Scotland, France, England, the Scottish Colonies of New Albion, New Caledonia, Quebec, Ontario, and Briggittania, with the neutral Dutch giving logistics and trade support. On the other side was the United States of America, which now stretched to the Pacific, Spain, and Ireland, which saw this as a chance to take Ulster. There was also conflict in the East Indies as Scotland sought to take the Philipines away from Spain.

It was a brutal and harsh war. But there was little doubt who would win- as the Scottish Navy was too strong, surrounding the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States, imposing an embargo, and destroying the economy of the South of the USA that depended on the cotton trade. The US was dominated by the North which desired Industrializatin and was driven by this vision of dominating the entire continent, thus pushing out the Scots, English, and French. The result was the US side fell apart into a civil war. This led the US to seek peace as quickly as possible.

In the Treaty of 1826 the United States, while still fighting its own rebels, negotiated the borders with Scottish North America by dividing the yet settled Louisiana at the 42nd Latitude, which already had been negotiated as the northern border of California, New Mexico, and the furthest western part of Texas. This woud run to the Mississippi River, which would be the border up until its headwaters. From there the border would be a straight line to the extreme southwest corner of Lake Superior. The previous borders in the east would continue.

Standing alone, Spain was no match for Scotland and sued for peace, yielding the Philipines and several western northern Pacific island to Scotland. Engand and France, as junior partners, took advantage of this too. France took Indochina and England took islands in the Gulf of Canton.

Ireland fought to a standstill. Malcolm made peace with a bold idea. All the northern counties on the island of Ireland would hold plebiscites and decide themselves which nation they wanted to be part of, the Scottish Kingdom with voting rights to send members to Parliament in Edinburgh, or the Irish Republic. Both nations would honor the decision of the people from then and forever. Also the people could move from one to the other, instantly having full citizenship where they lived.

It was no surprise to the Scots that all of Ulster chose to be part of the Scottish Kingdom, although it was a bit of a shock to many in the Republic. Humiliated by this result, the Republic Army had to retreat from the territory they'd taken in parts of Ulster before the stalemate.

Scotland had won on all fronts.

Malcolm was only 26 and was the king of a robust world power. But he was still single. It was time for him to marry. He had the choice of a thousand princesses from across the world. He spent a year meeting and spending time with various princesses sent to Edinburgh for his consideration. She wasn't the most political choice, that would have been an English or French princess, or even the rising powers of Prussia or Russia. Instead he chose a Dutch princess of the House of Orange, a nation that was seeing its power as the dominate spice trading nation being surplanted by Scotland itself. Sabrina Vander Mall was a minor princess in the House of Orange, the third daughter of the fifth daughter of the Prince of Orange. If she had not married royalty her own children would no longer have been considered royalty. But when Malcolm met her he was instantly in love and so her chidren were royalty, Scottish royalty.

Queen Sabrina Vander Mall de Orange Graham

Three great events marked the year 1827:

1) The grand wedding of the King: it was a lavish affair with visiting royalty and dignitaries from around the world.

2) The return of Admiral McPherson's Fleet from its circle of the world and establishment of settlements around the world. With him were chidren of tribal chieftains from Briggittania, children of the King & Queen of the Sandwich Islands, children of the Sultan of the Philipines, and children of Aboriginal chiefs from Antipodes. All of them were in their native dress and treated as visiting dignitaries and royaty. They attended the Royal Wedding in their native attire and returned to their homes the following year with many immigrating to the new colonies.

3) The signing of the peace treaty previously negotiated with Spain, Ireland, and the United States.

Malcolm could now turn his attention to uniting Canada, building the colonies in Antipodes, and expanding the Scottish government into more democratic and constitutional directions. The power of Parliament was expanded, the right to vote was extended to all men whatever their race, color, or religion, and Ulster, the Canadian Provinces, and the Antipodes Provinces all were considered to be full parts of the Scottish Kingdom and would elect members to Parliament on and equal footing to Scotland proper. This required logistics for the distant provinces (the term colony was removed from usage) as it might take up to a year for their members to arrive in Ediburgh- so their elections would be in advance of Parliament.

In part to unite the worldwide Kingdom, Malcom became an advocate of railroads and Parliament was fully behind him on this. Two major railroads were built in the middle of the 19th Century. The Canadian transcontinental to unite Briggittania with the eastern provines was the biggest and most difficult needing to transverse the Rocky Mountains. The much shorter Sinai Railroad was difficut in that the land was owned by the Ottoman Empire.

The solution was the independence of Egypt under the Mamluks, helped to establish this with Scottish pressure and war ships off Istanbul. First a railroad was built. Then a canal was begun.

Scotland, including its overseas provinces, prospered during Malcolm's long reign. In midlife he grew a beard, the first Scots King in centuries to have a full beard. He and Queen Sabrina had many chidren and those children had many children. A middle class developed and literacy reached very high levels. An interest in Scottish history as expressed in historical novels, especially about the Stewarts and Grahams, developed.

Later in life when Malcolm was in his early 80s, a new colonization push was happening in Africa. Scotland joined in from its base in Madagascar, which it had colonized right after the Scottish-American War. Mozambique, Tanzania, Zanibar, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe all became Scottish colonies (the term was reintroduced to usage.)

In previous provinces the indigenous peoples had been made full Scottish citizens, a multicultural approach was taken with multilingualism, and local governments were established. In the new provinces the growing business oriented middle class of non-aristocrats dominated Parliament and had no interest in following Malcolm's previous policies. Malcolm had reformed away much of the royal power he'd had as a young King with his democratic reforms and now he was powerless to stop the new Imperialism that treated the native Africans as subjects not citizens.

In an effort to raise awareness, Malcolm did something never done before by a European monarch. He and the Queen left Scotland and journed to the southern African colonies, which he insisted on calling 'provinces.' They toured the African provinces, finding themselves loved by the native people, who understood this foreign King and Queen were here to extend to them the same freedom and privileges their own peope had. The tour was a success and the new telegraph made sure everyone in the Kingdom knew.

Malcolm was convinced that on returning home that his message of equality and inclusion would carry the day in the next elections and sweep into power those who would extend the franchise and citizenship to the Africans.

But Malcom didn't live long enough to see this. He died at sea, a fitting end for him. He had contracted Malaria on his tour and while at sea it overwhelmed him. He died on deck in the arms of his beloved Sabrina. His elderly son, Prince James, Duke of Rothesay, who had fulfilled his royal duties while he was in Africa, succeeded him.

James VII, at the time of his coronation.

[11] James VII was born on 7th February 1828 to Malcolm IV and his wife Queen Sabrina, at a time when the Kingdom of Scotland had defeated all of it's enemies and had begun to enter a new golden age of exploration, colonization, and domination in Europe. Being both the first born child and the male heir, many in Scotland breathed a sigh of relief that the alterations to the Scottish Succession made by Duncan IV wouldn't be put to the test, at least for one more generation.

The young Duke of Rothesay was quickly joined by his siblings Prince William Alexander, Duke of Albany (1829-1891), twins Princess Briggette, Empress of Scandanavia (1830-1879) and Princess Eloise, German Empress (1830-1891), Prince Duncan, Duke of Edinburgh (1831-1842), and Prince John, Duke of Montrose (1834-1906).

The heir to the Scottish throne would quickly prove to be a strong-willed child, full of energy and enthusiasum for a growing number of interests, and while he did inherit his father's love of the outdoors, sport, and hunting. Prince James, Duke of Rothesay also had a deep passion for literature, reading several books a day if he was allowed too, but unlike his father, the Prince had little interest in sailing, though he did travel as duty demanded of him, he had no real passion for voyages in of itself.

What many commentators noted was that unlike many monarchs and their heirs, Duncan IV and Prince James did not feud or quarrel very much, they had a stable, happy relationship with only one or two disagreements in their lives.

At age 14 the Prince suffered his first family loss, the death of Prince Duncan, Duke of Edinburgh at age 11. Prince Duncan had been born with epilepsy and had suffered a series seizures that grew worse the older he got, to protect him the lad was kept away from the public eye as much as possible by the King and the Queen, and his death wounded the royal family deeply.

The first major disagreement between Malcolm IV and Prince James came about when James was 17 and began taking an interest in Freemasonry under the guidance of a relative, Leo, Duke of Glasgow (the son of Prince Alexander, Duke of Glasgow) who was a member of the Grand Lodge of Scotland. However to avoid a public scandal, the King ultimately agreed to look the other way, something that Malcolm IV would come to regret.

When Prince James reached the age of 20, the King began to consider possible candidates to wed his son and heir, due to the great upheavals in Europe, new nations had emerged. In the former Holy Roman Empire now stood two great Empires. In the south was the Catholic, Austro-Hungarian Empire ruled by the Habsburg-Wittelsbach's, the Protestant north of the HRE was now dominated by the German Empire ruled by the Hohenzollerns. The Italian states of the HRE had been united into a United Kingdom of Italy under a Habsburg-Wittelsbach King (the Papal States had been recently annexed), Naples was still an independent Kingdom under it's Bourbon King (many expected an invasion by the UKI soon). Meanwhile in the region of Scandinavia, Denmark-Norway and Sweden had once more entered into a personal union that had just seen the creation of the Empire of Scandinavia, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1845 had seen the rise of several new Kingdoms and Republics as well.

Of these new states, along with the old nations as well, King Malcolm IV made a series of strategic decisions, he decided that his two daughters would marry the future Emperors of Scandinavia and Germany respectively (when their ages were right of course), but for his eldest son he needed a Princess, and since legally the Scottish royals were still barred from marrying Catholic, Malcolm IV began to consider the usual Dutch and German families for candidates when a different offer came to him.

The Russian Empire had undergone extensive Westernization since the reigns of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and of course Peter IV the Wise, and had expanded it's power deep into Asia, and had also seized much land from the now dead Ottoman Empire, and under Alexandra I was making overtures into newly liberated Eastern Europe.

Seeing the rise of Scotland as a major power in Europe, Alexandra I wanted to stay on Malcolm's good side, and was hoping that an alliance sealed by a marriage would allow her a 'free hand' in asserting Russian domination in the Balkans and the new Kingdom of the Greeks (RL Greece, Cyprus, and the European parts of RL Turkey including the whole of Istanbul/Constantinople), she proposed a marriage between Prince James and one of her daughters, Alexandra's preferred choice was her third eldest daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Mikhailovna.

The only sticking point was personal religion, as the Grand Duchess was Eastern Orthodox and her mother was hesitant at allowing any of her children to convert, even for the sake of marriage. However the Scottish courts ruled that while the royal family was still barred from marrying (or becoming) Catholic, an Eastern Orthodox marriage was allowable. The ban on leaving the Church of Scotland was still binding, and any children of Prince James's marriage had to stay in the faith to retain their rights to the throne.

So on 7 June, 1850, Prince James, Duke of Rothesay and Grand Duchess Maria Mikhailovna were married in a Presbyterian ceremony, the groom was 22, the bride had turned 18 three days prior.

The marriage would see the forming of a powerful friendship between Prince James and his Russian wife, a friendship that would eventually become love, and see the birth of a grand total of eight children, but the premature deaths of the two youngest would affect the couple greatly.

During what Prince James realized would be a lengthy wait as heir, he oversaw a number of responsibilities on behalf of his father, such as major restorations and renovations of the major royal residencies, some of which hadn't been repaired since the 18th century. Prince James's work on making the royal castles and palaces better would see the Scottish court become among the most splendid in Europe, though his proposal to construct several new palaces was reject by Malcolm IV as needlessly expensive.

Prince James's personal tragedies began when his seventh child, Princess Rosemond died of scarlet fever at age three, then a month later his eighth and last child, Prince John Constantine died a few hours after he was born, his head full of water (the modern term being Hydrocephalus). The deaths of his youngest children plunged Prince James into deep grief, setting the stage for the Prince's newest obsession, the occult.

In the late 19th century, a growing popular movement of Spiritual mediums and the sale of new devices promising to allow the user to communicate with the dead had emerged, this Spiritualism movement first began in England as a reaction to the brief, Second English Civil War (1853-1855) due to the extinction of the House of Tudor and a disputed succession. Spiritualism quickly spread across the western world and into the new world as well, and now Prince James began to try and contact the spirits of his dead children.

His wife, initially joined the Prince in his seances before becoming more skeptical of the subject, the King and much of polite society was horrified, however others in the gentry shared the Prince's interest in the growing popularity of Spiritualism and other aspects of Occultist lore.

The second major dispute between the King and the Prince came about due to the Prince's growing obsession with magic, the Prince even writing a series of books on the subject (albeit under the pseudonym, Jacob Rothes) that would become staples of the Occultism movement well into the modern era, ultimately earning Prince James his nickname of 'James the Sorcerer'.

Despite the Prince's 'new hobby', he did not allow himself much distraction from his work, it was the other thing that helped him cope with the loss, the Prince served as an advisor to his father, handling several matters of state that the King delegated to him, making several royal appearances on his father's behalf, and serving as Regent during those times that his father was traveling abroad.

The final time as regent would see the death of Malcolm IV on his ship and the ascension of James VII to the throne at age 61.

James VII's reign was expected to be brief, despite his good health, he had one of the longest terms serving as heir to a throne in recorded history. However James VII was King of a nation at the absolute height of it's Golden Age, the Scottish Colonial Empire was beginning to expand into India and China by establishing important trading ports in Bombay and Shanghai respectively, and Malcolm IV's wish of improving the rights of those in the African colonies was granted when the Conservative Party lost the Parliamentary elections of 1890 and were replaced by the Liberal National Party.

James VII's reign was a time of peace and continued prosperity for Scotland, in 1891 the LNP Prime Minister, John Andrew Carnegie convinced the King to make a royal visit to Scotland's colonies in Antipodes, New Skye Islands, and the new colonies in India and China, and to have the royal heir make a visit to Canada as well. The trip was long, even with the new technologies that made travel via the ocean much quicker, however the 1893-1895 tour of Asia and the Pacific was a huge success.

In 1896 the King suffered severe bronchitis (most likely from his heavy smoking habit) and was bedridden for six months, a regency under the heir was formed and the nation waited and prayed, however James VII made a miraculous recovery that astonished everyone.

James VII continued his prosperous reign, semi-secretly writing about mysticism, freemasonry and talking to the deceased, and enjoying time with his remaining children and grandchildren, being very much a doting, loving grandfather.

James VII surprised everyone by living to see the dawn of a new century, however on December of 1901 the King was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in his throat, he died on 8 March of 1902 at age 74, leaving the throne to his grandson, James.

Emperor James VIII

[12] Prince James and Princess Maria had five chidren who reached majority. The eldest was born in 1851, a male named after his grandfather, Malcolm. Prince Malcom was the first son of the heir, the Duke of Rothesay, to be given the title the Earl of Rothesay, on his birth. From then on this was the tradition. The next child was Prince William, named Duke of Briggittania, born 1853. The third child was Princess Eloise, named Duchess of Antipodes & Skye, born 1856. Princess Maria Christina was born in 1859. The next child was named after his uncle, Duncan, and made Duke of Ediburgh in his honor.

The Earl was a favorite of his grandfather, the King, and loved the sea like him. He was allowed to go into the Navy and serve as an officer. In 1874, at age 23, he reached the rank of Lieutenant, and was allowed to marry. His bride was a distant cousin in the Duke of Belfast line, Mary Graham. This was a love match, which was why he married a Scottish girl instead of a foreign princess. By the time King Malcolm made his tour of Africa, the Earl was a Captain and it was his ship that took his grandfather there and was returning him when he died. Now suddenly becoming the Duke of Rothesay as his father was now King, Prince Malcolm cared for his grandmother on the trip home. On this voyage his own wife, now the Duchess of Rothesay, and their children had accompanied the Royal couple.

The oldest was Prince James, born in 1876, now 12 years old and suddenly going from Prince James of Rothesay to Prince James, Earl of Rothesay. Also with them were Princess Charlotte, age 9, and Prince Alexander, age 6.

The new King was not comfortable with his son being an active Captain in command of a ship in His Majesty's Navy and upon the Duke's return to Scotland, they disagreed about this. The King demanded he resign his commission. The Duke refused. The Dowager Queen argued for the Duke to be able to continue to serve his Kingdom as his grandfather would have wished. This seemed to be an impasse, although a secret one no one outside the Royal Family was aware of. Finally it was the Duchess of Rothesay who whispered in the King's ear, "What do Rosemond and John Constantine think?"

In a seance with his occultic associates the King inquired and tapping on the table indicated that the departed spirits wished for their brother to continue in the Navy. In truth one of the associates had been paid by the Duchess and Dowager Queen to do the tapping. The King now gave his permission.

In 1893 war broke out between the Russian Empire and the Austrian Empire over the Crimea. Scotland, of course, supported Russia and sent the Navy to the Black Sea. During a naval battle in the Black Sea, His Majesty's Ship, the Queen Christina, was sunk by Austrian forces. Most of the crew were saved, but the Captain went down with his ship. The Captain was the Duke of Rothesay, Prince Malcolm, and he was 42.

At age 17, Prince James became the Duke of Rothesay and heir to the throne. He was the center of attention of many women, his great-grandmother, Queen Sabrina, his grandmother, Queen Maria, and his mother the Dowager Duchess, as well as his aunts, Princess Eloise, who was still single as she married later in life (more on that later,) and Princess Maria Christina, who had married a commoner raised to nobiity, Howard Smythe, Lord Blackstone, but had only daughers.

It was a sad victory for Scotland when the Russian Scottish alliance was victorious and secured Crimea for Russia and the Austrian Empire paid an enormous compensation to Scotland for the death of the heir. To secure the peace treaty a marriage was arranged for the Duke with a granddaughter of the Emperor who'd been raised as a Protestant as the Princess of Bohemia, her father, Casimir Jagiellon, being from a long line of Bohemian Princes who reigned in Prague under the Hapsburg Emperors, and her mother being Princess Maria Hapsburg. As part of her dowry the Austrians surrended to Scotland Zimiiny Island, also known as Snake Island, where Scotland could build a Naval Base in the Black Sea. The Princess Yvona was also 17.

Yvona Jagiellon stepped right into the circle of women who were close to and loved the Duke. The two were wed after a three months engagement in which the Princess lived with the Dowager Queen, perfecting her English. During that time the couple met with chaperones and fell in love.

Empress Yvona

The young Royal Couple were careful in their first years of marriage to avoid child bearing, believing that they need time to be young and strengthen their marriage. James became King before they could begin. Once the two were crowned King and Queen, the settled down to having a famiy, ending up having four children.

Two major events occurred in the Kingdom during James' early reign. The first was the official change of Scotland from a Kingdom to an Empire and the re-coronation of the King and Queen as the Emperor and Empress. The King wore a formal Kilt for the Coronation and the Queen wore a white gown filled with a lot of lace.

The second change was ironic considering the official recognition of the Scottish Empire being just that. It also was ironic that with the establishment of railroads, canals, steam ships, and the telegraph, making it easy for the citizens of the Kingdom in Canada and Antipodes & New Skye to participate in the national government, a growing movement for home rule became inevitable.

So it was that Parliament not 3 years later, decided to grant independence to Canada and Antipodes & New Skye into sister kingdoms. There was ony one solution, members of the royal family would relocate to those kingdoms to reign their. The obvious choices were King James' aunt and uncle, Eloise who was already the Duchess of Antipodes & New Skye, and William, who was already the Duke of Briggittania. Eloise was still not married and she finally married now, but as she was in her fifties, she was unable to have children.

In mid-life, King James face the greatest threat to Scotland it had seen for centuries. The Great War broke out in 1918 when the long standing tension between Scotland, the existing naval power, and the German Empire, which sought to become the great naval power. The long standing tension between the Russian Empire and the Austrian Empire also had been growing. Several periphial nations in the Austrian Empire had broken away, such as Serbia and Bohemia, which moved into the Russian circle. Austria sought to retain its hegenomy in the Balkans and Eastern Europe and Russia sought to establish a pan-slavic union. It was natural for Germany and Austria to ally, and for Scotland, Russia, and France to ally.

The Great War broke out when Scottish and German battleships confronted each other in the North Sea and the confrontation escalated into exchange of fire.

The King and Queen were stalwarts for Scotland in this time of war, volunteerng their time to meet soldiers on the homefront, preparing bandages, and constantly giving speeches encouraging the nation. Finally the war ended in 1922 when the United States, England, and Italy joined with Scotland and Russia to fight Germany and Ausria. (Canada and Antipodes & New Skye had already been fighting with the Mother Country.)

Germany had taken most of northern France, but not a peace was agreed on that restored all the former borders, but resolved none of the issues that had led to war.

A depression in the 1930s and the rise of fascism in Germany in that same decade led to fear the Great War woud resume again, but before that could occur, King James died of a heart attack. The throne passed to his _____________, ________________.

Asharella · Sep 14, 2019

Sorry that my latest post is taking so long. I got sick. I'll finish it up but edit it so others can do the branches...

Asharella · Sep 14, 2019

"Prince James and Princess Maria had five chidren who reached majority. The eldest was born in 1851, a male named after his grandfather, Malcolm. Prince Malcom was the first son of the heir, the Duke of Rothesay, to be given the title the Earl of Rothesay, on his birth. From then on this was the tradition. The next child was Prince William, named Duke of Briggittania, born 1853."

"So it was that Parliament not 3 years later, decided to grant independence to Canada and Antipodes & New Skye into sister kingdoms. There was ony one solution, members of the royal family would relocate to those kingdoms to reign their. The obvious choices were King James' aunt and uncle, Eloise who was already the Duchess of Antipodes & New Skye, and William, who was already the Duke of Briggittania. Eloise was still not married and she finally married now, but as she was in her fifties, she was unable to have children."

Monarchs of Scottish Canada

1910 - ?: William I (House of Graham) [1]

Asharella · Sep 14, 2019

"Prince James and Princess Maria had five chidren who reached majority. The eldest was born in 1851, a male named after his grandfather, Malcolm. Prince Malcom was the first son of the heir, the Duke of Rothesay, to be given the title the Earl of Rothesay, on his birth. From then on this was the tradition. The next child was Prince William, named Duke of Briggittania, born 1853. The third child was Princess Eloise, named Duchess of Antipodes & Skye, born 1856."

"So it was that Parliament not 3 years later, decided to grant independence to Canada and Antipodes & New Skye into sister kingdoms. There was ony one solution, members of the royal family would relocate to those kingdoms to reign their. The obvious choices were King James' aunt and uncle, Eloise who was already the Duchess of Antipodes & New Skye, and William, who was already the Duke of Briggittania. Eloise was still not married and she finally married now, but as she was in her fifties, she was unable to have children."

Monarchs of Antipodes & New Skye

1910 - ?: Eloise I (House of Graham) [1]

Asharella · Sep 14, 2019

I am letting others tell the story of the first monarchs of Scottish Canada and Antipodes & New Skye.

Asharella · Sep 14, 2019

Asharella said:
King James died of a heart attack.

This is now done.

Deleted member 107125 · Sep 16, 2019

I claim next king of Canada

Shiva · Sep 16, 2019

What if James IV of Scotland (House of Stewart) had married Maria of Aragon instead of Margaret Tudor of England, daugher and sister to kings. Thus the crowns of Scotland and England would not eventually unite, nor Scotland and England eventually become the United Kingdom?

1488 - 1513: James IV (House of Stewart)
1513 - 1566: James V (House of Stewart) [1]
1566 - 1568: Alexander IV (House of Stewart) [2]
1568 - 1584: Charles I (House of Stewart) [3]
1584 - 1621: Matthew I (House of Stewart) [4]
1621 - 1690: Duncan III (House of Stewart) [5]
1690 - 1753: Alexander V (House of Graham) [6]
1753 - 1763: William II (House of Graham) [7]
1763 - 1801: James VI (House of Graham) [8]
1801 - 1817: Duncan IV (House of Graham) [9]
1817 - 1889: Malcolm IV (House of Graham) [10]
1889 - 1902: James VII (House of Graham) [11]
1902 - 1907: James VIII (House of Graham) [12]

Emperor of the Scottish Empire

1907 - 1936: James VIII (House of Graham) [12]
1936 - 1940: Malcolm V (House of Graham) [13]

James V

[1] In the year 1500, King James IV of Scotland, House of Stewart, married the Infanta Maria of Aragon, daughter of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile. She was 18 and he was 27. Therir firstborn, named after his father, was born in 1501. He was partially raised in the Higlands by Alexander Gordon, 3rd Earl of Huntly, and Sherrif of Inverness, which he was made in 1500. Gordon was the righthand man of the King in securing the north and west and he was trusted with helping raise the Prince. James IV wanted to insure that his son was not seen as Spanish, but as a true Scotsman, and thus the sending him to Inerness every summer from the age of four until his majority. When the King died in 1513 in battle with England, Gordon became co-Regent with Queen Maria, and sole regent when shortly after that she married Manuel of Portugual.

James V, House of Stewart, always considered himself a Highlander and was beloved by the clans. In 1519 he ended the regency and married Gordon's granddaughter, Jean Campbell, keeping Gordon as an advisor until the older man's death five years later.

Scotland was constantly at war with England during the reign of James, both during the Regency of the Earl of Huntly and when James came of age. Border skirmishes and outright wars breaking out were common. Finally in 1543 the Scottish forces won a decisive victory against the English at the Battle of Solway Moss. Afterwards a peace was enacted between James and his young cousin, King Henry IX, of England. The borders that were negotiated remain the borders between the two British kingdoms until this day. (Yep, Mary I Tudor is instead male and succeeds his father sooner.)

The final battle between England and Scotland was noteworthy in that England was securely Catholic with King Henry IX continuing his father's role as "Defender of the Faith," that is the Catholic Faith, while Scotland was more and more becoming Presbyterian and James himself 'reformed' in 1542 becoming Presbyterian. Quickly after that the entire country converted. James identified with the Highlander Presbyterians over the lowland Catholics. The battle was an attempt by England to force Scotland to at least remain Catholic in the lowlands. Many of those lowlander Catholics fled to England after the victory of Solway Moss and the realization that Scotland was not going to give up the Reformation.

James died in his sleep at the age of 65 after complaining of headaches the night before He was survived by his wife, his children, and a country secure in its Independence, its Presbtyerianism, and its Gaelic heritage.

Alexander IV

[2] James would be succeeded by his second son Alexander, after the death of the Duke of Rothesay one year earlier. Rothesay and his wife, Barbara of Hesse, would only have three daughters before James's death: Anna, Mary, and Jean. Many feared war would break out over the princesses rights to the succession, particularly given the unpopularity of Alexander and his wife, the young Catherine Vasa.

Catherine was an almost fanatic devotee to Lutheranism and attempted to convert the Scottish court to the faith. Many reformers saw the faith as too Catholic in its traditions and saw Catherine as ruining all their hard work. However, the Queen was popular among the Catholic south, who saw Lutheranism as more tolerable. Alexander himself had the opposite problem, being accused of "having only one concern: his own enrichment". His ascension was bemoaned by the nobility, who believed his nature was antithetical to Kingship. The King's constant covert meetings with ambassadors "taking bribes and other such things".

The birth of a daughter, called Catherine for her mother, became the last straw. There were rumors that King Alexander planned on selling his young nieces to the highest bidders, which was met with revulsion due to their ages, given the eldest only recently turning 7 at the time. These rumors caught the ears of Robert McDonald, a young courtier of the Dowager Duchess of Rothesay. Fearing for his beloved mistress and her daughters, he took up vigilante justice. While the King was out riding with one of his many foreign friends, looking for new streams of private revenue, stopped at Cadzow Castle. McDonald covertly followed him in and, when the King went off alone for some heir, stabbed the King, reportedly screaming "Die you bastard". The news of McDonald's actions shocked the court, not least his former mistress, who called it "a ghastly thing". The short reign of King Alexander IV would be followed by that of his uncle, Charles.

Charles when he converted

[3] If his older brother was his father's son, raised to be a True Scotsman, by fostering him to the north, Charles was his mother's son, sharing the same name as his more illustrious cousin, Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, the House of Hapsburg, and as Charles I was the King of Spain. Charles did not spend time in the Highlands or among the north. When most of Scotland became Presbyterian, including his brother the king, Charles remained Catholic. However, after the Battle of Solway Moss and the clear reality that from this point on Scotland and Presbyterianism were from now on one and the same, Charles had three options. He could, like so many of his wife's relatives from the south, decamp to England, or perhaps to the Continent and the court of his cousin. He coud remain in Scotland and convert to remain a part of the Court and a True Scotsman. Finally he could choose to reject the new conditions of the kingdom, unite the southern aristocracy who were Catholic, and go to war with his brother.

Charles became Presbyterian. Like many of the other southern nobility, Charle's converion was not a deep one, but his children were still young as he'd married late in life in his early 30s, the oldest, Prince Henry, Duke of Albany, was only ten at this point. They were raised in the new Presbyterian faith and they were sincere by adulthood.

By the time of his nephew's assassination, Charles was 61, had been officially Presbyterian for over two decades, and had children and grandchildren all in this faith.

Some of the still leaning towards Catholicism in their hearts among the souther nobility, hoped that Charles would on taking the throne avenge the death of his nephew, and perhaps take up the 'compromise' of becoming Lutheran- that is Protestant in Theology but Catholic in style, especially Bishops instead of elected councils of Elders (Presbyters) governing the church, a parallel to Parliament having shared governing responsibiity with the monarch.

But Charles knew that would lead to civil war and eventually intervention by Catholic England, which would easily destroy Scotland's independence if they had allies.

So Charles remained Presbyterian, demanded that Queen Catherine convert and raise Princesess Catherine within the Covenant, and did not include the Dowager Duchess nor her daughters in the arrests that eventually led to the trial and execution of McDonald for regicide.

Charles unified Scotland after the fears of civil war and then turned its attention to overseas. He found common cause with France, despite their religious differences, in that both were threatened by the alliance between Catholic England and the Catholic Hapsburgs. This gave Scotland the breathing room to explore trade with the Indies of the Far East and the Indies of the Carribean. He also hired Jacques Cartier to explore North America for Scotland and conceived of a Scottish Colony somewhere in North America, which didn't happen until after he'd died and his heir, his grandson, Prince Matthew, Duke of Albany, and as heir, the Duke of Rothesay, succeeded him.

Charles died at the ripe age of 77, still a robust man, when he was riding his horse and it tripped. He fell and broke his leg. While recovering it became infected and he did from the infection.

Matthew I in his old age.

[4] Matthew I was born the second son of Prince Henry, Duke of Albany, Duke of Rothesay, and his wife, Princess Hedwig of Anhalt, being 'the spare' to his brother Prince Charles, Prince Matthew was educated for the possibility of one day wearing the crown, in addition to being tutored in the faith of the Scottish Kirk along side his older brother and their younger siblings.

As the Prince became older he fell in with the clique of popular young noblemen that flocked around Prince Charles, this group of young men became notorious all throughout Scotland for their epic drinking binges, wild hunting parties, and an ever changing cast of young, beautiful women. The King was dismissive of complaints from the authorities about his grandsons behavior, seeing it as part of their growing up with their peers.

The death of Charles and Matthew's father, Prince Henry, Duke of Albany, and as heir, the Duke of Rothesay, in one of the last outbreaks of the Sweating Sickness bumped Matthew up in the succession, and forced the King to consider the marriages of his grandchildren.

A prestigious continental match was made for Prince Charles, for Matthew his first wife was chosen from the Scottish nobility, Barbara Hamilton, a daughter of the prestigious Hamilton family, with whom he had two children before Barbara died in a miscarriage with what would have been their third child.

King Charles began to consider a new marriage for his second grandson when another tragedy struck the House of Stewart with the unexpected death of Prince Charles, Duke of Albany, and as heir, the Duke of Rothesay, when he fell out of a tower window while drunk, crashing onto the ground below.

Prince Matthew was then made Duke of Albany and as the heir to the Scottish throne, the Duke of Rothesay, and his second marriage was not with a Scottish lady but with a German Princess, Anna Magdalene of Brandenburg with whom Matthew would have three children.

Prince Matthew's partying ways slowed down considerably after the death of his first wife, and ended by the birth of his third child with Anna Magdalene, it was his second wife who encouraged his maturity, even encouraging regular church attendance, which earned the Prince (and his wife) the love of the ministers in the Church of Scotland.

The 'long-wait' for the throne ended with the death of King Charles and the rise of King Matthew I to the throne.

As the continent continued to convulse with the growing number of Protestant churches, internal schisms, Catholic Reformation, war and violence bloomed like flowers in spring. Scotland being relatively peaceful became a haven for various Calvinist and Presbyterian preachers.

Problems for Scotland began when members of other groups within Protestantism found their way to Scotland, the various branches of Lutheranism, and more radical groups such as the Anabaptists and Nontrinitarian Christianity, these groups were not officially welcomed into the Kingdom but never the less they did gain small followings, particularly on the borderlands with England, which did allow these groups to slip between the border to preach in England and flee to the 'relative' safety of Scotland.

This did anger the English authorities, however King Matthew was able to plead ignorance of the matter to King Henry XI of England, who also had to deal with rebellion in Ireland due to England's 'Plantations' in Ireland. Keeping England distracted with internal problems would prove to be King Matthew I's main policy of dealing with the English Kingdom.

King Matthew I also served as a patron of literature and the arts in Scotland, seeing the rise of the 'Scottish Renaissance' that would outlast Matthew's reign, in addition to this King Matthew established a number of schools and two universities to promote education amongst the nobility and merchant classes.

The King also considered a colonial project in the New World, however the costs at the time were seen as too high and Scotland's low population meant that there were a lack of volunteers to risk it all in a strange new land.

However when Queen Anna Magdalene died at age 53 in 1619, it broke the King's heart, the remaining few years of his reign were spent in a gloomy court in perpetual mourning until King Matthew I was found to have passed in his sleep at age 58 in 1621, passing the crown to his son, James.

Duncan III

[5] Duncan Charles Stewart was born May 29, 1588, the eight child of then Prince Matthew, the sixth with his second wife, Anna Magdalene, and his third son and second son to survive to adulthood. He was 32 when he took the throne, a vibrant man and soldier, who'd fought in the wars of Religion on the Continent, alongside his mother's relatives, fighting for the Protestants of Brandenburg against the Holy Roman Empire and Poland. (OOC: the War known as the Thirty Years War in OTL is the Forty Years War in TTL, starting in 1609 instead of 1618. /OOC) His older brother, Prince Robert James Stewart died in 1620 only months before his father, and Prince Duncan became the heir and the Duke of Rothesay and recalled from the wars on the Continent.

Prince Robert was Duncan's senior by 7 years, the child that had led to their father settling down into a devout life. Robert had continued in that vein, becoming a devout man of art, literature, and science. He married his mother's cousin's daughter, Katrina of Brandenburg and had many children, but only daughters who survived past infancy. Robert never was a robust man, he was a thin, frail man, who started balding in his early twenties and often would be bedridden for a week or more with an illness. Finally one of those illnesses took him when he was not yet 40 years old.

Prince Duncan, on the other hand, was a robust man, who as a child had loved the hunt, the Highlands, where the family had kept the Inverness Castle as a second home in the north, and revered his ancestors, Charles I and James V. Against his father's wishes, he'd gone to the continent to soldier as soon as the Wars of Religion began in the Forty Years War in 1609. There the little bit of German he'd learned from his mother became a second tongue for him. He was reknown for his courage and prowess in battle.

It was a blow to him to have to return to Scotland while the war raged on. He not only grieved his older brother, whom he loved dearly, but also having to cease to be a soldier. He'd never married or even courted a woman. Now a friendship over the death of Robert led him and Katrina to become quite close. After the death of King Matthew, it was clear the wisest thing for Dunan was to marry the Princess. They did marry in 1622 and he became the stepfather of his nieces. However, he and Katrina were never able to conceive a child. It was clear they loved each other and neither one was ever unfaithful.

Duncan remained robust throughout his life, an outdoors king. His long life amazed his contemporaries, living to the age of 102, being on the throne for yearly 70 years. By then his Queen, Katrina, and step daughters had all died, even some of his step-grandchildren who'd survived childhood had also died. It was said Duncan at age 100 resembled another man in his 80s; he still had all his mental facilities, all his teeth, a full head of hair, good eye sight and hearing, and stood strong and tall. He only declined in his last year of life.

Duncan pursued colonies in North America, estabishing New Albion in the lands south of the St. Lawrence River Gulf (New Brunswich and Nova Scotia in OTL). He also established a colony in the East Indies in Timor, with the Dutch taking the rest.

Scotland remained a devout land steeped in Presbyterianism, but this faith was one very open to the developing Science and drew men of learning in the new leaning from all over Europe to Scotland, where a Royal Academy was developed by Duncan and the Universities of Edinburgh and of Glasgow became among the most prestigious centers of learning in the world.

Even though it was expected when the King's health began to turn as he entered his second century, it was still difficult for the kingdom to lose their long reigning king. He was suceeded by his great step-grandson, Prince Charles.

Alexander V

[6] Affectionately known as Sandy by close family and friends, from a childhood nickname due to his older brothers, being unable to say his name properly at a young age as the third son of the Prince James, Duke of Ross (1649–1688), and his wife Maria Katharina of Denmark and Norway, a daughter of Frederick III, King of Denmark and Sweden.
Prince James was the son of Elizabeth, (eldest daughter of Prince Robert and Queen Katrina) and her husband, James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, bringing the mighty clan Graham, into the royal family.

Alexander was born in Mugdock Castle on 11 May 1682 and he was named the Earl of Dundee. The possibility of his becoming King seemed very remote; the King's oldest niece and heir, Princess Elizabeth, Alexander's father and his elder brothers Duncan and Robert were ahead of him in the succession. However, Princess Elizabeth died of pneumonia on 29 December 1682.
On 11 February 1684, his father, Prince Robert, was stricken with measles and died, followed on 15 February by his second brother.
On 19 February, it was found that both Alexander and his remaining older brother, Duncan, had the measles. The two brothers were treated in the traditional way, with bleeding.

By the morning of the 20th, Prince Duncan died from the combination of the disease and the treatment. Fearing for her last child, Princess Maria, would not allow the doctors to bleed Alexander any further, pleading that if God was to take him from her, he would do so peacefully; he was very ill but survived.

When Duncan III died, Alexander, at the age of eight, inherited the throne and would see his mother rule as regent along with his father’s cousin, Malcolm, Earl of Glasgow.

Following his age of majority in 1698, Alexander became known as the Enlightenment King.

He was the earliest opponent of capital punishment, abolishing the act in 1725, he would set about some of the greatest minds in Scotland to bring about an improved and reformed government.

His marriage in 1702 to Henriette Albertine, Princess of Nassau-Dietz, (1686-1754) was seen as an unusual choice to ally with, but over time, the alliance between the Dutch Republic and Scotland, would be financially and militarily beneficial to both nations, with their joint naval knowledge, matching those of England, France and Spain.

He modernized the Scottish bureaucracy and civil service and pursued religious policies throughout his realm that ranged from tolerance to segregation.

He reformed the judicial system and made it possible for men not of noble status to become judges and senior bureaucrats.

Alexander encouraged immigrants of various nationalities and faiths to come to Scotland and their colonies.

He supported arts and philosophers, he favored as well as allowing complete freedom of the press and literature.

Most modern biographers agree that Alexander, was primarily homosexual, and that his sexual orientation was central to his life and character, although he did his duty producing a male heir.

Many modern historian, including Dean of Edinburgh University, Nicola Sturgeon, has called him "one of the most shrewd and sensible monarchs ever to wear a crown".
As well as this, on his tomb is inscribed with this quote, “With the massive shoes left to him by his great-grandfather, a lesser man would have tripped and stumbled, whereas Alexander, proudly picked them up and carried on the legacy.”

William II

[7] William II was the only son of Alexander V, named after William the Lion due to his birth cries sounding like a lion's roar, William II would ultimately prove a far cry from the legendary warrior-king of old.

The then Prince was raised surrounded by an army of nannies, courtiers, his mother, and two sisters the Princesses Anne and Eleanor. While many expected the royal children to emerge hopelessly spoiled, their mother the Queen Henriette Albertine proved a formidable figure in their lives, holding her children to a strict standard of behavior and in their education. At times members of the court found the Queen too harsh, however the King usually sided with his wife, and so the royal children emerged high educated, but social awkward with all but each other.

As the future King became older, he began to rebel at his mother's controls, attaching himself to a group of young noblemen that came to be called 'the Young Bucks', like many such groups of young men before them, they became known for their wild ways, which led to the fighting between the Queen and the Prince to become worse and worse until the King was forced to intervene by separating the pair the only way he could and still save face.

The King hurriedly arranged a marriage for his son at the age of 16 to an English noblewoman, Lady Mary Catherine Howard, the daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, this allowed the King to grant his son the rights to his own household away from court, and away from his mother.

The forced seperation of Prince William from his sisters however would leave William forever bitter at both his parents, however his first marraige to Mary Catherine would prove a happy one, but would only produce a single child.

It was in his twenties that Prince William was able to return to court, however his sisters has been married off, leaving the Prince with few true allies. This narrowness in his social circle grew more pronounced when the Prince's first wife, Mary Catherine Howard died of pnemonia.

Once again the King hurriedly arranged a new marriage for his son, this time out of fear of an uncertain succession since so few members of the House of Graham remained. William's second wife was a continental match, the Princess Eleonora Maria of Sardinia, one of the daughter of the King of Sardinia. The match was controversial due to Eleonora Maria being Roman Catholic, however it went forward and the marriage would prove more fruitful than William's first, seeing the birth of four children in quick succession, though two died in infancy.

Tragedy nearly struck when Prince William became deathly ill with smallpox in his thirties, while he did survive (albeit heavily scared), William's health never fully recovered.

Upon the death of Alexander V, sickly William II took the Scottish throne at age 41. Within a year the Queen Eleonora Maria died in a riding accident, the King initially decided to remain single for the remainder of his life, however a number of advisors convinced him that having more heirs would be to Scotland's benefit.

So the King got to choose his own wife, this time selecting Princess Christine Augusta of Prussia, a woman with a surprisingly dynamic personality and a female painter in an era when it was rare for women to do so. This marriage would see the birth of two more children, and Queen Christine Augusta would become popular with the Scottish commoners, though the nobility was more divided in it's views on King William II's third wife.

Despite his poor health, William II would prove an effective administrator, and was more involved in his children's lives than his father was, and became known for being a loving, doting father to all of his children.

The sickly King's health gave out on him in 1763, having spent the unusually warm autumn day out and about enjoying his gardens, reading in the shade of his favorite tree, and spending his evening enjoying a dinner with the royal family and their friends. William II's successor was his first born child, James.

James VI

[8] James Stewart Graham, was the only child of his father's first marriage to Lady Mary Catherine Howard, born in 1731, when Prince William was only 19 and the Princess was only 17. His parents were married when they were young and she was only 14. However, for the first two years of their marriage, the marriage was only in name only, due to the youth of both. After the wedding the new Princess returned to her own family in Arundel Castle in Sussex, to live with her father, Thomas, the 8th Duke of Norfolk, her mother, Catherine nee Graham, a granddaughter of Malcolm, Earl of Glasgow, her older brother, Henry, her father's heir (he'd become the 9th Duke in 1732,) and her younger sister, Sophia, who was 13. On the Princess's 16th birthday she joined her husband and their marriage was finally consummated. Prince James was only 9 months old when his mother died of pneumonia. The small family had only returned to the Court a few months previously.

Quickly the baby Prince's maternal aunt, Sophia, now 18, took the child to raise him. She had married her own distant cousin, Angus Graham, the son of the current Earl of Glasgow, also named Malcom like his grandfather, who'd been regent during King Alexander's childhood. Sophia and Angus lived with William at the Court and fostered the baby for him. Later when his father married a second time, Sophia and Angus had the primary responsibility in raising Prince James.

His two half siblings by his father's second marriage who survived infancy were both sisters, Princess Louisa Maria and Princess Theresa Maria, born in 1737 and 1743. The Prince and these half-sisters were never close due to Princess Eleonora Maria severely disliking the Lady Sophia Graham and her jealously of Prince James as the heir. She had hoped that her own third child, Robert, born in 1740, would be made the heir, but of course Robert died before his first birthday. Her first child, also a girl, Regina Maria, was born in 1736 and lived to be two, dying in 1738. On the Duke of Rothesay's marriage in 1736, Sophia and her husband returned to Glasow, as Angus now became the Earl upon his father's death. Angus and Sophia convinced the Duke that Prince James was not really safe at court and so he was raised by them in Glasgow.

James never felt close to his father, especially after the illness of his father in 1742, the Duke no longer was well enough to visit the boy in Glasgow, and his aunt and uncle did not want him visiting Edinburgh for extended stays. The Prince was 21 when his father became King and he became the Duke of Rothesay. When the new Queen died a year later, James finally moved into quarters in court, along with his cousin, the Earl of Glasgow's heir, also named Malcolm, who was only a year younger than James and like a brother to him.

To James and Malcolm, James newest half siblings were more like nieces and nephews. James especially took a liking to his youngest sibling, Prince William, affectionally known as Billy, born in 1758. (Billy's older sister, Princess Ilse, was born in 1756.) The two older princesses, Louisa Maria and Theresa Maria, were 17 and 11, when their mother died. Louisia Maria had already been married to the Count of Savoy and her younger sister joined her there. (At this point their secret Catholicism became evident. Later Therea Maria would take orders as a Poor Claire.)

As Duke of Rothesay, James represented his sickly father to the kingdom, traveling throughout it, always accompanied by his cousin, Malcolm. It was while visiting Ulster, which had been part of the Scottish Kingdom since the days of Duncan III, that he met the eldest daughter of Andrew MacMurray, the Earl of Belfast, Briggitte. It was a whirlwind romance. James intended on marrying the girl and was returning to Court to speak to his father when the King died.

The Dowage Queen, Christina Augusta, was quite a bit younger than her late husband, in fact she was younger than her step-son! She'd been born in 1733, having married the King at the age of 21. She'd been a dutiful wife, popular with the people, a good mother, and a good friend to James and Malcolm, as well as Malcolm's parents. But the marriage was loveless and the King had only visited her bed a few time, but enough to sire her two children. A secret romance had grown between the Queen and Macolm, but it had remained chaste due to their mutual devotion not only to the King, but to the morals of their faith.

Two marriage occured in 1763 after the coronation of King James. First was his marriage to Lady Briggitte of Belfast. Some months later, after an appropriate time of morning, Lord Malcolm and Christina Augusta also married. Both marriages were love matches and were long, fruitful, good matches.

Queen Briggitte

It was during the reign of King James that Scotland joined the Industrial Revolution. Also the Scottish Colonies in both North America and the East Indies expanded. Besides New Albion, New Caledonia was established alongside the southern shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the St. Lawrence River up to Lake Champlain, taking these lands from France in the brief War of 1769. In the Indies, Scotland established a colony on the north coast of Austraila south of Timor, known as Kingsland.

Scotland continued to be a land of learning and science, attracting the best minds of the world to study there. In 1770, the King proclaimed the Edict of Toleration, allowing all Scottish citizens in both Scotland, Ulster, the North American Colonies, and the Indies, to practice whatever faith their conscience demanded. Learned Jews flocked to Scotland, French Catholics in New Caledonia practiced their faith openly, and Muslims and Hindus were received fully in the Indies. However, the Kingdom remained officially Presbyterian with the King and Queen required to be members in good stand of the Kirk and raise ther children in the Covenant.

King James and Queen Briggitte had many children, as did his former step-mother and Malcolm. The King died at the age of 70 after he choked on a piece of meat he was eating. His Queen, his cousin, now the Earl of Glasgow, his former Step-mother, his two youngest half-siblings, and his children and grandchildren survived him. He was succeeded by his third son, Prince Duncan, Duke of Rothesay.

Duncan IV

[9] Duncan IV, born Prince Duncan, Duke of Rothes was the third son of James VI and Queen Briggitte, he was preceded in birth order by his older brothers Prince James, Duke of Rothesay and Prince Malcolm, Duke of Aberdeen (who died at age 7), and his eldest sister the Princess Catherine (later married to the King of Sweden). With little expectation of becoming King, Prince Duncan grew up in his father's splendid court alongside his younger siblings and many children of the Scottish peerage in relative ease, and while his education wasn't neglected, the Prince didn't put much focus on it, instead his interests were in sports like golf, horse racing, and of course the pastime of many court, gambling and drinking.

It was during his brother Prince James's marriage to Princess Louise of England and Ireland that James VI began to negotiate a marriage for his third, somewhat disappointing son. After a few months the King selected the Princess Caroline of Denmark for Prince Duncan, hoping that his new daughter-in-law could be a positive influence on his son.

While Prince Duncan accepted the marriage with good grace, he didn't seem to have much feeling for his plain-looking, religiously devout Danish bride, and continued with his wild ways, much to his father's anger.

This anger became more acute when Princess Louise died giving birth to a sickly girl (Princess Mary Louise), leaving Prince Duncan still close in the line of succession to the Scottish throne.

A mere six months after the death of Princess Louise, Prince James, Duke of Rothesay was poisoned by an unknown assailant, dying a week later. Thus his hedonistic brother Prince Duncan became the heir to the throne.

The death of his brother did cause Duncan to moderate some of his excesses, but he continued enjoying a series of mistresses, up until this point having only bothered to father a single child on his wife Princess Caroline. James VI was able to convince his son to return to his wife's bed to father an additional two more children to help bolster the succession, and try and distract him a bit.

Having gained the Duchy of Rothesay as heir, Prince Duncan made a tour of Scotland's colonies in North America in 1787, making him the first Scottish royal to visit the New World when his wife was pregnant with their third child. Duncan noticed a number of intellectual trends being imported from the English Colonies to the south, ideas of liberty, democracy, and freedom of faith. Things that Scotland already practiced to various degrees, but the English under their autocratic monarchy was the antithesis of.

Duncan noted his concerns to his father, but was ignored, which many historians considered to be one of James VI's greatest mistakes.

Upon the death of James VI, Duncan IV became king at age 38 at the dawn of a new century, one that would prove a bumpy ride for the monarchies of Europe. The reason was that Duncan's worries in the 1780s bore fruit with the American Revolution in the English Colonies against the tyrannical rule of King Henry XVII in 1802 to 1808, a bloody war that saw English expend massive amounts of resources, however the new republican government in the United States of America had many problems, however it's first President Hugh Jackson (the eldest of the infamous Jackson Brothers) had territorial ambitious and a desire to expand the new nation 'from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with only the American banner of Republic on the soil', setting the stage for future conflict between America and Scotland.

The American Revolution would not be contained in the New World, having lost to 'mere colonists' and angry at the decades of repression by the Tudor monarchy, much of Ireland and many in England rose against their King, detonating the War of Irish Independence and the First English Civil War in 1810, with revolutionary ideas (and violence) spreading throughout much of continental Europe.

Duncan IV was thankful that Scotland was spared the internal troubles, with only a few malcontents to deal with, the problem was the violence south of the border. Duncan IV did not like Henry XVII, however he could not condone the overthrow of an anointed King, and so Scotland sided with the Tudor Monarchy against the Revolutionaries, and while the Scots were able to aid the English Monarchists against the Revolutionaries in 1814, in Ireland the intervention failed at the Battle of Dublin (1815) that saw the Irish drive out the Anglo-Scottish Alliance and establish the Republic of Ireland.

The war was exhausting, and a mere year after the First English Civil War, Henry XVII was assassinated, plunging England into a messy regency under Henry XVIII and setting the stage for further war in the 19th century.

For Duncan IV, it was heartbreaking to see so much of Europe burning, and Scotland having been forced to fight to prevent a worse conflict at home. While Scotland celebrated it's victory in England, the failed Irish Intervention pushed Duncan IV to the breaking point.

After a night with his latest mistress, Anne Crawford (a beautiful commoner actress) the King was found to have died in his sleep at age 54 after a 16 year reign, much of which was dominated by war.

Duncan IV was succeeded by his grandson, Malcolm, the Duke of Albany.

Malcolm IV

[10] Duncan IV's sickly niece, Princess Mary Louise, had died not much longer after her father's death. When Duncan and his wife had a child, also a daughter, they were deeply concerned as she was sickly also. This was part of the reason that Duncan's father was so adamant he have more children.

Thus it was ironic that of all the grandchildren of James VI, it was this firstborn girl who surived to adulthood. She was named Briggitte, in honor of her grandmother. She was born in 1782. Her siblings were Prince James (1785-1793), who died of a broken neck he got while climbing on the walls of the Inverness Castle when the Prince's famiy was visiting there, and Princess Caroline (February 2, 1788- February 6, 1788) who died in infancy.

Princess Briggitte didn't remain sickly long. By her first birthday she was fully healthy. By the time she was ready to start learning her letters, she was beyond healthy, she was a robust child and what later came to be called a Tomboy. She wanted to learn how to ride like a man, use a sword, and wear trousers. But as a young lady she was willing to act ladylike, wear the dresses, wigs, makeup and jewelry that befit a princess.

On her 16th birthday she wed her own cousin by some degrees, James Graham, the heir to the current Duke of Glasgow, a descendent of Queen Christina. James had always been friends with the Princess due to their close family connections and as children they had played together, rode together, and sparred together. He was a year her senior and deeply in love with her. The Princess within a year became pregnant and their son, named after not only the kings, but the husband of Queen Christina, was Malcolm Graham, born on Christmas Day 1799.

It was known from his birth that Prince Malcolm would become King. His great grandfather granted him the title that had been part of the crown for generations, and he became the Duke of Albany.

Upon the death of King James, Malcolm's grandfather, King Duncan, declared that from this point on the first born child, whatever their gender, would be the heir of the King and that Princess Briggitte was now the Duchess of Rothesay, and her husband was the Earl of Rothesay. Upon her acension to the throne he would retain that title and also gain the title of Prince. Of course one day he would also be the Duke of Glasgow. Duncan also declared that the Duchy of Glasgow would not pass to Prince Malcolm, but to the next born son of Briggitte and James, which in due course of times turned out to be Prince Alexander, born in 1803.

By 1812, the Princess and the Earl had three more children, all surviving infancy. Princess Eloise, born in 1805, Prince William, born in 1809, and Princess Adelaine, born in 1811. It was shortly after Adelaine's birth that the Princess and the Earl went horseback riding. Several in the court thought it was too early after giving birth, but the Princess assured them she was healed.

She was healed. But that didn't save her from the horse throwing her when it was scared by a skunk. She was impaled on a broken branch and died almost immediately, only enough time for the Earl to get to her side and for her to say the mysterious words, "Seven ravens destroy the crown." As soon as this was known, many believed she was prophesying and started specualting on the meaning of her last words.

Prince Malcolm, the Duke of Albany, now became the Duke of Rothesay and the heir to the throne. He was only 12 years old. He was the true son of his parents, an outdoorsman like his ancestors, and a lover of everything Scottish and Scotland. But Malcolm had a new passion that was not the usual passion of a Scot Royal- he loved the sea and sailing. As a small boy that only meant small boats on the lochs that were oared. By the time he was 10 he was sailing small boats on the lochs. As a teenager, the young man insisted he be able to go to sea and be a member of the Scottish Navy- not staying home in Edinburgh waiting to take the crown some decades in the future, but to serve the Kingdom then.

It was common for aristocratic boys who wished to serve in the Navy to start at age 14 serving as the Captain's Cabin Boy. This was what Malcolm insisted on, but his grandfather the King denied this to him. Instead the boy was allowed to sail as a guest on limited voyages on a ship but only a few hours out into the North Sea and then back. However, once at sea, Malcolm insisted by his royal privilege that he be allowed to work as a member of the crew.

Malcolm over time convinced his grandfather to let him take a commission when he was 18. His father, the Earl, and now the current Duke of Glasgow, was an advocate for his son on this and it is said whispered in the King's ears that with the current rules of succession, that there were four more heirs besides Malcolm. It was known the Earl had spoken to the King on this, but unknown what he said. Speculation arose that he said that the seven ravens his wife spoke about were the King, the late Duchess of Rothesay herself, who was alive when she said the prophesy, and the five children- but that by letting the current Duke of Rothesay go to sea he became a gull instead of a raven, and the prophesy was undone. In reality Earl James said nothing of the sort.

Prince Malcolm did not take his commission, for by the age of 18 he was King. For a little less than a year there was a regency and the Duke of Glasgow, James Graham, the Earl of Rothesay, was the regent until the King's 18th birthday. But he never gave up on the sea. He made his priority as King be that the Scottish Navy was the biggest, best, and pre-eminent navy of the world. Every new ship commissioned was first captained by him on it's maiden voyage. A few leagues out to sea, he would turn over command and depart in a smaller boat back to shore.

Although the state of England and the rest of Europe, in war and chaos, was a very big disappointment to his predecessor, the new King saw it as an opportunity. England was caught up in internal problems and had just lost Ireland (But not Ulster, which had never been English, but Scottish.) England's American colonies had gained independence except for it's Canadian province further up the St. Lawrence Seaway, Ontario. Quebec, the French colony north of the St. Lawrence Seaway as well as New Caledonia and New Albion were all targets of American expansionism- but it was Ontario and the Spanish territories of Florida and Louisiana that were the first goals- as Quebec was protected by the Scottish colonies to its south and they were strong.

Scottish explorers commanded by Captain Horace McPherson in the 18th Century under King James and then in the early 19th under King Duncan had sailed up the Pacific Coast of North America, exploring the lands between Spanish California and Russian Alaska, claiming them for Scotland and giving them the name Briggittania, which they also named the great river there (OTL Columbia R). McPherson had been the one who'd worked with the King when he was a prince to sail on small voyages. King Malcolm now made McPherson the Admiral of the Pacific and the South Seas and sent him back to further explore Briggittania, establish permanent settlements on the Briggittania River and in the Prince William Sound (OTL Puget Sound). But also to explore the vast Pacific and the continent that Kingsland was on, and any lands surrounding it.

That continent had gained the name Antipodes, but it was unexplored beyond the north coast where Kingsland was. During this long voyage from 1819 to 1827, Admiral McPherson discovered the Sandwich Islands, where he established a treaty of friendship between the two Kingdoms, many of the South Seas Island, The New Skye Islands (OTL New Zealand), and explored the West Coast and South Coast of Antipodes- estabishing the settlements of Malcolmville (OTL Sydney), Duncan (OTL Melbourne), and Adelaine (OTL Adelaide.)

In Briggittania, McPherson established on Prince Alexander Island (OTL Vancouver Island) the settlement of Eloise (OTL Victoria), in Prince William Sound the settlement of Queen Christina Town (OTL Seattle), and further up the inland waters the settlement of Sophia Town on the river named Sophia River (OTL Vancouver, B.C. & the Fraser River.)

This establishment of the Scottish Colony on the west coast of North America was only part of Malcolm's plan. The other part was to unite the northern colonies into one Scottish realm of Canada to counter the American attempt to domiate the continent. While McPherson was rounding the Horn, Malcolm was convincing France and England that their colonies in North America were more trouble than they were worth. Scotland had become rich from the spice trade using the East Indies colony of Timor and Kingsland as the base for this. England and France had wanted to get into this too, but their problems early in the 19th Century interferred in this and so the Dutch and the Scots continued to dominate it. Now Malcolm offered large sums to both kingdoms for their North American colonies with promise that in each colony their language and culture would be preserved and not replaced with Scots or Gaelic and that a special relationship would be established with their original mother countries- anyone from France who wanted to immigrate to Quebec or to do busines in Quebec was welcome and the same with England and Ontario.

Malcolm was not the only one buying colonies. The United States also did this with Spain, who was still in possession of its North American Colonies but was dealing with revolution and rebellion in Central America and South America. Spain was happy to sell Florida, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and California to the United States.

By 1823 this was complete on both sides and the stage was set for Scottish-American War. On one side were Scotland, France, England, the Scottish Colonies of New Albion, New Caledonia, Quebec, Ontario, and Briggittania, with the neutral Dutch giving logistics and trade support. On the other side was the United States of America, which now stretched to the Pacific, Spain, and Ireland, which saw this as a chance to take Ulster. There was also conflict in the East Indies as Scotland sought to take the Philipines away from Spain.

It was a brutal and harsh war. But there was little doubt who would win- as the Scottish Navy was too strong, surrounding the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States, imposing an embargo, and destroying the economy of the South of the USA that depended on the cotton trade. The US was dominated by the North which desired Industrializatin and was driven by this vision of dominating the entire continent, thus pushing out the Scots, English, and French. The result was the US side fell apart into a civil war. This led the US to seek peace as quickly as possible.

In the Treaty of 1826 the United States, while still fighting its own rebels, negotiated the borders with Scottish North America by dividing the yet settled Louisiana at the 42nd Latitude, which already had been negotiated as the northern border of California, New Mexico, and the furthest western part of Texas. This woud run to the Mississippi River, which would be the border up until its headwaters. From there the border would be a straight line to the extreme southwest corner of Lake Superior. The previous borders in the east would continue.

Standing alone, Spain was no match for Scotland and sued for peace, yielding the Philipines and several western northern Pacific island to Scotland. Engand and France, as junior partners, took advantage of this too. France took Indochina and England took islands in the Gulf of Canton.

Ireland fought to a standstill. Malcolm made peace with a bold idea. All the northern counties on the island of Ireland would hold plebiscites and decide themselves which nation they wanted to be part of, the Scottish Kingdom with voting rights to send members to Parliament in Edinburgh, or the Irish Republic. Both nations would honor the decision of the people from then and forever. Also the people could move from one to the other, instantly having full citizenship where they lived.

It was no surprise to the Scots that all of Ulster chose to be part of the Scottish Kingdom, although it was a bit of a shock to many in the Republic. Humiliated by this result, the Republic Army had to retreat from the territory they'd taken in parts of Ulster before the stalemate.

Scotland had won on all fronts.

Malcolm was only 26 and was the king of a robust world power. But he was still single. It was time for him to marry. He had the choice of a thousand princesses from across the world. He spent a year meeting and spending time with various princesses sent to Edinburgh for his consideration. She wasn't the most political choice, that would have been an English or French princess, or even the rising powers of Prussia or Russia. Instead he chose a Dutch princess of the House of Orange, a nation that was seeing its power as the dominate spice trading nation being surplanted by Scotland itself. Sabrina Vander Mall was a minor princess in the House of Orange, the third daughter of the fifth daughter of the Prince of Orange. If she had not married royalty her own children would no longer have been considered royalty. But when Malcolm met her he was instantly in love and so her chidren were royalty, Scottish royalty.

Queen Sabrina Vander Mall de Orange Graham

Three great events marked the year 1827:

1) The grand wedding of the King: it was a lavish affair with visiting royalty and dignitaries from around the world.

2) The return of Admiral McPherson's Fleet from its circle of the world and establishment of settlements around the world. With him were chidren of tribal chieftains from Briggittania, children of the King & Queen of the Sandwich Islands, children of the Sultan of the Philipines, and children of Aboriginal chiefs from Antipodes. All of them were in their native dress and treated as visiting dignitaries and royaty. They attended the Royal Wedding in their native attire and returned to their homes the following year with many immigrating to the new colonies.

3) The signing of the peace treaty previously negotiated with Spain, Ireland, and the United States.

Malcolm could now turn his attention to uniting Canada, building the colonies in Antipodes, and expanding the Scottish government into more democratic and constitutional directions. The power of Parliament was expanded, the right to vote was extended to all men whatever their race, color, or religion, and Ulster, the Canadian Provinces, and the Antipodes Provinces all were considered to be full parts of the Scottish Kingdom and would elect members to Parliament on and equal footing to Scotland proper. This required logistics for the distant provinces (the term colony was removed from usage) as it might take up to a year for their members to arrive in Ediburgh- so their elections would be in advance of Parliament.

In part to unite the worldwide Kingdom, Malcom became an advocate of railroads and Parliament was fully behind him on this. Two major railroads were built in the middle of the 19th Century. The Canadian transcontinental to unite Briggittania with the eastern provines was the biggest and most difficult needing to transverse the Rocky Mountains. The much shorter Sinai Railroad was difficut in that the land was owned by the Ottoman Empire.

The solution was the independence of Egypt under the Mamluks, helped to establish this with Scottish pressure and war ships off Istanbul. First a railroad was built. Then a canal was begun.

Scotland, including its overseas provinces, prospered during Malcolm's long reign. In midlife he grew a beard, the first Scots King in centuries to have a full beard. He and Queen Sabrina had many chidren and those children had many children. A middle class developed and literacy reached very high levels. An interest in Scottish history as expressed in historical novels, especially about the Stewarts and Grahams, developed.

Later in life when Malcolm was in his early 80s, a new colonization push was happening in Africa. Scotland joined in from its base in Madagascar, which it had colonized right after the Scottish-American War. Mozambique, Tanzania, Zanibar, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe all became Scottish colonies (the term was reintroduced to usage.)

In previous provinces the indigenous peoples had been made full Scottish citizens, a multicultural approach was taken with multilingualism, and local governments were established. In the new provinces the growing business oriented middle class of non-aristocrats dominated Parliament and had no interest in following Malcolm's previous policies. Malcolm had reformed away much of the royal power he'd had as a young King with his democratic reforms and now he was powerless to stop the new Imperialism that treated the native Africans as subjects not citizens.

In an effort to raise awareness, Malcolm did something never done before by a European monarch. He and the Queen left Scotland and journed to the southern African colonies, which he insisted on calling 'provinces.' They toured the African provinces, finding themselves loved by the native people, who understood this foreign King and Queen were here to extend to them the same freedom and privileges their own peope had. The tour was a success and the new telegraph made sure everyone in the Kingdom knew.

Malcolm was convinced that on returning home that his message of equality and inclusion would carry the day in the next elections and sweep into power those who would extend the franchise and citizenship to the Africans.

But Malcom didn't live long enough to see this. He died at sea, a fitting end for him. He had contracted Malaria on his tour and while at sea it overwhelmed him. He died on deck in the arms of his beloved Sabrina. His elderly son, Prince James, Duke of Rothesay, who had fulfilled his royal duties while he was in Africa, succeeded him.

James VII, at the time of his coronation.

[11] James VII was born on 7th February 1828 to Malcolm IV and his wife Queen Sabrina, at a time when the Kingdom of Scotland had defeated all of it's enemies and had begun to enter a new golden age of exploration, colonization, and domination in Europe. Being both the first born child and the male heir, many in Scotland breathed a sigh of relief that the alterations to the Scottish Succession made by Duncan IV wouldn't be put to the test, at least for one more generation.

The young Duke of Rothesay was quickly joined by his siblings Prince William Alexander, Duke of Albany (1829-1891), twins Princess Briggette, Empress of Scandanavia (1830-1879) and Princess Eloise, German Empress (1830-1891), Prince Duncan, Duke of Edinburgh (1831-1842), and Prince John, Duke of Montrose (1834-1906).

The heir to the Scottish throne would quickly prove to be a strong-willed child, full of energy and enthusiasum for a growing number of interests, and while he did inherit his father's love of the outdoors, sport, and hunting. Prince James, Duke of Rothesay also had a deep passion for literature, reading several books a day if he was allowed too, but unlike his father, the Prince had little interest in sailing, though he did travel as duty demanded of him, he had no real passion for voyages in of itself.

What many commentators noted was that unlike many monarchs and their heirs, Duncan IV and Prince James did not feud or quarrel very much, they had a stable, happy relationship with only one or two disagreements in their lives.

At age 14 the Prince suffered his first family loss, the death of Prince Duncan, Duke of Edinburgh at age 11. Prince Duncan had been born with epilepsy and had suffered a series seizures that grew worse the older he got, to protect him the lad was kept away from the public eye as much as possible by the King and the Queen, and his death wounded the royal family deeply.

The first major disagreement between Malcolm IV and Prince James came about when James was 17 and began taking an interest in Freemasonry under the guidance of a relative, Leo, Duke of Glasgow (the son of Prince Alexander, Duke of Glasgow) who was a member of the Grand Lodge of Scotland. However to avoid a public scandal, the King ultimately agreed to look the other way, something that Malcolm IV would come to regret.

When Prince James reached the age of 20, the King began to consider possible candidates to wed his son and heir, due to the great upheavals in Europe, new nations had emerged. In the former Holy Roman Empire now stood two great Empires. In the south was the Catholic, Austro-Hungarian Empire ruled by the Habsburg-Wittelsbach's, the Protestant north of the HRE was now dominated by the German Empire ruled by the Hohenzollerns. The Italian states of the HRE had been united into a United Kingdom of Italy under a Habsburg-Wittelsbach King (the Papal States had been recently annexed), Naples was still an independent Kingdom under it's Bourbon King (many expected an invasion by the UKI soon). Meanwhile in the region of Scandinavia, Denmark-Norway and Sweden had once more entered into a personal union that had just seen the creation of the Empire of Scandinavia, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1845 had seen the rise of several new Kingdoms and Republics as well.

Of these new states, along with the old nations as well, King Malcolm IV made a series of strategic decisions, he decided that his two daughters would marry the future Emperors of Scandinavia and Germany respectively (when their ages were right of course), but for his eldest son he needed a Princess, and since legally the Scottish royals were still barred from marrying Catholic, Malcolm IV began to consider the usual Dutch and German families for candidates when a different offer came to him.

The Russian Empire had undergone extensive Westernization since the reigns of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and of course Peter IV the Wise, and had expanded it's power deep into Asia, and had also seized much land from the now dead Ottoman Empire, and under Alexandra I was making overtures into newly liberated Eastern Europe.

Seeing the rise of Scotland as a major power in Europe, Alexandra I wanted to stay on Malcolm's good side, and was hoping that an alliance sealed by a marriage would allow her a 'free hand' in asserting Russian domination in the Balkans and the new Kingdom of the Greeks (RL Greece, Cyprus, and the European parts of RL Turkey including the whole of Istanbul/Constantinople), she proposed a marriage between Prince James and one of her daughters, Alexandra's preferred choice was her third eldest daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Mikhailovna.

The only sticking point was personal religion, as the Grand Duchess was Eastern Orthodox and her mother was hesitant at allowing any of her children to convert, even for the sake of marriage. However the Scottish courts ruled that while the royal family was still barred from marrying (or becoming) Catholic, an Eastern Orthodox marriage was allowable. The ban on leaving the Church of Scotland was still binding, and any children of Prince James's marriage had to stay in the faith to retain their rights to the throne.

So on 7 June, 1850, Prince James, Duke of Rothesay and Grand Duchess Maria Mikhailovna were married in a Presbyterian ceremony, the groom was 22, the bride had turned 18 three days prior.

The marriage would see the forming of a powerful friendship between Prince James and his Russian wife, a friendship that would eventually become love, and see the birth of a grand total of eight children, but the premature deaths of the two youngest would affect the couple greatly.

During what Prince James realized would be a lengthy wait as heir, he oversaw a number of responsibilities on behalf of his father, such as major restorations and renovations of the major royal residencies, some of which hadn't been repaired since the 18th century. Prince James's work on making the royal castles and palaces better would see the Scottish court become among the most splendid in Europe, though his proposal to construct several new palaces was reject by Malcolm IV as needlessly expensive.

Prince James's personal tragedies began when his seventh child, Princess Rosemond died of scarlet fever at age three, then a month later his eighth and last child, Prince John Constantine died a few hours after he was born, his head full of water (the modern term being Hydrocephalus). The deaths of his youngest children plunged Prince James into deep grief, setting the stage for the Prince's newest obsession, the occult.

In the late 19th century, a growing popular movement of Spiritual mediums and the sale of new devices promising to allow the user to communicate with the dead had emerged, this Spiritualism movement first began in England as a reaction to the brief, Second English Civil War (1853-1855) due to the extinction of the House of Tudor and a disputed succession. Spiritualism quickly spread across the western world and into the new world as well, and now Prince James began to try and contact the spirits of his dead children.

His wife, initially joined the Prince in his seances before becoming more skeptical of the subject, the King and much of polite society was horrified, however others in the gentry shared the Prince's interest in the growing popularity of Spiritualism and other aspects of Occultist lore.

The second major dispute between the King and the Prince came about due to the Prince's growing obsession with magic, the Prince even writing a series of books on the subject (albeit under the pseudonym, Jacob Rothes) that would become staples of the Occultism movement well into the modern era, ultimately earning Prince James his nickname of 'James the Sorcerer'.

Despite the Prince's 'new hobby', he did not allow himself much distraction from his work, it was the other thing that helped him cope with the loss, the Prince served as an advisor to his father, handling several matters of state that the King delegated to him, making several royal appearances on his father's behalf, and serving as Regent during those times that his father was traveling abroad.

The final time as regent would see the death of Malcolm IV on his ship and the ascension of James VII to the throne at age 61.

James VII's reign was expected to be brief, despite his good health, he had one of the longest terms serving as heir to a throne in recorded history. However James VII was King of a nation at the absolute height of it's Golden Age, the Scottish Colonial Empire was beginning to expand into India and China by establishing important trading ports in Bombay and Shanghai respectively, and Malcolm IV's wish of improving the rights of those in the African colonies was granted when the Conservative Party lost the Parliamentary elections of 1890 and were replaced by the Liberal National Party.

James VII's reign was a time of peace and continued prosperity for Scotland, in 1891 the LNP Prime Minister, John Andrew Carnegie convinced the King to make a royal visit to Scotland's colonies in Antipodes, New Skye Islands, and the new colonies in India and China, and to have the royal heir make a visit to Canada as well. The trip was long, even with the new technologies that made travel via the ocean much quicker, however the 1893-1895 tour of Asia and the Pacific was a huge success.

In 1896 the King suffered severe bronchitis (most likely from his heavy smoking habit) and was bedridden for six months, a regency under the heir was formed and the nation waited and prayed, however James VII made a miraculous recovery that astonished everyone.

James VII continued his prosperous reign, semi-secretly writing about mysticism, freemasonry and talking to the deceased, and enjoying time with his remaining children and grandchildren, being very much a doting, loving grandfather.

James VII surprised everyone by living to see the dawn of a new century, however on December of 1901 the King was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in his throat, he died on 8 March of 1902 at age 74, leaving the throne to his grandson, James.

Emperor James VIII

[12] Prince James and Princess Maria had five chidren who reached majority. The eldest was born in 1851, a male named after his grandfather, Malcolm. Prince Malcom was the first son of the heir, the Duke of Rothesay, to be given the title the Earl of Rothesay, on his birth. From then on this was the tradition. The next child was Prince William, named Duke of Briggittania, born 1853. The third child was Princess Eloise, named Duchess of Antipodes & Skye, born 1856. Princess Maria Christina was born in 1859. The next child was named after his uncle, Duncan, and made Duke of Ediburgh in his honor.

The Earl was a favorite of his grandfather, the King, and loved the sea like him. He was allowed to go into the Navy and serve as an officer. In 1874, at age 23, he reached the rank of Lieutenant, and was allowed to marry. His bride was a distant cousin in the Duke of Belfast line, Mary Graham. This was a love match, which was why he married a Scottish girl instead of a foreign princess. By the time King Malcolm made his tour of Africa, the Earl was a Captain and it was his ship that took his grandfather there and was returning him when he died. Now suddenly becoming the Duke of Rothesay as his father was now King, Prince Malcolm cared for his grandmother on the trip home. On this voyage his own wife, now the Duchess of Rothesay, and their children had accompanied the Royal couple.

The oldest was Prince James, born in 1876, now 12 years old and suddenly going from Prince James of Rothesay to Prince James, Earl of Rothesay. Also with them were Princess Charlotte, age 9, and Prince Alexander, age 6.

The new King was not comfortable with his son being an active Captain in command of a ship in His Majesty's Navy and upon the Duke's return to Scotland, they disagreed about this. The King demanded he resign his commission. The Duke refused. The Dowager Queen argued for the Duke to be able to continue to serve his Kingdom as his grandfather would have wished. This seemed to be an impasse, although a secret one no one outside the Royal Family was aware of. Finally it was the Duchess of Rothesay who whispered in the King's ear, "What do Rosemond and John Constantine think?"

In a seance with his occultic associates the King inquired and tapping on the table indicated that the departed spirits wished for their brother to continue in the Navy. In truth one of the associates had been paid by the Duchess and Dowager Queen to do the tapping. The King now gave his permission.

In 1893 war broke out between the Russian Empire and the Austrian Empire over the Crimea. Scotland, of course, supported Russia and sent the Navy to the Black Sea. During a naval battle in the Black Sea, His Majesty's Ship, the Queen Christina, was sunk by Austrian forces. Most of the crew were saved, but the Captain went down with his ship. The Captain was the Duke of Rothesay, Prince Malcolm, and he was 42.

At age 17, Prince James became the Duke of Rothesay and heir to the throne. He was the center of attention of many women, his great-grandmother, Queen Sabrina, his grandmother, Queen Maria, and his mother the Dowager Duchess, as well as his aunts, Princess Eloise, who was still single as she married later in life (more on that later,) and Princess Maria Christina, who had married a commoner raised to nobiity, Howard Smythe, Lord Blackstone, but had only daughers.

It was a sad victory for Scotland when the Russian Scottish alliance was victorious and secured Crimea for Russia and the Austrian Empire paid an enormous compensation to Scotland for the death of the heir. To secure the peace treaty a marriage was arranged for the Duke with a granddaughter of the Emperor who'd been raised as a Protestant as the Princess of Bohemia, her father, Casimir Jagiellon, being from a long line of Bohemian Princes who reigned in Prague under the Hapsburg Emperors, and her mother being Princess Maria Hapsburg. As part of her dowry the Austrians surrended to Scotland Zimiiny Island, also known as Snake Island, where Scotland could build a Naval Base in the Black Sea. The Princess Yvona was also 17.

Yvona Jagiellon stepped right into the circle of women who were close to and loved the Duke. The two were wed after a three months engagement in which the Princess lived with the Dowager Queen, perfecting her English. During that time the couple met with chaperones and fell in love.

View attachment 487819
Empress Yvona

The young Royal Couple were careful in their first years of marriage to avoid child bearing, believing that they need time to be young and strengthen their marriage. James became King before they could begin. Once the two were crowned King and Queen, the settled down to having a famiy, ending up having four children.

Two major events occurred in the Kingdom during James' early reign. The first was the official change of Scotland from a Kingdom to an Empire and the re-coronation of the King and Queen as the Emperor and Empress. The King wore a formal Kilt for the Coronation and the Queen wore a white gown filled with a lot of lace.

The second change was ironic considering the official recognition of the Scottish Empire being just that. It also was ironic that with the establishment of railroads, canals, steam ships, and the telegraph, making it easy for the citizens of the Kingdom in Canada and Antipodes & New Skye to participate in the national government, a growing movement for home rule became inevitable.

So it was that Parliament not 3 years later, decided to grant independence to Canada and Antipodes & New Skye into sister kingdoms. There was ony one solution, members of the royal family would relocate to those kingdoms to reign their. The obvious choices were King James' aunt and uncle, Eloise who was already the Duchess of Antipodes & New Skye, and William, who was already the Duke of Briggittania. Eloise was still not married and she finally married now, but as she was in her fifties, she was unable to have children.

In mid-life, King James face the greatest threat to Scotland it had seen for centuries. The Great War broke out in 1918 when the long standing tension between Scotland, the existing naval power, and the German Empire, which sought to become the great naval power. The long standing tension between the Russian Empire and the Austrian Empire also had been growing. Several periphial nations in the Austrian Empire had broken away, such as Serbia and Bohemia, which moved into the Russian circle. Austria sought to retain its hegenomy in the Balkans and Eastern Europe and Russia sought to establish a pan-slavic union. It was natural for Germany and Austria to ally, and for Scotland, Russia, and France to ally.

The Great War broke out when Scottish and German battleships confronted each other in the North Sea and the confrontation escalated into exchange of fire.

The King and Queen were stalwarts for Scotland in this time of war, volunteerng their time to meet soldiers on the homefront, preparing bandages, and constantly giving speeches encouraging the nation. Finally the war ended in 1922 when the United States, England, and Italy joined with Scotland and Russia to fight Germany and Ausria. (Canada and Antipodes & New Skye had already been fighting with the Mother Country.)

Germany had taken most of northern France, but not a peace was agreed on that restored all the former borders, but resolved none of the issues that had led to war.

A depression in the 1930s and the rise of fascism in Germany in that same decade led to fear the Great War woud resume again, but before that could occur, King James died of a heart attack. The throne passed to his eldest child and son, Malcolm V.

Malcolm V

[13] Malcolm V, a young man with such promise but who's life was taken from him so cruelly, began his life as the eldest child of James VIII and Empress Yolanda, named after his grandfather who died before his time. Malcolm was born on June 5, 1908 and was made the Duke of Rothesay and raised in the splendid court of Imperial Scotland alongside his siblings as the heir to the Imperial throne, though none knew that it would be ___ who would succeed Malcolm V.

Prince Malcolm grew up into a beautiful, ravishing young man, and combined with his wealth and royal title the Prince became very popular with the ladies, however in the decades after his reign a number of testimonies, documents, and a few photographs revealed that the future Malcolm V was bisexual, having just as strong an appetite for men as for women.

His father and mother did not approve, and were severely displeased when their young son fell in love with a young doctor named Oscar Douglas when the Prince was 19, Mr. Douglas being 27.

In order to 'remedy' this situation as Prince Malcolm and Dr. Douglas's relationship intensified, Empress Yolanda all but arranged for her eldest son to marry a woman of her choosing, she selected Lady Emily Kerr, a daughter of Walter Kerr, the Marquess of Lothian.

After their arranged courtship, the Prince was forced by his father to propose marriage, which Lady Emily accepted, and so a few days after his 22nd birthday, Prince Malcolm, Duke of Rothesay married the Lady Emily Kerr in a massive public ceremony and public celebration, though among the invited guests to the wedding was the Prince's 'good friend' the Dr. Oscar Douglas, a signal to those in the know that their relationship would continue.

It is unclear when the new Princess Emily learned of her husband's 'liaisons', but her reaction was not a pretty one. Despite this she didn't dare risk a public scandal, as revealed in her published diaries in the 21st century, and her husband did perform his marital duties.

The tragedy for Princess Emily was that she would ultimately discover was that she was born infertile, she would never bear any children nor continue Malcolm's line for him.

The relationship between Malcolm and his wife would evolve into a working relationship, but he never felt anything but bitterness towards her for being forced into the marriage by circumstance.

Malcolm V rose to the throne at age 28 when his father died of a sudden heart attack, the Scottish nation (and the world) in the grip of the Great Depression, the Portuguese and Spanish thrones having been overthrown by Communist Revolutionaries a few months prior, while a failed Communist revolt in Russia caused more instability. The ideology of Fascism emerged as a right-wing reaction, first in Italy, though the Italian Fascists attempt at gaining power would fail and see their groups disbanded and banned. It was in the German Empire (and later France) that Fascism would take deep root, the German Emperor, Ludwig II feared a revolution due to dissatisfaction by the end of the war and saw the German Fascists as a tool to repress the Communists, instead the German Fascists managed to seize control of the nation and turned the Emperor into a puppet, the same happened in France with Gaston IV.

The first major crisis of Malcolm V's reign was the growth of Fascist and Communist groups in the British Isles, it was due to Scottish intelligence given to the English that prevented a Fascist coup in London, saving the life of King Arthur III. In 1937 the Scottish Conservative government led by Ian McGregor authorized an intervention in Ireland to prevent an Anarcho-Communist revolt, saving the Irish Republic.

In Scotland however, as the Depression deepened, the Scottish Power Front (SPF), the main Fascist party in Scotland gained seats in parliament, as did the Scottish Communist Party, both of which were opposed to the monarchy, however they were both minority parties, the Conservatives still dominated the government, with the Scottish National Liberal Party (SNLP) choosing to abandon their traditional rivalry with the Conservatives to join them in government to make a super-majority.

Of the two radical factions, while the Communists were pushing for reforms in favor of the working class, which ironically the King supported, the SPF wanted power no matter what.

In 1938 a group of Fascist sympathetic businessmen attempted to plot the overthrow of the government, but when they tried to recruit leaders in the military that the plot fell part due to the military's loyalty to the Crown and the Elected government.

On September 4th, 1939, the Fascist controlled government in Germany launched it's invasion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, determined to unite the German peoples no matter the cost. This set off a wave of alliances being activated, and Scotland, having quietly aligned itself against the Fascists, joined the Grand Alliance of Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Scandinavia, and several powers in the new world. The Fascist state of France, and several dictatorships in the Americas joined the Fascist Bloc, meanwhile the Communists states formed their own alliance bloc, but initially stayed neutral.

Malcolm V found himself a king at war, but his time serving Scotland would soon come to an end.

On January 9, 1940, a few days after ringing in the new year as the world went to war, Malcolm V was making a royal visit to a hospital in Stirling to speak with wounded soldiers returned from the front when from the crowd of well-wishers outside three shots rang out. The Emperor was hit by two bullets, a third missed as the assassin was wrestled to the grown and nearly beaten to death by an angry mob, the assassin was a former member of the now banned SPF named Thomas Crauford.

The Emperor was killed instantly, the first shot having gotten in right in the heart.

The death of Malcolm V with no children meant that his ____, _____ would take the throne of an Empire at war.

wwbgdiaslt · Sep 17, 2019

What If ...

Louis Egalite and his sons all died during the French Revolution, so the French crown passes to Carlos, Count of Molina in 1830.

Kings of France

1830 - 1855 : Charles XI (House of Bourbon) (1)

(1) Charles XI, born Infante Carlos María Isidro Benito de Borbón y Borbón-Parma, Count of Molina in 1788, had never expected to be King. His elder brother was heir to Spain, and the Treaty of Utrecht had removed his families claim to France. When his father was overthrown by his brother, he became heir to Spain which, like France, operated upon strictly Salic Law. But when Charles X of France abdicated in 1830, the male line Orleanists had died out earlier that year, France convened the Second Treaty of Utrecht and revalidated the Spanish claim to the French crown - but offered it to the Count of Molina rather than the King of Spain.

Carlos, now Charles XI, accepted on the understanding that he would rescind any claims to Spain and the Spanish Kings heir would be his youngest brother, the Duke of Cadiz. But the Pragmatic Sanction took Spain away from agnatic primogeniture, towards male preference primogeniture. Thus the Spanish Kings heir was now his daughter - the French courts demanded action from the new King and a guarantee that he would not pass a similar device in France.

He agreed, and designated the Duke of Cadiz (created Duke of Orleans) as heir should his own male line be eliminated (and he had three sons of his own - Charles, John and Joseph to use the names they took once Charles XI became King of France). The civil war that might have erupted in Spain was avoided because the claimants had instead claimed the throne of France.

Still, Charles XI was not much of a leader. His court was split between religious leaders, politicians and members of the nobility. It became an arduous task to gather any consensus, many at court did not trust the clerics, simultaneously many disliked the nobles, yet still there were some who raged against the Spaniard on the throne and protested that Louis Antoine, the Duke of Angouleme was the rightful King.

Angouleme's supporters, the Antoinites (mockingly termed the Antoinettes at Charles' court), stirred up trouble at each opportunity, often backing more conservative elements of government rather than the partnership of Charles XI and Prime Minister Guizot.

The partnership largely worked, but Guizot advised Charles XI to ban the Banquet Campaign, encouraged by the Antoinites. However, Charles XI refused to listen to Guizot and listened to the demands for reform of the political system which thus helped to fend off a further revolution.

With many politicians previously deemed part of the Antounite movement having now achieved their goal of reform, at the encouragement of thr King, Parliamemt adjusted itself again. Guizot was out, the liberal DuPont was in and helped to implement the promised reforms under supervision of the King and his not so fractured court.

In 1855, Charles XI died, replaced by ......

TheNerd_ · Sep 17, 2019

I claim the bourbon king!

TheNerd_ · Sep 17, 2019

What If ...

Louis Egalite and his sons all died during the French Revolution, so the French crown passes to Carlos, Count of Molina in 1830.

Kings of France

1830 - 1855: Charles XI (House of Bourbon) [1]
1855 - 1878: Charles XII (House of Bourbon) [2]

(1) Charles XI, born Infante Carlos María Isidro Benito de Borbón y Borbón-Parma, Count of Molina in 1788, had never expected to be King. His elder brother was heir to Spain, and the Treaty of Utrecht had removed his families claim to France. When his father was overthrown by his brother, he became heir to Spain which, like France, operated upon strictly Salic Law. But when Charles X of France abdicated in 1830, the male line Orleanists had died out earlier that year, France convened the Second Treaty of Utrecht and revalidated the Spanish claim to the French crown - but offered it to the Count of Molina rather than the King of Spain.

Carlos, now Charles XI, accepted on the understanding that he would rescind any claims to Spain and the Spanish Kings heir would be his youngest brother, the Duke of Cadiz. But the Pragmatic Sanction took Spain away from agnatic primogeniture, towards male preference primogeniture. Thus the Spanish Kings heir was now his daughter - the French courts demanded action from the new King and a guarantee that he would not pass a similar device in France.

He agreed, and designated the Duke of Cadiz (created Duke of Orleans) as heir should his male line be eliminated (and he had three sons of his own - Charles, John, and Joseph to use the names they took once Charles XI became King of France). The civil war that might have erupted in Spain was avoided because the claimants had instead claimed the throne of France.

Still, Charles XI was not much of a leader. His court was split between religious leaders, politicians, and members of the nobility. It became an arduous task to gather any consensus, many at court did not trust the clerics, simultaneously many disliked the nobles, yet still, some raged against the Spaniard on the throne and protested that Louis Antoine, the Duke of Angouleme was the rightful King.

Angouleme's supporters, the Antoinites (mockingly termed the Antoinettes at Charles' court), stirred up trouble at each opportunity, often backing more conservative elements of government rather than the partnership of Charles XI and Prime Minister Guizot.

The partnership largely worked, but Guizot advised Charles XI to ban the Banquet Campaign, encouraged by the Antoinites. However, Charles XI refused to listen to Guizot and listened to the demands for reform of the political system which thus helped to fend off a further revolution.

With many politicians previously deemed part of the Antounite movement having now achieved their goal of reform, at the encouragement of the King, Parliament adjusted itself again. Guizot was out, the liberal DuPont was in and helped to implement the promised reforms under supervision of the King and his not so fractured court.

In 1855, Charles XI died, replaced by Charles.

Infante_Carlos%2C_Count_of_Montemolin.jpg

Charles XII of Bourbon was King of France from the death of his father in 1855 to 1878 shortly after the attempted republican coup. He would be an active King, seeking intervention wherever he could, in Crimea, Mexico, Italy, and Greece. While having good intentions, he was known for jumping in situations too hastily, at the promise of even a minuscule amount of increased prestige. Knowing that while France appeared to head to a new Golden age, in reality, it was under the mighty boot of the Anglais.

The first of these interventions, was Crimea in 1853, which was a success. After that came Italy, which was an even grander success, leading to the annexation of Nice, The Duchy of Savoy and Aosta Valley. Mexico though is regarded by the public and by the academia to have been a waste of resources, and furthermore, nothing came out of it since the Bourbons didn't get the Imperial Throne, The Habsburgs did.
But the public still wasn't burnt out, but The Greek Affair of 1861 would be what broke the camel's back.

The Greek affair was a deal organized between Charles XII and the Hellenic government, where assassinating would kill the current king, Otto of Wittelsbach, and the entire royal family. Then the government in Greece would ask Charles for a king, and his second son, Louis, would be placed on the throne.

King Otto of The Hellenes

The entire affair was revealed by a paparazzo, and The International community was disgusted.
The Neo-Jacobine faction regained influence, which was lost during after the reign of Charles XI, and thus starting the French Civil War, which would start in 1873, after a stock crash in the US caused the economy to freefall. It would last for 3 years and would destroy much of the northern economy. After the entire debacle, Charles would spend his last two years in silence, wanting to spare the nation of the suffering it was inflicted upon. He would die in 1878, and be succeded by ..., as this new monarch's abilities would be tested by a divided nation.

wwbgdiaslt · Sep 17, 2019

What If ...

Louis Egalite and his sons all died during the French Revolution, so the French crown passes to Carlos, Count of Molina in 1830.

Kings of France

1830 - 1855: Charles XI (House of Bourbon) [1]
1855 - 1878: Charles XII (House of Bourbon) [2]
1878 - 1909: Philip VII (House of Bourbon) [3]

(1) Charles XI, born Infante Carlos María Isidro Benito de Borbón y Borbón-Parma, Count of Molina in 1788, had never expected to be King. His elder brother was heir to Spain, and the Treaty of Utrecht had removed his families claim to France. When his father was overthrown by his brother, he became heir to Spain which, like France, operated upon strictly Salic Law. But when Charles X of France abdicated in 1830, the male line Orleanists had died out earlier that year, France convened the Second Treaty of Utrecht and revalidated the Spanish claim to the French crown - but offered it to the Count of Molina rather than the King of Spain.

Carlos, now Charles XI, accepted on the understanding that he would rescind any claims to Spain and the Spanish Kings heir would be his youngest brother, the Duke of Cadiz. But the Pragmatic Sanction took Spain away from agnatic primogeniture, towards male preference primogeniture. Thus the Spanish Kings heir was now his daughter - the French courts demanded action from the new King and a guarantee that he would not pass a similar device in France.

He agreed, and designated the Duke of Cadiz (created Duke of Orleans) as heir should his male line be eliminated (and he had three sons of his own - Charles, John, and Joseph to use the names they took once Charles XI became King of France). The civil war that might have erupted in Spain was avoided because the claimants had instead claimed the throne of France.

Still, Charles XI was not much of a leader. His court was split between religious leaders, politicians, and members of the nobility. It became an arduous task to gather any consensus, many at court did not trust the clerics, simultaneously many disliked the nobles, yet still, some raged against the Spaniard on the throne and protested that Louis Antoine, the Duke of Angouleme was the rightful King.

Angouleme's supporters, the Antoinites (mockingly termed the Antoinettes at Charles' court), stirred up trouble at each opportunity, often backing more conservative elements of government rather than the partnership of Charles XI and Prime Minister Guizot.

The partnership largely worked, but Guizot advised Charles XI to ban the Banquet Campaign, encouraged by the Antoinites. However, Charles XI refused to listen to Guizot and listened to the demands for reform of the political system which thus helped to fend off a further revolution.

With many politicians previously deemed part of the Antounite movement having now achieved their goal of reform, at the encouragement of the King, Parliament adjusted itself again. Guizot was out, the liberal DuPont was in and helped to implement the promised reforms under supervision of the King and his not so fractured court.

In 1855, Charles XI died, replaced by Charles.

Charles XII of Bourbon was King of France from the death of his father in 1855 to 1878 shortly after the attempted republican coup. He would be an active King, seeking intervention wherever he could, in Crimea, Mexico, Italy, and Greece. While having good intentions, he was known for jumping in situations too hastily, at the promise of even a minuscule amount of increased prestige. Knowing that while France appeared to head to a new Golden age, in reality, it was under the mighty boot of the Anglais.

The first of these interventions, was Crimea in 1853, which was a success. After that came Italy, which was an even grander success, leading to the annexation of Nice, The Duchy of Savoy and Aosta Valley. Mexico though is regarded by the public and by the academia to have been a waste of resources, and furthermore, nothing came out of it since the Bourbons didn't get the Imperial Throne, The Habsburgs did.
But the public still wasn't burnt out, but The Greek Affair of 1861 would be what broke the camel's back.

The Greek affair was a deal organized between Charles XII and the Hellenic government, where assassinating would kill the current king, Otto of Wittelsbach, and the entire royal family. Then the government in Greece would ask Charles for a king, and his second son, Louis, would be placed on the throne.

King Otto of The Hellenes

The entire affair was revealed by a paparazzo, and The International community was disgusted.
The Neo-Jacobine faction regained influence, which was lost during after the reign of Charles XI, and thus starting the French Civil War, which would start in 1873, after a stock crash in the US caused the economy to freefall. It would last for 3 years and would destroy much of the northern economy. After the entire debacle, Charles would spend his last two years in silence, wanting to spare the nation of the suffering it was inflicted upon. He would die in 1878, and be succeded by ..., as this new monarch's abilities would be tested by a divided nation.

Alfonso_Carlos_of_Bourbon%2C_Duke_of_San_Jaime.JPG

(3) Prince Philippe, Dauphin of France, was the eldest of the five sons of Charles XII. Born during the reign of his grandfather, he was known as the Duke of Chartres from birth before becoming Dauphin in 1855. His younger brothers (the Dukes of Nemours [the Prince Louis of the Greek Affair], Penthievre, Aumale and Montpensier) were all handsome and charismatic, whereas Philippe was, in turn, plain and boring and calm in the face of the chaos that would grow in his father's reign - not things that would attract a wife of the required level. His father looked towards Italy and his Bourbon relatives there, but they thumbed their noses at him after the Italian Affair of the 1850's and 1860's. Would Philippe ever find a wife, the French court wondered, but those questions were tossed aside by the French Civil War following the stock market crash. Whilst his father retired from public life, the Dauphin would use much of his personal wealth to fund charities and soup kitchens for the poor, earning him the love from the common people that his father's reign had eroded.

30 when made King in 1878, he continued his charitable work and the press coined him, "Philippe Le Philanthrope" (Because the press love word play and alliteration), which amused him greatly. Still, despite the pressure, as the years turned, he would continue to focus on his management of the country in conjunction with Parliament.

Rumours abounded about the Kings sexual preference, his lack of interest in a wife was unusual but not unknown, but he lacked any interest in a mistress either. Perhaps his interests laid elsewhere? Historians today now believe that Philippe was merely asexual, others believe that his single minded focus on managing the country might have indicated him as being on the autistic spectrum.

He helped manage the economy away from absolute collapse in his thirty years on the throne, never married, but was near universally adored by the people (but not necessarily the nobility or even his four brothers and assorted nephews) and died aged 60 at the Chateau St Cloud near Paris, which had become his residence of choice following his childhood there.

When he died, with no children of his own, the crown passed to ....

Charles IV of Spain

a) Ferdinand VII of Spain

1) Isobel of Spain

b) Charles XI of France

1) Charles XII of France

a) Philip VII of France (prev. Duke of Chartres)
b) Louis, Duke of Nemours
c) ?, Duke of Penthievre
d) ?, Duke of Aumale
e) ?, Duke of Montpensier

2) John, Duke of ?
3) Joseph, Duke of ?

c) Francisco, Duke of Cadiz and Orleans

Brita · Sep 23, 2019

I claim the next Bourbon monarch!

Brita · Sep 23, 2019

What If...

Louis Egalite and his sons all died during the French Revolution, so the French crown passes to Carlos, Count of Molina in 1830.

Kings of France

1830 - 1855: Charles XI (House of Bourbon) [1]
1855 - 1878: Charles XII (House of Bourbon) [2]
1878 - 1909: Philip VII (House of Bourbon) [3]
1909 - 1937: Clémentine I (House of Bourbon) [4]

$C:\Users\LAB9CF~1\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.jpg$

(1) Charles XI, born Infante Carlos María Isidro Benito de Borbón y Borbón-Parma, Count of Molina in 1788, had never expected to be King. His elder brother was heir to Spain, and the Treaty of Utrecht had removed his families claim to France. When his father was overthrown by his brother, he became heir to Spain which, like France, operated upon strictly Salic Law. But when Charles X of France abdicated in 1830, the male line Orleanists had died out earlier that year, France convened the Second Treaty of Utrecht and revalidated the Spanish claim to the French crown - but offered it to the Count of Molina rather than the King of Spain.

Carlos, now Charles XI, accepted on the understanding that he would rescind any claims to Spain and the Spanish Kings heir would be his youngest brother, the Duke of Cadiz. But the Pragmatic Sanction took Spain away from agnatic primogeniture, towards male preference primogeniture. Thus the Spanish Kings heir was now his daughter - the French courts demanded action from the new King and a guarantee that he would not pass a similar device in France.

He agreed, and designated the Duke of Cadiz (created Duke of Orleans) as heir should his male line be eliminated (and he had three sons of his own - Charles, John, and Joseph to use the names they took once Charles XI became King of France). The civil war that might have erupted in Spain was avoided because the claimants had instead claimed the throne of France.

Still, Charles XI was not much of a leader. His court was split between religious leaders, politicians, and members of the nobility. It became an arduous task to gather any consensus, many at court did not trust the clerics, simultaneously many disliked the nobles, yet still, some raged against the Spaniard on the throne and protested that Louis Antoine, the Duke of Angouleme was the rightful King.

Angouleme's supporters, the Antoinites (mockingly termed the Antoinettes at Charles' court), stirred up trouble at each opportunity, often backing more conservative elements of government rather than the partnership of Charles XI and Prime Minister Guizot.

The partnership largely worked, but Guizot advised Charles XI to ban the Banquet Campaign, encouraged by the Antoinites. However, Charles XI refused to listen to Guizot and listened to the demands for reform of the political system which thus helped to fend off a further revolution.

With many politicians previously deemed part of the Antounite movement having now achieved their goal of reform, at the encouragement of the King, Parliament adjusted itself again. Guizot was out, the liberal DuPont was in and helped to implement the promised reforms under supervision of the King and his not so fractured court.

In 1855, Charles XI died, replaced by Charles.

$C:\Users\LAB9CF~1\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image002.jpg$

Charles XII of Bourbon was King of France from the death of his father in 1855 to 1878 shortly after the attempted republican coup. He would be an active King, seeking intervention wherever he could, in Crimea, Mexico, Italy, and Greece. While having good intentions, he was known for jumping in situations too hastily, at the promise of even a minuscule amount of increased prestige. Knowing that while France appeared to head to a new Golden age, in reality, it was under the mighty boot of the Anglais.

The first of these interventions, was Crimea in 1853, which was a success. After that came Italy, which was an even grander success, leading to the annexation of Nice, The Duchy of Savoy and Aosta Valley. Mexico though is regarded by the public and by the academia to have been a waste of resources, and furthermore, nothing came out of it since the Bourbons didn't get the Imperial Throne, The Habsburgs did.
But the public still wasn't burnt out, but The Greek Affair of 1861 would be what broke the camel's back.

The Greek affair was a deal organized between Charles XII and the Hellenic government, where assassinating would kill the current king, Otto of Wittelsbach, and the entire royal family. Then the government in Greece would ask Charles for a king, and his second son, Louis, would be placed on the throne.

$C:\Users\LAB9CF~1\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image003.jpg$

King Otto of The Hellenes

The entire affair was revealed by a paparazzo, and The International community was disgusted.
The Neo-Jacobine faction regained influence, which was lost during after the reign of Charles XI, and thus starting the French Civil War, which would start in 1873, after a stock crash in the US caused the economy to freefall. It would last for 3 years and would destroy much of the northern economy. After the entire debacle, Charles would spend his last two years in silence, wanting to spare the nation of the suffering it was inflicted upon. He would die in 1878, and be succeded by ..., as this new monarch's abilities would be tested by a divided nation.

$C:\Users\LAB9CF~1\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image004.jpg$

(3) Prince Philippe, Dauphin of France, was the eldest of the five sons of Charles XII. Born during the reign of his grandfather, he was known as the Duke of Chartres from birth before becoming Dauphin in 1855. His younger brothers (the Dukes of Nemours [the Prince Louis of the Greek Affair], Penthievre, Aumale and Montpensier) were all handsome and charismatic, whereas Philippe was, in turn, plain and boring and calm in the face of the chaos that would grow in his father's reign - not things that would attract a wife of the required level. His father looked towards Italy and his Bourbon relatives there, but they thumbed their noses at him after the Italian Affair of the 1850's and 1860's. Would Philippe ever find a wife, the French court wondered, but those questions were tossed aside by the French Civil War following the stock market crash. Whilst his father retired from public life, the Dauphin would use much of his personal wealth to fund charities and soup kitchens for the poor, earning him the love from the common people that his father's reign had eroded.

30 when made King in 1878, he continued his charitable work and the press coined him, "Philippe Le Philanthrope" (Because the press love word play and alliteration), which amused him greatly. Still, despite the pressure, as the years turned, he would continue to focus on his management of the country in conjunction with Parliament.

Rumours abounded about the Kings sexual preference, his lack of interest in a wife was unusual but not unknown, but he lacked any interest in a mistress either. Perhaps his interests laid elsewhere? Historians today now believe that Philippe was merely asexual, others believe that his single minded focus on managing the country might have indicated him as being on the autistic spectrum.

He helped manage the economy away from absolute collapse in his thirty years on the throne, never married, but was near universally adored by the people (but not necessarily the nobility or even his four brothers and assorted nephews) and died aged 60 at the Chateau St Cloud near Paris, which had become his residence of choice following his childhood there.

When he died, with no children of his own, the crown passed to ....

Queen Clémentine I, her husband François de Rochechouart de Mortemart and their five children (from left to right: Anne, Louis, Françoise, Marie and Clémentine) painted by the Queen’s sister, Anne Marie de Bourbon

[4] The death of Philip VII was followed by a succession crisis such as France had never expected to see.
Having no children of his own, Philippe could have been succeeded by one of his younger brothers: Louis, Charles, Joseph or Ferdinand. The Greek affair having tarnished Louis’s reputation in the first years of Philippe’s reign, Philippe had excluded him and his descendants from the succession in the first years of his reign and named his brother Charles, Duke of Penthièvre, who had always been close to him, as his successor. But Charles, like his younger brothers, had died leaving only daughters.

In the last weeks of Philippe’s reign, his sister-in-law Marie Adrienne Anne Victurnienne Clémentine de Rochechouart de Mortemart, the Duke of Penthièvre’s widow and a prominent figure of the feminist movement, encouraged him to declare that Salic Law was discriminatory and make her eldest daughter Clémentine (b. 1885)
his heiress. This was met with astonishment by the nobility and soon after Queen Clémentine ascended the throne, several voices were raised against her.
The first were the late king’s male relatives who claimed that Salic Law was indivisible from the French monarchy and insisted that the Queen had no right to be crowned: Louis, Duke of Nemours, tried to overthrow his niece but was so unpopular that his attempt failed. He was sentenced to house arrest and spent the last years of his life in the countryside, dying in 1918.
The other male claimant was Louis Antoine Auguste de Bourbon, Duke of Joinville, Charles XI’s great-grandson through his second son John.

The second contesters were female claimants: one of them was Alicia of Bourbon-Parma, Duchess of Calabria, a descendant of Charles X who reckoned her claim was superior to that of any descendant of Charles XI. Others included Charlotte-Sophie-Victoria of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingfürst, a descendant of Joan II of Navarre, who claimed that since Salic Law was discriminatory, the eldest child of a sovereign should succeed them, whatever its sex. Charlotte-Sophie-Victoria herself was descended from Joan II of Navarre through the eldest of her descendants.

In the months following Clémentine’s succession, her main rival Louis Antoine Auguste de Bourbon offered to marry her. However, she refused, saying this would be as good as accepting the superiority of men over women. She married her maternal cousin François de Rochechouart de Mortemart (b.1881) instead and had five children, only one of whom was a boy. This, she used to say jokingly, was proof that girls were as good as boys. Since her son was the eldest of her children, she willingly agreed to associate him to the government of the country as soon as he was sixteen, in order to calm things down. However, she arranged a marriage between him and one of Alice of Bourbon-Parma’s granddaughters, as well as marriages for her daughters with the sons of Charlotte-Sophie-Victoria of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingfürst, thus publicly scorning all male claimants.

It was during Clémentine’s reign that the First European War broke out. The Duke of Joinville tried to use the situation at his advantage in order to have her abdicate, but Clémentine and her husband held fast, allying with Britain, Spain and Belgium against the Italo-Germanic coalition. The War lasted five years (November 1913- February 1919) and was a great blow to Clémentine, whose husband was seriously injured in 1918. Peace was eventually restored, with France gaining Ethiopia from Italy but losing Alsace and Lorraine to the German Empire. Clémentine’s youngest sister Anne Marie was married to the German Emperor’s second son as part of the Peace Agreement.

Clémentine’s scorn for her male adversaries led people to question her sexuality and although her marriage produced no less than five children, she was rumored to be homosexual. This she always denied, saying that though she felt “the most intense dislike towards her rivals”, she had no love for women either. It has been suggested that the portrait of her family by her youngest sister Anne Marie, one of the last academic painters, was painted at her request to show that her tastes were “straight”.
It is now thought that her venomous attitude toward men came mostly from the fact that as a woman, her right to the throne had been difficult to establish.

Clémentine died, aged 52, in August 1937 and was succeeded by …

Charles IV of Spain
a) Ferdinand VII of Spain
1) Isobel of Spain
b) Charles XI of France
1) Charles XII of France
a) Philip VII of France (prev. Duke of Chartres)
b) Louis, Duke of Nemours
c) Charles, Duke of Penthievre
1) Clémentine Jeanne of Bourbon
a) Louis, Duke of Chartres
b) Clémentine of Bourbon
c) Françoise of Bourbon
d) Anne of Bourbon
e) Marie of Bourbon
2) Marie Adélaïde of Bourbon
3) Louise Eugénie of Bourbon
4) Isabelle Charlotte of Bourbon
5) Anne Marie of Bourbon
d) Joseph, Duke of Aumale
e) Ferdinand, Duke of Montpensier
2) John I, Duke of Joinville
a) John II, Duke of Joinville
1) Louis Antoine Auguste, Duke of Joinville
3) Joseph, Duke of Anjou
c) Francisco, Duke of Cadiz and Orleans

TheNerd_ · Sep 23, 2019

Brita said:
France gaining lands in Northeastern Italy

That's ... Impossible. France has a border with Italy to the West, and I've already given them all Francophone lands in Italy. Maybe France gains Ethiopia?

Brita · Sep 23, 2019

Oh right... And I didn't think about the colonies. Yes, Ethiopia is a good idea, although it was semi-independent OTL. But this can make things interesting in colonial matters. I'll make the edits right now.

wwbgdiaslt · Sep 23, 2019

Formatted ...

Charles IV of Spain

a) Ferdinand VII of Spain

1) Isobel of Spain

b) Charles XI of France

1) Charles XII of France

a) Philip VII of France (prev. Duke of Chartres)
b) Louis, Duke of Nemours
c) Charles, Duke of Penthievre

1) Clémentine Jeanne of Bourbon

a) Louis, Duke of Chartres
b) Clémentine of Bourbon
c) Françoise of Bourbon
d) Anne of Bourbon
e) Marie of Bourbon

2) Marie Adélaïde of Bourbon
3) Louise Eugénie of Bourbon
4) Isabelle Charlotte of Bourbon
5) Anne Marie of Bourbon

d) Joseph, Duke of Aumale
e) Ferdinand, Duke of Montpensier

2) John I, Duke of Joinville

a) John II, Duke of Joinville

1) Louis Antoine Auguste, Duke of Joinville

3) Joseph, Duke of Anjou

c) Francisco, Duke of Cadiz and Orleans

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