List of monarchs III
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What if... the Confederation of the Rhine had adopted a form of elective monarchy?
List of Monarchs of the Confederation of the Rhine
1806-1817: Karl Theodor I (House of Dalberg) [1]
1817-1825: Maximilian I Joseph (House of Wittelsbach) [2]
1825-1853: Ludwig I (House of Wittelsbach) [3]
1853-1863: Augusta I (House of Wettin) [4]
1863-1891: Frederick Napoléon I (House of Bonaparte) [5]
1891-1901: William I (House of Solms-Laubach) [6]
1901-1911: Christian Günther I (House of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen) [7]
1911-1912: Alexander I (House of Leuchtenberg) [8]
1912-1924: Joseph Leopold I (House of Hapsburg-Wurzbürg) [9]
1924-1938: Eugen I (House of Württemberg) [10]
1938-1967: Franziska I (House of Mecklemburg) [11]
Karl Theodor I, Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine,
Prince-Elector of Regensburg, Grand Duke of Frankfurt,
Prince of Aschaffenburg, Bishop of Constance, Regensburg, and Worms.
[1] Karl Theodor I, born in 1744, was the Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine, from his election in 1806 until he died in 1817.
Karl Theodor was born as Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg, in Herrnsheim, near the city of Worms. Karl Theodor devoted himself to studying canon law and entered a career in the Church. Dalberg was distinguished with his patriotic attitude, whether in ecclesiastical matters or in his efforts to galvanize the machinery of the Holy Roman Empire. Karl Theodor became frustrated with the Empire’s inability to create an effective central government for Germany and turned to Napoleon Bonaparte.
In 1803, Karl Theodor became Arch-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire. Dalberg was also the new Elector of Mainz, but, in the same, the Electorate of Mainz was partioned amongst France, Hesse, the Nassaus, and Prussia. Dalberg retained the Aschaffenburg area and was made Prince of Aschaffenburg, he was also compensated with Regensburg and surrounding areas, becoming the Prince of Regensburg.
In early June of 1806, the Confederation of the Rhine was created. Soon, Holy Roman Emperor Francis II soon abdicated his title, ending the existence of the more than thousand-year-old imperial entity. Dalberg joined the Confederation of the Rhine. As a way to continue award states such as Baden, Bavaria, and Württemberg, who would be his main suppliers of soldiers from Germany, the Confederation of the Rhine was made to implement a system of an elective monarchy.
Dalberg was elected Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine by the rulers of Baden, Bavaria, Berg, Hesse-Darmstadt, Regensburg, Saxony, Westphalia, Württemberg, and Würzburg, at the urging of French Emperor Napoleon. A few weeks later, he was crowned as Karl Theodor I in a public ceremony in Frankfurt.
During his reign, Karl Theodor I lifted all restrictions on the Jewish people, and serfdom and socage were abolished. A code similar to the Napoleonic code was enacted, which did away with guilds. A universal metric system of weights and measures was introduced.
However, arguably the most influential thing that Karl Theodor I did was sending a very skilled diplomat, who was from the Principality of Reuss-Lobenstein to the Napoleonic court. The diplomat soon became one of the French Emperor’s closest advisors, convincing Napoleon to uphold the 1807 Treaty of Fontainebleau. He also convinced the Romanovs to have Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna of Russia marry Napoleon and form an alliance with France against Austria, which eventually resulted in the division of the Austrian Empire into various independent kingdoms, duchies, and principalities. Austria proper, itself, was reduced to the rank of a grand duchy.
In 1817, Karl Theodor I passed away peacefully in the city of Regensburg. The electors elected Maximilian I Joseph, King of Bavaria, as his successor.
Maximilian I Joseph, King of Bavaria
[2] There was little doubt whom to elect as the new Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine as the most powerful monarch in the Confederacy was the King of Bavaria, who'd used his ties to the French Emperor to establish himself as the first King of Bavaria and also make his kingdom the most powerful state in the confederacy. By electing a king to lead the Confederation, it made no sense to refer to the leader as a "prince" and so the title was changed to "Kaiser."
This adoption of an imperial title for the leader was diplomatically sold to the French with the argument that in ancient Rome when there was a 'junior' Emperor, he was called Caesar and the senior one was called Augustus. The diplomats who negotiated this with Paris presented the French Emperor a letter in which Maximillian addressed Napoleon as "My Augustus."
Maximilian used his new position to expand Bavaria into what had formerly been western Austria and the Tyrol. His main accomplishment for the Confederacy was establishing a single, unified "Army of the Rhine." When he died the Confederacy elected as its new Kaiser his son Ludwig.
Kaiser Ludwig I, Elector and King of Bavaria
Grand Duke of Salzburg, Duke of Franconia,
Duke in Swabia, Count Palatine of the Rhine.
[3] When his father died, Kaiser Ludwig I was elected as the new ruler of the Confederation of the Rhine. Ludwig I was not pleased with the amount of influence France had over the confederation, as he had previously tried to regain the eastern part of the Palatinate for Bavaria but failed due to the intervention of France.
Ludwig I supported the Greeks in their war of independence against the Ottoman Empire. Kaiser Ludwig also convinced the French Emperor to have France and its allies intervene in the war. After the war, Ludwig's second son, Otto, was elected King of Greece.
Throughout his reign, Ludwig I also encouraged the industrialization of the Confederation of the Rhine. As a patron of the arts and architecture, the Kaiser ordered the construction of many neoclassical buildings across the confederation.
Ludwig I abdicated after being embroiled in an extramarital affair with Marianna Florenzi, which caused a severe backlash against the House of Wittelsbach. The electors elected Augusta I, Queen Dowager of Saxony, as his successor.
Kaiserin Augusta I "the Unexpected"
[4] With the Florenzi Affair staining the reputation of the Wittelsbach dynasty, the consensus that had been established around Ludwig I's son Maximilian was weakened. His two main rivals were King William I of Württemberg and Prince Karl-Anton of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. The succession crisis started with the abdication of Kaiser Ludwig III in February well into October, when a compromise solution was found: the old Queen of Saxony, Augusta I, was to be put on the throne until tensions had dissipated, as she had no apparent heir and was essentially seen as a way to gain time on the matter. This resulted in uproar from the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and the Prussian ambassador who had supported him, claiming that the election of a woman was illegal, while the proponents didn't see how much damage an old lady who was expected to die in a handful of years could do, and just wanted the Prussians to stop meddling with the elections. While the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen threatened to leave the Confederation, he never followed through, and slowly sunk into irrelevance because of his own policy of non-cooperation with the Confederal government.
Queen Augusta was indeed old: she was almost 70 years old and was in her youth expected to become Queen of Poland. These plans didn't go far, as Poland was instead partitioned, and she never got an occasion to marry her Polish suitor, Prince Jozef Poniatowski. But these plans might have very well led her to the Rhenish throne, as they had made her ambitious and had led her to take a huge interest in matters of state. She made herself inseparable from her father, who had become King of Saxony in 1806, and slowly but surely built up her influence, that crystallized in the Constitution of 1819. She had enticed her father to commit to reforms by reminding him of the Golden Liberty that had ruled their beloved Poland, but also pointing out the success of rationalizations that had propelled the French Empire forward. And among the administrative reorganizations and the economic reforms stood a small clause: a father who would die without male issue could transfer his possessions to his daughter instead. From any father, to any daughter. That is how she climbed to the throne of Saxony.
While Queen of Saxony, she worked very hard at industrializing her Kingdom, trying to replace Britain's role as the factory Russia relied on. Thus, she poured all the Royal Treasure into the creation of a company: the Köeniglisches Eisenbahnen und Fabriken Gemeinschaft, Royal Railroads and Factories Corporation. Her goal was to buy all the necessary infrastructure for Saxony to become a major industrial center, and it worked to a certain extent: her reign oversaw the construction of a dense network of railroads and canals that was comparable to the one of Northern England, and the steel production of Saxony rivaled the one of Silesia. She also tried to given her fellow women more rights, hoping that the more advanced her lady subjects' rights would be, the less she was likely to be challenged by her nephew for the throne.
Even though she had been elected on the assumption that she would just die quietly and allow for the situation to calm down after the abdication of King Ludwig I, awarding her the nickname of "Imperial Wedge" in England, she was quite proactive in her two main fields of expertise: industrializing and backstabbing people to get her position forward. The Napoleonic System that had held for nearly half a century was cracking more and more, and she used this opportunity to pull out concessions on the Elbe, Rhine and Weser from Napoleon II's clenched and rageful claws, using these new concessions to propel the Rhenish industry forward.
The joke is often made that she clinged to power so much she took three years to die from tuberculosis just to stay Empress for ten years, which would not really be below her ... When she drew her final breath, in November 1863, she had largely exceeded anything that was expected from her. She had never been married, so the question of the Confederal succession was once again up in the air, until the electors settled for Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia.
Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte,
King of Westphalia upon his election
[5] Of the three large states of the Confederacy, the Kingdom of Westphalia, formed by the French Emperor Napoléon I, had not seen its King be elected the Kaiser, while the two other large states, Bavaria and Saxony had.
The first King, Napoléon's younger brother, Jérôme Bonaparte, had been made the King of the state formed from other smaller states and parts of Prussia and of the former British Hanover in 1807. Jérôme had previously emigrated to America and married an American, but his brother forced him to return to France and annulled his marriage, making his first son unable to inherit. In 1803 Jérôme had married Princess Katharina Friederike of Württemberg, daughter of King Frederick I of Württemberg and through her mother, the Duchess Augusta of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, she was a grand niece of George III Hanover, King of Great Britain and the elector of Hanover before it was absorbed into Westphalia.
Jérôme I had never been a contender to the throne of Kaiser in the elections of 1817, 1825, or 1853. The other electors, despite their alliance with the French, didn't want a French Kaiser, a fact that Jérôme never could put behind him as King of Westphalia. But his son and heir, Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte, the first born of his marriage with Queen Katharina, was born in 1815 in Cassel, the capitol of the Kingdom of Westphalia, and raised as a German prince.
As Jérôme I lived a long life to the age of 75, dying in 1860, Frederick Napoléon didn't become King of Westphalia until he was 45. As both the Royal Prince and as King, Frederick Napoléon had supported Kaiserin Augusta against his own cousin, Napoléon II of the French, over the Elbe, Weser, and Rhine Concessions, convincing the other electors he was a true German and not a toady of the French.
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon proved his mettle in the Rhenish-Prussian War of 1872 when the Prussian attempted to force the Confederacy into a union with Prussia with Berlin as senior state and the Kings of Prussia hereditary Kaisers. By then Prussia had absorbed Schleswig-Holstein and Swedish Pomerania to the north of the Confederacy as well as regions to the east.
The war was triggered when Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, the son of the late Prince Karl-Anton, announced that Sigmaringen was leaving the Confederacy and he swore allegiance to King Wilhelm I of Prussia as his Kaiser. His claim was that the Confederacy was actually little more than an alliance of independent states and Sigmaringen had the right to leave it and join with Prussia in a new, centralized Empire.
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon called for a meeting of the electors in Cassel to determine if this was their will, could member states leave the Confederacy or not. While they were deliberating, news came to the court that Prussian forces had not only entered Sigmaringen, but moved into the Elbe Concession on the right bank of the Elbe, which Kaiserin Augusta had seized from the French. It had been treated as its own small state, but both Westphalia and Sigmaringen claimed it as part of their state.
The electors agreed this Prussian occupation was an invasion of the Confederacy. Quickly they put forth the Cassel Declaration that the Confederacy of the Rhine was in truth an indivisible union, that the Elbe Concession was part of Westphalia, and that the Rhine Kaiserreich (a term used for the first time in the Declaration) was at war with Prussia.
At the same time, the Prussians invaded the Weser Concession (Frisian lands along the North Sea) and the low countries, still part of the French Empire. This, and the treatment of the French Imperial officials in the Elbe Concession by the Prussians, brought France into the war. When Kaiserin Augusta had taken the Concessions, she'd been advised by Frederick Napoléon to both pay France for them and to give the Imperial French officials in them a choice- remain in the Concessions, become citizens of the states they'd be annexed to, and receive a pension for life or emigrate to the French Empire. Part of this agreement, which Napoléon II had accepted begrudgingly, was that those who chose to stay in the Concession would remain citizens of France, having dual citizenship and could freely moved back and forth.
The Prussians now revoked this in the Elbe Confederacy, both the dual citizenship and the life time pensions.
The tension between the Rhine and France was gone.
The war at first went well for Prussia as their forces swept through the low lands into France proper, intending to conquer Paris and force France to surrender before invading the rest of the Rhine. But this changed when the Poles rebelled and the Russian Empire invaded Prussia from the east "To protect our Slavic cousins from the Huns."
The Army of the Rhine now attacked Prussia and the Prussian offensive collapsed. By late 1872 Berlin sued for peace. The Treaty of Paris established a new post war Europe. The Polish provinces of Prussia were annexed into the Russian Empire. Swedish Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein were added to the Rhine Kaiserreich and Sigmaringen was restored, with its former Hohenzollern rulers exiled to Prussia. Prussian rulers were denied the term of Kaiser. The provinces of the French Empire in the lowlands were restored to France.
After the Treaty of Paris, the Rhine Kaiserreich enacted more reforms to establish itself as more a federation than a confederacy or alliance. A federal government was established with limited powers- besides commanding the Army of the Rhine that had previously been established, now the federal government would have a democratically elected legislature that would govern over a unified postal system, financial system, and foreign affairs, including ambassadors. Each member state would also have a constitutional monarchal government. Finally, an Imperial Navy replaced the Frisian navy that had come with the Weser Concession. A written Constitution was agreed on also and it enshrined the practice that the Kaiser was always an elected position but added two new limitations. The first had been practiced but not established, the elected Kaiser must be a legitimate monarch of a member state. The second was that a supermajority of 2/3rds of the Electors could demand an abdication of a Kaiser or Kaiserin if needed. The Federal legislature would meet at Halle while the Kaiser would reign from the capital of his or her member state, but also have a residence in Halle.
Great Britain, the Swedish Empire, the Duchy of Austria, and the Hungarian Empire were also signatories to the Treaty of Paris as well as the states that had been at war. In the treaty, Great Britain finally officially ceded its Hanover claim. the Duchy of Austria was allowed to reclaim the term Kaiser for its monarch (an intentional slap in the face to Prussia,) and both Britain and Sweden were compensated for their ceded territories in the Rhine. (Hanover and Pomerania.)
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon now turned his attention to furthering the industrialization of the Rhine, the building of the Imperial Navy, and in the 1880s, the establishment of the Rhenish Colonial Empire in the Pacific and Sub-Sahara Africa (Tanzania, Rhenish Congo, Namibia, Kamerun, and Togo.)
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon had married while still the Royal Prince of Westphalia, a minor Württemberg Countess, Regina von Harken of Tettnang. They had many children.
The Kaiser died in 1891 at the age of 75. He was quite obese by then, unlike when he was younger, and he died of a heart attack. The Electors met and elected King William of Frisia to replace him.
Kaiser William I, King of Frisia, Prince of Erfurt, Hereditary Prince of Solms-Laubach
[6] The Principality of Erfurt had been directly ruled by the Emperors of France since 1807. That changed in 1860, when the Principality was occupied by Rhenish forces and Emperor Napoleon II was force to grant independence to Erfurt. William's father, Friedrich von Solms-Laubach, a wealthy industrialist and landowner in the area, was elected to the hereditary position of Prince of Erfurt.
In 1874, Friedrich was elected as King of Frisia, by the Frisian Parliament. Ten years before, William was born in Erfurt City Palace. In 1889, King Friedrich I died of a stroke, and the 25-year-old William became the new ruler of Frisia. As King, William I recognize the rights of Peter II as Grand Duke of Oldenburg.
William was a massive supporter of Frederick Napoléon I's reforms of the Rhine Kaiserreich. When the Kaiser died in 1891, there were many candidates in the election of that year. However, the electors eventually selected the young and energetic King William I.
During the William ten-year long reign, he mended relations with Prussia. He also continued the expansion of the Rhenish Army and Navy. In 1901, Kaiser William I was assassinated by a train bomb from a Russian nationalist, while on a diplomatic voyage to the Kingdom of Nothern Lusitania. The electors elected Prince Christian Günther III of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen as his successor.
Christian Günther III, Hereditary Prince
of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen
[7] It had been brewing for a long time and finally the Electors achieved their goal. After a series of the larger states putting their king or queen on the throne of the Kaiserreich, the smaller states elected one of their own. The fact that Frederick I's reforms had changed the system so that every monarch of every member state was now an elector gave them the power. At the previous election their desire to choose one of themselves had been overridden by a desire to choose one of the two new member states added to the Kaiserreich. But now that had occurred and it was time to select a monarch from one of the smallest member states.
It so happened that one of the smallest states, the Principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen was ruled by one of the oldest and most renown families of the Kaiserreich, the House of Schwarzburg. The small principality might not have a lot of sway in the Kaiserreich, but the ruling family had prestige.
Christian Günther III, named after his great, great grandfather, succeed his grandfather, Günther Frederick Charles II (b. 1805, r. 1835-1889) in 1889 when the old Prince died at the age of 83. Christian was the son of Imperial Prince Charles Günther (1830-1872), who'd died in the Rhenish-Prussian War. Christian had been born in 1855 in the Sondershausen Palace and was 17 when his father died and he became heir. When he ascended to the throne of the small principality, he was 34, married to Princess Sophia Hilde of Saxe-Altenburg, and the father of three children.
His rule as a Prince had been unremarkable, but his participation at the Election of 1891 had riveted the other Electors. He'd dominated the coalition of the smaller states with his charisma and eloquence and had been the coalitions leader in advocating the then hoped for candidate from the smaller states, his father-in-law, Prince Heinrich Wettin of Saxe-Altenberg. The election had gone round and round in circles until finally Christian came away from a meeting with King William, one of the two candidates from the states formed out of the Concessions (the other was Prince Karl of Alsace-Lorraine,) that convinced him the Kaiserreich needed a young dynamic leader instead of an older man like his father-in-law or Prince Karl.
Christian, despite being from a landlocked principality, had believed in the need of a strong navy and had himself served in the Kaisserreich Navy as a young man. It was King's William's commitment to that and the awareness that the Kaiserreich needed a new modern fleet of steel plated, steam powered, Battleships that had convinced Christian to support him. When Christian spoke of this to the Electors it broke the deadlock between the three contenders and the young William was elected.
Swiftly the Kaiser made Christian the Minister of the Navy and it was the Prince who did the leg work in building the Navy. When the Kaiser was assassinated, the Electors had no question whom to select for the new Kaiser, being the first of his name as Kaiser.
The new Kaiser knew the threats now facing the Rhine and her German allies of Prussia and Austria. The Russian Nationalist who killed Kaiser William was not an isolated murderer. He was part of a Revolution that was sweeping through several states. While the Russian Empire fell apart into a terrible civil war, the Hungarian Empire's Revolution happened swiftly and as the Electors met in Halle in 1901, the Marxist Workers Coalition of Socialist States was being set up in Budapest, replacing the Empire that stretched from the Danube to the Aegean Islands Meanwhile the Swedish Empire went to war with the Russian Socialist State that was itself at war with the rump Russian Empire to its south that was still in control in Central Asia, the Caucuses, and Ukraine.
Shortly after that the tension between the French Empire and the British Empire over their colonial territories flashed into several conflicts in Africa and Asia. The two Empires faced each other in Europe, waiting for the other to attack.
Europe was a powder keg and the Kaiser had to lead his Reich into a new and strange Century as new and horrid weapons of war changed things.
The opinion of most in the three members of the Germanic Alliance was to stand with Sweden and the Russian Empire against the Russian Socialists. But Christian, the Rhenish Council of Electors, and the National Legislature all agreed that the last thing needed was war. Peace through strength was the motto of the new administration and the efforts to build the strongest Navy and modernize the Army continued. Over the next decade that meant armoured cars, machine guns, undersee ships, airships, and aeroplanes. It also meant expanding the use of radio and building new roads, railroads, and telephone lines.
But War did come in 1909 when a French ship that had been attacked at sea sought aid at Rhenish Zanzibar and then British ships attacked the African Rhenish colony. The local Rhenish officials had no choice but to defend their colony. When word reach London of this, the British decided the stalemate in Europe would not last if the Germanic Alliance was siding with the French and decisive action needed to occur to force an end before an ongoing war such as the Swedish-Russian Socialist-Russian Empire War just dragged on and on. So the British mounted an invasion of Frisia and Westphalia in an attempt to demolish the Rhenish Fleet before they could react.
They largely succeeded with those at port, but most of the fleet was in the Baltic and the Kaiser had ordered the North Sea fleet to sea.
This was the Hungarians' chance to attack the Ottomans and take Constantinople. Now Europe was involved in three separate wars and all of them had theatres outside Europe proper as Japan and the United States invaded Siberia and attacked the Russian Socialist State from the East.
A British expeditionary force invaded Frisia and then swept through the lowlands and took northern France before their advance was stopped short of Paris. As feared, this became another stalemate of giant armies facing each other as was happening in Russia. Trench warfare developed and the front went from the North Sea inland then ran to the south until it headed back west to the Bay of Biscay south of Brittany.
In 1911, the Kaiser was visiting Hamburg to inspect the fleet stationed there when a bombing raid killed him. In the middle of a war, another Kaiser had been killed.
[8] The Imperial election of 1911 saw the rise to the Imperial dignity of the Grand Duke of Frankfurt, Alexander von Leuchtenberg. A descendant of Eugène de Beuharnais, the Duke of Frankfurt and lieutenant of the Grande Armée, the young Grand Duke has a strong interest in military matters. He was serving as Marshall at the time of his election, and won the vote of the princes thanks to the ferocious campaigning of his wife Charlotte von Isenburg, who presented him as the obvious candidate for such a situation.
The Marshall-Emperor was delighted to learn this, as he had been blindsighted by what he perceived as shameful incompetence from several high ranking whom he couldn't demote without Imperial approval. Now he had it. During the months of stalemate that marked the second half of 1911, he reorganized the army as well as the rationing system, hoping to improve the morale and efficiency of the army. His goal was to simply make this war look unwinable to the British: if he could make their logistics ruinous while maintaining a facade of abundance, he could make the Rhine look like too big of a prey to swallow.
For this, he developed an extensive fleet of submarines: the British had to cross the Channel to maintain their positions, the Continentals didn't, so he'd do his best to undermine them at every occasion. In another effort to undermine the British war effort, and being well aware of the difficulties they were facing in the wake of colonial unrest, he sent advisors and informants to separatist movements across the Empire, while promising to his own oversea colonies that they would be granted self-rule. The final straw was the Emerald Plan, an infiltration of Irish Rights movements to radicalize them and offer them weapons. In the end, the massive riots and guerillas across the British Empire, the seemingly unwavering determination of the compact Rhenish Confederation and the crumbling logistics of the British Expeditionary Corp in Europe started, in Britain, to undermine public support for a war now seen as pointless and unlikely to reap any benefits, far from the easy retaliatory disbarkment in France that has originally been promised.
However, Kaiser Alexander I would not get to see the end of this war, as he died in February 1912 during a visit to the trenches, where an undercover British spy seized the occasion to shoot the Emperor to death. The Emperor died, sheltering the nurse he was discussing with seconds ago from the bullets of his murderer. He was succeeded by Joseph Leopold I, Grand Duke and Titular Elector of Würzburg.
Kaiser Joseph Leopold I, Grand Duke and Titular Elector of Würzburg
[9] Most thought that a Hapsburg would never come to be the ruler of the Confederation of the Rhine, ever, but unexpected times are bound to yield unexpected results. After the news of the assassination of the Kaiser Alexander I, it appeared as though that Prince Eugen of Würrtemberg, after he gave his now infamous speech, "The Vengeful Rhine" which called for the avenging for the three assassinated Kaisers. However, Grand Duke Joseph Leopold of Würzburg convinced the electors that wrathful vengeance against Britain and Russia would only stoke even more resentment from the countries against the Rhine Kaiserreich. His arguments were convinced many as Joseph Leopold I was elected, nearly unanimously by the electors of the confederation.
With the approaching of the 1912 general election in the United Kingdom, Joseph Leopold sought for the Peace Coalition (made-up of Conservative, Liberal, and Labour party members who wanted peace with the Rhine and its allies) to win the election. A shrewd man, Joseph Leopold believed that it was better to ''... give a man a thousand little cuts than one big slash.'' Kaiser Joseph Leopold I ran fake stories of British extremists blowing up houses of government officials with children in them, which caused much anger in Britain, as they wanted to see their country and the war as righteous, not as a vile force of evil.
The Peace Coalition won in a landslide in the British general election of 1912, and soon an armistice was made, and a new peace followed, as well. The Kaiser also aided with the Rome Agreements, which ended the war between Hungary and the newly formed Kingdom of Anatolia and the Russian Civil War.
After peace was restored to Europe, the Kaiser led the Rhine Kaiserreich into an economic and cultural golden age. He liberalized many aspects of Rhenish society including the decriminalization of homosexuality, in 1921. However, with the Kaiser increasing liberalization of the country, the conservative elites off the Rhine Kaiserreich became increasingly alienated. In 1924, most electors forced the Kaiser to abdicate, and Joseph Leopold was replaced by King Eugen I of Württemberg.
King Eugen I of Württemberg
[10] When Prince Eugen of Württemberg made his firebrand speech in 1912, he spoke for his own father, King Frederick II of Württemberg, to be the next Kaiser. The Prince was 27 at the time and a veteran of the War.
King Frederick II of Württemberg. r. 1888-1919
The Prince had never given up on his political advocacy for a more conservative, vengeful Kaiserreich and when his father died in 1919 and he became King Eugen I, the hopes of the younger conservative elites, who called themselves the Lineale Party, transferred from his father to the new King. By 1924 they gained enough power to force Joseph Leopold to abdicate and put Eugen on the throne at the age of 39.
The Kaiserreich changed now and went into a totally different direction. While it had already evolved from a Confederacy into a Federation, now the Kaiser and the Lineale made it a much more centralized Empire. He made the Imperial Palace in Halle his permanent residence and appointed a royal viceroy to fulfil his duties back in Stuttgart, the capital of Württemberg. Although the old states were not replaced nor their monarchs, they were either united or divided into different Kaiserreich 'regions.' (Small states were united and large ones divided.) The actual governance of a region was done by a ReichFuhrer appointed by the Kaiser and approved by the Federal legislature, which was little more than a rubberstamp. The Federal legislature had become this due to it being trimmed down. The actual electors who ruled in their various states now were just figureheads with no power, unless they also happened to be an appointed ReichFuhrer, which only occurred if they were one of the Lineale, who dominated the Council of Electors. The same was true of the democratically elected state legislatures, which had all power stripped from them except ceremonial duties and given to the ReichFuhrers and their staffs.
The first order of business of the new Kaiser and the Lineale was what came to be known as the Vereinigung der Vier, the 'Unification of the Four.' It began with the inclusion of Prussia in the Kaiserreich in 1928. This greatly increased the dominance of the conservative elites, as only the Prussian nobility who shared their values were added to the Council of Electors. In 1931 the Empire of Austria was dissolved and its various provinces added to the Kaiserreich. Both Prussia and Austria were added with the other German states passing a law for the Vereinigung. But the fourth addition was purely by force as German speaking Switzerland was just annexed by the Kaiserreich.
Some of the liberal reforms that had occurred were undone. Homosexuality was again outlawed, divorce was made very difficult, non German minorities were forced to swear loyalty oaths (and Jews and Romani were consider non Germans whether they spoke German or not,) and a centralized schooling system was imposed on the Kaiserreich that included a very strong element of teaching German patriotism.
The industrialization of the Empire now went full steam ahead to increase the military. As one of the ongoing policies of the Lineale was the further expanse of the Kaiserreich to include all territory where there were German speaking ethic groups, it seed more and more likely that the Kaiserreich would go to war with Hungary's Marxist Workers' Coalition of Socialist States (WCSS), as many German speaking people lived there and had for centuries and with the French Empire, as the Lineale consiered Dutch a German dialect.
This of course drove the former ally of France into a new alliance with Britain and the WCSS, which was allied with the Russian Socialist State.
The Kaiserreich was on the edge of war when those who'd opposed the Lineale and their Kaiser took to the streets in protest and general strikes. While the Lineale were convinced the Kaiserreich was stronger than other nations and would win a war quickly, many in the Expanded Empire thought this was folly. They knew that all their potential enemies had also built up their military and that this time the United States might side with the British.
The Revolution of 1938 declared the reforms of the the last 14 years were null and void and ran its own new election for the federal legislature. Now there were two governments in Halle. But the Revolutionaries quickly took control, arrested most of the Lineale and forced the Kaiser to abdicate. Eugen not only was forced to give up being the Kaiser, but he had to abdicate his kingship, his cousin instead took the throne of Württemberg in Stuttgart. Eugen was given only one of the family's smaller castles and put under house arrest there. His former title of "Prince" was, however, granted him again.
With the arrest of the Lineale electors and their replacement by other sympatico with the Revolution, a new council of electors chose the Grand-Duchess Franziska of Mecklemburg to be Kaiserin. Now the question was would peace be made with France, Britain, Hungary, and Russia or not? Would the Vereinigung be undone or would one German Reich continue? Would the member states' power to govern be restored or the new system continue but liberalized and made democratic?
[11] Franziska von Mecklemburg was one of the newly installed nobles, having being highly and very vocally opposed to both her cousins, Frederick Franzis VI von Mecklemburg-Schwerin and Adolphus-Frederick VI von Mecklemburg-Sterlitz, who were both Linealen. The new Grand-Duchess of Mecklemburg, however, was at first supportive of the Conservative ideas of Eugen von Württemberg: she was as mad as he was at the liberal policies of Joseph Leopold von Würzburg and resented the forced separation between the Rhine Confederation and the other Germans. However, the reign of the one she invested so many hopes in in the first years soon transformed into a journey through the political spectrum: the young Conservative princess in her late teens had by 1938 evolved into an anti-Lineale protestor who embraced ideas ranging from moderate reformism to full blown progressivism. She had been instrumental to the ultimate downfall of Eugen I, working hard at undermining Lineale support in the Northeast.
She wasn't the favourite by far when the election cycle started, but her fiery candidacy speech had gained her the support of the one group that was usually left out in those matters: the crowd. And little by little, with a lot of passion and shaming of the opposition, she was elected by a small margin over the more moderate Ludwig of Bavaria, her supports in the Electoral Assembly hoping her oratory talents and public opposition to Lineale ideology would allow her to reassure the foreign powers. And, after sending a swarm of ambassadors and delegates to gain time with Britain, France, Russia and Hungary, she set out to solve the Swiss Question: in her opinion, there was no keeping Switzerland, and Germany would have to puke it if she didn't want to choke on it. Thus, canton by canton referendums were organized, and all the Swiss cantons chose independance, ridding the Empire of a first problem.
However, appeasement with the rest of Europe was harder to achieve: everyone had demands, and not all of them were reasonable. To appease France, she accepted to reevaluate the Rhine concession's border, accepting that French speaking municipalities (including Saverne, Ferrette and Altkirch as well as a good chunk of the Vosges mountains) would be able to carry on referendums to reunite with Germany. To appease Britain, she accepted to partake in disarmament conferences. To appease Hungary, she accepted to demilitarize the boundary in exchange for guarantees for the German communities in Hungary. Russia, however, was a tougher client: what did the Socialist Council want that she could offer? In the end, a deal was struck that Russia and Germany would cooperate economically at the condition that worker protection laws would be passed in Germany.
Considering the future of Germany ... despite the personal feelings of the newly installed princes of the Empire, it was evident that the idea of unification was popular, and that reverting it was only going to create fuel for a potential Lineale reignition. It was thus agreed in backdoor discussions that German unity would be presented as a nonpartisan theme that every current party supports, regardless of personal feelings. However, that was pretty much the only domestic issue they could all agree on. While a lot of more moderate Princes wanted to purely revert to the pre-Eugen politics, there were also those who admitted that the administrative organization of the Linealen could be reformed and liberalized. Kaiserin Franziska disagreed with both. To her, going back to the executive supremacy of Princes was only going to lead to other terrible decisions in the future, and was simply not an option; but the Linealen had put on a administration that was essentially the negation of local particularities and of the Confederal nature of the government. Thus, she offered her own set of reforms: to her, the basic cell of the new German government should be the Municipality, the Princes acting as advisors, ceremonial figures and subsidizers, and the German government would proceed from those two authorities. To Kaiserin Franziska, Germany needed a new Constitution, even if it would take years ....
She would abdicate in 1967, after 29 frustrating years of attempting to make her vision of a new and better Germany come to life. In 29 years, the Imperial Constitution had garnered two fifths of the Imperial Assembly's votes: in the 1967 draft, the Constitution considers the realms (Counties to Kingdoms) and the municipalities as the two base units of the Empire, admits as its Legislative Assembly (but not Constitutional Assembly) a monocameral legislature based on proportional vote for one half and municipal delegates for the other, guarantees freedom of expression and faith, protects "individual property" and guarantees voting rights to anyone 17 years or older, it bans discriminations based on gender, ethnic background or faith, and it is accompanied by a "Social Contract" that defines a number of base protections for parents, children, workers, the environment, and a bunch of other stuff. Main points of disagreement include what power are given to the Princes, the existence or not of a Princely Assembly and its potential powers and the mode of election of the Kaiser of Kaiserin. But those are questions for a younger monarch. Franziska is 59, she's feeling old and her witt isn't as sharp as it used to be. Besides, she's the only on in this country that didn't get to enjoy life resuming after the rigors of Lineale social corsetry. The rest is up to the Constitutional Assembly. In absence of a proper structure to elect the next German Emperor, the Constitutional Assembly has been tasked to elect her successor. Her reign would be followed by ________________________
List of Monarchs of the Confederation of the Rhine
1806-1817: Karl Theodor I (House of Dalberg) [1]
1817-1825: Maximilian I Joseph (House of Wittelsbach) [2]
1825-1853: Ludwig I (House of Wittelsbach) [3]
1853-1863: Augusta I (House of Wettin) [4]
1863-1891: Frederick Napoléon I (House of Bonaparte) [5]
1891-1901: William I (House of Solms-Laubach) [6]
1901-1911: Christian Günther I (House of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen) [7]
1911-1912: Alexander I (House of Leuchtenberg) [8]
1912-1924: Joseph Leopold I (House of Hapsburg-Wurzbürg) [9]
1924-1938: Eugen I (House of Württemberg) [10]
1938-1967: Franziska I (House of Mecklemburg) [11]
Karl Theodor I, Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine,
Prince-Elector of Regensburg, Grand Duke of Frankfurt,
Prince of Aschaffenburg, Bishop of Constance, Regensburg, and Worms.
[1] Karl Theodor I, born in 1744, was the Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine, from his election in 1806 until he died in 1817.
Karl Theodor was born as Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg, in Herrnsheim, near the city of Worms. Karl Theodor devoted himself to studying canon law and entered a career in the Church. Dalberg was distinguished with his patriotic attitude, whether in ecclesiastical matters or in his efforts to galvanize the machinery of the Holy Roman Empire. Karl Theodor became frustrated with the Empire’s inability to create an effective central government for Germany and turned to Napoleon Bonaparte.
In 1803, Karl Theodor became Arch-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire. Dalberg was also the new Elector of Mainz, but, in the same, the Electorate of Mainz was partioned amongst France, Hesse, the Nassaus, and Prussia. Dalberg retained the Aschaffenburg area and was made Prince of Aschaffenburg, he was also compensated with Regensburg and surrounding areas, becoming the Prince of Regensburg.
In early June of 1806, the Confederation of the Rhine was created. Soon, Holy Roman Emperor Francis II soon abdicated his title, ending the existence of the more than thousand-year-old imperial entity. Dalberg joined the Confederation of the Rhine. As a way to continue award states such as Baden, Bavaria, and Württemberg, who would be his main suppliers of soldiers from Germany, the Confederation of the Rhine was made to implement a system of an elective monarchy.
Dalberg was elected Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine by the rulers of Baden, Bavaria, Berg, Hesse-Darmstadt, Regensburg, Saxony, Westphalia, Württemberg, and Würzburg, at the urging of French Emperor Napoleon. A few weeks later, he was crowned as Karl Theodor I in a public ceremony in Frankfurt.
During his reign, Karl Theodor I lifted all restrictions on the Jewish people, and serfdom and socage were abolished. A code similar to the Napoleonic code was enacted, which did away with guilds. A universal metric system of weights and measures was introduced.
However, arguably the most influential thing that Karl Theodor I did was sending a very skilled diplomat, who was from the Principality of Reuss-Lobenstein to the Napoleonic court. The diplomat soon became one of the French Emperor’s closest advisors, convincing Napoleon to uphold the 1807 Treaty of Fontainebleau. He also convinced the Romanovs to have Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna of Russia marry Napoleon and form an alliance with France against Austria, which eventually resulted in the division of the Austrian Empire into various independent kingdoms, duchies, and principalities. Austria proper, itself, was reduced to the rank of a grand duchy.
In 1817, Karl Theodor I passed away peacefully in the city of Regensburg. The electors elected Maximilian I Joseph, King of Bavaria, as his successor.
Maximilian I Joseph, King of Bavaria
[2] There was little doubt whom to elect as the new Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine as the most powerful monarch in the Confederacy was the King of Bavaria, who'd used his ties to the French Emperor to establish himself as the first King of Bavaria and also make his kingdom the most powerful state in the confederacy. By electing a king to lead the Confederation, it made no sense to refer to the leader as a "prince" and so the title was changed to "Kaiser."
This adoption of an imperial title for the leader was diplomatically sold to the French with the argument that in ancient Rome when there was a 'junior' Emperor, he was called Caesar and the senior one was called Augustus. The diplomats who negotiated this with Paris presented the French Emperor a letter in which Maximillian addressed Napoleon as "My Augustus."
Maximilian used his new position to expand Bavaria into what had formerly been western Austria and the Tyrol. His main accomplishment for the Confederacy was establishing a single, unified "Army of the Rhine." When he died the Confederacy elected as its new Kaiser his son Ludwig.
Kaiser Ludwig I, Elector and King of Bavaria
Grand Duke of Salzburg, Duke of Franconia,
Duke in Swabia, Count Palatine of the Rhine.
[3] When his father died, Kaiser Ludwig I was elected as the new ruler of the Confederation of the Rhine. Ludwig I was not pleased with the amount of influence France had over the confederation, as he had previously tried to regain the eastern part of the Palatinate for Bavaria but failed due to the intervention of France.
Ludwig I supported the Greeks in their war of independence against the Ottoman Empire. Kaiser Ludwig also convinced the French Emperor to have France and its allies intervene in the war. After the war, Ludwig's second son, Otto, was elected King of Greece.
Throughout his reign, Ludwig I also encouraged the industrialization of the Confederation of the Rhine. As a patron of the arts and architecture, the Kaiser ordered the construction of many neoclassical buildings across the confederation.
Ludwig I abdicated after being embroiled in an extramarital affair with Marianna Florenzi, which caused a severe backlash against the House of Wittelsbach. The electors elected Augusta I, Queen Dowager of Saxony, as his successor.
Kaiserin Augusta I "the Unexpected"
[4] With the Florenzi Affair staining the reputation of the Wittelsbach dynasty, the consensus that had been established around Ludwig I's son Maximilian was weakened. His two main rivals were King William I of Württemberg and Prince Karl-Anton of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. The succession crisis started with the abdication of Kaiser Ludwig III in February well into October, when a compromise solution was found: the old Queen of Saxony, Augusta I, was to be put on the throne until tensions had dissipated, as she had no apparent heir and was essentially seen as a way to gain time on the matter. This resulted in uproar from the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and the Prussian ambassador who had supported him, claiming that the election of a woman was illegal, while the proponents didn't see how much damage an old lady who was expected to die in a handful of years could do, and just wanted the Prussians to stop meddling with the elections. While the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen threatened to leave the Confederation, he never followed through, and slowly sunk into irrelevance because of his own policy of non-cooperation with the Confederal government.
Queen Augusta was indeed old: she was almost 70 years old and was in her youth expected to become Queen of Poland. These plans didn't go far, as Poland was instead partitioned, and she never got an occasion to marry her Polish suitor, Prince Jozef Poniatowski. But these plans might have very well led her to the Rhenish throne, as they had made her ambitious and had led her to take a huge interest in matters of state. She made herself inseparable from her father, who had become King of Saxony in 1806, and slowly but surely built up her influence, that crystallized in the Constitution of 1819. She had enticed her father to commit to reforms by reminding him of the Golden Liberty that had ruled their beloved Poland, but also pointing out the success of rationalizations that had propelled the French Empire forward. And among the administrative reorganizations and the economic reforms stood a small clause: a father who would die without male issue could transfer his possessions to his daughter instead. From any father, to any daughter. That is how she climbed to the throne of Saxony.
While Queen of Saxony, she worked very hard at industrializing her Kingdom, trying to replace Britain's role as the factory Russia relied on. Thus, she poured all the Royal Treasure into the creation of a company: the Köeniglisches Eisenbahnen und Fabriken Gemeinschaft, Royal Railroads and Factories Corporation. Her goal was to buy all the necessary infrastructure for Saxony to become a major industrial center, and it worked to a certain extent: her reign oversaw the construction of a dense network of railroads and canals that was comparable to the one of Northern England, and the steel production of Saxony rivaled the one of Silesia. She also tried to given her fellow women more rights, hoping that the more advanced her lady subjects' rights would be, the less she was likely to be challenged by her nephew for the throne.
Even though she had been elected on the assumption that she would just die quietly and allow for the situation to calm down after the abdication of King Ludwig I, awarding her the nickname of "Imperial Wedge" in England, she was quite proactive in her two main fields of expertise: industrializing and backstabbing people to get her position forward. The Napoleonic System that had held for nearly half a century was cracking more and more, and she used this opportunity to pull out concessions on the Elbe, Rhine and Weser from Napoleon II's clenched and rageful claws, using these new concessions to propel the Rhenish industry forward.
The joke is often made that she clinged to power so much she took three years to die from tuberculosis just to stay Empress for ten years, which would not really be below her ... When she drew her final breath, in November 1863, she had largely exceeded anything that was expected from her. She had never been married, so the question of the Confederal succession was once again up in the air, until the electors settled for Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia.
Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte,
King of Westphalia upon his election
[5] Of the three large states of the Confederacy, the Kingdom of Westphalia, formed by the French Emperor Napoléon I, had not seen its King be elected the Kaiser, while the two other large states, Bavaria and Saxony had.
The first King, Napoléon's younger brother, Jérôme Bonaparte, had been made the King of the state formed from other smaller states and parts of Prussia and of the former British Hanover in 1807. Jérôme had previously emigrated to America and married an American, but his brother forced him to return to France and annulled his marriage, making his first son unable to inherit. In 1803 Jérôme had married Princess Katharina Friederike of Württemberg, daughter of King Frederick I of Württemberg and through her mother, the Duchess Augusta of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, she was a grand niece of George III Hanover, King of Great Britain and the elector of Hanover before it was absorbed into Westphalia.
Jérôme I had never been a contender to the throne of Kaiser in the elections of 1817, 1825, or 1853. The other electors, despite their alliance with the French, didn't want a French Kaiser, a fact that Jérôme never could put behind him as King of Westphalia. But his son and heir, Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte, the first born of his marriage with Queen Katharina, was born in 1815 in Cassel, the capitol of the Kingdom of Westphalia, and raised as a German prince.
As Jérôme I lived a long life to the age of 75, dying in 1860, Frederick Napoléon didn't become King of Westphalia until he was 45. As both the Royal Prince and as King, Frederick Napoléon had supported Kaiserin Augusta against his own cousin, Napoléon II of the French, over the Elbe, Weser, and Rhine Concessions, convincing the other electors he was a true German and not a toady of the French.
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon proved his mettle in the Rhenish-Prussian War of 1872 when the Prussian attempted to force the Confederacy into a union with Prussia with Berlin as senior state and the Kings of Prussia hereditary Kaisers. By then Prussia had absorbed Schleswig-Holstein and Swedish Pomerania to the north of the Confederacy as well as regions to the east.
The war was triggered when Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, the son of the late Prince Karl-Anton, announced that Sigmaringen was leaving the Confederacy and he swore allegiance to King Wilhelm I of Prussia as his Kaiser. His claim was that the Confederacy was actually little more than an alliance of independent states and Sigmaringen had the right to leave it and join with Prussia in a new, centralized Empire.
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon called for a meeting of the electors in Cassel to determine if this was their will, could member states leave the Confederacy or not. While they were deliberating, news came to the court that Prussian forces had not only entered Sigmaringen, but moved into the Elbe Concession on the right bank of the Elbe, which Kaiserin Augusta had seized from the French. It had been treated as its own small state, but both Westphalia and Sigmaringen claimed it as part of their state.
The electors agreed this Prussian occupation was an invasion of the Confederacy. Quickly they put forth the Cassel Declaration that the Confederacy of the Rhine was in truth an indivisible union, that the Elbe Concession was part of Westphalia, and that the Rhine Kaiserreich (a term used for the first time in the Declaration) was at war with Prussia.
At the same time, the Prussians invaded the Weser Concession (Frisian lands along the North Sea) and the low countries, still part of the French Empire. This, and the treatment of the French Imperial officials in the Elbe Concession by the Prussians, brought France into the war. When Kaiserin Augusta had taken the Concessions, she'd been advised by Frederick Napoléon to both pay France for them and to give the Imperial French officials in them a choice- remain in the Concessions, become citizens of the states they'd be annexed to, and receive a pension for life or emigrate to the French Empire. Part of this agreement, which Napoléon II had accepted begrudgingly, was that those who chose to stay in the Concession would remain citizens of France, having dual citizenship and could freely moved back and forth.
The Prussians now revoked this in the Elbe Confederacy, both the dual citizenship and the life time pensions.
The tension between the Rhine and France was gone.
The war at first went well for Prussia as their forces swept through the low lands into France proper, intending to conquer Paris and force France to surrender before invading the rest of the Rhine. But this changed when the Poles rebelled and the Russian Empire invaded Prussia from the east "To protect our Slavic cousins from the Huns."
The Army of the Rhine now attacked Prussia and the Prussian offensive collapsed. By late 1872 Berlin sued for peace. The Treaty of Paris established a new post war Europe. The Polish provinces of Prussia were annexed into the Russian Empire. Swedish Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein were added to the Rhine Kaiserreich and Sigmaringen was restored, with its former Hohenzollern rulers exiled to Prussia. Prussian rulers were denied the term of Kaiser. The provinces of the French Empire in the lowlands were restored to France.
After the Treaty of Paris, the Rhine Kaiserreich enacted more reforms to establish itself as more a federation than a confederacy or alliance. A federal government was established with limited powers- besides commanding the Army of the Rhine that had previously been established, now the federal government would have a democratically elected legislature that would govern over a unified postal system, financial system, and foreign affairs, including ambassadors. Each member state would also have a constitutional monarchal government. Finally, an Imperial Navy replaced the Frisian navy that had come with the Weser Concession. A written Constitution was agreed on also and it enshrined the practice that the Kaiser was always an elected position but added two new limitations. The first had been practiced but not established, the elected Kaiser must be a legitimate monarch of a member state. The second was that a supermajority of 2/3rds of the Electors could demand an abdication of a Kaiser or Kaiserin if needed. The Federal legislature would meet at Halle while the Kaiser would reign from the capital of his or her member state, but also have a residence in Halle.
Great Britain, the Swedish Empire, the Duchy of Austria, and the Hungarian Empire were also signatories to the Treaty of Paris as well as the states that had been at war. In the treaty, Great Britain finally officially ceded its Hanover claim. the Duchy of Austria was allowed to reclaim the term Kaiser for its monarch (an intentional slap in the face to Prussia,) and both Britain and Sweden were compensated for their ceded territories in the Rhine. (Hanover and Pomerania.)
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon now turned his attention to furthering the industrialization of the Rhine, the building of the Imperial Navy, and in the 1880s, the establishment of the Rhenish Colonial Empire in the Pacific and Sub-Sahara Africa (Tanzania, Rhenish Congo, Namibia, Kamerun, and Togo.)
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon had married while still the Royal Prince of Westphalia, a minor Württemberg Countess, Regina von Harken of Tettnang. They had many children.
The Kaiser died in 1891 at the age of 75. He was quite obese by then, unlike when he was younger, and he died of a heart attack. The Electors met and elected King William of Frisia to replace him.
Kaiser William I, King of Frisia, Prince of Erfurt, Hereditary Prince of Solms-Laubach
[6] The Principality of Erfurt had been directly ruled by the Emperors of France since 1807. That changed in 1860, when the Principality was occupied by Rhenish forces and Emperor Napoleon II was force to grant independence to Erfurt. William's father, Friedrich von Solms-Laubach, a wealthy industrialist and landowner in the area, was elected to the hereditary position of Prince of Erfurt.
In 1874, Friedrich was elected as King of Frisia, by the Frisian Parliament. Ten years before, William was born in Erfurt City Palace. In 1889, King Friedrich I died of a stroke, and the 25-year-old William became the new ruler of Frisia. As King, William I recognize the rights of Peter II as Grand Duke of Oldenburg.
William was a massive supporter of Frederick Napoléon I's reforms of the Rhine Kaiserreich. When the Kaiser died in 1891, there were many candidates in the election of that year. However, the electors eventually selected the young and energetic King William I.
During the William ten-year long reign, he mended relations with Prussia. He also continued the expansion of the Rhenish Army and Navy. In 1901, Kaiser William I was assassinated by a train bomb from a Russian nationalist, while on a diplomatic voyage to the Kingdom of Nothern Lusitania. The electors elected Prince Christian Günther III of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen as his successor.
Christian Günther III, Hereditary Prince
of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen
[7] It had been brewing for a long time and finally the Electors achieved their goal. After a series of the larger states putting their king or queen on the throne of the Kaiserreich, the smaller states elected one of their own. The fact that Frederick I's reforms had changed the system so that every monarch of every member state was now an elector gave them the power. At the previous election their desire to choose one of themselves had been overridden by a desire to choose one of the two new member states added to the Kaiserreich. But now that had occurred and it was time to select a monarch from one of the smallest member states.
It so happened that one of the smallest states, the Principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen was ruled by one of the oldest and most renown families of the Kaiserreich, the House of Schwarzburg. The small principality might not have a lot of sway in the Kaiserreich, but the ruling family had prestige.
Christian Günther III, named after his great, great grandfather, succeed his grandfather, Günther Frederick Charles II (b. 1805, r. 1835-1889) in 1889 when the old Prince died at the age of 83. Christian was the son of Imperial Prince Charles Günther (1830-1872), who'd died in the Rhenish-Prussian War. Christian had been born in 1855 in the Sondershausen Palace and was 17 when his father died and he became heir. When he ascended to the throne of the small principality, he was 34, married to Princess Sophia Hilde of Saxe-Altenburg, and the father of three children.
His rule as a Prince had been unremarkable, but his participation at the Election of 1891 had riveted the other Electors. He'd dominated the coalition of the smaller states with his charisma and eloquence and had been the coalitions leader in advocating the then hoped for candidate from the smaller states, his father-in-law, Prince Heinrich Wettin of Saxe-Altenberg. The election had gone round and round in circles until finally Christian came away from a meeting with King William, one of the two candidates from the states formed out of the Concessions (the other was Prince Karl of Alsace-Lorraine,) that convinced him the Kaiserreich needed a young dynamic leader instead of an older man like his father-in-law or Prince Karl.
Christian, despite being from a landlocked principality, had believed in the need of a strong navy and had himself served in the Kaisserreich Navy as a young man. It was King's William's commitment to that and the awareness that the Kaiserreich needed a new modern fleet of steel plated, steam powered, Battleships that had convinced Christian to support him. When Christian spoke of this to the Electors it broke the deadlock between the three contenders and the young William was elected.
Swiftly the Kaiser made Christian the Minister of the Navy and it was the Prince who did the leg work in building the Navy. When the Kaiser was assassinated, the Electors had no question whom to select for the new Kaiser, being the first of his name as Kaiser.
The new Kaiser knew the threats now facing the Rhine and her German allies of Prussia and Austria. The Russian Nationalist who killed Kaiser William was not an isolated murderer. He was part of a Revolution that was sweeping through several states. While the Russian Empire fell apart into a terrible civil war, the Hungarian Empire's Revolution happened swiftly and as the Electors met in Halle in 1901, the Marxist Workers Coalition of Socialist States was being set up in Budapest, replacing the Empire that stretched from the Danube to the Aegean Islands Meanwhile the Swedish Empire went to war with the Russian Socialist State that was itself at war with the rump Russian Empire to its south that was still in control in Central Asia, the Caucuses, and Ukraine.
Shortly after that the tension between the French Empire and the British Empire over their colonial territories flashed into several conflicts in Africa and Asia. The two Empires faced each other in Europe, waiting for the other to attack.
Europe was a powder keg and the Kaiser had to lead his Reich into a new and strange Century as new and horrid weapons of war changed things.
The opinion of most in the three members of the Germanic Alliance was to stand with Sweden and the Russian Empire against the Russian Socialists. But Christian, the Rhenish Council of Electors, and the National Legislature all agreed that the last thing needed was war. Peace through strength was the motto of the new administration and the efforts to build the strongest Navy and modernize the Army continued. Over the next decade that meant armoured cars, machine guns, undersee ships, airships, and aeroplanes. It also meant expanding the use of radio and building new roads, railroads, and telephone lines.
But War did come in 1909 when a French ship that had been attacked at sea sought aid at Rhenish Zanzibar and then British ships attacked the African Rhenish colony. The local Rhenish officials had no choice but to defend their colony. When word reach London of this, the British decided the stalemate in Europe would not last if the Germanic Alliance was siding with the French and decisive action needed to occur to force an end before an ongoing war such as the Swedish-Russian Socialist-Russian Empire War just dragged on and on. So the British mounted an invasion of Frisia and Westphalia in an attempt to demolish the Rhenish Fleet before they could react.
They largely succeeded with those at port, but most of the fleet was in the Baltic and the Kaiser had ordered the North Sea fleet to sea.
This was the Hungarians' chance to attack the Ottomans and take Constantinople. Now Europe was involved in three separate wars and all of them had theatres outside Europe proper as Japan and the United States invaded Siberia and attacked the Russian Socialist State from the East.
A British expeditionary force invaded Frisia and then swept through the lowlands and took northern France before their advance was stopped short of Paris. As feared, this became another stalemate of giant armies facing each other as was happening in Russia. Trench warfare developed and the front went from the North Sea inland then ran to the south until it headed back west to the Bay of Biscay south of Brittany.
In 1911, the Kaiser was visiting Hamburg to inspect the fleet stationed there when a bombing raid killed him. In the middle of a war, another Kaiser had been killed.
[8] The Imperial election of 1911 saw the rise to the Imperial dignity of the Grand Duke of Frankfurt, Alexander von Leuchtenberg. A descendant of Eugène de Beuharnais, the Duke of Frankfurt and lieutenant of the Grande Armée, the young Grand Duke has a strong interest in military matters. He was serving as Marshall at the time of his election, and won the vote of the princes thanks to the ferocious campaigning of his wife Charlotte von Isenburg, who presented him as the obvious candidate for such a situation.
The Marshall-Emperor was delighted to learn this, as he had been blindsighted by what he perceived as shameful incompetence from several high ranking whom he couldn't demote without Imperial approval. Now he had it. During the months of stalemate that marked the second half of 1911, he reorganized the army as well as the rationing system, hoping to improve the morale and efficiency of the army. His goal was to simply make this war look unwinable to the British: if he could make their logistics ruinous while maintaining a facade of abundance, he could make the Rhine look like too big of a prey to swallow.
For this, he developed an extensive fleet of submarines: the British had to cross the Channel to maintain their positions, the Continentals didn't, so he'd do his best to undermine them at every occasion. In another effort to undermine the British war effort, and being well aware of the difficulties they were facing in the wake of colonial unrest, he sent advisors and informants to separatist movements across the Empire, while promising to his own oversea colonies that they would be granted self-rule. The final straw was the Emerald Plan, an infiltration of Irish Rights movements to radicalize them and offer them weapons. In the end, the massive riots and guerillas across the British Empire, the seemingly unwavering determination of the compact Rhenish Confederation and the crumbling logistics of the British Expeditionary Corp in Europe started, in Britain, to undermine public support for a war now seen as pointless and unlikely to reap any benefits, far from the easy retaliatory disbarkment in France that has originally been promised.
However, Kaiser Alexander I would not get to see the end of this war, as he died in February 1912 during a visit to the trenches, where an undercover British spy seized the occasion to shoot the Emperor to death. The Emperor died, sheltering the nurse he was discussing with seconds ago from the bullets of his murderer. He was succeeded by Joseph Leopold I, Grand Duke and Titular Elector of Würzburg.
Kaiser Joseph Leopold I, Grand Duke and Titular Elector of Würzburg
[9] Most thought that a Hapsburg would never come to be the ruler of the Confederation of the Rhine, ever, but unexpected times are bound to yield unexpected results. After the news of the assassination of the Kaiser Alexander I, it appeared as though that Prince Eugen of Würrtemberg, after he gave his now infamous speech, "The Vengeful Rhine" which called for the avenging for the three assassinated Kaisers. However, Grand Duke Joseph Leopold of Würzburg convinced the electors that wrathful vengeance against Britain and Russia would only stoke even more resentment from the countries against the Rhine Kaiserreich. His arguments were convinced many as Joseph Leopold I was elected, nearly unanimously by the electors of the confederation.
With the approaching of the 1912 general election in the United Kingdom, Joseph Leopold sought for the Peace Coalition (made-up of Conservative, Liberal, and Labour party members who wanted peace with the Rhine and its allies) to win the election. A shrewd man, Joseph Leopold believed that it was better to ''... give a man a thousand little cuts than one big slash.'' Kaiser Joseph Leopold I ran fake stories of British extremists blowing up houses of government officials with children in them, which caused much anger in Britain, as they wanted to see their country and the war as righteous, not as a vile force of evil.
The Peace Coalition won in a landslide in the British general election of 1912, and soon an armistice was made, and a new peace followed, as well. The Kaiser also aided with the Rome Agreements, which ended the war between Hungary and the newly formed Kingdom of Anatolia and the Russian Civil War.
After peace was restored to Europe, the Kaiser led the Rhine Kaiserreich into an economic and cultural golden age. He liberalized many aspects of Rhenish society including the decriminalization of homosexuality, in 1921. However, with the Kaiser increasing liberalization of the country, the conservative elites off the Rhine Kaiserreich became increasingly alienated. In 1924, most electors forced the Kaiser to abdicate, and Joseph Leopold was replaced by King Eugen I of Württemberg.
King Eugen I of Württemberg
[10] When Prince Eugen of Württemberg made his firebrand speech in 1912, he spoke for his own father, King Frederick II of Württemberg, to be the next Kaiser. The Prince was 27 at the time and a veteran of the War.
King Frederick II of Württemberg. r. 1888-1919
The Prince had never given up on his political advocacy for a more conservative, vengeful Kaiserreich and when his father died in 1919 and he became King Eugen I, the hopes of the younger conservative elites, who called themselves the Lineale Party, transferred from his father to the new King. By 1924 they gained enough power to force Joseph Leopold to abdicate and put Eugen on the throne at the age of 39.
The Kaiserreich changed now and went into a totally different direction. While it had already evolved from a Confederacy into a Federation, now the Kaiser and the Lineale made it a much more centralized Empire. He made the Imperial Palace in Halle his permanent residence and appointed a royal viceroy to fulfil his duties back in Stuttgart, the capital of Württemberg. Although the old states were not replaced nor their monarchs, they were either united or divided into different Kaiserreich 'regions.' (Small states were united and large ones divided.) The actual governance of a region was done by a ReichFuhrer appointed by the Kaiser and approved by the Federal legislature, which was little more than a rubberstamp. The Federal legislature had become this due to it being trimmed down. The actual electors who ruled in their various states now were just figureheads with no power, unless they also happened to be an appointed ReichFuhrer, which only occurred if they were one of the Lineale, who dominated the Council of Electors. The same was true of the democratically elected state legislatures, which had all power stripped from them except ceremonial duties and given to the ReichFuhrers and their staffs.
The first order of business of the new Kaiser and the Lineale was what came to be known as the Vereinigung der Vier, the 'Unification of the Four.' It began with the inclusion of Prussia in the Kaiserreich in 1928. This greatly increased the dominance of the conservative elites, as only the Prussian nobility who shared their values were added to the Council of Electors. In 1931 the Empire of Austria was dissolved and its various provinces added to the Kaiserreich. Both Prussia and Austria were added with the other German states passing a law for the Vereinigung. But the fourth addition was purely by force as German speaking Switzerland was just annexed by the Kaiserreich.
Some of the liberal reforms that had occurred were undone. Homosexuality was again outlawed, divorce was made very difficult, non German minorities were forced to swear loyalty oaths (and Jews and Romani were consider non Germans whether they spoke German or not,) and a centralized schooling system was imposed on the Kaiserreich that included a very strong element of teaching German patriotism.
The industrialization of the Empire now went full steam ahead to increase the military. As one of the ongoing policies of the Lineale was the further expanse of the Kaiserreich to include all territory where there were German speaking ethic groups, it seed more and more likely that the Kaiserreich would go to war with Hungary's Marxist Workers' Coalition of Socialist States (WCSS), as many German speaking people lived there and had for centuries and with the French Empire, as the Lineale consiered Dutch a German dialect.
This of course drove the former ally of France into a new alliance with Britain and the WCSS, which was allied with the Russian Socialist State.
The Kaiserreich was on the edge of war when those who'd opposed the Lineale and their Kaiser took to the streets in protest and general strikes. While the Lineale were convinced the Kaiserreich was stronger than other nations and would win a war quickly, many in the Expanded Empire thought this was folly. They knew that all their potential enemies had also built up their military and that this time the United States might side with the British.
The Revolution of 1938 declared the reforms of the the last 14 years were null and void and ran its own new election for the federal legislature. Now there were two governments in Halle. But the Revolutionaries quickly took control, arrested most of the Lineale and forced the Kaiser to abdicate. Eugen not only was forced to give up being the Kaiser, but he had to abdicate his kingship, his cousin instead took the throne of Württemberg in Stuttgart. Eugen was given only one of the family's smaller castles and put under house arrest there. His former title of "Prince" was, however, granted him again.
With the arrest of the Lineale electors and their replacement by other sympatico with the Revolution, a new council of electors chose the Grand-Duchess Franziska of Mecklemburg to be Kaiserin. Now the question was would peace be made with France, Britain, Hungary, and Russia or not? Would the Vereinigung be undone or would one German Reich continue? Would the member states' power to govern be restored or the new system continue but liberalized and made democratic?
[11] Franziska von Mecklemburg was one of the newly installed nobles, having being highly and very vocally opposed to both her cousins, Frederick Franzis VI von Mecklemburg-Schwerin and Adolphus-Frederick VI von Mecklemburg-Sterlitz, who were both Linealen. The new Grand-Duchess of Mecklemburg, however, was at first supportive of the Conservative ideas of Eugen von Württemberg: she was as mad as he was at the liberal policies of Joseph Leopold von Würzburg and resented the forced separation between the Rhine Confederation and the other Germans. However, the reign of the one she invested so many hopes in in the first years soon transformed into a journey through the political spectrum: the young Conservative princess in her late teens had by 1938 evolved into an anti-Lineale protestor who embraced ideas ranging from moderate reformism to full blown progressivism. She had been instrumental to the ultimate downfall of Eugen I, working hard at undermining Lineale support in the Northeast.
She wasn't the favourite by far when the election cycle started, but her fiery candidacy speech had gained her the support of the one group that was usually left out in those matters: the crowd. And little by little, with a lot of passion and shaming of the opposition, she was elected by a small margin over the more moderate Ludwig of Bavaria, her supports in the Electoral Assembly hoping her oratory talents and public opposition to Lineale ideology would allow her to reassure the foreign powers. And, after sending a swarm of ambassadors and delegates to gain time with Britain, France, Russia and Hungary, she set out to solve the Swiss Question: in her opinion, there was no keeping Switzerland, and Germany would have to puke it if she didn't want to choke on it. Thus, canton by canton referendums were organized, and all the Swiss cantons chose independance, ridding the Empire of a first problem.
However, appeasement with the rest of Europe was harder to achieve: everyone had demands, and not all of them were reasonable. To appease France, she accepted to reevaluate the Rhine concession's border, accepting that French speaking municipalities (including Saverne, Ferrette and Altkirch as well as a good chunk of the Vosges mountains) would be able to carry on referendums to reunite with Germany. To appease Britain, she accepted to partake in disarmament conferences. To appease Hungary, she accepted to demilitarize the boundary in exchange for guarantees for the German communities in Hungary. Russia, however, was a tougher client: what did the Socialist Council want that she could offer? In the end, a deal was struck that Russia and Germany would cooperate economically at the condition that worker protection laws would be passed in Germany.
Considering the future of Germany ... despite the personal feelings of the newly installed princes of the Empire, it was evident that the idea of unification was popular, and that reverting it was only going to create fuel for a potential Lineale reignition. It was thus agreed in backdoor discussions that German unity would be presented as a nonpartisan theme that every current party supports, regardless of personal feelings. However, that was pretty much the only domestic issue they could all agree on. While a lot of more moderate Princes wanted to purely revert to the pre-Eugen politics, there were also those who admitted that the administrative organization of the Linealen could be reformed and liberalized. Kaiserin Franziska disagreed with both. To her, going back to the executive supremacy of Princes was only going to lead to other terrible decisions in the future, and was simply not an option; but the Linealen had put on a administration that was essentially the negation of local particularities and of the Confederal nature of the government. Thus, she offered her own set of reforms: to her, the basic cell of the new German government should be the Municipality, the Princes acting as advisors, ceremonial figures and subsidizers, and the German government would proceed from those two authorities. To Kaiserin Franziska, Germany needed a new Constitution, even if it would take years ....
She would abdicate in 1967, after 29 frustrating years of attempting to make her vision of a new and better Germany come to life. In 29 years, the Imperial Constitution had garnered two fifths of the Imperial Assembly's votes: in the 1967 draft, the Constitution considers the realms (Counties to Kingdoms) and the municipalities as the two base units of the Empire, admits as its Legislative Assembly (but not Constitutional Assembly) a monocameral legislature based on proportional vote for one half and municipal delegates for the other, guarantees freedom of expression and faith, protects "individual property" and guarantees voting rights to anyone 17 years or older, it bans discriminations based on gender, ethnic background or faith, and it is accompanied by a "Social Contract" that defines a number of base protections for parents, children, workers, the environment, and a bunch of other stuff. Main points of disagreement include what power are given to the Princes, the existence or not of a Princely Assembly and its potential powers and the mode of election of the Kaiser of Kaiserin. But those are questions for a younger monarch. Franziska is 59, she's feeling old and her witt isn't as sharp as it used to be. Besides, she's the only on in this country that didn't get to enjoy life resuming after the rigors of Lineale social corsetry. The rest is up to the Constitutional Assembly. In absence of a proper structure to elect the next German Emperor, the Constitutional Assembly has been tasked to elect her successor. Her reign would be followed by ________________________
What If Parliament had allowed William, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh to accept the Swedish throne in 1812?
Kings of Sweden
1809 to 1818: Charles XIII (House of Holstein Gottorp)
1818 to 1834: Frederick II (House of Hanover) (1)
1834 to 1889: Christian III (House of Hanover) (2)
1889 to 1901: Christina II Louise (House of Hanover) (3)
1901 to 1932: John IV Ferdinand (House of Braganza) (4)
1932 to 1951: Charles XIV Ferdinand (House of Braganza) [5]
1951 to 1975: Peter I Gustaf (House of Braganza) [6]
1975-1977: Frederick III Augustus (House of Braganza) [7]
(1) William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, born 1776, was 36 and unmarried when the invitation to become the heir to the throne of Sweden was offered to him. There was much opposition, but eventually Parliament, and his cousin, the Prince Regent, would eventually consent. But as William, or Frederick as he would start to style himself, was unmarried, this was the first thing that Charles XIII would turn his attention to - with the result that in 1813, Frederick married Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, and the pair had five children, the first being born in 1814.
All but one of the children, Prince Gustav, survived infancy. Three of the children were born by the time of Fredericks coronation. As a monarch, he was well liked, but not politically active, after his failure to successfully have Denmark cede Norway to Sweden had caused him embarrassment, especially when Norway elected Jules, Duke of Polignac as King Auguste of Norway.
Whilst he did not believe in absolute monarchy, he did demand certain rules be followed - no man could be seated in his presence, unless he too were also seated, and he expected to be brought drinks by only women at any parties he went to.
Behind his back, his enemies at court and some in the Swedish Parliament called him Dumbom Fred (or Silly Fred). At least, they said, he had endeavoured to learn the Swedish language, which he could do on at least a conversational basis by the time he was crowned. In 1820, he visited Britain for his Uncles funeral, and then in 1830 for his cousins.
Because of his lack of interest in politics, the Swedish Parliament gained significant power during his reign, evolving into a more constitutional monarchy than had been in place.
When it became clear that another of his cousins, William IV of Britain would not produce an heir and that Princess Alexandrina of Kent would be Queen in due course, Frederick petitioned King William IV and the Dowager Duchess of Kent for his second son, to marry Alexandrina. William himself favoured a Dutch match, whilst the Dowager Duchess favoured one of her nephews.
Frederick would die before the Affair of the British Marriage came to its conclusion. He was found unconscious in his bath tub at Drottingholm Palace (his favourite residence), having suffered a stroke, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Prince Christian.
[2] Christian was born the eldest child of Frederick and Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, born in 1814. Named in hopes that he would have the faith of the country behind him.
Being the heir, Christian found himself under the focused attention of his mother. Their relationship strained and comments in diaries and letters, kept by both as well as governors and tutors suggests that she tried to dominate and influence him, which over time did have an affect, with Christian’s ideas matching those of his Russian heritage rather than his British.
While his relationship with his father seems to be non-existing, with Christian, feeling superior to his father.
For example, his father lacked interest in politics, Christian found the Riksdag of the Estates, something of a game and enjoyed pitting the four groups against each other for his own gain.
At 20 years of age, the death of his father was mourned by many, however to Christian, it was just an inconvenience in state affairs.
Under Christian III, the Affair of the British Marriage, came to nothing. Many believed that it was the British government who had an issue with Swedish and British match, however, historians have uncovered secret letters, where Christian III was against the match as he didn’t want to see his brother in a higher position as him.
Victoria instead went with a match arranged by her mother and Uncle Leopoldo, by marrying Prince Albert.
Instead Christian arranged marriages that benefit is own need. Both sisters were married to near by kingdoms. The kingdom of Denmark was a must, while the Hanover match was to stop Prussia’s influence.
For his brother, he arranged a marriage with their cousin, Grand duchess Maria of Russia, which was not a happy one, from rumours around court.
Most of his 55-year reign was spent defending his diplomatic ties, social change and reform ideas.
Following Great Britain, slavery was abolished in all parts of Sweden, including her colonies, in 1839; slavery had legislated in Saint-Barthélemy under the Ordinance concerning the Police of Slaves and free Coloured People dated 30 July 1787. The last legally owned slaves in the Swedish colony of Saint-Barthélemy were bought and freed by the Swedish state on October 9, 1840.
During his reign, the first stage of the Industrial Revolution reached Sweden. This first take-off was founded on rural forges, textile proto-industries and sawmills.
During the Austro-Prussian War (1866), Hanover attempted to maintain a neutral position, along with some other member states of the German Confederation. Hanover's vote in favor of the mobilisation of Confederation troops against Prussia on 14 June 1866 prompted Prussia to declare war. Christian III sent troops to defend his sister and brother-in-law, helping the Kingdom of Hanover to keep independence from the imperialist Prussia.
His death in 1889, was felt across Europe by his family, (daughters who married abroad) and his supporters. He was succeeded by his daughter, Christina II Louise.
(3) Born 1841, Christina II Louise was the eldest of the daughters of Christian III and had spent much of her life as heir presumptive, her elder brother, Crown Prince Christian, was born in 1839, and then died of typhoid at the age of eighteen. Christian had been engaged to Charlotte of Belgium, but unmarried and with no issue at the time of his death.
Christina Louise had become engaged to Prince Joao of Portugal, the Duke of Beja, who was a year younger than herself, and the pair married in 1860 when Joao turned 18 and converted to Lutheranism. As the third son of Maria II, Queen of Portugal, he had been unlikely to ascend the Portuguese throne and abdicated his claim upon his conversion.
Joao was styled as Peter of Portugal from the marriage (he had abdicated his claim to the Dukedom of Beja when he abdicated his claim to the Portuguese throne), and created as Duke of Ostergotland by Christian II when the new couples first child, the Kings first grandchild, was born a year after their marriage. The couple would have five more children who lived to adulthood over the next seventeen years, which lead to an eighteen-year age gap between their eldest (1861) and their youngest (1878).
Christina Louise became Queen of Sweden at the age of 48 in 1889 and took Christina II Louise as her regnal name. Her four sisters, the Countess of Flanders, the Dowager Queen or Greece, the Crown Princess of Norway and the Queen of Italy all attended their fathers funeral and their sisters subsequent coronation (only the Countess of Flanders and the Crown Princess of Norway attended with their partners).
Her reign was, in contrast to her father's, brief and mostly peaceful as she worked with the Reiksdag to develop industry and commerce. The only significant crisis during her reign was the Finnish Civil War in which Finland declared independence from Russia. Christian III had always been more closely aligned with the Russian side of his heritage, but Christina II Louise played a more moderate and pragmatic political game, neither actively supporting her Russian relatives, nor working against them. This worked in her favour when, in 1895, Finland was officially recognised as an independent Kingdom and she successfully managed to negotiate the election of her paternal cousin, the Duke of Uppland, as King. He was deemed the Goldilocks Option - with a Russian mother and grandmother, he was palatable Alexander III and the Russian Court, but could not become Emperor of Russia as his Russian links were via a female line, and therefore palatable to Britain, France and the other Scandinavian nations.
Her other major contribution to Sweden was the establishment of the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block which presented Sweden, Norway, Denmark and then Finland with preferential trading agreements with their neighbouring countries.
Christina II Louise of Sweden died in the summer of 1901, seven months after the Duke of Ostergotland, at the Tullgarn Palace, according to hearsay and never officially confirmed, when the clock struck noon, she was heard declaring "And now, I think I might retire ..." before passing away.
She was succeeded by John Ferdinand, her son.
(4) John Ferdinand was born to then Crown Princess Christina and Peter, Duke of Ostergotland on September 17, 1861. The eldest of six children, John was an lively child, and would play with his siblings in his youth.
John Ferdinand had not yet married when his mother became Queen of Sweden in 1889, and many brides were selected for him, but ultimately picked Princess Alexandrina of the United Kingdom, daughter of Edward VII and Christina of Denmark, and the sister of Prince George of Wales, as his wife. They would go on to have five children together between 1892 and 1902.
When Christina II Louise died in August of 1901, John Ferdinand became King of Sweden as John IV Ferdinand at the age of 39. His siblings, Charles, Astrid, the Queen of the Netherlands, and Frederick, all attended their mother's funeral and their brother's subsequent coronation (only the Queen of Prussia didn't attend).
John IV Ferdinand's reign would see the Great War (1906-1909) happen. While Sweden remained neutral in the war, John IV Ferdinand supported the alliance of Great Britian, Prussia, and France against the alliance of Russia, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire. At the Treaty of Berlin, many new nations were created, one being Estonia, which picked John IV Ferdinand's brother Frederick, and his wife Margaret of Finland, as their King and Queen. Estonia would later join the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block with Karelia.
The rest of John IV Ferdinand's reign was mostly peaceful and would die in 1932, one year after his wife, Alexandrina. He was succeeded by his grandson, Charles XIV Frederick.
(5) Born 1911, Charles Ferdinamd Christian, created Duke of Narke upon his birth, was the only son of Crown Prince Ferdinand, Duke of Skane (the eldest son of John IV Ferdinand) and his wife, Elisabeth of Medelpad, a descendant of Sophia of Gloucester, sister of Frederick I whom he had married to a minor Swedish Count, Magnus Leijonhufvud, that he created as Duke of Medelpad in order to give his sister precedence at the Swedish Court second only to his wife and children.
Crown Prince Ferdinand died in a train crash when his son was only five. Elisabeth of Medelpad later remarried, like her ancestor before her, a minor noble and the Duke or Narke became Crown Prince and went to live with his grandparents and be given the appropriate education for the future King.
When his grandfather died, the Crown Prince took the regnal name of Charles XIV Ferdinand. The descendants of Frederick II sat on the thrones of many European nations - Prussia, Estonia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Norway, Hanover, Italy, Denmark and the United Kingdom.
Swedish Consorts since the coronation of Frederick II had been Russian, German, Portuguese and British so there was no clear precedent as to which nation that the new King should marry into the monarchy of. His aunts pressured him with their preferences, but eventually, he married Evelin, Princess Royal of Estonia, a second cousin via his grandfathers late brother, Frederick I of Estonia. This marriage renewed focus on the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block and it's transformation into the Scandinavian Economic Area - not just preferential trade agreements, but free movement of citizens as well as goods, as well as the right to take up residence in any of the partner nations.
The marriage also resulted in only one child. Born in 1934, Crown Prince Toomas, who died at the age of six. Although not publicised widely at the time, it is believed that Toomas was epileptic and his condition deteriorated significantly from the age of four. Queen Evelin spent much of his last two years at an isolated lodge with her son and was with him when he passed away. Due to his duties, Charles XIV Ferdinand could not spend much time with his wife and son and this lead to inevitable estrangement between the couple, as Evelin resented her husband. Evelin continued to reside at the royal lodge whilst her husband this entertained a number of lovers at the royal palaces, and fathered at least one illegitimate son, Alexander, created as Count Askersund.
Charles XIV Ferdinand would die at the age of 40 and be succeeded by Peter I Gustaf, his grand uncle.
[6] Peter Gustaf was born in 1897, the second and youngest son of John IV Ferdinand. As Peter Gustaf wasn't expected to become King of Sweden, he had a little more casual education. During his early twenties, he went traveling around the world, meeting all sorts of people and visting various places.
It was during one such trip where Peter Gustaf met his future wife, Ingrid Olavson, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, at a hotel in New York City. He pleaded with his father to marry her, but John IV Ferdinand refused. When he died in 1931 however, Peter Gustaf was able to marry Ingrid, which they did in 1932. They would have three children, who they allowed to marry whoever they want.
With his nephew's son died in 1940, Peter Gustaf became the heir to Charles XIV Ferdinand, and eventually King in 1951, with Peter I Gustaf becoming his regnal name. His three sisters, Anna, Birgitte, and Christina would attend their brother's coronation. Peter I Gustaf's reign was peaceful, but he would start the process of turning the Scandinavian Economic Area into a Scandinavian Federation (with the monarchies intact).
The beloved King would die in 1975, not able to see his dream finished, at the age of 78. His wife Ingrid would live for another seven years before dying at 84. Peter I Gustaf was succeeded by _______, his ________.
Crown Prince Frederick August, in May of 1973
[7] Prince Frederick August was born in 1935, as the second child of King Peter I Gustaf and Queen-Consort Ingrid Olavson. When the prince was in his early adolescence, he became deeply interested in Hollywood films and wished to become a movie star. And, in 1963, he moved to the city of Los Angeles. The next year, the prince starred in the now-classic movie, ''The Nordic Star''.
In late 1972, Crown Prince Christopher, Frederick August’s older brother, unexpectedly died from lung cancer. Thus, Frederick August became the first person in line to succeed his father as King of Sweden. As his father became more ill, Frederick August was forced to move back to Sweden.
When his father, finally, died in 1975, Frederick August was crowned as Frederick III August. The new King of Sweden was not very knowledgeable in the field of politics. The only things that King Frederick III August did during his short reign were oppose his late father's plans for a Scandinavian federation, and advocate for a Ministry of the Environment, which would protect and preserve Sweden's natural wonders.
As his stress about his job rose, the king's disinterest grew as well. And, ultimately, Frederick III August abdicated when he heard news of the creation of "The Nordic Star 2". He was succeeded by ___________.
Kings of Sweden
1809 to 1818: Charles XIII (House of Holstein Gottorp)
1818 to 1834: Frederick II (House of Hanover) (1)
1834 to 1889: Christian III (House of Hanover) (2)
1889 to 1901: Christina II Louise (House of Hanover) (3)
1901 to 1932: John IV Ferdinand (House of Braganza) (4)
1932 to 1951: Charles XIV Ferdinand (House of Braganza) [5]
1951 to 1975: Peter I Gustaf (House of Braganza) [6]
1975-1977: Frederick III Augustus (House of Braganza) [7]
(1) William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, born 1776, was 36 and unmarried when the invitation to become the heir to the throne of Sweden was offered to him. There was much opposition, but eventually Parliament, and his cousin, the Prince Regent, would eventually consent. But as William, or Frederick as he would start to style himself, was unmarried, this was the first thing that Charles XIII would turn his attention to - with the result that in 1813, Frederick married Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, and the pair had five children, the first being born in 1814.
All but one of the children, Prince Gustav, survived infancy. Three of the children were born by the time of Fredericks coronation. As a monarch, he was well liked, but not politically active, after his failure to successfully have Denmark cede Norway to Sweden had caused him embarrassment, especially when Norway elected Jules, Duke of Polignac as King Auguste of Norway.
Whilst he did not believe in absolute monarchy, he did demand certain rules be followed - no man could be seated in his presence, unless he too were also seated, and he expected to be brought drinks by only women at any parties he went to.
Behind his back, his enemies at court and some in the Swedish Parliament called him Dumbom Fred (or Silly Fred). At least, they said, he had endeavoured to learn the Swedish language, which he could do on at least a conversational basis by the time he was crowned. In 1820, he visited Britain for his Uncles funeral, and then in 1830 for his cousins.
Because of his lack of interest in politics, the Swedish Parliament gained significant power during his reign, evolving into a more constitutional monarchy than had been in place.
When it became clear that another of his cousins, William IV of Britain would not produce an heir and that Princess Alexandrina of Kent would be Queen in due course, Frederick petitioned King William IV and the Dowager Duchess of Kent for his second son, to marry Alexandrina. William himself favoured a Dutch match, whilst the Dowager Duchess favoured one of her nephews.
Frederick would die before the Affair of the British Marriage came to its conclusion. He was found unconscious in his bath tub at Drottingholm Palace (his favourite residence), having suffered a stroke, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Prince Christian.
[2] Christian was born the eldest child of Frederick and Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, born in 1814. Named in hopes that he would have the faith of the country behind him.
Being the heir, Christian found himself under the focused attention of his mother. Their relationship strained and comments in diaries and letters, kept by both as well as governors and tutors suggests that she tried to dominate and influence him, which over time did have an affect, with Christian’s ideas matching those of his Russian heritage rather than his British.
While his relationship with his father seems to be non-existing, with Christian, feeling superior to his father.
For example, his father lacked interest in politics, Christian found the Riksdag of the Estates, something of a game and enjoyed pitting the four groups against each other for his own gain.
At 20 years of age, the death of his father was mourned by many, however to Christian, it was just an inconvenience in state affairs.
Under Christian III, the Affair of the British Marriage, came to nothing. Many believed that it was the British government who had an issue with Swedish and British match, however, historians have uncovered secret letters, where Christian III was against the match as he didn’t want to see his brother in a higher position as him.
Victoria instead went with a match arranged by her mother and Uncle Leopoldo, by marrying Prince Albert.
Instead Christian arranged marriages that benefit is own need. Both sisters were married to near by kingdoms. The kingdom of Denmark was a must, while the Hanover match was to stop Prussia’s influence.
For his brother, he arranged a marriage with their cousin, Grand duchess Maria of Russia, which was not a happy one, from rumours around court.
Most of his 55-year reign was spent defending his diplomatic ties, social change and reform ideas.
Following Great Britain, slavery was abolished in all parts of Sweden, including her colonies, in 1839; slavery had legislated in Saint-Barthélemy under the Ordinance concerning the Police of Slaves and free Coloured People dated 30 July 1787. The last legally owned slaves in the Swedish colony of Saint-Barthélemy were bought and freed by the Swedish state on October 9, 1840.
During his reign, the first stage of the Industrial Revolution reached Sweden. This first take-off was founded on rural forges, textile proto-industries and sawmills.
During the Austro-Prussian War (1866), Hanover attempted to maintain a neutral position, along with some other member states of the German Confederation. Hanover's vote in favor of the mobilisation of Confederation troops against Prussia on 14 June 1866 prompted Prussia to declare war. Christian III sent troops to defend his sister and brother-in-law, helping the Kingdom of Hanover to keep independence from the imperialist Prussia.
His death in 1889, was felt across Europe by his family, (daughters who married abroad) and his supporters. He was succeeded by his daughter, Christina II Louise.
(3) Born 1841, Christina II Louise was the eldest of the daughters of Christian III and had spent much of her life as heir presumptive, her elder brother, Crown Prince Christian, was born in 1839, and then died of typhoid at the age of eighteen. Christian had been engaged to Charlotte of Belgium, but unmarried and with no issue at the time of his death.
Christina Louise had become engaged to Prince Joao of Portugal, the Duke of Beja, who was a year younger than herself, and the pair married in 1860 when Joao turned 18 and converted to Lutheranism. As the third son of Maria II, Queen of Portugal, he had been unlikely to ascend the Portuguese throne and abdicated his claim upon his conversion.
Joao was styled as Peter of Portugal from the marriage (he had abdicated his claim to the Dukedom of Beja when he abdicated his claim to the Portuguese throne), and created as Duke of Ostergotland by Christian II when the new couples first child, the Kings first grandchild, was born a year after their marriage. The couple would have five more children who lived to adulthood over the next seventeen years, which lead to an eighteen-year age gap between their eldest (1861) and their youngest (1878).
Christina Louise became Queen of Sweden at the age of 48 in 1889 and took Christina II Louise as her regnal name. Her four sisters, the Countess of Flanders, the Dowager Queen or Greece, the Crown Princess of Norway and the Queen of Italy all attended their fathers funeral and their sisters subsequent coronation (only the Countess of Flanders and the Crown Princess of Norway attended with their partners).
Her reign was, in contrast to her father's, brief and mostly peaceful as she worked with the Reiksdag to develop industry and commerce. The only significant crisis during her reign was the Finnish Civil War in which Finland declared independence from Russia. Christian III had always been more closely aligned with the Russian side of his heritage, but Christina II Louise played a more moderate and pragmatic political game, neither actively supporting her Russian relatives, nor working against them. This worked in her favour when, in 1895, Finland was officially recognised as an independent Kingdom and she successfully managed to negotiate the election of her paternal cousin, the Duke of Uppland, as King. He was deemed the Goldilocks Option - with a Russian mother and grandmother, he was palatable Alexander III and the Russian Court, but could not become Emperor of Russia as his Russian links were via a female line, and therefore palatable to Britain, France and the other Scandinavian nations.
Her other major contribution to Sweden was the establishment of the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block which presented Sweden, Norway, Denmark and then Finland with preferential trading agreements with their neighbouring countries.
Christina II Louise of Sweden died in the summer of 1901, seven months after the Duke of Ostergotland, at the Tullgarn Palace, according to hearsay and never officially confirmed, when the clock struck noon, she was heard declaring "And now, I think I might retire ..." before passing away.
She was succeeded by John Ferdinand, her son.
(4) John Ferdinand was born to then Crown Princess Christina and Peter, Duke of Ostergotland on September 17, 1861. The eldest of six children, John was an lively child, and would play with his siblings in his youth.
John Ferdinand had not yet married when his mother became Queen of Sweden in 1889, and many brides were selected for him, but ultimately picked Princess Alexandrina of the United Kingdom, daughter of Edward VII and Christina of Denmark, and the sister of Prince George of Wales, as his wife. They would go on to have five children together between 1892 and 1902.
When Christina II Louise died in August of 1901, John Ferdinand became King of Sweden as John IV Ferdinand at the age of 39. His siblings, Charles, Astrid, the Queen of the Netherlands, and Frederick, all attended their mother's funeral and their brother's subsequent coronation (only the Queen of Prussia didn't attend).
John IV Ferdinand's reign would see the Great War (1906-1909) happen. While Sweden remained neutral in the war, John IV Ferdinand supported the alliance of Great Britian, Prussia, and France against the alliance of Russia, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire. At the Treaty of Berlin, many new nations were created, one being Estonia, which picked John IV Ferdinand's brother Frederick, and his wife Margaret of Finland, as their King and Queen. Estonia would later join the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block with Karelia.
The rest of John IV Ferdinand's reign was mostly peaceful and would die in 1932, one year after his wife, Alexandrina. He was succeeded by his grandson, Charles XIV Frederick.
(5) Born 1911, Charles Ferdinamd Christian, created Duke of Narke upon his birth, was the only son of Crown Prince Ferdinand, Duke of Skane (the eldest son of John IV Ferdinand) and his wife, Elisabeth of Medelpad, a descendant of Sophia of Gloucester, sister of Frederick I whom he had married to a minor Swedish Count, Magnus Leijonhufvud, that he created as Duke of Medelpad in order to give his sister precedence at the Swedish Court second only to his wife and children.
Crown Prince Ferdinand died in a train crash when his son was only five. Elisabeth of Medelpad later remarried, like her ancestor before her, a minor noble and the Duke or Narke became Crown Prince and went to live with his grandparents and be given the appropriate education for the future King.
When his grandfather died, the Crown Prince took the regnal name of Charles XIV Ferdinand. The descendants of Frederick II sat on the thrones of many European nations - Prussia, Estonia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Norway, Hanover, Italy, Denmark and the United Kingdom.
Swedish Consorts since the coronation of Frederick II had been Russian, German, Portuguese and British so there was no clear precedent as to which nation that the new King should marry into the monarchy of. His aunts pressured him with their preferences, but eventually, he married Evelin, Princess Royal of Estonia, a second cousin via his grandfathers late brother, Frederick I of Estonia. This marriage renewed focus on the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block and it's transformation into the Scandinavian Economic Area - not just preferential trade agreements, but free movement of citizens as well as goods, as well as the right to take up residence in any of the partner nations.
The marriage also resulted in only one child. Born in 1934, Crown Prince Toomas, who died at the age of six. Although not publicised widely at the time, it is believed that Toomas was epileptic and his condition deteriorated significantly from the age of four. Queen Evelin spent much of his last two years at an isolated lodge with her son and was with him when he passed away. Due to his duties, Charles XIV Ferdinand could not spend much time with his wife and son and this lead to inevitable estrangement between the couple, as Evelin resented her husband. Evelin continued to reside at the royal lodge whilst her husband this entertained a number of lovers at the royal palaces, and fathered at least one illegitimate son, Alexander, created as Count Askersund.
Charles XIV Ferdinand would die at the age of 40 and be succeeded by Peter I Gustaf, his grand uncle.
[6] Peter Gustaf was born in 1897, the second and youngest son of John IV Ferdinand. As Peter Gustaf wasn't expected to become King of Sweden, he had a little more casual education. During his early twenties, he went traveling around the world, meeting all sorts of people and visting various places.
It was during one such trip where Peter Gustaf met his future wife, Ingrid Olavson, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, at a hotel in New York City. He pleaded with his father to marry her, but John IV Ferdinand refused. When he died in 1931 however, Peter Gustaf was able to marry Ingrid, which they did in 1932. They would have three children, who they allowed to marry whoever they want.
With his nephew's son died in 1940, Peter Gustaf became the heir to Charles XIV Ferdinand, and eventually King in 1951, with Peter I Gustaf becoming his regnal name. His three sisters, Anna, Birgitte, and Christina would attend their brother's coronation. Peter I Gustaf's reign was peaceful, but he would start the process of turning the Scandinavian Economic Area into a Scandinavian Federation (with the monarchies intact).
The beloved King would die in 1975, not able to see his dream finished, at the age of 78. His wife Ingrid would live for another seven years before dying at 84. Peter I Gustaf was succeeded by _______, his ________.
Crown Prince Frederick August, in May of 1973
[7] Prince Frederick August was born in 1935, as the second child of King Peter I Gustaf and Queen-Consort Ingrid Olavson. When the prince was in his early adolescence, he became deeply interested in Hollywood films and wished to become a movie star. And, in 1963, he moved to the city of Los Angeles. The next year, the prince starred in the now-classic movie, ''The Nordic Star''.
In late 1972, Crown Prince Christopher, Frederick August’s older brother, unexpectedly died from lung cancer. Thus, Frederick August became the first person in line to succeed his father as King of Sweden. As his father became more ill, Frederick August was forced to move back to Sweden.
When his father, finally, died in 1975, Frederick August was crowned as Frederick III August. The new King of Sweden was not very knowledgeable in the field of politics. The only things that King Frederick III August did during his short reign were oppose his late father's plans for a Scandinavian federation, and advocate for a Ministry of the Environment, which would protect and preserve Sweden's natural wonders.
As his stress about his job rose, the king's disinterest grew as well. And, ultimately, Frederick III August abdicated when he heard news of the creation of "The Nordic Star 2". He was succeeded by ___________.
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What If Parliament had allowed William, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh to accept the Swedish throne in 1812?
Kings of Sweden
1809 to 1818: Charles XIII (House of Holstein Gottorp)
1818 to 1834: Frederick II (House of Hanover) (1)
1834 to 1889: Christian III (House of Hanover) (2)
1889 to 1901: Christina II Louise (House of Hanover) (3)
1901 to 1932: John IV Ferdinand (House of Braganza) (4)
1932 to 1951: Charles XIV Ferdinand (House of Braganza) [5]
1951 to 1975: Peter I Gustaf (House of Braganza) [6]
1975-1977: Frederick III Augustus (House of Braganza) [7]
1977-2002: Nicholas I Alexander (House of Liechtenstein) [8]
(1) William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, born 1776, was 36 and unmarried when the invitation to become the heir to the throne of Sweden was offered to him. There was much opposition, but eventually Parliament, and his cousin, the Prince Regent, would eventually consent. But as William, or Frederick as he would start to style himself, was unmarried, this was the first thing that Charles XIII would turn his attention to - with the result that in 1813, Frederick married Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, and the pair had five children, the first being born in 1814.
All but one of the children, Prince Gustav, survived infancy. Three of the children were born by the time of Fredericks coronation. As a monarch, he was well liked, but not politically active, after his failure to successfully have Denmark cede Norway to Sweden had caused him embarrassment, especially when Norway elected Jules, Duke of Polignac as King Auguste of Norway.
Whilst he did not believe in absolute monarchy, he did demand certain rules be followed - no man could be seated in his presence, unless he too were also seated, and he expected to be brought drinks by only women at any parties he went to.
Behind his back, his enemies at court and some in the Swedish Parliament called him Dumbom Fred (or Silly Fred). At least, they said, he had endeavoured to learn the Swedish language, which he could do on at least a conversational basis by the time he was crowned. In 1820, he visited Britain for his Uncles funeral, and then in 1830 for his cousins.
Because of his lack of interest in politics, the Swedish Parliament gained significant power during his reign, evolving into a more constitutional monarchy than had been in place.
When it became clear that another of his cousins, William IV of Britain would not produce an heir and that Princess Alexandrina of Kent would be Queen in due course, Frederick petitioned King William IV and the Dowager Duchess of Kent for his second son, to marry Alexandrina. William himself favoured a Dutch match, whilst the Dowager Duchess favoured one of her nephews.
Frederick would die before the Affair of the British Marriage came to its conclusion. He was found unconscious in his bath tub at Drottingholm Palace (his favourite residence), having suffered a stroke, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Prince Christian.
[2] Christian was born the eldest child of Frederick and Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, born in 1814. Named in hopes that he would have the faith of the country behind him.
Being the heir, Christian found himself under the focused attention of his mother. Their relationship strained and comments in diaries and letters, kept by both as well as governors and tutors suggests that she tried to dominate and influence him, which over time did have an affect, with Christian’s ideas matching those of his Russian heritage rather than his British.
While his relationship with his father seems to be non-existing, with Christian, feeling superior to his father.
For example, his father lacked interest in politics, Christian found the Riksdag of the Estates, something of a game and enjoyed pitting the four groups against each other for his own gain.
At 20 years of age, the death of his father was mourned by many, however to Christian, it was just an inconvenience in state affairs.
Under Christian III, the Affair of the British Marriage, came to nothing. Many believed that it was the British government who had an issue with Swedish and British match, however, historians have uncovered secret letters, where Christian III was against the match as he didn’t want to see his brother in a higher position as him.
Victoria instead went with a match arranged by her mother and Uncle Leopoldo, by marrying Prince Albert.
Instead Christian arranged marriages that benefit is own need. Both sisters were married to near by kingdoms. The kingdom of Denmark was a must, while the Hanover match was to stop Prussia’s influence.
For his brother, he arranged a marriage with their cousin, Grand duchess Maria of Russia, which was not a happy one, from rumours around court.
Most of his 55-year reign was spent defending his diplomatic ties, social change and reform ideas.
Following Great Britain, slavery was abolished in all parts of Sweden, including her colonies, in 1839; slavery had legislated in Saint-Barthélemy under the Ordinance concerning the Police of Slaves and free Coloured People dated 30 July 1787. The last legally owned slaves in the Swedish colony of Saint-Barthélemy were bought and freed by the Swedish state on October 9, 1840.
During his reign, the first stage of the Industrial Revolution reached Sweden. This first take-off was founded on rural forges, textile proto-industries and sawmills.
During the Austro-Prussian War (1866), Hanover attempted to maintain a neutral position, along with some other member states of the German Confederation. Hanover's vote in favor of the mobilisation of Confederation troops against Prussia on 14 June 1866 prompted Prussia to declare war. Christian III sent troops to defend his sister and brother-in-law, helping the Kingdom of Hanover to keep independence from the imperialist Prussia.
His death in 1889, was felt across Europe by his family, (daughters who married abroad) and his supporters. He was succeeded by his daughter, Christina II Louise.
(3) Born 1841, Christina II Louise was the eldest of the daughters of Christian III and had spent much of her life as heir presumptive, her elder brother, Crown Prince Christian, was born in 1839, and then died of typhoid at the age of eighteen. Christian had been engaged to Charlotte of Belgium, but unmarried and with no issue at the time of his death.
Christina Louise had become engaged to Prince Joao of Portugal, the Duke of Beja, who was a year younger than herself, and the pair married in 1860 when Joao turned 18 and converted to Lutheranism. As the third son of Maria II, Queen of Portugal, he had been unlikely to ascend the Portuguese throne and abdicated his claim upon his conversion.
Joao was styled as Peter of Portugal from the marriage (he had abdicated his claim to the Dukedom of Beja when he abdicated his claim to the Portuguese throne), and created as Duke of Ostergotland by Christian II when the new couples first child, the Kings first grandchild, was born a year after their marriage. The couple would have five more children who lived to adulthood over the next seventeen years, which lead to an eighteen-year age gap between their eldest (1861) and their youngest (1878).
Christina Louise became Queen of Sweden at the age of 48 in 1889 and took Christina II Louise as her regnal name. Her four sisters, the Countess of Flanders, the Dowager Queen or Greece, the Crown Princess of Norway and the Queen of Italy all attended their fathers funeral and their sisters subsequent coronation (only the Countess of Flanders and the Crown Princess of Norway attended with their partners).
Her reign was, in contrast to her father's, brief and mostly peaceful as she worked with the Reiksdag to develop industry and commerce. The only significant crisis during her reign was the Finnish Civil War in which Finland declared independence from Russia. Christian III had always been more closely aligned with the Russian side of his heritage, but Christina II Louise played a more moderate and pragmatic political game, neither actively supporting her Russian relatives, nor working against them. This worked in her favour when, in 1895, Finland was officially recognised as an independent Kingdom and she successfully managed to negotiate the election of her paternal cousin, the Duke of Uppland, as King. He was deemed the Goldilocks Option - with a Russian mother and grandmother, he was palatable Alexander III and the Russian Court, but could not become Emperor of Russia as his Russian links were via a female line, and therefore palatable to Britain, France and the other Scandinavian nations.
Her other major contribution to Sweden was the establishment of the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block which presented Sweden, Norway, Denmark and then Finland with preferential trading agreements with their neighbouring countries.
Christina II Louise of Sweden died in the summer of 1901, seven months after the Duke of Ostergotland, at the Tullgarn Palace, according to hearsay and never officially confirmed, when the clock struck noon, she was heard declaring "And now, I think I might retire ..." before passing away.
She was succeeded by John Ferdinand, her son.
(4) John Ferdinand was born to then Crown Princess Christina and Peter, Duke of Ostergotland on September 17, 1861. The eldest of six children, John was an lively child, and would play with his siblings in his youth.
John Ferdinand had not yet married when his mother became Queen of Sweden in 1889, and many brides were selected for him, but ultimately picked Princess Alexandrina of the United Kingdom, daughter of Edward VII and Christina of Denmark, and the sister of Prince George of Wales, as his wife. They would go on to have five children together between 1892 and 1902.
When Christina II Louise died in August of 1901, John Ferdinand became King of Sweden as John IV Ferdinand at the age of 39. His siblings, Charles, Astrid, the Queen of the Netherlands, and Frederick, all attended their mother's funeral and their brother's subsequent coronation (only the Queen of Prussia didn't attend).
John IV Ferdinand's reign would see the Great War (1906-1909) happen. While Sweden remained neutral in the war, John IV Ferdinand supported the alliance of Great Britian, Prussia, and France against the alliance of Russia, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire. At the Treaty of Berlin, many new nations were created, one being Estonia, which picked John IV Ferdinand's brother Frederick, and his wife Margaret of Finland, as their King and Queen. Estonia would later join the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block with Karelia.
The rest of John IV Ferdinand's reign was mostly peaceful and would die in 1932, one year after his wife, Alexandrina. He was succeeded by his grandson, Charles XIV Frederick.
(5) Born 1911, Charles Ferdinamd Christian, created Duke of Narke upon his birth, was the only son of Crown Prince Ferdinand, Duke of Skane (the eldest son of John IV Ferdinand) and his wife, Elisabeth of Medelpad, a descendant of Sophia of Gloucester, sister of Frederick I whom he had married to a minor Swedish Count, Magnus Leijonhufvud, that he created as Duke of Medelpad in order to give his sister precedence at the Swedish Court second only to his wife and children.
Crown Prince Ferdinand died in a train crash when his son was only five. Elisabeth of Medelpad later remarried, like her ancestor before her, a minor noble and the Duke or Narke became Crown Prince and went to live with his grandparents and be given the appropriate education for the future King.
When his grandfather died, the Crown Prince took the regnal name of Charles XIV Ferdinand. The descendants of Frederick II sat on the thrones of many European nations - Prussia, Estonia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Norway, Hanover, Italy, Denmark and the United Kingdom.
Swedish Consorts since the coronation of Frederick II had been Russian, German, Portuguese and British so there was no clear precedent as to which nation that the new King should marry into the monarchy of. His aunts pressured him with their preferences, but eventually, he married Evelin, Princess Royal of Estonia, a second cousin via his grandfathers late brother, Frederick I of Estonia. This marriage renewed focus on the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block and it's transformation into the Scandinavian Economic Area - not just preferential trade agreements, but free movement of citizens as well as goods, as well as the right to take up residence in any of the partner nations.
The marriage also resulted in only one child. Born in 1934, Crown Prince Toomas, who died at the age of six. Although not publicised widely at the time, it is believed that Toomas was epileptic and his condition deteriorated significantly from the age of four. Queen Evelin spent much of his last two years at an isolated lodge with her son and was with him when he passed away. Due to his duties, Charles XIV Ferdinand could not spend much time with his wife and son and this lead to inevitable estrangement between the couple, as Evelin resented her husband. Evelin continued to reside at the royal lodge whilst her husband this entertained a number of lovers at the royal palaces, and fathered at least one illegitimate son, Alexander, created as Count Askersund.
Charles XIV Ferdinand would die at the age of 40 and be succeeded by Peter I Gustaf, his grand uncle.
[6] Peter Gustaf was born in 1897, the second and youngest son of John IV Ferdinand. As Peter Gustaf wasn't expected to become King of Sweden, he had a little more casual education. During his early twenties, he went traveling around the world, meeting all sorts of people and visting various places.
It was during one such trip where Peter Gustaf met his future wife, Ingrid Olavson, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, at a hotel in New York City. He pleaded with his father to marry her, but John IV Ferdinand refused. When he died in 1931 however, Peter Gustaf was able to marry Ingrid, which they did in 1932. They would have three children, who they allowed to marry whoever they want.
With his nephew's son died in 1940, Peter Gustaf became the heir to Charles XIV Ferdinand, and eventually King in 1951, with Peter I Gustaf becoming his regnal name. His three sisters, Anna, Birgitte, and Christina would attend their brother's coronation. Peter I Gustaf's reign was peaceful, but he would start the process of turning the Scandinavian Economic Area into a Scandinavian Federation (with the monarchies intact).
The beloved King would die in 1975, not able to see his dream finished, at the age of 78. His wife Ingrid would live for another seven years before dying at 84. Peter I Gustaf was succeeded by _______, his ________.
Crown Prince Frederick August, in May of 1973
[7] Prince Frederick August was born in 1935, as the second child of King Peter I Gustaf and Queen-Consort Ingrid Olavson. When the prince was in his early adolescence, he became deeply interested in Hollywood films and wished to become a movie star. And, in 1963, he moved to the city of Los Angeles. The next year, the prince starred in the now-classic movie, ''The Nordic Star''.
In late 1972, Crown Prince Christopher, Frederick August’s older brother, unexpectedly died from lung cancer. Thus, Frederick August became the first person in line to succeed his father as King of Sweden. As his father became more ill, Frederick August was forced to move back to Sweden.
When his father, finally, died in 1975, Frederick August was crowned as Frederick III August. The new King of Sweden was not very knowledgeable in the field of politics. The only things that King Frederick III August did during his short reign were oppose his late father's plans for a Scandinavian federation, and advocate for a Ministry of the Environment, which would protect and preserve Sweden's natural wonders.
As his stress about his job rose, the king's disinterest grew as well. And, ultimately, Frederick III August abdicated when he heard news of the creation of "The Nordic Star 2". He was succeeded by his nephew, Nicolas I Alexander.
(8) Nicolas I Alexander was born as fourth in the line of succession, and following his mother's death, his uncles death, his grandfathers death and then his other uncles abdication, he became King of Sweden at 20 in 1977. He was the only child of Princess Ingrid of Sweden and Prince Leopold of Liechtenstein, the third son of Johann IV, Prince Regnant of Liechtenstein. This meant Nicolas was also placed high in the line of succession to the crown of Liechtenstein, behind his elder two paternal uncles, Hereditary Prince Johann and Prince Alois and his cousins, Joseph, George and Max. After he became King of Sweden in 1977, he was encouraged to find a wife, as his heir at that point was the line of his Great Aunt Anna, who had married the Grand Duke or Luxembourg and whose daughter, Adelaide I was now Grand Duchess of Luxembourg.
Adelaide had three sons and a daughter with the Duke of Valentinois, a member of the Monegasque royal family. It was this daughter, Adelaide of Luxembourg, that Nicolas I Alexander married in 1981 in a lavish ceremony in Stockholm. They swiftly had three children.
1989 saw the eventual transformation of the SEA into the Nordic Federation, rather than the Scandinavian Federation as it now embraced Iceland. The Head of State of the Nordic Federation would be assigned to each member state for a rotational five year term, in order that they had entered first the trade pact, the SEA or the Federation. As such, from 1989 to 1994, Nicolas I Alexander was also the Head of the Federation, a position which he embraced fully for the rest of his reign.
He died in 2002 after suffering a heart attack whilst on a tour of the Federation during the leadership of the King of Finland. His body was returned to Stockholm and he was succeeded by ............
Christian II Paul, King of Sweden (1814-1889) m. 1836, m. Louise of Hesse-Kassel (1817–1898)
Kings of Sweden
1809 to 1818: Charles XIII (House of Holstein Gottorp)
1818 to 1834: Frederick II (House of Hanover) (1)
1834 to 1889: Christian III (House of Hanover) (2)
1889 to 1901: Christina II Louise (House of Hanover) (3)
1901 to 1932: John IV Ferdinand (House of Braganza) (4)
1932 to 1951: Charles XIV Ferdinand (House of Braganza) [5]
1951 to 1975: Peter I Gustaf (House of Braganza) [6]
1975-1977: Frederick III Augustus (House of Braganza) [7]
1977-2002: Nicholas I Alexander (House of Liechtenstein) [8]
(1) William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, born 1776, was 36 and unmarried when the invitation to become the heir to the throne of Sweden was offered to him. There was much opposition, but eventually Parliament, and his cousin, the Prince Regent, would eventually consent. But as William, or Frederick as he would start to style himself, was unmarried, this was the first thing that Charles XIII would turn his attention to - with the result that in 1813, Frederick married Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, and the pair had five children, the first being born in 1814.
All but one of the children, Prince Gustav, survived infancy. Three of the children were born by the time of Fredericks coronation. As a monarch, he was well liked, but not politically active, after his failure to successfully have Denmark cede Norway to Sweden had caused him embarrassment, especially when Norway elected Jules, Duke of Polignac as King Auguste of Norway.
Whilst he did not believe in absolute monarchy, he did demand certain rules be followed - no man could be seated in his presence, unless he too were also seated, and he expected to be brought drinks by only women at any parties he went to.
Behind his back, his enemies at court and some in the Swedish Parliament called him Dumbom Fred (or Silly Fred). At least, they said, he had endeavoured to learn the Swedish language, which he could do on at least a conversational basis by the time he was crowned. In 1820, he visited Britain for his Uncles funeral, and then in 1830 for his cousins.
Because of his lack of interest in politics, the Swedish Parliament gained significant power during his reign, evolving into a more constitutional monarchy than had been in place.
When it became clear that another of his cousins, William IV of Britain would not produce an heir and that Princess Alexandrina of Kent would be Queen in due course, Frederick petitioned King William IV and the Dowager Duchess of Kent for his second son, to marry Alexandrina. William himself favoured a Dutch match, whilst the Dowager Duchess favoured one of her nephews.
Frederick would die before the Affair of the British Marriage came to its conclusion. He was found unconscious in his bath tub at Drottingholm Palace (his favourite residence), having suffered a stroke, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Prince Christian.
[2] Christian was born the eldest child of Frederick and Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, born in 1814. Named in hopes that he would have the faith of the country behind him.
Being the heir, Christian found himself under the focused attention of his mother. Their relationship strained and comments in diaries and letters, kept by both as well as governors and tutors suggests that she tried to dominate and influence him, which over time did have an affect, with Christian’s ideas matching those of his Russian heritage rather than his British.
While his relationship with his father seems to be non-existing, with Christian, feeling superior to his father.
For example, his father lacked interest in politics, Christian found the Riksdag of the Estates, something of a game and enjoyed pitting the four groups against each other for his own gain.
At 20 years of age, the death of his father was mourned by many, however to Christian, it was just an inconvenience in state affairs.
Under Christian III, the Affair of the British Marriage, came to nothing. Many believed that it was the British government who had an issue with Swedish and British match, however, historians have uncovered secret letters, where Christian III was against the match as he didn’t want to see his brother in a higher position as him.
Victoria instead went with a match arranged by her mother and Uncle Leopoldo, by marrying Prince Albert.
Instead Christian arranged marriages that benefit is own need. Both sisters were married to near by kingdoms. The kingdom of Denmark was a must, while the Hanover match was to stop Prussia’s influence.
For his brother, he arranged a marriage with their cousin, Grand duchess Maria of Russia, which was not a happy one, from rumours around court.
Most of his 55-year reign was spent defending his diplomatic ties, social change and reform ideas.
Following Great Britain, slavery was abolished in all parts of Sweden, including her colonies, in 1839; slavery had legislated in Saint-Barthélemy under the Ordinance concerning the Police of Slaves and free Coloured People dated 30 July 1787. The last legally owned slaves in the Swedish colony of Saint-Barthélemy were bought and freed by the Swedish state on October 9, 1840.
During his reign, the first stage of the Industrial Revolution reached Sweden. This first take-off was founded on rural forges, textile proto-industries and sawmills.
During the Austro-Prussian War (1866), Hanover attempted to maintain a neutral position, along with some other member states of the German Confederation. Hanover's vote in favor of the mobilisation of Confederation troops against Prussia on 14 June 1866 prompted Prussia to declare war. Christian III sent troops to defend his sister and brother-in-law, helping the Kingdom of Hanover to keep independence from the imperialist Prussia.
His death in 1889, was felt across Europe by his family, (daughters who married abroad) and his supporters. He was succeeded by his daughter, Christina II Louise.
(3) Born 1841, Christina II Louise was the eldest of the daughters of Christian III and had spent much of her life as heir presumptive, her elder brother, Crown Prince Christian, was born in 1839, and then died of typhoid at the age of eighteen. Christian had been engaged to Charlotte of Belgium, but unmarried and with no issue at the time of his death.
Christina Louise had become engaged to Prince Joao of Portugal, the Duke of Beja, who was a year younger than herself, and the pair married in 1860 when Joao turned 18 and converted to Lutheranism. As the third son of Maria II, Queen of Portugal, he had been unlikely to ascend the Portuguese throne and abdicated his claim upon his conversion.
Joao was styled as Peter of Portugal from the marriage (he had abdicated his claim to the Dukedom of Beja when he abdicated his claim to the Portuguese throne), and created as Duke of Ostergotland by Christian II when the new couples first child, the Kings first grandchild, was born a year after their marriage. The couple would have five more children who lived to adulthood over the next seventeen years, which lead to an eighteen-year age gap between their eldest (1861) and their youngest (1878).
Christina Louise became Queen of Sweden at the age of 48 in 1889 and took Christina II Louise as her regnal name. Her four sisters, the Countess of Flanders, the Dowager Queen or Greece, the Crown Princess of Norway and the Queen of Italy all attended their fathers funeral and their sisters subsequent coronation (only the Countess of Flanders and the Crown Princess of Norway attended with their partners).
Her reign was, in contrast to her father's, brief and mostly peaceful as she worked with the Reiksdag to develop industry and commerce. The only significant crisis during her reign was the Finnish Civil War in which Finland declared independence from Russia. Christian III had always been more closely aligned with the Russian side of his heritage, but Christina II Louise played a more moderate and pragmatic political game, neither actively supporting her Russian relatives, nor working against them. This worked in her favour when, in 1895, Finland was officially recognised as an independent Kingdom and she successfully managed to negotiate the election of her paternal cousin, the Duke of Uppland, as King. He was deemed the Goldilocks Option - with a Russian mother and grandmother, he was palatable Alexander III and the Russian Court, but could not become Emperor of Russia as his Russian links were via a female line, and therefore palatable to Britain, France and the other Scandinavian nations.
Her other major contribution to Sweden was the establishment of the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block which presented Sweden, Norway, Denmark and then Finland with preferential trading agreements with their neighbouring countries.
Christina II Louise of Sweden died in the summer of 1901, seven months after the Duke of Ostergotland, at the Tullgarn Palace, according to hearsay and never officially confirmed, when the clock struck noon, she was heard declaring "And now, I think I might retire ..." before passing away.
She was succeeded by John Ferdinand, her son.
(4) John Ferdinand was born to then Crown Princess Christina and Peter, Duke of Ostergotland on September 17, 1861. The eldest of six children, John was an lively child, and would play with his siblings in his youth.
John Ferdinand had not yet married when his mother became Queen of Sweden in 1889, and many brides were selected for him, but ultimately picked Princess Alexandrina of the United Kingdom, daughter of Edward VII and Christina of Denmark, and the sister of Prince George of Wales, as his wife. They would go on to have five children together between 1892 and 1902.
When Christina II Louise died in August of 1901, John Ferdinand became King of Sweden as John IV Ferdinand at the age of 39. His siblings, Charles, Astrid, the Queen of the Netherlands, and Frederick, all attended their mother's funeral and their brother's subsequent coronation (only the Queen of Prussia didn't attend).
John IV Ferdinand's reign would see the Great War (1906-1909) happen. While Sweden remained neutral in the war, John IV Ferdinand supported the alliance of Great Britian, Prussia, and France against the alliance of Russia, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire. At the Treaty of Berlin, many new nations were created, one being Estonia, which picked John IV Ferdinand's brother Frederick, and his wife Margaret of Finland, as their King and Queen. Estonia would later join the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block with Karelia.
The rest of John IV Ferdinand's reign was mostly peaceful and would die in 1932, one year after his wife, Alexandrina. He was succeeded by his grandson, Charles XIV Frederick.
(5) Born 1911, Charles Ferdinamd Christian, created Duke of Narke upon his birth, was the only son of Crown Prince Ferdinand, Duke of Skane (the eldest son of John IV Ferdinand) and his wife, Elisabeth of Medelpad, a descendant of Sophia of Gloucester, sister of Frederick I whom he had married to a minor Swedish Count, Magnus Leijonhufvud, that he created as Duke of Medelpad in order to give his sister precedence at the Swedish Court second only to his wife and children.
Crown Prince Ferdinand died in a train crash when his son was only five. Elisabeth of Medelpad later remarried, like her ancestor before her, a minor noble and the Duke or Narke became Crown Prince and went to live with his grandparents and be given the appropriate education for the future King.
When his grandfather died, the Crown Prince took the regnal name of Charles XIV Ferdinand. The descendants of Frederick II sat on the thrones of many European nations - Prussia, Estonia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Norway, Hanover, Italy, Denmark and the United Kingdom.
Swedish Consorts since the coronation of Frederick II had been Russian, German, Portuguese and British so there was no clear precedent as to which nation that the new King should marry into the monarchy of. His aunts pressured him with their preferences, but eventually, he married Evelin, Princess Royal of Estonia, a second cousin via his grandfathers late brother, Frederick I of Estonia. This marriage renewed focus on the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block and it's transformation into the Scandinavian Economic Area - not just preferential trade agreements, but free movement of citizens as well as goods, as well as the right to take up residence in any of the partner nations.
The marriage also resulted in only one child. Born in 1934, Crown Prince Toomas, who died at the age of six. Although not publicised widely at the time, it is believed that Toomas was epileptic and his condition deteriorated significantly from the age of four. Queen Evelin spent much of his last two years at an isolated lodge with her son and was with him when he passed away. Due to his duties, Charles XIV Ferdinand could not spend much time with his wife and son and this lead to inevitable estrangement between the couple, as Evelin resented her husband. Evelin continued to reside at the royal lodge whilst her husband this entertained a number of lovers at the royal palaces, and fathered at least one illegitimate son, Alexander, created as Count Askersund.
Charles XIV Ferdinand would die at the age of 40 and be succeeded by Peter I Gustaf, his grand uncle.
[6] Peter Gustaf was born in 1897, the second and youngest son of John IV Ferdinand. As Peter Gustaf wasn't expected to become King of Sweden, he had a little more casual education. During his early twenties, he went traveling around the world, meeting all sorts of people and visting various places.
It was during one such trip where Peter Gustaf met his future wife, Ingrid Olavson, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, at a hotel in New York City. He pleaded with his father to marry her, but John IV Ferdinand refused. When he died in 1931 however, Peter Gustaf was able to marry Ingrid, which they did in 1932. They would have three children, who they allowed to marry whoever they want.
With his nephew's son died in 1940, Peter Gustaf became the heir to Charles XIV Ferdinand, and eventually King in 1951, with Peter I Gustaf becoming his regnal name. His three sisters, Anna, Birgitte, and Christina would attend their brother's coronation. Peter I Gustaf's reign was peaceful, but he would start the process of turning the Scandinavian Economic Area into a Scandinavian Federation (with the monarchies intact).
The beloved King would die in 1975, not able to see his dream finished, at the age of 78. His wife Ingrid would live for another seven years before dying at 84. Peter I Gustaf was succeeded by _______, his ________.
Crown Prince Frederick August, in May of 1973
[7] Prince Frederick August was born in 1935, as the second child of King Peter I Gustaf and Queen-Consort Ingrid Olavson. When the prince was in his early adolescence, he became deeply interested in Hollywood films and wished to become a movie star. And, in 1963, he moved to the city of Los Angeles. The next year, the prince starred in the now-classic movie, ''The Nordic Star''.
In late 1972, Crown Prince Christopher, Frederick August’s older brother, unexpectedly died from lung cancer. Thus, Frederick August became the first person in line to succeed his father as King of Sweden. As his father became more ill, Frederick August was forced to move back to Sweden.
When his father, finally, died in 1975, Frederick August was crowned as Frederick III August. The new King of Sweden was not very knowledgeable in the field of politics. The only things that King Frederick III August did during his short reign were oppose his late father's plans for a Scandinavian federation, and advocate for a Ministry of the Environment, which would protect and preserve Sweden's natural wonders.
As his stress about his job rose, the king's disinterest grew as well. And, ultimately, Frederick III August abdicated when he heard news of the creation of "The Nordic Star 2". He was succeeded by his nephew, Nicolas I Alexander.
(8) Nicolas I Alexander was born as fourth in the line of succession, and following his mother's death, his uncles death, his grandfathers death and then his other uncles abdication, he became King of Sweden at 20 in 1977. He was the only child of Princess Ingrid of Sweden and Prince Leopold of Liechtenstein, the third son of Johann IV, Prince Regnant of Liechtenstein. This meant Nicolas was also placed high in the line of succession to the crown of Liechtenstein, behind his elder two paternal uncles, Hereditary Prince Johann and Prince Alois and his cousins, Joseph, George and Max. After he became King of Sweden in 1977, he was encouraged to find a wife, as his heir at that point was the line of his Great Aunt Anna, who had married the Grand Duke or Luxembourg and whose daughter, Adelaide I was now Grand Duchess of Luxembourg.
Adelaide had three sons and a daughter with the Duke of Valentinois, a member of the Monegasque royal family. It was this daughter, Adelaide of Luxembourg, that Nicolas I Alexander married in 1981 in a lavish ceremony in Stockholm. They swiftly had three children.
1989 saw the eventual transformation of the SEA into the Nordic Federation, rather than the Scandinavian Federation as it now embraced Iceland. The Head of State of the Nordic Federation would be assigned to each member state for a rotational five year term, in order that they had entered first the trade pact, the SEA or the Federation. As such, from 1989 to 1994, Nicolas I Alexander was also the Head of the Federation, a position which he embraced fully for the rest of his reign.
He died in 2002 after suffering a heart attack whilst on a tour of the Federation during the leadership of the King of Finland. His body was returned to Stockholm and he was succeeded by ............
Christian II Paul, King of Sweden (1814-1889) m. 1836, m. Louise of Hesse-Kassel (1817–1898)
a) Christian, Crown Prince of Sweden, b. 1839, d. 1857, engaged to Charlotte of Belgium
b) Christina II Louise, Queen of Sweden, b. 1841, r. 1889 to 1901, m. Peter of Portugal, Duke of Ostergotland
1) John IV Ferdinand, King of Sweden, b. 1861, r. 1901 to 1932, m. 1891, Alexandrina of the United Kingdom (1865-1931)
a) Crown Prince Ferdinand, Duke of Skane, b. 1892, d. 1916, m. Elisabeth of Medelpad
1) Charles XIV Ferdinand, King of Sweden, b. 1911, r. 1932 to 1951, m. Evelin, Princess Royal of Estonia
a) Crown Prince Toomas, b. 1934, d. 1940
b) Anna of Sweden, b. 1894, m. Grand Duke Guillaume V of Luxemburg, b. 1893, d. 1949
1) Adelaide, Grand Duchess of Luxemburg, b. 1920, d. 1985, m. Albert, Duke of Valentinois
a) 3 sons
b) Adelaide, Queen of Sweden, b. 1960, m. Nicolas I Alexander of Sweden
1) has issue
c) Peter I Gustaf, King of Sweden, b. 1897, r. 1951 to 1975, m. 1932, Ingrid Olavson (1898-1982)
1) Crown Prince Christopher, b. pre 1935, d. 1972, either never married or no issue
2) Frederick III Augustus, King of Sweden, b..1935, r. 1975 to 1977
3) Ingrid of Sweden, b. 1936, d. 1960, m. Prince Leopold of Liechtenstein
a) Nicolas I Alexander, King of Sweden, b. 1957, m. Adelaide of Luxemburg and Monaco
d) Birgitte, b. 1899, d. XXXX
e) Christina, b. 1902, d. XXXX
2) Louise, Queen of Prussia, b. 1863, d. 1924, m. Henry I of Prussia (1862-1930)
a) has issue
3) Charles, b. 1867, d. 19XX, married
4) Astrid, b. 1869, d. 19XX, m. Ferdinand of Denmark (1871-19XX)
5) Mary, Queen of the Netherlands, b. 1874, d. 19XX, m. William IV of the Netherlands (1875-19XX)
a) has issue
6) Frederick I of Estonia, b. 1878, r. 1910 to 1928, m. Margaret of Finland (1877-19XX)
a) Toomas I of Estonia, b. 1896, r. 1928 to 19XX, m. Evelin, Countess of Narva
1) Evelin, Princess Royal of Estonia, b. 1915, m. Charles XIV Ferdinand
c) Eugenie, Countess of Flanders, b. 1842, d. 19XX m. Philippe, Count of Flanders (1837 to 1905)
1) has issue
d) Ingrid, Dowager Queen of Greece, b. 1845, d. 19XX, m. George I of Greece (1845 to 19XX)
1) has issue
e) Birgitte, Crown Princess of Norway, b. 1846, d. 19XX, m. Auguste, Crown Prince of Norway (1843 to 19XX)
1) has issue
f) Victoria, Queen of Italy, b. 1847, d. 19XX, m. Umberto I, King of Italy (1844 to 1900)
1) has issue
What if... the Confederation of the Rhine had adopted a form of elective monarchy?
List of Monarchs of the Confederation of the Rhine
1806-1817: Karl Theodor I (House of Dalberg) [1]
1817-1825: Maximilian I Joseph (House of Wittelsbach) [2]
1825-1853: Ludwig I (House of Wittelsbach) [3]
1853-1863: Augusta I (House of Wettin) [4]
1863-1891: Frederick Napoléon I (House of Bonaparte) [5]
1891-1901: William I (House of Solms-Laubach) [6]
1901-1911: Christian Günther I (House of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen) [7]
1911-1912: Alexander I (House of Leuchtenberg) [8]
1912-1924: Joseph Leopold I (House of Hapsburg-Wurzbürg) [9]
1924-1938: Eugen I (House of Württemberg) [10]
1938-1967: Franziska I (House of Mecklemburg) [11]
1967-1971: Ferdinand I (House of Isenburg) [12]
Karl Theodor I, Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine,
Prince-Elector of Regensburg, Grand Duke of Frankfurt,
Prince of Aschaffenburg, Bishop of Constance, Regensburg, and Worms.
[1] Karl Theodor I, born in 1744, was the Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine, from his election in 1806 until he died in 1817.
Karl Theodor was born as Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg, in Herrnsheim, near the city of Worms. Karl Theodor devoted himself to studying canon law and entered a career in the Church. Dalberg was distinguished with his patriotic attitude, whether in ecclesiastical matters or in his efforts to galvanize the machinery of the Holy Roman Empire. Karl Theodor became frustrated with the Empire’s inability to create an effective central government for Germany and turned to Napoleon Bonaparte.
In 1803, Karl Theodor became Arch-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire. Dalberg was also the new Elector of Mainz, but, in the same, the Electorate of Mainz was partioned amongst France, Hesse, the Nassaus, and Prussia. Dalberg retained the Aschaffenburg area and was made Prince of Aschaffenburg, he was also compensated with Regensburg and surrounding areas, becoming the Prince of Regensburg.
In early June of 1806, the Confederation of the Rhine was created. Soon, Holy Roman Emperor Francis II soon abdicated his title, ending the existence of the more than thousand-year-old imperial entity. Dalberg joined the Confederation of the Rhine. As a way to continue award states such as Baden, Bavaria, and Württemberg, who would be his main suppliers of soldiers from Germany, the Confederation of the Rhine was made to implement a system of an elective monarchy.
Dalberg was elected Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine by the rulers of Baden, Bavaria, Berg, Hesse-Darmstadt, Regensburg, Saxony, Westphalia, Württemberg, and Würzburg, at the urging of French Emperor Napoleon. A few weeks later, he was crowned as Karl Theodor I in a public ceremony in Frankfurt.
During his reign, Karl Theodor I lifted all restrictions on the Jewish people, and serfdom and socage were abolished. A code similar to the Napoleonic code was enacted, which did away with guilds. A universal metric system of weights and measures was introduced.
However, arguably the most influential thing that Karl Theodor I did was sending a very skilled diplomat, who was from the Principality of Reuss-Lobenstein to the Napoleonic court. The diplomat soon became one of the French Emperor’s closest advisors, convincing Napoleon to uphold the 1807 Treaty of Fontainebleau. He also convinced the Romanovs to have Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna of Russia marry Napoleon and form an alliance with France against Austria, which eventually resulted in the division of the Austrian Empire into various independent kingdoms, duchies, and principalities. Austria proper, itself, was reduced to the rank of a grand duchy.
In 1817, Karl Theodor I passed away peacefully in the city of Regensburg. The electors elected Maximilian I Joseph, King of Bavaria, as his successor.
Maximilian I Joseph, King of Bavaria
[2] There was little doubt whom to elect as the new Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine as the most powerful monarch in the Confederacy was the King of Bavaria, who'd used his ties to the French Emperor to establish himself as the first King of Bavaria and also make his kingdom the most powerful state in the confederacy. By electing a king to lead the Confederation, it made no sense to refer to the leader as a "prince" and so the title was changed to "Kaiser."
This adoption of an imperial title for the leader was diplomatically sold to the French with the argument that in ancient Rome when there was a 'junior' Emperor, he was called Caesar and the senior one was called Augustus. The diplomats who negotiated this with Paris presented the French Emperor a letter in which Maximillian addressed Napoleon as "My Augustus."
Maximilian used his new position to expand Bavaria into what had formerly been western Austria and the Tyrol. His main accomplishment for the Confederacy was establishing a single, unified "Army of the Rhine." When he died the Confederacy elected as its new Kaiser his son Ludwig.
Kaiser Ludwig I, Elector and King of Bavaria
Grand Duke of Salzburg, Duke of Franconia,
Duke in Swabia, Count Palatine of the Rhine.
[3] When his father died, Kaiser Ludwig I was elected as the new ruler of the Confederation of the Rhine. Ludwig I was not pleased with the amount of influence France had over the confederation, as he had previously tried to regain the eastern part of the Palatinate for Bavaria but failed due to the intervention of France.
Ludwig I supported the Greeks in their war of independence against the Ottoman Empire. Kaiser Ludwig also convinced the French Emperor to have France and its allies intervene in the war. After the war, Ludwig's second son, Otto, was elected King of Greece.
Throughout his reign, Ludwig I also encouraged the industrialization of the Confederation of the Rhine. As a patron of the arts and architecture, the Kaiser ordered the construction of many neoclassical buildings across the confederation.
Ludwig I abdicated after being embroiled in an extramarital affair with Marianna Florenzi, which caused a severe backlash against the House of Wittelsbach. The electors elected Augusta I, Queen Dowager of Saxony, as his successor.
Kaiserin Augusta I "the Unexpected"
[4] With the Florenzi Affair staining the reputation of the Wittelsbach dynasty, the consensus that had been established around Ludwig I's son Maximilian was weakened. His two main rivals were King William I of Württemberg and Prince Karl-Anton of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. The succession crisis started with the abdication of Kaiser Ludwig III in February well into October, when a compromise solution was found: the old Queen of Saxony, Augusta I, was to be put on the throne until tensions had dissipated, as she had no apparent heir and was essentially seen as a way to gain time on the matter. This resulted in uproar from the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and the Prussian ambassador who had supported him, claiming that the election of a woman was illegal, while the proponents didn't see how much damage an old lady who was expected to die in a handful of years could do, and just wanted the Prussians to stop meddling with the elections. While the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen threatened to leave the Confederation, he never followed through, and slowly sunk into irrelevance because of his own policy of non-cooperation with the Confederal government.
Queen Augusta was indeed old: she was almost 70 years old and was in her youth expected to become Queen of Poland. These plans didn't go far, as Poland was instead partitioned, and she never got an occasion to marry her Polish suitor, Prince Jozef Poniatowski. But these plans might have very well led her to the Rhenish throne, as they had made her ambitious and had led her to take a huge interest in matters of state. She made herself inseparable from her father, who had become King of Saxony in 1806, and slowly but surely built up her influence, that crystallized in the Constitution of 1819. She had enticed her father to commit to reforms by reminding him of the Golden Liberty that had ruled their beloved Poland, but also pointing out the success of rationalizations that had propelled the French Empire forward. And among the administrative reorganizations and the economic reforms stood a small clause: a father who would die without male issue could transfer his possessions to his daughter instead. From any father, to any daughter. That is how she climbed to the throne of Saxony.
While Queen of Saxony, she worked very hard at industrializing her Kingdom, trying to replace Britain's role as the factory Russia relied on. Thus, she poured all the Royal Treasure into the creation of a company: the Köeniglisches Eisenbahnen und Fabriken Gemeinschaft, Royal Railroads and Factories Corporation. Her goal was to buy all the necessary infrastructure for Saxony to become a major industrial center, and it worked to a certain extent: her reign oversaw the construction of a dense network of railroads and canals that was comparable to the one of Northern England, and the steel production of Saxony rivaled the one of Silesia. She also tried to given her fellow women more rights, hoping that the more advanced her lady subjects' rights would be, the less she was likely to be challenged by her nephew for the throne.
Even though she had been elected on the assumption that she would just die quietly and allow for the situation to calm down after the abdication of King Ludwig I, awarding her the nickname of "Imperial Wedge" in England, she was quite proactive in her two main fields of expertise: industrializing and backstabbing people to get her position forward. The Napoleonic System that had held for nearly half a century was cracking more and more, and she used this opportunity to pull out concessions on the Elbe, Rhine and Weser from Napoleon II's clenched and rageful claws, using these new concessions to propel the Rhenish industry forward.
The joke is often made that she clinged to power so much she took three years to die from tuberculosis just to stay Empress for ten years, which would not really be below her ... When she drew her final breath, in November 1863, she had largely exceeded anything that was expected from her. She had never been married, so the question of the Confederal succession was once again up in the air, until the electors settled for Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia.
Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte,
King of Westphalia upon his election
[5] Of the three large states of the Confederacy, the Kingdom of Westphalia, formed by the French Emperor Napoléon I, had not seen its King be elected the Kaiser, while the two other large states, Bavaria and Saxony had.
The first King, Napoléon's younger brother, Jérôme Bonaparte, had been made the King of the state formed from other smaller states and parts of Prussia and of the former British Hanover in 1807. Jérôme had previously emigrated to America and married an American, but his brother forced him to return to France and annulled his marriage, making his first son unable to inherit. In 1803 Jérôme had married Princess Katharina Friederike of Württemberg, daughter of King Frederick I of Württemberg and through her mother, the Duchess Augusta of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, she was a grand niece of George III Hanover, King of Great Britain and the elector of Hanover before it was absorbed into Westphalia.
Jérôme I had never been a contender to the throne of Kaiser in the elections of 1817, 1825, or 1853. The other electors, despite their alliance with the French, didn't want a French Kaiser, a fact that Jérôme never could put behind him as King of Westphalia. But his son and heir, Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte, the first born of his marriage with Queen Katharina, was born in 1815 in Cassel, the capitol of the Kingdom of Westphalia, and raised as a German prince.
As Jérôme I lived a long life to the age of 75, dying in 1860, Frederick Napoléon didn't become King of Westphalia until he was 45. As both the Royal Prince and as King, Frederick Napoléon had supported Kaiserin Augusta against his own cousin, Napoléon II of the French, over the Elbe, Weser, and Rhine Concessions, convincing the other electors he was a true German and not a toady of the French.
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon proved his mettle in the Rhenish-Prussian War of 1872 when the Prussian attempted to force the Confederacy into a union with Prussia with Berlin as senior state and the Kings of Prussia hereditary Kaisers. By then Prussia had absorbed Schleswig-Holstein and Swedish Pomerania to the north of the Confederacy as well as regions to the east.
The war was triggered when Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, the son of the late Prince Karl-Anton, announced that Sigmaringen was leaving the Confederacy and he swore allegiance to King Wilhelm I of Prussia as his Kaiser. His claim was that the Confederacy was actually little more than an alliance of independent states and Sigmaringen had the right to leave it and join with Prussia in a new, centralized Empire.
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon called for a meeting of the electors in Cassel to determine if this was their will, could member states leave the Confederacy or not. While they were deliberating, news came to the court that Prussian forces had not only entered Sigmaringen, but moved into the Elbe Concession on the right bank of the Elbe, which Kaiserin Augusta had seized from the French. It had been treated as its own small state, but both Westphalia and Sigmaringen claimed it as part of their state.
The electors agreed this Prussian occupation was an invasion of the Confederacy. Quickly they put forth the Cassel Declaration that the Confederacy of the Rhine was in truth an indivisible union, that the Elbe Concession was part of Westphalia, and that the Rhine Kaiserreich (a term used for the first time in the Declaration) was at war with Prussia.
At the same time, the Prussians invaded the Weser Concession (Frisian lands along the North Sea) and the low countries, still part of the French Empire. This, and the treatment of the French Imperial officials in the Elbe Concession by the Prussians, brought France into the war. When Kaiserin Augusta had taken the Concessions, she'd been advised by Frederick Napoléon to both pay France for them and to give the Imperial French officials in them a choice- remain in the Concessions, become citizens of the states they'd be annexed to, and receive a pension for life or emigrate to the French Empire. Part of this agreement, which Napoléon II had accepted begrudgingly, was that those who chose to stay in the Concession would remain citizens of France, having dual citizenship and could freely moved back and forth.
The Prussians now revoked this in the Elbe Confederacy, both the dual citizenship and the life time pensions.
The tension between the Rhine and France was gone.
The war at first went well for Prussia as their forces swept through the low lands into France proper, intending to conquer Paris and force France to surrender before invading the rest of the Rhine. But this changed when the Poles rebelled and the Russian Empire invaded Prussia from the east "To protect our Slavic cousins from the Huns."
The Army of the Rhine now attacked Prussia and the Prussian offensive collapsed. By late 1872 Berlin sued for peace. The Treaty of Paris established a new post war Europe. The Polish provinces of Prussia were annexed into the Russian Empire. Swedish Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein were added to the Rhine Kaiserreich and Sigmaringen was restored, with its former Hohenzollern rulers exiled to Prussia. Prussian rulers were denied the term of Kaiser. The provinces of the French Empire in the lowlands were restored to France.
After the Treaty of Paris, the Rhine Kaiserreich enacted more reforms to establish itself as more a federation than a confederacy or alliance. A federal government was established with limited powers- besides commanding the Army of the Rhine that had previously been established, now the federal government would have a democratically elected legislature that would govern over a unified postal system, financial system, and foreign affairs, including ambassadors. Each member state would also have a constitutional monarchal government. Finally, an Imperial Navy replaced the Frisian navy that had come with the Weser Concession. A written Constitution was agreed on also and it enshrined the practice that the Kaiser was always an elected position but added two new limitations. The first had been practiced but not established, the elected Kaiser must be a legitimate monarch of a member state. The second was that a supermajority of 2/3rds of the Electors could demand an abdication of a Kaiser or Kaiserin if needed. The Federal legislature would meet at Halle while the Kaiser would reign from the capital of his or her member state, but also have a residence in Halle.
Great Britain, the Swedish Empire, the Duchy of Austria, and the Hungarian Empire were also signatories to the Treaty of Paris as well as the states that had been at war. In the treaty, Great Britain finally officially ceded its Hanover claim. the Duchy of Austria was allowed to reclaim the term Kaiser for its monarch (an intentional slap in the face to Prussia,) and both Britain and Sweden were compensated for their ceded territories in the Rhine. (Hanover and Pomerania.)
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon now turned his attention to furthering the industrialization of the Rhine, the building of the Imperial Navy, and in the 1880s, the establishment of the Rhenish Colonial Empire in the Pacific and Sub-Sahara Africa (Tanzania, Rhenish Congo, Namibia, Kamerun, and Togo.)
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon had married while still the Royal Prince of Westphalia, a minor Württemberg Countess, Regina von Harken of Tettnang. They had many children.
The Kaiser died in 1891 at the age of 75. He was quite obese by then, unlike when he was younger, and he died of a heart attack. The Electors met and elected King William of Frisia to replace him.
Kaiser William I, King of Frisia, Prince of Erfurt, Hereditary Prince of Solms-Laubach
[6] The Principality of Erfurt had been directly ruled by the Emperors of France since 1807. That changed in 1860, when the Principality was occupied by Rhenish forces and Emperor Napoleon II was force to grant independence to Erfurt. William's father, Friedrich von Solms-Laubach, a wealthy industrialist and landowner in the area, was elected to the hereditary position of Prince of Erfurt.
In 1874, Friedrich was elected as King of Frisia, by the Frisian Parliament. Ten years before, William was born in Erfurt City Palace. In 1889, King Friedrich I died of a stroke, and the 25-year-old William became the new ruler of Frisia. As King, William I recognize the rights of Peter II as Grand Duke of Oldenburg.
William was a massive supporter of Frederick Napoléon I's reforms of the Rhine Kaiserreich. When the Kaiser died in 1891, there were many candidates in the election of that year. However, the electors eventually selected the young and energetic King William I.
During the William ten-year long reign, he mended relations with Prussia. He also continued the expansion of the Rhenish Army and Navy. In 1901, Kaiser William I was assassinated by a train bomb from a Russian nationalist, while on a diplomatic voyage to the Kingdom of Nothern Lusitania. The electors elected Prince Christian Günther III of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen as his successor.
Christian Günther III, Hereditary Prince
of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen
[7] It had been brewing for a long time and finally the Electors achieved their goal. After a series of the larger states putting their king or queen on the throne of the Kaiserreich, the smaller states elected one of their own. The fact that Frederick I's reforms had changed the system so that every monarch of every member state was now an elector gave them the power. At the previous election their desire to choose one of themselves had been overridden by a desire to choose one of the two new member states added to the Kaiserreich. But now that had occurred and it was time to select a monarch from one of the smallest member states.
It so happened that one of the smallest states, the Principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen was ruled by one of the oldest and most renown families of the Kaiserreich, the House of Schwarzburg. The small principality might not have a lot of sway in the Kaiserreich, but the ruling family had prestige.
Christian Günther III, named after his great, great grandfather, succeed his grandfather, Günther Frederick Charles II (b. 1805, r. 1835-1889) in 1889 when the old Prince died at the age of 83. Christian was the son of Imperial Prince Charles Günther (1830-1872), who'd died in the Rhenish-Prussian War. Christian had been born in 1855 in the Sondershausen Palace and was 17 when his father died and he became heir. When he ascended to the throne of the small principality, he was 34, married to Princess Sophia Hilde of Saxe-Altenburg, and the father of three children.
His rule as a Prince had been unremarkable, but his participation at the Election of 1891 had riveted the other Electors. He'd dominated the coalition of the smaller states with his charisma and eloquence and had been the coalitions leader in advocating the then hoped for candidate from the smaller states, his father-in-law, Prince Heinrich Wettin of Saxe-Altenberg. The election had gone round and round in circles until finally Christian came away from a meeting with King William, one of the two candidates from the states formed out of the Concessions (the other was Prince Karl of Alsace-Lorraine,) that convinced him the Kaiserreich needed a young dynamic leader instead of an older man like his father-in-law or Prince Karl.
Christian, despite being from a landlocked principality, had believed in the need of a strong navy and had himself served in the Kaisserreich Navy as a young man. It was King's William's commitment to that and the awareness that the Kaiserreich needed a new modern fleet of steel plated, steam powered, Battleships that had convinced Christian to support him. When Christian spoke of this to the Electors it broke the deadlock between the three contenders and the young William was elected.
Swiftly the Kaiser made Christian the Minister of the Navy and it was the Prince who did the leg work in building the Navy. When the Kaiser was assassinated, the Electors had no question whom to select for the new Kaiser, being the first of his name as Kaiser.
The new Kaiser knew the threats now facing the Rhine and her German allies of Prussia and Austria. The Russian Nationalist who killed Kaiser William was not an isolated murderer. He was part of a Revolution that was sweeping through several states. While the Russian Empire fell apart into a terrible civil war, the Hungarian Empire's Revolution happened swiftly and as the Electors met in Halle in 1901, the Marxist Workers Coalition of Socialist States was being set up in Budapest, replacing the Empire that stretched from the Danube to the Aegean Islands Meanwhile the Swedish Empire went to war with the Russian Socialist State that was itself at war with the rump Russian Empire to its south that was still in control in Central Asia, the Caucuses, and Ukraine.
Shortly after that the tension between the French Empire and the British Empire over their colonial territories flashed into several conflicts in Africa and Asia. The two Empires faced each other in Europe, waiting for the other to attack.
Europe was a powder keg and the Kaiser had to lead his Reich into a new and strange Century as new and horrid weapons of war changed things.
The opinion of most in the three members of the Germanic Alliance was to stand with Sweden and the Russian Empire against the Russian Socialists. But Christian, the Rhenish Council of Electors, and the National Legislature all agreed that the last thing needed was war. Peace through strength was the motto of the new administration and the efforts to build the strongest Navy and modernize the Army continued. Over the next decade that meant armoured cars, machine guns, undersee ships, airships, and aeroplanes. It also meant expanding the use of radio and building new roads, railroads, and telephone lines.
But War did come in 1909 when a French ship that had been attacked at sea sought aid at Rhenish Zanzibar and then British ships attacked the African Rhenish colony. The local Rhenish officials had no choice but to defend their colony. When word reach London of this, the British decided the stalemate in Europe would not last if the Germanic Alliance was siding with the French and decisive action needed to occur to force an end before an ongoing war such as the Swedish-Russian Socialist-Russian Empire War just dragged on and on. So the British mounted an invasion of Frisia and Westphalia in an attempt to demolish the Rhenish Fleet before they could react.
They largely succeeded with those at port, but most of the fleet was in the Baltic and the Kaiser had ordered the North Sea fleet to sea.
This was the Hungarians' chance to attack the Ottomans and take Constantinople. Now Europe was involved in three separate wars and all of them had theatres outside Europe proper as Japan and the United States invaded Siberia and attacked the Russian Socialist State from the East.
A British expeditionary force invaded Frisia and then swept through the lowlands and took northern France before their advance was stopped short of Paris. As feared, this became another stalemate of giant armies facing each other as was happening in Russia. Trench warfare developed and the front went from the North Sea inland then ran to the south until it headed back west to the Bay of Biscay south of Brittany.
In 1911, the Kaiser was visiting Hamburg to inspect the fleet stationed there when a bombing raid killed him. In the middle of a war, another Kaiser had been killed.
[8] The Imperial election of 1911 saw the rise to the Imperial dignity of the Grand Duke of Frankfurt, Alexander von Leuchtenberg. A descendant of Eugène de Beuharnais, the Duke of Frankfurt and lieutenant of the Grande Armée, the young Grand Duke has a strong interest in military matters. He was serving as Marshall at the time of his election, and won the vote of the princes thanks to the ferocious campaigning of his wife Charlotte von Isenburg, who presented him as the obvious candidate for such a situation.
The Marshall-Emperor was delighted to learn this, as he had been blindsighted by what he perceived as shameful incompetence from several high ranking whom he couldn't demote without Imperial approval. Now he had it. During the months of stalemate that marked the second half of 1911, he reorganized the army as well as the rationing system, hoping to improve the morale and efficiency of the army. His goal was to simply make this war look unwinnable to the British: if he could make their logistics ruinous while maintaining a facade of abundance, he could make the Rhine look like too big of a prey to swallow.
For this, he developed an extensive fleet of submarines: the British had to cross the Channel to maintain their positions, the Continentals didn't, so he'd do his best to undermine them at every occasion. In another effort to undermine the British war effort, and being well aware of the difficulties they were facing in the wake of colonial unrest, he sent advisors and informants to separatist movements across the Empire, while promising to his own oversea colonies that they would be granted self-rule. The final straw was the Emerald Plan, an infiltration of Irish Rights movements to radicalize them and offer them weapons. In the end, the massive riots and guerillas across the British Empire, the seemingly unwavering determination of the compact Rhenish Confederation and the crumbling logistics of the British Expeditionary Corp in Europe started, in Britain, to undermine public support for a war now seen as pointless and unlikely to reap any benefits, far from the easy retaliatory disbarkment in France that has originally been promised.
However, Kaiser Alexander I would not get to see the end of this war, as he died in February 1912 during a visit to the trenches, where an undercover British spy seized the occasion to shoot the Emperor to death. The Emperor died, sheltering the nurse he was discussing with seconds ago from the bullets of his murderer. He was succeeded by Joseph Leopold I, Grand Duke and Titular Elector of Würzburg.
Kaiser Joseph Leopold I, Grand Duke and Titular Elector of Würzburg
[9] Most thought that a Hapsburg would never come to be the ruler of the Confederation of the Rhine, ever, but unexpected times are bound to yield unexpected results. After the news of the assassination of the Kaiser Alexander I, it appeared as though that Prince Eugen of Würrtemberg, after he gave his now infamous speech, "The Vengeful Rhine" which called for the avenging for the three assassinated Kaisers. However, Grand Duke Joseph Leopold of Würzburg convinced the electors that wrathful vengeance against Britain and Russia would only stoke even more resentment from the countries against the Rhine Kaiserreich. His arguments were convinced many as Joseph Leopold I was elected, nearly unanimously by the electors of the confederation.
With the approaching of the 1912 general election in the United Kingdom, Joseph Leopold sought for the Peace Coalition (made-up of Conservative, Liberal, and Labour party members who wanted peace with the Rhine and its allies) to win the election. A shrewd man, Joseph Leopold believed that it was better to ''... give a man a thousand little cuts than one big slash.'' Kaiser Joseph Leopold I ran fake stories of British extremists blowing up houses of government officials with children in them, which caused much anger in Britain, as they wanted to see their country and the war as righteous, not as a vile force of evil.
The Peace Coalition won in a landslide in the British general election of 1912, and soon an armistice was made, and a new peace followed, as well. The Kaiser also aided with the Rome Agreements, which ended the war between Hungary and the newly formed Kingdom of Anatolia and the Russian Civil War.
After peace was restored to Europe, the Kaiser led the Rhine Kaiserreich into an economic and cultural golden age. He liberalized many aspects of Rhenish society including the decriminalization of homosexuality, in 1921. However, with the Kaiser increasing liberalization of the country, the conservative elites off the Rhine Kaiserreich became increasingly alienated. In 1924, most electors forced the Kaiser to abdicate, and Joseph Leopold was replaced by King Eugen I of Württemberg.
King Eugen I of Württemberg
[10] When Prince Eugen of Württemberg made his firebrand speech in 1912, he spoke for his own father, King Frederick II of Württemberg, to be the next Kaiser. The Prince was 27 at the time and a veteran of the War.
King Frederick II of Württemberg. r. 1888-1919
The Prince had never given up on his political advocacy for a more conservative, vengeful Kaiserreich and when his father died in 1919 and he became King Eugen I, the hopes of the younger conservative elites, who called themselves the Lineale Party, transferred from his father to the new King. By 1924 they gained enough power to force Joseph Leopold to abdicate and put Eugen on the throne at the age of 39.
The Kaiserreich changed now and went into a totally different direction. While it had already evolved from a Confederacy into a Federation, now the Kaiser and the Lineale made it a much more centralized Empire. He made the Imperial Palace in Halle his permanent residence and appointed a royal viceroy to fulfil his duties back in Stuttgart, the capital of Württemberg. Although the old states were not replaced nor their monarchs, they were either united or divided into different Kaiserreich 'regions.' (Small states were united and large ones divided.) The actual governance of a region was done by a ReichFuhrer appointed by the Kaiser and approved by the Federal legislature, which was little more than a rubberstamp. The Federal legislature had become this due to it being trimmed down. The actual electors who ruled in their various states now were just figureheads with no power, unless they also happened to be an appointed ReichFuhrer, which only occurred if they were one of the Lineale, who dominated the Council of Electors. The same was true of the democratically elected state legislatures, which had all power stripped from them except ceremonial duties and given to the ReichFuhrers and their staffs.
The first order of business of the new Kaiser and the Lineale was what came to be known as the Vereinigung der Vier, the 'Unification of the Four.' It began with the inclusion of Prussia in the Kaiserreich in 1928. This greatly increased the dominance of the conservative elites, as only the Prussian nobility who shared their values were added to the Council of Electors. In 1931 the Empire of Austria was dissolved and its various provinces added to the Kaiserreich. Both Prussia and Austria were added with the other German states passing a law for the Vereinigung. But the fourth addition was purely by force as German speaking Switzerland was just annexed by the Kaiserreich.
Some of the liberal reforms that had occurred were undone. Homosexuality was again outlawed, divorce was made very difficult, non German minorities were forced to swear loyalty oaths (and Jews and Romani were consider non Germans whether they spoke German or not,) and a centralized schooling system was imposed on the Kaiserreich that included a very strong element of teaching German patriotism.
The industrialization of the Empire now went full steam ahead to increase the military. As one of the ongoing policies of the Lineale was the further expanse of the Kaiserreich to include all territory where there were German speaking ethic groups, it seed more and more likely that the Kaiserreich would go to war with Hungary's Marxist Workers' Coalition of Socialist States (WCSS), as many German speaking people lived there and had for centuries and with the French Empire, as the Lineale consiered Dutch a German dialect.
This of course drove the former ally of France into a new alliance with Britain and the WCSS, which was allied with the Russian Socialist State.
The Kaiserreich was on the edge of war when those who'd opposed the Lineale and their Kaiser took to the streets in protest and general strikes. While the Lineale were convinced the Kaiserreich was stronger than other nations and would win a war quickly, many in the Expanded Empire thought this was folly. They knew that all their potential enemies had also built up their military and that this time the United States might side with the British.
The Revolution of 1938 declared the reforms of the last 14 years were null and void and ran its own new election for the federal legislature. Now there were two governments in Halle. But the Revolutionaries quickly took control, arrested most of the Lineale and forced the Kaiser to abdicate. Eugen not only was forced to give up being the Kaiser, but he had to abdicate his kingship, his cousin instead took the throne of Württemberg in Stuttgart. Eugen was given only one of the family's smaller castles and put under house arrest there. His former title of "Prince" was, however, granted him again.
With the arrest of the Lineale electors and their replacement by other sympatico with the Revolution, a new council of electors chose the Grand-Duchess Franziska of Mecklemburg to be Kaiserin. Now the question was would peace be made with France, Britain, Hungary, and Russia or not? Would the Vereinigung be undone or would one German Reich continue? Would the member states' power to govern be restored or the new system continue but liberalized and made democratic?
[11] Franziska von Mecklemburg was one of the newly installed nobles, having being highly and very vocally opposed to both her cousins, Frederick Franzis VI von Mecklemburg-Schwerin and Adolphus-Frederick VI von Mecklemburg-Sterlitz, who were both Linealen. The new Grand-Duchess of Mecklemburg, however, was at first supportive of the Conservative ideas of Eugen von Württemberg: she was as mad as he was at the liberal policies of Joseph Leopold von Würzburg and resented the forced separation between the Rhine Confederation and the other Germans. However, the reign of the one she invested so many hopes in in the first years soon transformed into a journey through the political spectrum: the young Conservative princess in her late teens had by 1938 evolved into an anti-Lineale protestor who embraced ideas ranging from moderate reformism to full blown progressivism. She had been instrumental to the ultimate downfall of Eugen I, working hard at undermining Lineale support in the Northeast.
She wasn't the favourite by far when the election cycle started, but her fiery candidacy speech had gained her the support of the one group that was usually left out in those matters: the crowd. And little by little, with a lot of passion and shaming of the opposition, she was elected by a small margin over the more moderate Ludwig of Bavaria, her supports in the Electoral Assembly hoping her oratory talents and public opposition to Lineale ideology would allow her to reassure the foreign powers. And, after sending a swarm of ambassadors and delegates to gain time with Britain, France, Russia and Hungary, she set out to solve the Swiss Question: in her opinion, there was no keeping Switzerland, and Germany would have to puke it if she didn't want to choke on it. Thus, canton by canton referendums were organized, and all the Swiss cantons chose independance, ridding the Empire of a first problem.
However, appeasement with the rest of Europe was harder to achieve: everyone had demands, and not all of them were reasonable. To appease France, she accepted to reevaluate the Rhine concession's border, accepting that French-speaking municipalities (including Saverne, Ferrette and Altkirch as well as a good chunk of the Vosges mountains) would be able to carry on referendums to reunite with Germany. To appease Britain, she accepted to partake in disarmament conferences. To appease Hungary, she accepted to demilitarize the boundary in exchange for guarantees for the German communities in Hungary. Russia, however, was a tougher client: what did the Socialist Council want that she could offer? In the end, a deal was struck that Russia and Germany would cooperate economically at the condition that worker protection laws would be passed in Germany.
Considering the future of Germany ... despite the personal feelings of the newly installed princes of the Empire, it was evident that the idea of unification was popular, and that reverting it was only going to create fuel for a potential Lineale reignition. It was thus agreed in backdoor discussions that German unity would be presented as a nonpartisan theme that every current party supports, regardless of personal feelings. However, that was pretty much the only domestic issue they could all agree on. While a lot of more moderate Princes wanted to purely revert to the pre-Eugen politics, there were also those who admitted that the administrative organization of the Linealen could be reformed and liberalized. Kaiserin Franziska disagreed with both. To her, going back to the executive supremacy of Princes was only going to lead to other terrible decisions in the future, and was simply not an option; but the Linealen had put on an administration that was essentially the negation of local particularities and of the Confederal nature of the government. Thus, she offered her own set of reforms: to her, the basic cell of the new German government should be the Municipality, the Princes acting as advisors, ceremonial figures and subsidizers, and the German government would proceed from those two authorities. To Kaiserin Franziska, Germany needed a new Constitution, even if it would take years ....
She would abdicate in 1967, after 29 frustrating years of attempting to make her vision of a new and better Germany come to life. In 29 years, the Imperial Constitution had garnered two fifths of the Imperial Assembly's votes: in the 1967 draft, the Constitution considers the realms (Counties to Kingdoms) and the municipalities as the two base units of the Empire, admits as its Legislative Assembly (but not Constitutional Assembly) a monocameral legislature based on proportional vote for one half and municipal delegates for the other, guarantees freedom of expression and faith, protects "individual property" and guarantees voting rights to anyone 17 years or older, it bans discriminations based on gender, ethnic background or faith, and it is accompanied by a "Social Contract" that defines a number of base protections for parents, children, workers, the environment, and a bunch of other stuff. Main points of disagreement include what power are given to the Princes, the existence or not of a Princely Assembly and its potential powers and the mode of election of the Kaiser of Kaiserin. But those are questions for a younger monarch. Franziska is 59, she's feeling old and her wit isn't as sharp as it used to be. Besides, she's the only on in this country that didn't get to enjoy life resuming after the rigors of Lineale social corsetry. The rest is up to the Constitutional Assembly. In absence of a proper structure to elect the next German Emperor, the Constitutional Assembly has been tasked to elect her successor. Her reign would be followed by ____________________.
Kaiser Ferdinand I, Prince and Count of Isenburg, wearing his father's marshal clothes and medals, in 1968
[12] With the abdication of Kaiserin Franziska I, the electors were deadlocked as to who should be the next ruler of the Rhine. The debate over what powers of the princes should be, continued with no end in sight. After several days, Prince Ferdinand of Isenburg, a young and energetic prince, had emerged as a compromise candidate. He was easily elected as Kaiser as he promised that he would not interfere with the Rhenish government as they debated the potential powers of the princes of the Rhine Kaiserreich.
Kaiser Ferdinand I was more experienced as a social host than an administrator, which only caused exacerbated problems between several local governments, as the unclarity of which governmental bodies had what authorities increased. The Kaiser was much more interested in the social liberalization of Rhenish society and court. Aside from dismantling the court’s conservative etiquette, Ferdinand I also created the royal positions, known as the Grand Dignitaries, which were similar to the system of the French Empire.
In 1971, after having to deal with several intense arguments, Ferdinand I abdicated and returned to the Principality of Isenburg. He was succeeded ________________.
List of Monarchs of the Confederation of the Rhine
1806-1817: Karl Theodor I (House of Dalberg) [1]
1817-1825: Maximilian I Joseph (House of Wittelsbach) [2]
1825-1853: Ludwig I (House of Wittelsbach) [3]
1853-1863: Augusta I (House of Wettin) [4]
1863-1891: Frederick Napoléon I (House of Bonaparte) [5]
1891-1901: William I (House of Solms-Laubach) [6]
1901-1911: Christian Günther I (House of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen) [7]
1911-1912: Alexander I (House of Leuchtenberg) [8]
1912-1924: Joseph Leopold I (House of Hapsburg-Wurzbürg) [9]
1924-1938: Eugen I (House of Württemberg) [10]
1938-1967: Franziska I (House of Mecklemburg) [11]
1967-1971: Ferdinand I (House of Isenburg) [12]
Karl Theodor I, Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine,
Prince-Elector of Regensburg, Grand Duke of Frankfurt,
Prince of Aschaffenburg, Bishop of Constance, Regensburg, and Worms.
[1] Karl Theodor I, born in 1744, was the Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine, from his election in 1806 until he died in 1817.
Karl Theodor was born as Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg, in Herrnsheim, near the city of Worms. Karl Theodor devoted himself to studying canon law and entered a career in the Church. Dalberg was distinguished with his patriotic attitude, whether in ecclesiastical matters or in his efforts to galvanize the machinery of the Holy Roman Empire. Karl Theodor became frustrated with the Empire’s inability to create an effective central government for Germany and turned to Napoleon Bonaparte.
In 1803, Karl Theodor became Arch-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire. Dalberg was also the new Elector of Mainz, but, in the same, the Electorate of Mainz was partioned amongst France, Hesse, the Nassaus, and Prussia. Dalberg retained the Aschaffenburg area and was made Prince of Aschaffenburg, he was also compensated with Regensburg and surrounding areas, becoming the Prince of Regensburg.
In early June of 1806, the Confederation of the Rhine was created. Soon, Holy Roman Emperor Francis II soon abdicated his title, ending the existence of the more than thousand-year-old imperial entity. Dalberg joined the Confederation of the Rhine. As a way to continue award states such as Baden, Bavaria, and Württemberg, who would be his main suppliers of soldiers from Germany, the Confederation of the Rhine was made to implement a system of an elective monarchy.
Dalberg was elected Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine by the rulers of Baden, Bavaria, Berg, Hesse-Darmstadt, Regensburg, Saxony, Westphalia, Württemberg, and Würzburg, at the urging of French Emperor Napoleon. A few weeks later, he was crowned as Karl Theodor I in a public ceremony in Frankfurt.
During his reign, Karl Theodor I lifted all restrictions on the Jewish people, and serfdom and socage were abolished. A code similar to the Napoleonic code was enacted, which did away with guilds. A universal metric system of weights and measures was introduced.
However, arguably the most influential thing that Karl Theodor I did was sending a very skilled diplomat, who was from the Principality of Reuss-Lobenstein to the Napoleonic court. The diplomat soon became one of the French Emperor’s closest advisors, convincing Napoleon to uphold the 1807 Treaty of Fontainebleau. He also convinced the Romanovs to have Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna of Russia marry Napoleon and form an alliance with France against Austria, which eventually resulted in the division of the Austrian Empire into various independent kingdoms, duchies, and principalities. Austria proper, itself, was reduced to the rank of a grand duchy.
In 1817, Karl Theodor I passed away peacefully in the city of Regensburg. The electors elected Maximilian I Joseph, King of Bavaria, as his successor.
Maximilian I Joseph, King of Bavaria
[2] There was little doubt whom to elect as the new Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine as the most powerful monarch in the Confederacy was the King of Bavaria, who'd used his ties to the French Emperor to establish himself as the first King of Bavaria and also make his kingdom the most powerful state in the confederacy. By electing a king to lead the Confederation, it made no sense to refer to the leader as a "prince" and so the title was changed to "Kaiser."
This adoption of an imperial title for the leader was diplomatically sold to the French with the argument that in ancient Rome when there was a 'junior' Emperor, he was called Caesar and the senior one was called Augustus. The diplomats who negotiated this with Paris presented the French Emperor a letter in which Maximillian addressed Napoleon as "My Augustus."
Maximilian used his new position to expand Bavaria into what had formerly been western Austria and the Tyrol. His main accomplishment for the Confederacy was establishing a single, unified "Army of the Rhine." When he died the Confederacy elected as its new Kaiser his son Ludwig.
Kaiser Ludwig I, Elector and King of Bavaria
Grand Duke of Salzburg, Duke of Franconia,
Duke in Swabia, Count Palatine of the Rhine.
[3] When his father died, Kaiser Ludwig I was elected as the new ruler of the Confederation of the Rhine. Ludwig I was not pleased with the amount of influence France had over the confederation, as he had previously tried to regain the eastern part of the Palatinate for Bavaria but failed due to the intervention of France.
Ludwig I supported the Greeks in their war of independence against the Ottoman Empire. Kaiser Ludwig also convinced the French Emperor to have France and its allies intervene in the war. After the war, Ludwig's second son, Otto, was elected King of Greece.
Throughout his reign, Ludwig I also encouraged the industrialization of the Confederation of the Rhine. As a patron of the arts and architecture, the Kaiser ordered the construction of many neoclassical buildings across the confederation.
Ludwig I abdicated after being embroiled in an extramarital affair with Marianna Florenzi, which caused a severe backlash against the House of Wittelsbach. The electors elected Augusta I, Queen Dowager of Saxony, as his successor.
Kaiserin Augusta I "the Unexpected"
[4] With the Florenzi Affair staining the reputation of the Wittelsbach dynasty, the consensus that had been established around Ludwig I's son Maximilian was weakened. His two main rivals were King William I of Württemberg and Prince Karl-Anton of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. The succession crisis started with the abdication of Kaiser Ludwig III in February well into October, when a compromise solution was found: the old Queen of Saxony, Augusta I, was to be put on the throne until tensions had dissipated, as she had no apparent heir and was essentially seen as a way to gain time on the matter. This resulted in uproar from the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and the Prussian ambassador who had supported him, claiming that the election of a woman was illegal, while the proponents didn't see how much damage an old lady who was expected to die in a handful of years could do, and just wanted the Prussians to stop meddling with the elections. While the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen threatened to leave the Confederation, he never followed through, and slowly sunk into irrelevance because of his own policy of non-cooperation with the Confederal government.
Queen Augusta was indeed old: she was almost 70 years old and was in her youth expected to become Queen of Poland. These plans didn't go far, as Poland was instead partitioned, and she never got an occasion to marry her Polish suitor, Prince Jozef Poniatowski. But these plans might have very well led her to the Rhenish throne, as they had made her ambitious and had led her to take a huge interest in matters of state. She made herself inseparable from her father, who had become King of Saxony in 1806, and slowly but surely built up her influence, that crystallized in the Constitution of 1819. She had enticed her father to commit to reforms by reminding him of the Golden Liberty that had ruled their beloved Poland, but also pointing out the success of rationalizations that had propelled the French Empire forward. And among the administrative reorganizations and the economic reforms stood a small clause: a father who would die without male issue could transfer his possessions to his daughter instead. From any father, to any daughter. That is how she climbed to the throne of Saxony.
While Queen of Saxony, she worked very hard at industrializing her Kingdom, trying to replace Britain's role as the factory Russia relied on. Thus, she poured all the Royal Treasure into the creation of a company: the Köeniglisches Eisenbahnen und Fabriken Gemeinschaft, Royal Railroads and Factories Corporation. Her goal was to buy all the necessary infrastructure for Saxony to become a major industrial center, and it worked to a certain extent: her reign oversaw the construction of a dense network of railroads and canals that was comparable to the one of Northern England, and the steel production of Saxony rivaled the one of Silesia. She also tried to given her fellow women more rights, hoping that the more advanced her lady subjects' rights would be, the less she was likely to be challenged by her nephew for the throne.
Even though she had been elected on the assumption that she would just die quietly and allow for the situation to calm down after the abdication of King Ludwig I, awarding her the nickname of "Imperial Wedge" in England, she was quite proactive in her two main fields of expertise: industrializing and backstabbing people to get her position forward. The Napoleonic System that had held for nearly half a century was cracking more and more, and she used this opportunity to pull out concessions on the Elbe, Rhine and Weser from Napoleon II's clenched and rageful claws, using these new concessions to propel the Rhenish industry forward.
The joke is often made that she clinged to power so much she took three years to die from tuberculosis just to stay Empress for ten years, which would not really be below her ... When she drew her final breath, in November 1863, she had largely exceeded anything that was expected from her. She had never been married, so the question of the Confederal succession was once again up in the air, until the electors settled for Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia.
Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte,
King of Westphalia upon his election
[5] Of the three large states of the Confederacy, the Kingdom of Westphalia, formed by the French Emperor Napoléon I, had not seen its King be elected the Kaiser, while the two other large states, Bavaria and Saxony had.
The first King, Napoléon's younger brother, Jérôme Bonaparte, had been made the King of the state formed from other smaller states and parts of Prussia and of the former British Hanover in 1807. Jérôme had previously emigrated to America and married an American, but his brother forced him to return to France and annulled his marriage, making his first son unable to inherit. In 1803 Jérôme had married Princess Katharina Friederike of Württemberg, daughter of King Frederick I of Württemberg and through her mother, the Duchess Augusta of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, she was a grand niece of George III Hanover, King of Great Britain and the elector of Hanover before it was absorbed into Westphalia.
Jérôme I had never been a contender to the throne of Kaiser in the elections of 1817, 1825, or 1853. The other electors, despite their alliance with the French, didn't want a French Kaiser, a fact that Jérôme never could put behind him as King of Westphalia. But his son and heir, Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte, the first born of his marriage with Queen Katharina, was born in 1815 in Cassel, the capitol of the Kingdom of Westphalia, and raised as a German prince.
As Jérôme I lived a long life to the age of 75, dying in 1860, Frederick Napoléon didn't become King of Westphalia until he was 45. As both the Royal Prince and as King, Frederick Napoléon had supported Kaiserin Augusta against his own cousin, Napoléon II of the French, over the Elbe, Weser, and Rhine Concessions, convincing the other electors he was a true German and not a toady of the French.
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon proved his mettle in the Rhenish-Prussian War of 1872 when the Prussian attempted to force the Confederacy into a union with Prussia with Berlin as senior state and the Kings of Prussia hereditary Kaisers. By then Prussia had absorbed Schleswig-Holstein and Swedish Pomerania to the north of the Confederacy as well as regions to the east.
The war was triggered when Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, the son of the late Prince Karl-Anton, announced that Sigmaringen was leaving the Confederacy and he swore allegiance to King Wilhelm I of Prussia as his Kaiser. His claim was that the Confederacy was actually little more than an alliance of independent states and Sigmaringen had the right to leave it and join with Prussia in a new, centralized Empire.
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon called for a meeting of the electors in Cassel to determine if this was their will, could member states leave the Confederacy or not. While they were deliberating, news came to the court that Prussian forces had not only entered Sigmaringen, but moved into the Elbe Concession on the right bank of the Elbe, which Kaiserin Augusta had seized from the French. It had been treated as its own small state, but both Westphalia and Sigmaringen claimed it as part of their state.
The electors agreed this Prussian occupation was an invasion of the Confederacy. Quickly they put forth the Cassel Declaration that the Confederacy of the Rhine was in truth an indivisible union, that the Elbe Concession was part of Westphalia, and that the Rhine Kaiserreich (a term used for the first time in the Declaration) was at war with Prussia.
At the same time, the Prussians invaded the Weser Concession (Frisian lands along the North Sea) and the low countries, still part of the French Empire. This, and the treatment of the French Imperial officials in the Elbe Concession by the Prussians, brought France into the war. When Kaiserin Augusta had taken the Concessions, she'd been advised by Frederick Napoléon to both pay France for them and to give the Imperial French officials in them a choice- remain in the Concessions, become citizens of the states they'd be annexed to, and receive a pension for life or emigrate to the French Empire. Part of this agreement, which Napoléon II had accepted begrudgingly, was that those who chose to stay in the Concession would remain citizens of France, having dual citizenship and could freely moved back and forth.
The Prussians now revoked this in the Elbe Confederacy, both the dual citizenship and the life time pensions.
The tension between the Rhine and France was gone.
The war at first went well for Prussia as their forces swept through the low lands into France proper, intending to conquer Paris and force France to surrender before invading the rest of the Rhine. But this changed when the Poles rebelled and the Russian Empire invaded Prussia from the east "To protect our Slavic cousins from the Huns."
The Army of the Rhine now attacked Prussia and the Prussian offensive collapsed. By late 1872 Berlin sued for peace. The Treaty of Paris established a new post war Europe. The Polish provinces of Prussia were annexed into the Russian Empire. Swedish Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein were added to the Rhine Kaiserreich and Sigmaringen was restored, with its former Hohenzollern rulers exiled to Prussia. Prussian rulers were denied the term of Kaiser. The provinces of the French Empire in the lowlands were restored to France.
After the Treaty of Paris, the Rhine Kaiserreich enacted more reforms to establish itself as more a federation than a confederacy or alliance. A federal government was established with limited powers- besides commanding the Army of the Rhine that had previously been established, now the federal government would have a democratically elected legislature that would govern over a unified postal system, financial system, and foreign affairs, including ambassadors. Each member state would also have a constitutional monarchal government. Finally, an Imperial Navy replaced the Frisian navy that had come with the Weser Concession. A written Constitution was agreed on also and it enshrined the practice that the Kaiser was always an elected position but added two new limitations. The first had been practiced but not established, the elected Kaiser must be a legitimate monarch of a member state. The second was that a supermajority of 2/3rds of the Electors could demand an abdication of a Kaiser or Kaiserin if needed. The Federal legislature would meet at Halle while the Kaiser would reign from the capital of his or her member state, but also have a residence in Halle.
Great Britain, the Swedish Empire, the Duchy of Austria, and the Hungarian Empire were also signatories to the Treaty of Paris as well as the states that had been at war. In the treaty, Great Britain finally officially ceded its Hanover claim. the Duchy of Austria was allowed to reclaim the term Kaiser for its monarch (an intentional slap in the face to Prussia,) and both Britain and Sweden were compensated for their ceded territories in the Rhine. (Hanover and Pomerania.)
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon now turned his attention to furthering the industrialization of the Rhine, the building of the Imperial Navy, and in the 1880s, the establishment of the Rhenish Colonial Empire in the Pacific and Sub-Sahara Africa (Tanzania, Rhenish Congo, Namibia, Kamerun, and Togo.)
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon had married while still the Royal Prince of Westphalia, a minor Württemberg Countess, Regina von Harken of Tettnang. They had many children.
The Kaiser died in 1891 at the age of 75. He was quite obese by then, unlike when he was younger, and he died of a heart attack. The Electors met and elected King William of Frisia to replace him.
Kaiser William I, King of Frisia, Prince of Erfurt, Hereditary Prince of Solms-Laubach
[6] The Principality of Erfurt had been directly ruled by the Emperors of France since 1807. That changed in 1860, when the Principality was occupied by Rhenish forces and Emperor Napoleon II was force to grant independence to Erfurt. William's father, Friedrich von Solms-Laubach, a wealthy industrialist and landowner in the area, was elected to the hereditary position of Prince of Erfurt.
In 1874, Friedrich was elected as King of Frisia, by the Frisian Parliament. Ten years before, William was born in Erfurt City Palace. In 1889, King Friedrich I died of a stroke, and the 25-year-old William became the new ruler of Frisia. As King, William I recognize the rights of Peter II as Grand Duke of Oldenburg.
William was a massive supporter of Frederick Napoléon I's reforms of the Rhine Kaiserreich. When the Kaiser died in 1891, there were many candidates in the election of that year. However, the electors eventually selected the young and energetic King William I.
During the William ten-year long reign, he mended relations with Prussia. He also continued the expansion of the Rhenish Army and Navy. In 1901, Kaiser William I was assassinated by a train bomb from a Russian nationalist, while on a diplomatic voyage to the Kingdom of Nothern Lusitania. The electors elected Prince Christian Günther III of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen as his successor.
Christian Günther III, Hereditary Prince
of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen
[7] It had been brewing for a long time and finally the Electors achieved their goal. After a series of the larger states putting their king or queen on the throne of the Kaiserreich, the smaller states elected one of their own. The fact that Frederick I's reforms had changed the system so that every monarch of every member state was now an elector gave them the power. At the previous election their desire to choose one of themselves had been overridden by a desire to choose one of the two new member states added to the Kaiserreich. But now that had occurred and it was time to select a monarch from one of the smallest member states.
It so happened that one of the smallest states, the Principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen was ruled by one of the oldest and most renown families of the Kaiserreich, the House of Schwarzburg. The small principality might not have a lot of sway in the Kaiserreich, but the ruling family had prestige.
Christian Günther III, named after his great, great grandfather, succeed his grandfather, Günther Frederick Charles II (b. 1805, r. 1835-1889) in 1889 when the old Prince died at the age of 83. Christian was the son of Imperial Prince Charles Günther (1830-1872), who'd died in the Rhenish-Prussian War. Christian had been born in 1855 in the Sondershausen Palace and was 17 when his father died and he became heir. When he ascended to the throne of the small principality, he was 34, married to Princess Sophia Hilde of Saxe-Altenburg, and the father of three children.
His rule as a Prince had been unremarkable, but his participation at the Election of 1891 had riveted the other Electors. He'd dominated the coalition of the smaller states with his charisma and eloquence and had been the coalitions leader in advocating the then hoped for candidate from the smaller states, his father-in-law, Prince Heinrich Wettin of Saxe-Altenberg. The election had gone round and round in circles until finally Christian came away from a meeting with King William, one of the two candidates from the states formed out of the Concessions (the other was Prince Karl of Alsace-Lorraine,) that convinced him the Kaiserreich needed a young dynamic leader instead of an older man like his father-in-law or Prince Karl.
Christian, despite being from a landlocked principality, had believed in the need of a strong navy and had himself served in the Kaisserreich Navy as a young man. It was King's William's commitment to that and the awareness that the Kaiserreich needed a new modern fleet of steel plated, steam powered, Battleships that had convinced Christian to support him. When Christian spoke of this to the Electors it broke the deadlock between the three contenders and the young William was elected.
Swiftly the Kaiser made Christian the Minister of the Navy and it was the Prince who did the leg work in building the Navy. When the Kaiser was assassinated, the Electors had no question whom to select for the new Kaiser, being the first of his name as Kaiser.
The new Kaiser knew the threats now facing the Rhine and her German allies of Prussia and Austria. The Russian Nationalist who killed Kaiser William was not an isolated murderer. He was part of a Revolution that was sweeping through several states. While the Russian Empire fell apart into a terrible civil war, the Hungarian Empire's Revolution happened swiftly and as the Electors met in Halle in 1901, the Marxist Workers Coalition of Socialist States was being set up in Budapest, replacing the Empire that stretched from the Danube to the Aegean Islands Meanwhile the Swedish Empire went to war with the Russian Socialist State that was itself at war with the rump Russian Empire to its south that was still in control in Central Asia, the Caucuses, and Ukraine.
Shortly after that the tension between the French Empire and the British Empire over their colonial territories flashed into several conflicts in Africa and Asia. The two Empires faced each other in Europe, waiting for the other to attack.
Europe was a powder keg and the Kaiser had to lead his Reich into a new and strange Century as new and horrid weapons of war changed things.
The opinion of most in the three members of the Germanic Alliance was to stand with Sweden and the Russian Empire against the Russian Socialists. But Christian, the Rhenish Council of Electors, and the National Legislature all agreed that the last thing needed was war. Peace through strength was the motto of the new administration and the efforts to build the strongest Navy and modernize the Army continued. Over the next decade that meant armoured cars, machine guns, undersee ships, airships, and aeroplanes. It also meant expanding the use of radio and building new roads, railroads, and telephone lines.
But War did come in 1909 when a French ship that had been attacked at sea sought aid at Rhenish Zanzibar and then British ships attacked the African Rhenish colony. The local Rhenish officials had no choice but to defend their colony. When word reach London of this, the British decided the stalemate in Europe would not last if the Germanic Alliance was siding with the French and decisive action needed to occur to force an end before an ongoing war such as the Swedish-Russian Socialist-Russian Empire War just dragged on and on. So the British mounted an invasion of Frisia and Westphalia in an attempt to demolish the Rhenish Fleet before they could react.
They largely succeeded with those at port, but most of the fleet was in the Baltic and the Kaiser had ordered the North Sea fleet to sea.
This was the Hungarians' chance to attack the Ottomans and take Constantinople. Now Europe was involved in three separate wars and all of them had theatres outside Europe proper as Japan and the United States invaded Siberia and attacked the Russian Socialist State from the East.
A British expeditionary force invaded Frisia and then swept through the lowlands and took northern France before their advance was stopped short of Paris. As feared, this became another stalemate of giant armies facing each other as was happening in Russia. Trench warfare developed and the front went from the North Sea inland then ran to the south until it headed back west to the Bay of Biscay south of Brittany.
In 1911, the Kaiser was visiting Hamburg to inspect the fleet stationed there when a bombing raid killed him. In the middle of a war, another Kaiser had been killed.
[8] The Imperial election of 1911 saw the rise to the Imperial dignity of the Grand Duke of Frankfurt, Alexander von Leuchtenberg. A descendant of Eugène de Beuharnais, the Duke of Frankfurt and lieutenant of the Grande Armée, the young Grand Duke has a strong interest in military matters. He was serving as Marshall at the time of his election, and won the vote of the princes thanks to the ferocious campaigning of his wife Charlotte von Isenburg, who presented him as the obvious candidate for such a situation.
The Marshall-Emperor was delighted to learn this, as he had been blindsighted by what he perceived as shameful incompetence from several high ranking whom he couldn't demote without Imperial approval. Now he had it. During the months of stalemate that marked the second half of 1911, he reorganized the army as well as the rationing system, hoping to improve the morale and efficiency of the army. His goal was to simply make this war look unwinnable to the British: if he could make their logistics ruinous while maintaining a facade of abundance, he could make the Rhine look like too big of a prey to swallow.
For this, he developed an extensive fleet of submarines: the British had to cross the Channel to maintain their positions, the Continentals didn't, so he'd do his best to undermine them at every occasion. In another effort to undermine the British war effort, and being well aware of the difficulties they were facing in the wake of colonial unrest, he sent advisors and informants to separatist movements across the Empire, while promising to his own oversea colonies that they would be granted self-rule. The final straw was the Emerald Plan, an infiltration of Irish Rights movements to radicalize them and offer them weapons. In the end, the massive riots and guerillas across the British Empire, the seemingly unwavering determination of the compact Rhenish Confederation and the crumbling logistics of the British Expeditionary Corp in Europe started, in Britain, to undermine public support for a war now seen as pointless and unlikely to reap any benefits, far from the easy retaliatory disbarkment in France that has originally been promised.
However, Kaiser Alexander I would not get to see the end of this war, as he died in February 1912 during a visit to the trenches, where an undercover British spy seized the occasion to shoot the Emperor to death. The Emperor died, sheltering the nurse he was discussing with seconds ago from the bullets of his murderer. He was succeeded by Joseph Leopold I, Grand Duke and Titular Elector of Würzburg.
Kaiser Joseph Leopold I, Grand Duke and Titular Elector of Würzburg
[9] Most thought that a Hapsburg would never come to be the ruler of the Confederation of the Rhine, ever, but unexpected times are bound to yield unexpected results. After the news of the assassination of the Kaiser Alexander I, it appeared as though that Prince Eugen of Würrtemberg, after he gave his now infamous speech, "The Vengeful Rhine" which called for the avenging for the three assassinated Kaisers. However, Grand Duke Joseph Leopold of Würzburg convinced the electors that wrathful vengeance against Britain and Russia would only stoke even more resentment from the countries against the Rhine Kaiserreich. His arguments were convinced many as Joseph Leopold I was elected, nearly unanimously by the electors of the confederation.
With the approaching of the 1912 general election in the United Kingdom, Joseph Leopold sought for the Peace Coalition (made-up of Conservative, Liberal, and Labour party members who wanted peace with the Rhine and its allies) to win the election. A shrewd man, Joseph Leopold believed that it was better to ''... give a man a thousand little cuts than one big slash.'' Kaiser Joseph Leopold I ran fake stories of British extremists blowing up houses of government officials with children in them, which caused much anger in Britain, as they wanted to see their country and the war as righteous, not as a vile force of evil.
The Peace Coalition won in a landslide in the British general election of 1912, and soon an armistice was made, and a new peace followed, as well. The Kaiser also aided with the Rome Agreements, which ended the war between Hungary and the newly formed Kingdom of Anatolia and the Russian Civil War.
After peace was restored to Europe, the Kaiser led the Rhine Kaiserreich into an economic and cultural golden age. He liberalized many aspects of Rhenish society including the decriminalization of homosexuality, in 1921. However, with the Kaiser increasing liberalization of the country, the conservative elites off the Rhine Kaiserreich became increasingly alienated. In 1924, most electors forced the Kaiser to abdicate, and Joseph Leopold was replaced by King Eugen I of Württemberg.
King Eugen I of Württemberg
[10] When Prince Eugen of Württemberg made his firebrand speech in 1912, he spoke for his own father, King Frederick II of Württemberg, to be the next Kaiser. The Prince was 27 at the time and a veteran of the War.
King Frederick II of Württemberg. r. 1888-1919
The Prince had never given up on his political advocacy for a more conservative, vengeful Kaiserreich and when his father died in 1919 and he became King Eugen I, the hopes of the younger conservative elites, who called themselves the Lineale Party, transferred from his father to the new King. By 1924 they gained enough power to force Joseph Leopold to abdicate and put Eugen on the throne at the age of 39.
The Kaiserreich changed now and went into a totally different direction. While it had already evolved from a Confederacy into a Federation, now the Kaiser and the Lineale made it a much more centralized Empire. He made the Imperial Palace in Halle his permanent residence and appointed a royal viceroy to fulfil his duties back in Stuttgart, the capital of Württemberg. Although the old states were not replaced nor their monarchs, they were either united or divided into different Kaiserreich 'regions.' (Small states were united and large ones divided.) The actual governance of a region was done by a ReichFuhrer appointed by the Kaiser and approved by the Federal legislature, which was little more than a rubberstamp. The Federal legislature had become this due to it being trimmed down. The actual electors who ruled in their various states now were just figureheads with no power, unless they also happened to be an appointed ReichFuhrer, which only occurred if they were one of the Lineale, who dominated the Council of Electors. The same was true of the democratically elected state legislatures, which had all power stripped from them except ceremonial duties and given to the ReichFuhrers and their staffs.
The first order of business of the new Kaiser and the Lineale was what came to be known as the Vereinigung der Vier, the 'Unification of the Four.' It began with the inclusion of Prussia in the Kaiserreich in 1928. This greatly increased the dominance of the conservative elites, as only the Prussian nobility who shared their values were added to the Council of Electors. In 1931 the Empire of Austria was dissolved and its various provinces added to the Kaiserreich. Both Prussia and Austria were added with the other German states passing a law for the Vereinigung. But the fourth addition was purely by force as German speaking Switzerland was just annexed by the Kaiserreich.
Some of the liberal reforms that had occurred were undone. Homosexuality was again outlawed, divorce was made very difficult, non German minorities were forced to swear loyalty oaths (and Jews and Romani were consider non Germans whether they spoke German or not,) and a centralized schooling system was imposed on the Kaiserreich that included a very strong element of teaching German patriotism.
The industrialization of the Empire now went full steam ahead to increase the military. As one of the ongoing policies of the Lineale was the further expanse of the Kaiserreich to include all territory where there were German speaking ethic groups, it seed more and more likely that the Kaiserreich would go to war with Hungary's Marxist Workers' Coalition of Socialist States (WCSS), as many German speaking people lived there and had for centuries and with the French Empire, as the Lineale consiered Dutch a German dialect.
This of course drove the former ally of France into a new alliance with Britain and the WCSS, which was allied with the Russian Socialist State.
The Kaiserreich was on the edge of war when those who'd opposed the Lineale and their Kaiser took to the streets in protest and general strikes. While the Lineale were convinced the Kaiserreich was stronger than other nations and would win a war quickly, many in the Expanded Empire thought this was folly. They knew that all their potential enemies had also built up their military and that this time the United States might side with the British.
The Revolution of 1938 declared the reforms of the last 14 years were null and void and ran its own new election for the federal legislature. Now there were two governments in Halle. But the Revolutionaries quickly took control, arrested most of the Lineale and forced the Kaiser to abdicate. Eugen not only was forced to give up being the Kaiser, but he had to abdicate his kingship, his cousin instead took the throne of Württemberg in Stuttgart. Eugen was given only one of the family's smaller castles and put under house arrest there. His former title of "Prince" was, however, granted him again.
With the arrest of the Lineale electors and their replacement by other sympatico with the Revolution, a new council of electors chose the Grand-Duchess Franziska of Mecklemburg to be Kaiserin. Now the question was would peace be made with France, Britain, Hungary, and Russia or not? Would the Vereinigung be undone or would one German Reich continue? Would the member states' power to govern be restored or the new system continue but liberalized and made democratic?
[11] Franziska von Mecklemburg was one of the newly installed nobles, having being highly and very vocally opposed to both her cousins, Frederick Franzis VI von Mecklemburg-Schwerin and Adolphus-Frederick VI von Mecklemburg-Sterlitz, who were both Linealen. The new Grand-Duchess of Mecklemburg, however, was at first supportive of the Conservative ideas of Eugen von Württemberg: she was as mad as he was at the liberal policies of Joseph Leopold von Würzburg and resented the forced separation between the Rhine Confederation and the other Germans. However, the reign of the one she invested so many hopes in in the first years soon transformed into a journey through the political spectrum: the young Conservative princess in her late teens had by 1938 evolved into an anti-Lineale protestor who embraced ideas ranging from moderate reformism to full blown progressivism. She had been instrumental to the ultimate downfall of Eugen I, working hard at undermining Lineale support in the Northeast.
She wasn't the favourite by far when the election cycle started, but her fiery candidacy speech had gained her the support of the one group that was usually left out in those matters: the crowd. And little by little, with a lot of passion and shaming of the opposition, she was elected by a small margin over the more moderate Ludwig of Bavaria, her supports in the Electoral Assembly hoping her oratory talents and public opposition to Lineale ideology would allow her to reassure the foreign powers. And, after sending a swarm of ambassadors and delegates to gain time with Britain, France, Russia and Hungary, she set out to solve the Swiss Question: in her opinion, there was no keeping Switzerland, and Germany would have to puke it if she didn't want to choke on it. Thus, canton by canton referendums were organized, and all the Swiss cantons chose independance, ridding the Empire of a first problem.
However, appeasement with the rest of Europe was harder to achieve: everyone had demands, and not all of them were reasonable. To appease France, she accepted to reevaluate the Rhine concession's border, accepting that French-speaking municipalities (including Saverne, Ferrette and Altkirch as well as a good chunk of the Vosges mountains) would be able to carry on referendums to reunite with Germany. To appease Britain, she accepted to partake in disarmament conferences. To appease Hungary, she accepted to demilitarize the boundary in exchange for guarantees for the German communities in Hungary. Russia, however, was a tougher client: what did the Socialist Council want that she could offer? In the end, a deal was struck that Russia and Germany would cooperate economically at the condition that worker protection laws would be passed in Germany.
Considering the future of Germany ... despite the personal feelings of the newly installed princes of the Empire, it was evident that the idea of unification was popular, and that reverting it was only going to create fuel for a potential Lineale reignition. It was thus agreed in backdoor discussions that German unity would be presented as a nonpartisan theme that every current party supports, regardless of personal feelings. However, that was pretty much the only domestic issue they could all agree on. While a lot of more moderate Princes wanted to purely revert to the pre-Eugen politics, there were also those who admitted that the administrative organization of the Linealen could be reformed and liberalized. Kaiserin Franziska disagreed with both. To her, going back to the executive supremacy of Princes was only going to lead to other terrible decisions in the future, and was simply not an option; but the Linealen had put on an administration that was essentially the negation of local particularities and of the Confederal nature of the government. Thus, she offered her own set of reforms: to her, the basic cell of the new German government should be the Municipality, the Princes acting as advisors, ceremonial figures and subsidizers, and the German government would proceed from those two authorities. To Kaiserin Franziska, Germany needed a new Constitution, even if it would take years ....
She would abdicate in 1967, after 29 frustrating years of attempting to make her vision of a new and better Germany come to life. In 29 years, the Imperial Constitution had garnered two fifths of the Imperial Assembly's votes: in the 1967 draft, the Constitution considers the realms (Counties to Kingdoms) and the municipalities as the two base units of the Empire, admits as its Legislative Assembly (but not Constitutional Assembly) a monocameral legislature based on proportional vote for one half and municipal delegates for the other, guarantees freedom of expression and faith, protects "individual property" and guarantees voting rights to anyone 17 years or older, it bans discriminations based on gender, ethnic background or faith, and it is accompanied by a "Social Contract" that defines a number of base protections for parents, children, workers, the environment, and a bunch of other stuff. Main points of disagreement include what power are given to the Princes, the existence or not of a Princely Assembly and its potential powers and the mode of election of the Kaiser of Kaiserin. But those are questions for a younger monarch. Franziska is 59, she's feeling old and her wit isn't as sharp as it used to be. Besides, she's the only on in this country that didn't get to enjoy life resuming after the rigors of Lineale social corsetry. The rest is up to the Constitutional Assembly. In absence of a proper structure to elect the next German Emperor, the Constitutional Assembly has been tasked to elect her successor. Her reign would be followed by ____________________.
Kaiser Ferdinand I, Prince and Count of Isenburg, wearing his father's marshal clothes and medals, in 1968
Kaiser Ferdinand I was more experienced as a social host than an administrator, which only caused exacerbated problems between several local governments, as the unclarity of which governmental bodies had what authorities increased. The Kaiser was much more interested in the social liberalization of Rhenish society and court. Aside from dismantling the court’s conservative etiquette, Ferdinand I also created the royal positions, known as the Grand Dignitaries, which were similar to the system of the French Empire.
In 1971, after having to deal with several intense arguments, Ferdinand I abdicated and returned to the Principality of Isenburg. He was succeeded ________________.
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What If Parliament had allowed William, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh to accept the Swedish throne in 1812?
Kings of Sweden
1809 to 1818: Charles XIII (House of Holstein Gottorp)
1818 to 1834: Frederick II (House of Hanover) (1)
1834 to 1889: Christian III (House of Hanover) (2)
1889 to 1901: Christina II Louise (House of Hanover) (3)
1901 to 1932: John IV Ferdinand (House of Braganza) (4)
1932 to 1951: Charles XIV Ferdinand (House of Braganza) [5]
1951 to 1975: Peter I Gustaf (House of Braganza) [6]
1975-1977: Frederick III Augustus (House of Braganza) [7]
1977-2002: Nicholas I Alexander (House of Liechtenstein) [8]
2002-Present: Albert II Leopold (House of Liechtenstein) [9]
(1) William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, born 1776, was 36 and unmarried when the invitation to become the heir to the throne of Sweden was offered to him. There was much opposition, but eventually Parliament, and his cousin, the Prince Regent, would eventually consent. But as William, or Frederick as he would start to style himself, was unmarried, this was the first thing that Charles XIII would turn his attention to - with the result that in 1813, Frederick married Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, and the pair had five children, the first being born in 1814.
All but one of the children, Prince Gustav, survived infancy. Three of the children were born by the time of Fredericks coronation. As a monarch, he was well liked, but not politically active, after his failure to successfully have Denmark cede Norway to Sweden had caused him embarrassment, especially when Norway elected Jules, Duke of Polignac as King Auguste of Norway.
Whilst he did not believe in absolute monarchy, he did demand certain rules be followed - no man could be seated in his presence, unless he too were also seated, and he expected to be brought drinks by only women at any parties he went to.
Behind his back, his enemies at court and some in the Swedish Parliament called him Dumbom Fred (or Silly Fred). At least, they said, he had endeavoured to learn the Swedish language, which he could do on at least a conversational basis by the time he was crowned. In 1820, he visited Britain for his Uncles funeral, and then in 1830 for his cousins.
Because of his lack of interest in politics, the Swedish Parliament gained significant power during his reign, evolving into a more constitutional monarchy than had been in place.
When it became clear that another of his cousins, William IV of Britain would not produce an heir and that Princess Alexandrina of Kent would be Queen in due course, Frederick petitioned King William IV and the Dowager Duchess of Kent for his second son, to marry Alexandrina. William himself favoured a Dutch match, whilst the Dowager Duchess favoured one of her nephews.
Frederick would die before the Affair of the British Marriage came to its conclusion. He was found unconscious in his bath tub at Drottingholm Palace (his favourite residence), having suffered a stroke, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Prince Christian.
[2] Christian was born the eldest child of Frederick and Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, born in 1814. Named in hopes that he would have the faith of the country behind him.
Being the heir, Christian found himself under the focused attention of his mother. Their relationship strained and comments in diaries and letters, kept by both as well as governors and tutors suggests that she tried to dominate and influence him, which over time did have an affect, with Christian’s ideas matching those of his Russian heritage rather than his British.
While his relationship with his father seems to be non-existing, with Christian, feeling superior to his father.
For example, his father lacked interest in politics, Christian found the Riksdag of the Estates, something of a game and enjoyed pitting the four groups against each other for his own gain.
At 20 years of age, the death of his father was mourned by many, however to Christian, it was just an inconvenience in state affairs.
Under Christian III, the Affair of the British Marriage, came to nothing. Many believed that it was the British government who had an issue with Swedish and British match, however, historians have uncovered secret letters, where Christian III was against the match as he didn’t want to see his brother in a higher position as him.
Victoria instead went with a match arranged by her mother and Uncle Leopoldo, by marrying Prince Albert.
Instead Christian arranged marriages that benefit is own need. Both sisters were married to near by kingdoms. The kingdom of Denmark was a must, while the Hanover match was to stop Prussia’s influence.
For his brother, he arranged a marriage with their cousin, Grand duchess Maria of Russia, which was not a happy one, from rumours around court.
Most of his 55-year reign was spent defending his diplomatic ties, social change and reform ideas.
Following Great Britain, slavery was abolished in all parts of Sweden, including her colonies, in 1839; slavery had legislated in Saint-Barthélemy under the Ordinance concerning the Police of Slaves and free Coloured People dated 30 July 1787. The last legally owned slaves in the Swedish colony of Saint-Barthélemy were bought and freed by the Swedish state on October 9, 1840.
During his reign, the first stage of the Industrial Revolution reached Sweden. This first take-off was founded on rural forges, textile proto-industries and sawmills.
During the Austro-Prussian War (1866), Hanover attempted to maintain a neutral position, along with some other member states of the German Confederation. Hanover's vote in favor of the mobilisation of Confederation troops against Prussia on 14 June 1866 prompted Prussia to declare war. Christian III sent troops to defend his sister and brother-in-law, helping the Kingdom of Hanover to keep independence from the imperialist Prussia.
His death in 1889, was felt across Europe by his family, (daughters who married abroad) and his supporters. He was succeeded by his daughter, Christina II Louise.
(3) Born 1841, Christina II Louise was the eldest of the daughters of Christian III and had spent much of her life as heir presumptive, her elder brother, Crown Prince Christian, was born in 1839, and then died of typhoid at the age of eighteen. Christian had been engaged to Charlotte of Belgium, but unmarried and with no issue at the time of his death.
Christina Louise had become engaged to Prince Joao of Portugal, the Duke of Beja, who was a year younger than herself, and the pair married in 1860 when Joao turned 18 and converted to Lutheranism. As the third son of Maria II, Queen of Portugal, he had been unlikely to ascend the Portuguese throne and abdicated his claim upon his conversion.
Joao was styled as Peter of Portugal from the marriage (he had abdicated his claim to the Dukedom of Beja when he abdicated his claim to the Portuguese throne), and created as Duke of Ostergotland by Christian II when the new couples first child, the Kings first grandchild, was born a year after their marriage. The couple would have five more children who lived to adulthood over the next seventeen years, which lead to an eighteen-year age gap between their eldest (1861) and their youngest (1878).
Christina Louise became Queen of Sweden at the age of 48 in 1889 and took Christina II Louise as her regnal name. Her four sisters, the Countess of Flanders, the Dowager Queen or Greece, the Crown Princess of Norway and the Queen of Italy all attended their fathers funeral and their sisters subsequent coronation (only the Countess of Flanders and the Crown Princess of Norway attended with their partners).
Her reign was, in contrast to her father's, brief and mostly peaceful as she worked with the Reiksdag to develop industry and commerce. The only significant crisis during her reign was the Finnish Civil War in which Finland declared independence from Russia. Christian III had always been more closely aligned with the Russian side of his heritage, but Christina II Louise played a more moderate and pragmatic political game, neither actively supporting her Russian relatives, nor working against them. This worked in her favour when, in 1895, Finland was officially recognised as an independent Kingdom and she successfully managed to negotiate the election of her paternal cousin, the Duke of Uppland, as King. He was deemed the Goldilocks Option - with a Russian mother and grandmother, he was palatable Alexander III and the Russian Court, but could not become Emperor of Russia as his Russian links were via a female line, and therefore palatable to Britain, France and the other Scandinavian nations.
Her other major contribution to Sweden was the establishment of the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block which presented Sweden, Norway, Denmark and then Finland with preferential trading agreements with their neighbouring countries.
Christina II Louise of Sweden died in the summer of 1901, seven months after the Duke of Ostergotland, at the Tullgarn Palace, according to hearsay and never officially confirmed, when the clock struck noon, she was heard declaring "And now, I think I might retire ..." before passing away.
She was succeeded by John Ferdinand, her son.
(4) John Ferdinand was born to then Crown Princess Christina and Peter, Duke of Ostergotland on September 17, 1861. The eldest of six children, John was an lively child, and would play with his siblings in his youth.
John Ferdinand had not yet married when his mother became Queen of Sweden in 1889, and many brides were selected for him, but ultimately picked Princess Alexandrina of the United Kingdom, daughter of Edward VII and Christina of Denmark, and the sister of Prince George of Wales, as his wife. They would go on to have five children together between 1892 and 1902.
When Christina II Louise died in August of 1901, John Ferdinand became King of Sweden as John IV Ferdinand at the age of 39. His siblings, Charles, Astrid, the Queen of the Netherlands, and Frederick, all attended their mother's funeral and their brother's subsequent coronation (only the Queen of Prussia didn't attend).
John IV Ferdinand's reign would see the Great War (1906-1909) happen. While Sweden remained neutral in the war, John IV Ferdinand supported the alliance of Great Britian, Prussia, and France against the alliance of Russia, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire. At the Treaty of Berlin, many new nations were created, one being Estonia, which picked John IV Ferdinand's brother Frederick, and his wife Margaret of Finland, as their King and Queen. Estonia would later join the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block with Karelia.
The rest of John IV Ferdinand's reign was mostly peaceful and would die in 1932, one year after his wife, Alexandrina. He was succeeded by his grandson, Charles XIV Frederick.
(5) Born 1911, Charles Ferdinamd Christian, created Duke of Narke upon his birth, was the only son of Crown Prince Ferdinand, Duke of Skane (the eldest son of John IV Ferdinand) and his wife, Elisabeth of Medelpad, a descendant of Sophia of Gloucester, sister of Frederick I whom he had married to a minor Swedish Count, Magnus Leijonhufvud, that he created as Duke of Medelpad in order to give his sister precedence at the Swedish Court second only to his wife and children.
Crown Prince Ferdinand died in a train crash when his son was only five. Elisabeth of Medelpad later remarried, like her ancestor before her, a minor noble and the Duke or Narke became Crown Prince and went to live with his grandparents and be given the appropriate education for the future King.
When his grandfather died, the Crown Prince took the regnal name of Charles XIV Ferdinand. The descendants of Frederick II sat on the thrones of many European nations - Prussia, Estonia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Norway, Hanover, Italy, Denmark and the United Kingdom.
Swedish Consorts since the coronation of Frederick II had been Russian, German, Portuguese and British so there was no clear precedent as to which nation that the new King should marry into the monarchy of. His aunts pressured him with their preferences, but eventually, he married Evelin, Princess Royal of Estonia, a second cousin via his grandfathers late brother, Frederick I of Estonia. This marriage renewed focus on the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block and it's transformation into the Scandinavian Economic Area - not just preferential trade agreements, but free movement of citizens as well as goods, as well as the right to take up residence in any of the partner nations.
The marriage also resulted in only one child. Born in 1934, Crown Prince Toomas, who died at the age of six. Although not publicised widely at the time, it is believed that Toomas was epileptic and his condition deteriorated significantly from the age of four. Queen Evelin spent much of his last two years at an isolated lodge with her son and was with him when he passed away. Due to his duties, Charles XIV Ferdinand could not spend much time with his wife and son and this lead to inevitable estrangement between the couple, as Evelin resented her husband. Evelin continued to reside at the royal lodge whilst her husband this entertained a number of lovers at the royal palaces, and fathered at least one illegitimate son, Alexander, created as Count Askersund.
Charles XIV Ferdinand would die at the age of 40 and be succeeded by Peter I Gustaf, his grand uncle.
[6] Peter Gustaf was born in 1897, the second and youngest son of John IV Ferdinand. As Peter Gustaf wasn't expected to become King of Sweden, he had a little more casual education. During his early twenties, he went traveling around the world, meeting all sorts of people and visting various places.
It was during one such trip where Peter Gustaf met his future wife, Ingrid Olavson, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, at a hotel in New York City. He pleaded with his father to marry her, but John IV Ferdinand refused. When he died in 1931 however, Peter Gustaf was able to marry Ingrid, which they did in 1932. They would have three children, who they allowed to marry whoever they want.
With his nephew's son died in 1940, Peter Gustaf became the heir to Charles XIV Ferdinand, and eventually King in 1951, with Peter I Gustaf becoming his regnal name. His three sisters, Anna, Birgitte, and Christina would attend their brother's coronation. Peter I Gustaf's reign was peaceful, but he would start the process of turning the Scandinavian Economic Area into a Scandinavian Federation (with the monarchies intact).
The beloved King would die in 1975, not able to see his dream finished, at the age of 78. His wife Ingrid would live for another seven years before dying at 84. Peter I Gustaf was succeeded by _______, his ________.
Crown Prince Frederick August, in May of 1973
[7] Prince Frederick August was born in 1935, as the second child of King Peter I Gustaf and Queen-Consort Ingrid Olavson. When the prince was in his early adolescence, he became deeply interested in Hollywood films and wished to become a movie star. And, in 1963, he moved to the city of Los Angeles. The next year, the prince starred in the now-classic movie, ''The Nordic Star''.
In late 1972, Crown Prince Christopher, Frederick August’s older brother, unexpectedly died from lung cancer. Thus, Frederick August became the first person in line to succeed his father as King of Sweden. As his father became more ill, Frederick August was forced to move back to Sweden.
When his father, finally, died in 1975, Frederick August was crowned as Frederick III August. The new King of Sweden was not very knowledgeable in the field of politics. The only things that King Frederick III August did during his short reign were oppose his late father's plans for a Scandinavian federation, and advocate for a Ministry of the Environment, which would protect and preserve Sweden's natural wonders.
As his stress about his job rose, the king's disinterest grew as well. And, ultimately, Frederick III August abdicated when he heard news of the creation of "The Nordic Star 2". He was succeeded by his nephew, Nicolas I Alexander.
(8) Nicolas I Alexander was born as fourth in the line of succession, and following his mother's death, his uncles death, his grandfathers death and then his other uncles abdication, he became King of Sweden at 20 in 1977. He was the only child of Princess Ingrid of Sweden and Prince Leopold of Liechtenstein, the third son of Johann IV, Prince Regnant of Liechtenstein. This meant Nicolas was also placed high in the line of succession to the crown of Liechtenstein, behind his elder two paternal uncles, Hereditary Prince Johann and Prince Alois and his cousins, Joseph, George and Max. After he became King of Sweden in 1977, he was encouraged to find a wife, as his heir at that point was the line of his Great Aunt Anna, who had married the Grand Duke or Luxembourg and whose daughter, Adelaide I was now Grand Duchess of Luxembourg.
Adelaide had three sons and a daughter with the Duke of Valentinois, a member of the Monegasque royal family. It was this daughter, Adelaide of Luxembourg, that Nicolas I Alexander married in 1981 in a lavish ceremony in Stockholm. They swiftly had three children.
1989 saw the eventual transformation of the SEA into the Nordic Federation, rather than the Scandinavian Federation as it now embraced Iceland. The Head of State of the Nordic Federation would be assigned to each member state for a rotational five year term, in order that they had entered first the trade pact, the SEA or the Federation. As such, from 1989 to 1994, Nicolas I Alexander was also the Head of the Federation, a position which he embraced fully for the rest of his reign.
He died in 2002 after suffering a heart attack whilst on a tour of the Federation during the leadership of the King of Finland. His body was returned to Stockholm and he was succeeded by his son, Albert II Leopold.
[9] Albert (after his maternal grandfather) Leopold (after his paternal grandfather) was born in 1982 to King Nicolas I Alexander and Adelaide of Luxemburg and Monaco to joyful celebrations. His birth would be followed by the births of his younger sister Adelaide in 1984, and younger brother John in 1985.
Albert Leopold during his time as Crown Prince, saw him going on tours across Sweden, and meeting various people. He was the first member of the Swedish royal family to go to university, where he learned history, science, and literature.
In 2002, when Nicolas I Alexander died, Albert Leopold became King of Sweden as Albert II Leopold. While on a state vist to Norway in 2008, he fell in love with King Harald VI's daughter, Princess Augusta. They would marry in 2011 and have three children so far, Crown Prince Nicolas, born in 2012, Prince Gustaf, born in 2013, and Princess Christina, born in 2018. Augustua is currently pregnant with a fourth child, excepted to be born in late summer of 2021.
Albert II Leopold's regin was seen the Nordic Federation become a regional power in Europe, and it having some of the highest Human Development Index scores in the world. The future looks bright for the Nordic Federation.
Kings of Sweden
1809 to 1818: Charles XIII (House of Holstein Gottorp)
1818 to 1834: Frederick II (House of Hanover) (1)
1834 to 1889: Christian III (House of Hanover) (2)
1889 to 1901: Christina II Louise (House of Hanover) (3)
1901 to 1932: John IV Ferdinand (House of Braganza) (4)
1932 to 1951: Charles XIV Ferdinand (House of Braganza) [5]
1951 to 1975: Peter I Gustaf (House of Braganza) [6]
1975-1977: Frederick III Augustus (House of Braganza) [7]
1977-2002: Nicholas I Alexander (House of Liechtenstein) [8]
2002-Present: Albert II Leopold (House of Liechtenstein) [9]
(1) William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, born 1776, was 36 and unmarried when the invitation to become the heir to the throne of Sweden was offered to him. There was much opposition, but eventually Parliament, and his cousin, the Prince Regent, would eventually consent. But as William, or Frederick as he would start to style himself, was unmarried, this was the first thing that Charles XIII would turn his attention to - with the result that in 1813, Frederick married Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, and the pair had five children, the first being born in 1814.
All but one of the children, Prince Gustav, survived infancy. Three of the children were born by the time of Fredericks coronation. As a monarch, he was well liked, but not politically active, after his failure to successfully have Denmark cede Norway to Sweden had caused him embarrassment, especially when Norway elected Jules, Duke of Polignac as King Auguste of Norway.
Whilst he did not believe in absolute monarchy, he did demand certain rules be followed - no man could be seated in his presence, unless he too were also seated, and he expected to be brought drinks by only women at any parties he went to.
Behind his back, his enemies at court and some in the Swedish Parliament called him Dumbom Fred (or Silly Fred). At least, they said, he had endeavoured to learn the Swedish language, which he could do on at least a conversational basis by the time he was crowned. In 1820, he visited Britain for his Uncles funeral, and then in 1830 for his cousins.
Because of his lack of interest in politics, the Swedish Parliament gained significant power during his reign, evolving into a more constitutional monarchy than had been in place.
When it became clear that another of his cousins, William IV of Britain would not produce an heir and that Princess Alexandrina of Kent would be Queen in due course, Frederick petitioned King William IV and the Dowager Duchess of Kent for his second son, to marry Alexandrina. William himself favoured a Dutch match, whilst the Dowager Duchess favoured one of her nephews.
Frederick would die before the Affair of the British Marriage came to its conclusion. He was found unconscious in his bath tub at Drottingholm Palace (his favourite residence), having suffered a stroke, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Prince Christian.
[2] Christian was born the eldest child of Frederick and Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, born in 1814. Named in hopes that he would have the faith of the country behind him.
Being the heir, Christian found himself under the focused attention of his mother. Their relationship strained and comments in diaries and letters, kept by both as well as governors and tutors suggests that she tried to dominate and influence him, which over time did have an affect, with Christian’s ideas matching those of his Russian heritage rather than his British.
While his relationship with his father seems to be non-existing, with Christian, feeling superior to his father.
For example, his father lacked interest in politics, Christian found the Riksdag of the Estates, something of a game and enjoyed pitting the four groups against each other for his own gain.
At 20 years of age, the death of his father was mourned by many, however to Christian, it was just an inconvenience in state affairs.
Under Christian III, the Affair of the British Marriage, came to nothing. Many believed that it was the British government who had an issue with Swedish and British match, however, historians have uncovered secret letters, where Christian III was against the match as he didn’t want to see his brother in a higher position as him.
Victoria instead went with a match arranged by her mother and Uncle Leopoldo, by marrying Prince Albert.
Instead Christian arranged marriages that benefit is own need. Both sisters were married to near by kingdoms. The kingdom of Denmark was a must, while the Hanover match was to stop Prussia’s influence.
For his brother, he arranged a marriage with their cousin, Grand duchess Maria of Russia, which was not a happy one, from rumours around court.
Most of his 55-year reign was spent defending his diplomatic ties, social change and reform ideas.
Following Great Britain, slavery was abolished in all parts of Sweden, including her colonies, in 1839; slavery had legislated in Saint-Barthélemy under the Ordinance concerning the Police of Slaves and free Coloured People dated 30 July 1787. The last legally owned slaves in the Swedish colony of Saint-Barthélemy were bought and freed by the Swedish state on October 9, 1840.
During his reign, the first stage of the Industrial Revolution reached Sweden. This first take-off was founded on rural forges, textile proto-industries and sawmills.
During the Austro-Prussian War (1866), Hanover attempted to maintain a neutral position, along with some other member states of the German Confederation. Hanover's vote in favor of the mobilisation of Confederation troops against Prussia on 14 June 1866 prompted Prussia to declare war. Christian III sent troops to defend his sister and brother-in-law, helping the Kingdom of Hanover to keep independence from the imperialist Prussia.
His death in 1889, was felt across Europe by his family, (daughters who married abroad) and his supporters. He was succeeded by his daughter, Christina II Louise.
(3) Born 1841, Christina II Louise was the eldest of the daughters of Christian III and had spent much of her life as heir presumptive, her elder brother, Crown Prince Christian, was born in 1839, and then died of typhoid at the age of eighteen. Christian had been engaged to Charlotte of Belgium, but unmarried and with no issue at the time of his death.
Christina Louise had become engaged to Prince Joao of Portugal, the Duke of Beja, who was a year younger than herself, and the pair married in 1860 when Joao turned 18 and converted to Lutheranism. As the third son of Maria II, Queen of Portugal, he had been unlikely to ascend the Portuguese throne and abdicated his claim upon his conversion.
Joao was styled as Peter of Portugal from the marriage (he had abdicated his claim to the Dukedom of Beja when he abdicated his claim to the Portuguese throne), and created as Duke of Ostergotland by Christian II when the new couples first child, the Kings first grandchild, was born a year after their marriage. The couple would have five more children who lived to adulthood over the next seventeen years, which lead to an eighteen-year age gap between their eldest (1861) and their youngest (1878).
Christina Louise became Queen of Sweden at the age of 48 in 1889 and took Christina II Louise as her regnal name. Her four sisters, the Countess of Flanders, the Dowager Queen or Greece, the Crown Princess of Norway and the Queen of Italy all attended their fathers funeral and their sisters subsequent coronation (only the Countess of Flanders and the Crown Princess of Norway attended with their partners).
Her reign was, in contrast to her father's, brief and mostly peaceful as she worked with the Reiksdag to develop industry and commerce. The only significant crisis during her reign was the Finnish Civil War in which Finland declared independence from Russia. Christian III had always been more closely aligned with the Russian side of his heritage, but Christina II Louise played a more moderate and pragmatic political game, neither actively supporting her Russian relatives, nor working against them. This worked in her favour when, in 1895, Finland was officially recognised as an independent Kingdom and she successfully managed to negotiate the election of her paternal cousin, the Duke of Uppland, as King. He was deemed the Goldilocks Option - with a Russian mother and grandmother, he was palatable Alexander III and the Russian Court, but could not become Emperor of Russia as his Russian links were via a female line, and therefore palatable to Britain, France and the other Scandinavian nations.
Her other major contribution to Sweden was the establishment of the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block which presented Sweden, Norway, Denmark and then Finland with preferential trading agreements with their neighbouring countries.
Christina II Louise of Sweden died in the summer of 1901, seven months after the Duke of Ostergotland, at the Tullgarn Palace, according to hearsay and never officially confirmed, when the clock struck noon, she was heard declaring "And now, I think I might retire ..." before passing away.
She was succeeded by John Ferdinand, her son.
(4) John Ferdinand was born to then Crown Princess Christina and Peter, Duke of Ostergotland on September 17, 1861. The eldest of six children, John was an lively child, and would play with his siblings in his youth.
John Ferdinand had not yet married when his mother became Queen of Sweden in 1889, and many brides were selected for him, but ultimately picked Princess Alexandrina of the United Kingdom, daughter of Edward VII and Christina of Denmark, and the sister of Prince George of Wales, as his wife. They would go on to have five children together between 1892 and 1902.
When Christina II Louise died in August of 1901, John Ferdinand became King of Sweden as John IV Ferdinand at the age of 39. His siblings, Charles, Astrid, the Queen of the Netherlands, and Frederick, all attended their mother's funeral and their brother's subsequent coronation (only the Queen of Prussia didn't attend).
John IV Ferdinand's reign would see the Great War (1906-1909) happen. While Sweden remained neutral in the war, John IV Ferdinand supported the alliance of Great Britian, Prussia, and France against the alliance of Russia, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire. At the Treaty of Berlin, many new nations were created, one being Estonia, which picked John IV Ferdinand's brother Frederick, and his wife Margaret of Finland, as their King and Queen. Estonia would later join the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block with Karelia.
The rest of John IV Ferdinand's reign was mostly peaceful and would die in 1932, one year after his wife, Alexandrina. He was succeeded by his grandson, Charles XIV Frederick.
(5) Born 1911, Charles Ferdinamd Christian, created Duke of Narke upon his birth, was the only son of Crown Prince Ferdinand, Duke of Skane (the eldest son of John IV Ferdinand) and his wife, Elisabeth of Medelpad, a descendant of Sophia of Gloucester, sister of Frederick I whom he had married to a minor Swedish Count, Magnus Leijonhufvud, that he created as Duke of Medelpad in order to give his sister precedence at the Swedish Court second only to his wife and children.
Crown Prince Ferdinand died in a train crash when his son was only five. Elisabeth of Medelpad later remarried, like her ancestor before her, a minor noble and the Duke or Narke became Crown Prince and went to live with his grandparents and be given the appropriate education for the future King.
When his grandfather died, the Crown Prince took the regnal name of Charles XIV Ferdinand. The descendants of Frederick II sat on the thrones of many European nations - Prussia, Estonia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Norway, Hanover, Italy, Denmark and the United Kingdom.
Swedish Consorts since the coronation of Frederick II had been Russian, German, Portuguese and British so there was no clear precedent as to which nation that the new King should marry into the monarchy of. His aunts pressured him with their preferences, but eventually, he married Evelin, Princess Royal of Estonia, a second cousin via his grandfathers late brother, Frederick I of Estonia. This marriage renewed focus on the Pan Scandinavian Trading Block and it's transformation into the Scandinavian Economic Area - not just preferential trade agreements, but free movement of citizens as well as goods, as well as the right to take up residence in any of the partner nations.
The marriage also resulted in only one child. Born in 1934, Crown Prince Toomas, who died at the age of six. Although not publicised widely at the time, it is believed that Toomas was epileptic and his condition deteriorated significantly from the age of four. Queen Evelin spent much of his last two years at an isolated lodge with her son and was with him when he passed away. Due to his duties, Charles XIV Ferdinand could not spend much time with his wife and son and this lead to inevitable estrangement between the couple, as Evelin resented her husband. Evelin continued to reside at the royal lodge whilst her husband this entertained a number of lovers at the royal palaces, and fathered at least one illegitimate son, Alexander, created as Count Askersund.
Charles XIV Ferdinand would die at the age of 40 and be succeeded by Peter I Gustaf, his grand uncle.
[6] Peter Gustaf was born in 1897, the second and youngest son of John IV Ferdinand. As Peter Gustaf wasn't expected to become King of Sweden, he had a little more casual education. During his early twenties, he went traveling around the world, meeting all sorts of people and visting various places.
It was during one such trip where Peter Gustaf met his future wife, Ingrid Olavson, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, at a hotel in New York City. He pleaded with his father to marry her, but John IV Ferdinand refused. When he died in 1931 however, Peter Gustaf was able to marry Ingrid, which they did in 1932. They would have three children, who they allowed to marry whoever they want.
With his nephew's son died in 1940, Peter Gustaf became the heir to Charles XIV Ferdinand, and eventually King in 1951, with Peter I Gustaf becoming his regnal name. His three sisters, Anna, Birgitte, and Christina would attend their brother's coronation. Peter I Gustaf's reign was peaceful, but he would start the process of turning the Scandinavian Economic Area into a Scandinavian Federation (with the monarchies intact).
The beloved King would die in 1975, not able to see his dream finished, at the age of 78. His wife Ingrid would live for another seven years before dying at 84. Peter I Gustaf was succeeded by _______, his ________.
Crown Prince Frederick August, in May of 1973
[7] Prince Frederick August was born in 1935, as the second child of King Peter I Gustaf and Queen-Consort Ingrid Olavson. When the prince was in his early adolescence, he became deeply interested in Hollywood films and wished to become a movie star. And, in 1963, he moved to the city of Los Angeles. The next year, the prince starred in the now-classic movie, ''The Nordic Star''.
In late 1972, Crown Prince Christopher, Frederick August’s older brother, unexpectedly died from lung cancer. Thus, Frederick August became the first person in line to succeed his father as King of Sweden. As his father became more ill, Frederick August was forced to move back to Sweden.
When his father, finally, died in 1975, Frederick August was crowned as Frederick III August. The new King of Sweden was not very knowledgeable in the field of politics. The only things that King Frederick III August did during his short reign were oppose his late father's plans for a Scandinavian federation, and advocate for a Ministry of the Environment, which would protect and preserve Sweden's natural wonders.
As his stress about his job rose, the king's disinterest grew as well. And, ultimately, Frederick III August abdicated when he heard news of the creation of "The Nordic Star 2". He was succeeded by his nephew, Nicolas I Alexander.
(8) Nicolas I Alexander was born as fourth in the line of succession, and following his mother's death, his uncles death, his grandfathers death and then his other uncles abdication, he became King of Sweden at 20 in 1977. He was the only child of Princess Ingrid of Sweden and Prince Leopold of Liechtenstein, the third son of Johann IV, Prince Regnant of Liechtenstein. This meant Nicolas was also placed high in the line of succession to the crown of Liechtenstein, behind his elder two paternal uncles, Hereditary Prince Johann and Prince Alois and his cousins, Joseph, George and Max. After he became King of Sweden in 1977, he was encouraged to find a wife, as his heir at that point was the line of his Great Aunt Anna, who had married the Grand Duke or Luxembourg and whose daughter, Adelaide I was now Grand Duchess of Luxembourg.
Adelaide had three sons and a daughter with the Duke of Valentinois, a member of the Monegasque royal family. It was this daughter, Adelaide of Luxembourg, that Nicolas I Alexander married in 1981 in a lavish ceremony in Stockholm. They swiftly had three children.
1989 saw the eventual transformation of the SEA into the Nordic Federation, rather than the Scandinavian Federation as it now embraced Iceland. The Head of State of the Nordic Federation would be assigned to each member state for a rotational five year term, in order that they had entered first the trade pact, the SEA or the Federation. As such, from 1989 to 1994, Nicolas I Alexander was also the Head of the Federation, a position which he embraced fully for the rest of his reign.
He died in 2002 after suffering a heart attack whilst on a tour of the Federation during the leadership of the King of Finland. His body was returned to Stockholm and he was succeeded by his son, Albert II Leopold.
[9] Albert (after his maternal grandfather) Leopold (after his paternal grandfather) was born in 1982 to King Nicolas I Alexander and Adelaide of Luxemburg and Monaco to joyful celebrations. His birth would be followed by the births of his younger sister Adelaide in 1984, and younger brother John in 1985.
Albert Leopold during his time as Crown Prince, saw him going on tours across Sweden, and meeting various people. He was the first member of the Swedish royal family to go to university, where he learned history, science, and literature.
In 2002, when Nicolas I Alexander died, Albert Leopold became King of Sweden as Albert II Leopold. While on a state vist to Norway in 2008, he fell in love with King Harald VI's daughter, Princess Augusta. They would marry in 2011 and have three children so far, Crown Prince Nicolas, born in 2012, Prince Gustaf, born in 2013, and Princess Christina, born in 2018. Augustua is currently pregnant with a fourth child, excepted to be born in late summer of 2021.
Albert II Leopold's regin was seen the Nordic Federation become a regional power in Europe, and it having some of the highest Human Development Index scores in the world. The future looks bright for the Nordic Federation.
What if... James II fled to America?
Kings of Virginia
1688-1701: James I (House of Stuart) [1]
[1] In the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, James II, his family, and some of his loyal followers fled to England's holdings in North America, where a loyalist army would be built up. With military aid from France and Spian, James is crowned King James I of Virgina, and would set out to establish a hold over his new kingdom, and making plans to one day return to his rightful throne in Britian.
James' regin would see steady immigration to French and Spanish colones and back, the establishment of a Virginian Parliament and a wave of population exchange between Protestants and loyal Catholics.
James I would die in September of 1701, with the Kingdom of Virginia and claim to the British crown going to his ______, ______.
Kings of Virginia
1688-1701: James I (House of Stuart) [1]
James' regin would see steady immigration to French and Spanish colones and back, the establishment of a Virginian Parliament and a wave of population exchange between Protestants and loyal Catholics.
James I would die in September of 1701, with the Kingdom of Virginia and claim to the British crown going to his ______, ______.
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What if... James II fled to America?
Kings of Virginia
1688-1701: James I (House of Stuart) [1]
1701-1743: James II (House of Stuart) [2]
[1] In the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, James II, his family, and some of his loyal followers fled to England's holdings in North America, where a loyalist army would be built up. With military aid from France and Spian, James is crowned King James I of Virgina, and would set out to establish a hold over his new kingdom, and making plans to one day return to his rightful throne in Britian.
James' regin would see steady immigration to French and Spanish colones and back, the establishment of a Virginian Parliament and a wave of population exchange between Protestants and loyal Catholics.
James I would die in September of 1701, with the Kingdom of Virginia and claim to the British crown going to his thirty one year old son, James II.
[2] James, Crown Prince od Virginia and Mary, Princess Royal of Virginia were born in 1688 in London and 1692 in France whilst their father secured his position in Virginia. The two suffered from smallpox in 1699 and both died.
However, when James I had fled to Virginia, one of James' illegitimate sons, the Duke of Berwick, had joined them. Faced with an absence of heirs, the King was provided with two options - either put his niece, Anne, Duchess of Savoy, above his own daughter (Anne, as his elder daughter Mary had since died) or, legitimise the Duke of Berwick. As negotiations with Anne and her husband Victor Amadeus II of Savoy were frosty at best, Anne demanded recognition of her husband as King Regnant rather than King Consort, and the Virginian Parliament were wary of subjugation to another European crown, the King legitimise the unmarried Duke of Berwick. By the time of the Kings death, the Duke had been married to Maria Anna of Soissons, a Savoyard from the junior Savoy-Carignano branch of the family. This had cause to upset his niece and her husband further as they would not be rulers of Sardinia and Savoy until much later and their precedence at the Court of the Old Dominion, should they ever attend, would be lower than Mary.
Anne and Victor Amadeus II would continue to challenge the validity of the claim of the "House of FitzJames" to the throne of Virginia, attempting to raise support from France and Spain but these attempts to claim came to nothing given that the Kings and Queens of Great Britain held precedence, were legitimate male preference primogeniture used to determine validity.
In 1736, upon the death of her uncle, Eugene of Savoy, Queen Mary inherited substantial money and land holdings in Austria. To benefit Virginia, Mary was convinced by her husband to sell off these holdings at optimum prices. Whilst this frustrated many in Austria, the decision was seem as a sacrifice by the citizens of Virginia and popularised the Queen who had, by that point, been at her husband's side for 35 years and had born him two sons and a daughter between 1703 and 1710.
James II would learn of his half-sister Anne of Great Britain's death in 1714, and the succession of his sickly nephew, William III and IV, who has surprised everyone by surviving childhood, marrying and producing issue. When the Parliament of Virginia legitimized James II in 1700, Westminster had not and thus James had no succession rights in the UK.
To prevent any question of succession ahead of the birth of his own children, James II had the Parliament of Virginia recognised his brother and sister, Henry and Henriette, in 1702 and had Henry invested as Great Steward of Williamsburg
James II died in 1743 at the age of 73 at the Williamsburg Palace (although the Parliament was based in Richmond, the King had preferred the Williamsburg residence) in the company of his brother. His wife would outlive him by 20 years, and he would be succeeded by ______ , his ______.
The House of Stuart
Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland, b. 1600, r. 1625 to 1649, m. Henrietta Maria of France
Kings of Virginia
1688-1701: James I (House of Stuart) [1]
1701-1743: James II (House of Stuart) [2]
James' regin would see steady immigration to French and Spanish colones and back, the establishment of a Virginian Parliament and a wave of population exchange between Protestants and loyal Catholics.
James I would die in September of 1701, with the Kingdom of Virginia and claim to the British crown going to his thirty one year old son, James II.
[2] James, Crown Prince od Virginia and Mary, Princess Royal of Virginia were born in 1688 in London and 1692 in France whilst their father secured his position in Virginia. The two suffered from smallpox in 1699 and both died.
However, when James I had fled to Virginia, one of James' illegitimate sons, the Duke of Berwick, had joined them. Faced with an absence of heirs, the King was provided with two options - either put his niece, Anne, Duchess of Savoy, above his own daughter (Anne, as his elder daughter Mary had since died) or, legitimise the Duke of Berwick. As negotiations with Anne and her husband Victor Amadeus II of Savoy were frosty at best, Anne demanded recognition of her husband as King Regnant rather than King Consort, and the Virginian Parliament were wary of subjugation to another European crown, the King legitimise the unmarried Duke of Berwick. By the time of the Kings death, the Duke had been married to Maria Anna of Soissons, a Savoyard from the junior Savoy-Carignano branch of the family. This had cause to upset his niece and her husband further as they would not be rulers of Sardinia and Savoy until much later and their precedence at the Court of the Old Dominion, should they ever attend, would be lower than Mary.
Anne and Victor Amadeus II would continue to challenge the validity of the claim of the "House of FitzJames" to the throne of Virginia, attempting to raise support from France and Spain but these attempts to claim came to nothing given that the Kings and Queens of Great Britain held precedence, were legitimate male preference primogeniture used to determine validity.
In 1736, upon the death of her uncle, Eugene of Savoy, Queen Mary inherited substantial money and land holdings in Austria. To benefit Virginia, Mary was convinced by her husband to sell off these holdings at optimum prices. Whilst this frustrated many in Austria, the decision was seem as a sacrifice by the citizens of Virginia and popularised the Queen who had, by that point, been at her husband's side for 35 years and had born him two sons and a daughter between 1703 and 1710.
James II would learn of his half-sister Anne of Great Britain's death in 1714, and the succession of his sickly nephew, William III and IV, who has surprised everyone by surviving childhood, marrying and producing issue. When the Parliament of Virginia legitimized James II in 1700, Westminster had not and thus James had no succession rights in the UK.
To prevent any question of succession ahead of the birth of his own children, James II had the Parliament of Virginia recognised his brother and sister, Henry and Henriette, in 1702 and had Henry invested as Great Steward of Williamsburg
James II died in 1743 at the age of 73 at the Williamsburg Palace (although the Parliament was based in Richmond, the King had preferred the Williamsburg residence) in the company of his brother. His wife would outlive him by 20 years, and he would be succeeded by ______ , his ______.
The House of Stuart
Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland, b. 1600, r. 1625 to 1649, m. Henrietta Maria of France
1) Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland, b. 1630, r. 1660 to 1685, m. Catherine of Braganza
x) no legitimate issue
2) Mary, Princess Royal, b. 1631, d. 1660, m. William II, Prince of Orange
a) William II and III of England, Scotland and Ireland, b. 1650, r. 1688 to 1702, m. Mary II of England, Scotland and Ireland
x) no surviving issue
3) James I, II and VII, b. 1633, r. 1685 to 1688 (England, Scotland and Ireland), r. 1688 to 1701 (Virginia only), m1. Anne Hyde, m2. Mary of Modena, (m)3. Arabella Churchill
1a) Mary II of England, Scotland and Ireland, b. 1662, r. 1688 to 1694, m. William II and III of England, Scotland and Ireland
x) no surviving issue
1b) Anne of Great Britain, b. 1665, r. 1702 to 1714, m. George of Denmark
1) William III and IV of Great Britain, b. 1689, r. 1714 to 17XX
a) married and has issue
2c) James Edward, Crown Prince of Virginia, b. 1688, d. 1699
2d) Louisa Maria, Princess Royal of Virginia, b. 1692, d. 1699
3e) Henrietta FitzJames/Stuart, b. 1667, d. 1730, m. Henry Waldergave
1) James Waldergrave, b. 1684
3f) James II of Virginia, b. 1670, r. 1701 to 1743, m. Maria Anna of Soissons
x) three children (2 sons, 1 daughter) born from 1703 to 1710
3g) Henry FitzJames/Stuart, Great Steward of Williamsburg, b. 1673, m. Marie Gabrielle d'Audibert de Lussan
x) a daughter, b. 1703
4) Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, b. 1644, d. 1670, m. Philippe, Duke of Orleans
a) Marie Louise of Orleans, b. 1662, d. 1689, m. Charles II of Spain
x) no issue
b) Philippe, Duke of Valois, b. 1664, d. 1666
c) Anne Marie of Orleans, First Marian Claimant to Virginia, b. 1669, d. 1728, m. Victor Amadaeus II, Duke of Savoy, King of Sicily (1713 to 1720) and of Sardinia (1720 to 1730), d. 1732
x) has issue, grandchildren include the Kings of France, Spain and Sardinia
A supplemental family tree for Savoy to illustrate the Savoyard link between the Marian Claimants and the legitimized FitzJames line ...
The Houses of Savoy
Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, b. 1562, d. 1630, m. Catherina Micaela of Spain
The Houses of Savoy
Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, b. 1562, d. 1630, m. Catherina Micaela of Spain
1) Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy, b. 1587, d. 1637, m. Christine Marie of France
a) Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy, b. 1634, d. 1674, m. Marie Jeanne Baptiste of Savoy-Nemours
1) Victor Amadaeus II, Duke of Savoy, King of Sicily (1713 to 1720) and of Sardinia (1720 to 1730), b. 1666, d. 1732, m. Anne Marie of Orleans, First Marian Claimant to Virginia, b..1669, d. 1728
2) Thomas Francis, 1st Prince of Carignano, b. 1596, d. 1656, m. Marie de Bourbon
a) Emmanuel Philibert, 2nd Prince of Carignano, b. 1628, d. 1709
b) Eugene Maurice, Count of Soissons, b. 1635, d. 1683, m. Olimpia Mancini
1) Louis Thomas, Count of Soissons, b. 1656, d. 1702, m. Uranie de La Cropte de Beauvais
a) Maria Anna Victoria of Soissons, Queen of Virginia, b. 1683, d. 1763, m. James II of Virginia
b) Thomas Emmanuel, Prince of Savoy, Carignan, b. 1687
What if... the Confederation of the Rhine had adopted a form of elective monarchy?
List of Monarchs of the Confederation of the Rhine
1806-1817: Karl Theodor I (House of Dalberg) [1]
1817-1825: Maximilian I Joseph (House of Wittelsbach) [2]
1825-1853: Ludwig I (House of Wittelsbach) [3]
1853-1863: Augusta I (House of Wettin) [4]
1863-1891: Frederick Napoléon I (House of Bonaparte) [5]
1891-1901: William I (House of Solms-Laubach) [6]
1901-1911: Christian Günther I (House of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen) [7]
1911-1912: Alexander I (House of Leuchtenberg) [8]
1912-1924: Joseph Leopold I (House of Hapsburg-Wurzbürg) [9]
1924-1938: Eugen I (House of Württemberg) [10]
1938-1967: Franziska I (House of Mecklemburg) [11]
1967-1971: Ferdinand I (House of Isenburg) [12]
1971-Present: Friedrich I (House of Zähringen]) [13]
Karl Theodor I, Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine,
Prince-Elector of Regensburg, Grand Duke of Frankfurt,
Prince of Aschaffenburg, Bishop of Constance, Regensburg, and Worms.[1] Karl Theodor I, born in 1744, was the Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine, from his election in 1806 until he died in 1817.
Karl Theodor was born as Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg, in Herrnsheim, near the city of Worms. Karl Theodor devoted himself to studying canon law and entered a career in the Church. Dalberg was distinguished with his patriotic attitude, whether in ecclesiastical matters or in his efforts to galvanize the machinery of the Holy Roman Empire. Karl Theodor became frustrated with the Empire’s inability to create an effective central government for Germany and turned to Napoleon Bonaparte.
In 1803, Karl Theodor became Arch-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire. Dalberg was also the new Elector of Mainz, but, in the same, the Electorate of Mainz was partioned amongst France, Hesse, the Nassaus, and Prussia. Dalberg retained the Aschaffenburg area and was made Prince of Aschaffenburg, he was also compensated with Regensburg and surrounding areas, becoming the Prince of Regensburg.
In early June of 1806, the Confederation of the Rhine was created. Soon, Holy Roman Emperor Francis II soon abdicated his title, ending the existence of the more than thousand-year-old imperial entity. Dalberg joined the Confederation of the Rhine. As a way to continue award states such as Baden, Bavaria, and Württemberg, who would be his main suppliers of soldiers from Germany, the Confederation of the Rhine was made to implement a system of an elective monarchy.
Dalberg was elected Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine by the rulers of Baden, Bavaria, Berg, Hesse-Darmstadt, Regensburg, Saxony, Westphalia, Württemberg, and Würzburg, at the urging of French Emperor Napoleon. A few weeks later, he was crowned as Karl Theodor I in a public ceremony in Frankfurt.
During his reign, Karl Theodor I lifted all restrictions on the Jewish people, and serfdom and socage were abolished. A code similar to the Napoleonic code was enacted, which did away with guilds. A universal metric system of weights and measures was introduced.
However, arguably the most influential thing that Karl Theodor I did was sending a very skilled diplomat, who was from the Principality of Reuss-Lobenstein to the Napoleonic court. The diplomat soon became one of the French Emperor’s closest advisors, convincing Napoleon to uphold the 1807 Treaty of Fontainebleau. He also convinced the Romanovs to have Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna of Russia marry Napoleon and form an alliance with France against Austria, which eventually resulted in the division of the Austrian Empire into various independent kingdoms, duchies, and principalities. Austria proper, itself, was reduced to the rank of a grand duchy.
In 1817, Karl Theodor I passed away peacefully in the city of Regensburg. The electors elected Maximilian I Joseph, King of Bavaria, as his successor.
Maximilian I Joseph, King of Bavaria[2] There was little doubt whom to elect as the new Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine as the most powerful monarch in the Confederacy was the King of Bavaria, who'd used his ties to the French Emperor to establish himself as the first King of Bavaria and also make his kingdom the most powerful state in the confederacy. By electing a king to lead the Confederation, it made no sense to refer to the leader as a "prince" and so the title was changed to "Kaiser."
This adoption of an imperial title for the leader was diplomatically sold to the French with the argument that in ancient Rome when there was a 'junior' Emperor, he was called Caesar and the senior one was called Augustus. The diplomats who negotiated this with Paris presented the French Emperor a letter in which Maximillian addressed Napoleon as "My Augustus."
Maximilian used his new position to expand Bavaria into what had formerly been western Austria and the Tyrol. His main accomplishment for the Confederacy was establishing a single, unified "Army of the Rhine." When he died the Confederacy elected as its new Kaiser his son Ludwig.
Kaiser Ludwig I, Elector and King of Bavaria
Grand Duke of Salzburg, Duke of Franconia,
Duke in Swabia, Count Palatine of the Rhine.[3] When his father died, Kaiser Ludwig I was elected as the new ruler of the Confederation of the Rhine. Ludwig I was not pleased with the amount of influence France had over the confederation, as he had previously tried to regain the eastern part of the Palatinate for Bavaria but failed due to the intervention of France.
Ludwig I supported the Greeks in their war of independence against the Ottoman Empire. Kaiser Ludwig also convinced the French Emperor to have France and its allies intervene in the war. After the war, Ludwig's second son, Otto, was elected King of Greece.
Throughout his reign, Ludwig I also encouraged the industrialization of the Confederation of the Rhine. As a patron of the arts and architecture, the Kaiser ordered the construction of many neoclassical buildings across the confederation.
Ludwig I abdicated after being embroiled in an extramarital affair with Marianna Florenzi, which caused a severe backlash against the House of Wittelsbach. The electors elected Augusta I, Queen Dowager of Saxony, as his successor.
Kaiserin Augusta I "the Unexpected"[4] With the Florenzi Affair staining the reputation of the Wittelsbach dynasty, the consensus that had been established around Ludwig I's son Maximilian was weakened. His two main rivals were King William I of Württemberg and Prince Karl-Anton of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. The succession crisis started with the abdication of Kaiser Ludwig III in February well into October, when a compromise solution was found: the old Queen of Saxony, Augusta I, was to be put on the throne until tensions had dissipated, as she had no apparent heir and was essentially seen as a way to gain time on the matter. This resulted in uproar from the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen and the Prussian ambassador who had supported him, claiming that the election of a woman was illegal, while the proponents didn't see how much damage an old lady who was expected to die in a handful of years could do, and just wanted the Prussians to stop meddling with the elections. While the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen threatened to leave the Confederation, he never followed through, and slowly sunk into irrelevance because of his own policy of non-cooperation with the Confederal government.
Queen Augusta was indeed old: she was almost 70 years old and was in her youth expected to become Queen of Poland. These plans didn't go far, as Poland was instead partitioned, and she never got an occasion to marry her Polish suitor, Prince Jozef Poniatowski. But these plans might have very well led her to the Rhenish throne, as they had made her ambitious and had led her to take a huge interest in matters of state. She made herself inseparable from her father, who had become King of Saxony in 1806, and slowly but surely built up her influence, that crystallized in the Constitution of 1819. She had enticed her father to commit to reforms by reminding him of the Golden Liberty that had ruled their beloved Poland, but also pointing out the success of rationalizations that had propelled the French Empire forward. And among the administrative reorganizations and the economic reforms stood a small clause: a father who would die without male issue could transfer his possessions to his daughter instead. From any father, to any daughter. That is how she climbed to the throne of Saxony.
While Queen of Saxony, she worked very hard at industrializing her Kingdom, trying to replace Britain's role as the factory Russia relied on. Thus, she poured all the Royal Treasure into the creation of a company: the Köeniglisches Eisenbahnen und Fabriken Gemeinschaft, Royal Railroads and Factories Corporation. Her goal was to buy all the necessary infrastructure for Saxony to become a major industrial center, and it worked to a certain extent: her reign oversaw the construction of a dense network of railroads and canals that was comparable to the one of Northern England, and the steel production of Saxony rivaled the one of Silesia. She also tried to given her fellow women more rights, hoping that the more advanced her lady subjects' rights would be, the less she was likely to be challenged by her nephew for the throne.
Even though she had been elected on the assumption that she would just die quietly and allow for the situation to calm down after the abdication of King Ludwig I, awarding her the nickname of "Imperial Wedge" in England, she was quite proactive in her two main fields of expertise: industrializing and backstabbing people to get her position forward. The Napoleonic System that had held for nearly half a century was cracking more and more, and she used this opportunity to pull out concessions on the Elbe, Rhine and Weser from Napoleon II's clenched and rageful claws, using these new concessions to propel the Rhenish industry forward.
The joke is often made that she clinged to power so much she took three years to die from tuberculosis just to stay Empress for ten years, which would not really be below her ... When she drew her final breath, in November 1863, she had largely exceeded anything that was expected from her. She had never been married, so the question of the Confederal succession was once again up in the air, until the electors settled for Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia.
Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte,
King of Westphalia upon his election[5] Of the three large states of the Confederacy, the Kingdom of Westphalia, formed by the French Emperor Napoléon I, had not seen its King be elected the Kaiser, while the two other large states, Bavaria and Saxony had.
The first King, Napoléon's younger brother, Jérôme Bonaparte, had been made the King of the state formed from other smaller states and parts of Prussia and of the former British Hanover in 1807. Jérôme had previously emigrated to America and married an American, but his brother forced him to return to France and annulled his marriage, making his first son unable to inherit. In 1803 Jérôme had married Princess Katharina Friederike of Württemberg, daughter of King Frederick I of Württemberg and through her mother, the Duchess Augusta of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, she was a grand niece of George III Hanover, King of Great Britain and the elector of Hanover before it was absorbed into Westphalia.
Jérôme I had never been a contender to the throne of Kaiser in the elections of 1817, 1825, or 1853. The other electors, despite their alliance with the French, didn't want a French Kaiser, a fact that Jérôme never could put behind him as King of Westphalia. But his son and heir, Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte, the first born of his marriage with Queen Katharina, was born in 1815 in Cassel, the capitol of the Kingdom of Westphalia, and raised as a German prince.
As Jérôme I lived a long life to the age of 75, dying in 1860, Frederick Napoléon didn't become King of Westphalia until he was 45. As both the Royal Prince and as King, Frederick Napoléon had supported Kaiserin Augusta against his own cousin, Napoléon II of the French, over the Elbe, Weser, and Rhine Concessions, convincing the other electors he was a true German and not a toady of the French.
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon proved his mettle in the Rhenish-Prussian War of 1872 when the Prussian attempted to force the Confederacy into a union with Prussia with Berlin as senior state and the Kings of Prussia hereditary Kaisers. By then Prussia had absorbed Schleswig-Holstein and Swedish Pomerania to the north of the Confederacy as well as regions to the east.
The war was triggered when Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, the son of the late Prince Karl-Anton, announced that Sigmaringen was leaving the Confederacy and he swore allegiance to King Wilhelm I of Prussia as his Kaiser. His claim was that the Confederacy was actually little more than an alliance of independent states and Sigmaringen had the right to leave it and join with Prussia in a new, centralized Empire.
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon called for a meeting of the electors in Cassel to determine if this was their will, could member states leave the Confederacy or not. While they were deliberating, news came to the court that Prussian forces had not only entered Sigmaringen, but moved into the Elbe Concession on the right bank of the Elbe, which Kaiserin Augusta had seized from the French. It had been treated as its own small state, but both Westphalia and Sigmaringen claimed it as part of their state.
The electors agreed this Prussian occupation was an invasion of the Confederacy. Quickly they put forth the Cassel Declaration that the Confederacy of the Rhine was in truth an indivisible union, that the Elbe Concession was part of Westphalia, and that the Rhine Kaiserreich (a term used for the first time in the Declaration) was at war with Prussia.
At the same time, the Prussians invaded the Weser Concession (Frisian lands along the North Sea) and the low countries, still part of the French Empire. This, and the treatment of the French Imperial officials in the Elbe Concession by the Prussians, brought France into the war. When Kaiserin Augusta had taken the Concessions, she'd been advised by Frederick Napoléon to both pay France for them and to give the Imperial French officials in them a choice- remain in the Concessions, become citizens of the states they'd be annexed to, and receive a pension for life or emigrate to the French Empire. Part of this agreement, which Napoléon II had accepted begrudgingly, was that those who chose to stay in the Concession would remain citizens of France, having dual citizenship and could freely moved back and forth.
The Prussians now revoked this in the Elbe Confederacy, both the dual citizenship and the life time pensions.
The tension between the Rhine and France was gone.
The war at first went well for Prussia as their forces swept through the low lands into France proper, intending to conquer Paris and force France to surrender before invading the rest of the Rhine. But this changed when the Poles rebelled and the Russian Empire invaded Prussia from the east "To protect our Slavic cousins from the Huns."
The Army of the Rhine now attacked Prussia and the Prussian offensive collapsed. By late 1872 Berlin sued for peace. The Treaty of Paris established a new post war Europe. The Polish provinces of Prussia were annexed into the Russian Empire. Swedish Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein were added to the Rhine Kaiserreich and Sigmaringen was restored, with its former Hohenzollern rulers exiled to Prussia. Prussian rulers were denied the term of Kaiser. The provinces of the French Empire in the lowlands were restored to France.
After the Treaty of Paris, the Rhine Kaiserreich enacted more reforms to establish itself as more a federation than a confederacy or alliance. A federal government was established with limited powers- besides commanding the Army of the Rhine that had previously been established, now the federal government would have a democratically elected legislature that would govern over a unified postal system, financial system, and foreign affairs, including ambassadors. Each member state would also have a constitutional monarchal government. Finally, an Imperial Navy replaced the Frisian navy that had come with the Weser Concession. A written Constitution was agreed on also and it enshrined the practice that the Kaiser was always an elected position but added two new limitations. The first had been practiced but not established, the elected Kaiser must be a legitimate monarch of a member state. The second was that a supermajority of 2/3rds of the Electors could demand an abdication of a Kaiser or Kaiserin if needed. The Federal legislature would meet at Halle while the Kaiser would reign from the capital of his or her member state, but also have a residence in Halle.
Great Britain, the Swedish Empire, the Duchy of Austria, and the Hungarian Empire were also signatories to the Treaty of Paris as well as the states that had been at war. In the treaty, Great Britain finally officially ceded its Hanover claim. the Duchy of Austria was allowed to reclaim the term Kaiser for its monarch (an intentional slap in the face to Prussia,) and both Britain and Sweden were compensated for their ceded territories in the Rhine. (Hanover and Pomerania.)
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon now turned his attention to furthering the industrialization of the Rhine, the building of the Imperial Navy, and in the 1880s, the establishment of the Rhenish Colonial Empire in the Pacific and Sub-Sahara Africa (Tanzania, Rhenish Congo, Namibia, Kamerun, and Togo.)
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon had married while still the Royal Prince of Westphalia, a minor Württemberg Countess, Regina von Harken of Tettnang. They had many children.
The Kaiser died in 1891 at the age of 75. He was quite obese by then, unlike when he was younger, and he died of a heart attack. The Electors met and elected King William of Frisia to replace him.
Kaiser William I, King of Frisia, Prince of Erfurt, Hereditary Prince of Solms-Laubach[6] The Principality of Erfurt had been directly ruled by the Emperors of France since 1807. That changed in 1860, when the Principality was occupied by Rhenish forces and Emperor Napoleon II was force to grant independence to Erfurt. William's father, Friedrich von Solms-Laubach, a wealthy industrialist and landowner in the area, was elected to the hereditary position of Prince of Erfurt.
In 1874, Friedrich was elected as King of Frisia, by the Frisian Parliament. Ten years before, William was born in Erfurt City Palace. In 1889, King Friedrich I died of a stroke, and the 25-year-old William became the new ruler of Frisia. As King, William I recognize the rights of Peter II as Grand Duke of Oldenburg.
William was a massive supporter of Frederick Napoléon I's reforms of the Rhine Kaiserreich. When the Kaiser died in 1891, there were many candidates in the election of that year. However, the electors eventually selected the young and energetic King William I.
During the William ten-year long reign, he mended relations with Prussia. He also continued the expansion of the Rhenish Army and Navy. In 1901, Kaiser William I was assassinated by a train bomb from a Russian nationalist, while on a diplomatic voyage to the Kingdom of Nothern Lusitania. The electors elected Prince Christian Günther III of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen as his successor.
Christian Günther III, Hereditary Prince of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen[7] It had been brewing for a long time and finally the Electors achieved their goal. After a series of the larger states putting their king or queen on the throne of the Kaiserreich, the smaller states elected one of their own. The fact that Frederick I's reforms had changed the system so that every monarch of every member state was now an elector gave them the power. At the previous election their desire to choose one of themselves had been overridden by a desire to choose one of the two new member states added to the Kaiserreich. But now that had occurred and it was time to select a monarch from one of the smallest member states.
It so happened that one of the smallest states, the Principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen was ruled by one of the oldest and most renown families of the Kaiserreich, the House of Schwarzburg. The small principality might not have a lot of sway in the Kaiserreich, but the ruling family had prestige.
Christian Günther III, named after his great, great grandfather, succeed his grandfather, Günther Frederick Charles II (b. 1805, r. 1835-1889) in 1889 when the old Prince died at the age of 83. Christian was the son of Imperial Prince Charles Günther (1830-1872), who'd died in the Rhenish-Prussian War. Christian had been born in 1855 in the Sondershausen Palace and was 17 when his father died and he became heir. When he ascended to the throne of the small principality, he was 34, married to Princess Sophia Hilde of Saxe-Altenburg, and the father of three children.
His rule as a Prince had been unremarkable, but his participation at the Election of 1891 had riveted the other Electors. He'd dominated the coalition of the smaller states with his charisma and eloquence and had been the coalitions leader in advocating the then hoped for candidate from the smaller states, his father-in-law, Prince Heinrich Wettin of Saxe-Altenberg. The election had gone round and round in circles until finally Christian came away from a meeting with King William, one of the two candidates from the states formed out of the Concessions (the other was Prince Karl of Alsace-Lorraine,) that convinced him the Kaiserreich needed a young dynamic leader instead of an older man like his father-in-law or Prince Karl.
Christian, despite being from a landlocked principality, had believed in the need of a strong navy and had himself served in the Kaisserreich Navy as a young man. It was King's William's commitment to that and the awareness that the Kaiserreich needed a new modern fleet of steel plated, steam powered, Battleships that had convinced Christian to support him. When Christian spoke of this to the Electors it broke the deadlock between the three contenders and the young William was elected.
Swiftly the Kaiser made Christian the Minister of the Navy and it was the Prince who did the leg work in building the Navy. When the Kaiser was assassinated, the Electors had no question whom to select for the new Kaiser, being the first of his name as Kaiser.
The new Kaiser knew the threats now facing the Rhine and her German allies of Prussia and Austria. The Russian Nationalist who killed Kaiser William was not an isolated murderer. He was part of a Revolution that was sweeping through several states. While the Russian Empire fell apart into a terrible civil war, the Hungarian Empire's Revolution happened swiftly and as the Electors met in Halle in 1901, the Marxist Workers Coalition of Socialist States was being set up in Budapest, replacing the Empire that stretched from the Danube to the Aegean Islands Meanwhile the Swedish Empire went to war with the Russian Socialist State that was itself at war with the rump Russian Empire to its south that was still in control in Central Asia, the Caucuses, and Ukraine.
Shortly after that the tension between the French Empire and the British Empire over their colonial territories flashed into several conflicts in Africa and Asia. The two Empires faced each other in Europe, waiting for the other to attack.
Europe was a powder keg and the Kaiser had to lead his Reich into a new and strange Century as new and horrid weapons of war changed things.
The opinion of most in the three members of the Germanic Alliance was to stand with Sweden and the Russian Empire against the Russian Socialists. But Christian, the Rhenish Council of Electors, and the National Legislature all agreed that the last thing needed was war. Peace through strength was the motto of the new administration and the efforts to build the strongest Navy and modernize the Army continued. Over the next decade that meant armoured cars, machine guns, undersee ships, airships, and aeroplanes. It also meant expanding the use of radio and building new roads, railroads, and telephone lines.
But War did come in 1909 when a French ship that had been attacked at sea sought aid at Rhenish Zanzibar and then British ships attacked the African Rhenish colony. The local Rhenish officials had no choice but to defend their colony. When word reach London of this, the British decided the stalemate in Europe would not last if the Germanic Alliance was siding with the French and decisive action needed to occur to force an end before an ongoing war such as the Swedish-Russian Socialist-Russian Empire War just dragged on and on. So the British mounted an invasion of Frisia and Westphalia in an attempt to demolish the Rhenish Fleet before they could react.
They largely succeeded with those at port, but most of the fleet was in the Baltic and the Kaiser had ordered the North Sea fleet to sea.
This was the Hungarians' chance to attack the Ottomans and take Constantinople. Now Europe was involved in three separate wars and all of them had theatres outside Europe proper as Japan and the United States invaded Siberia and attacked the Russian Socialist State from the East.
A British expeditionary force invaded Frisia and then swept through the lowlands and took northern France before their advance was stopped short of Paris. As feared, this became another stalemate of giant armies facing each other as was happening in Russia. Trench warfare developed and the front went from the North Sea inland then ran to the south until it headed back west to the Bay of Biscay south of Brittany.
In 1911, the Kaiser was visiting Hamburg to inspect the fleet stationed there when a bombing raid killed him. In the middle of a war, another Kaiser had been killed.
[8] The Imperial election of 1911 saw the rise to the Imperial dignity of the Grand Duke of Frankfurt, Alexander von Leuchtenberg. A descendant of Eugène de Beuharnais, the Duke of Frankfurt and lieutenant of the Grande Armée, the young Grand Duke has a strong interest in military matters. He was serving as Marshall at the time of his election, and won the vote of the princes thanks to the ferocious campaigning of his wife Charlotte von Isenburg, who presented him as the obvious candidate for such a situation.
The Marshall-Emperor was delighted to learn this, as he had been blindsighted by what he perceived as shameful incompetence from several high ranking whom he couldn't demote without Imperial approval. Now he had it. During the months of stalemate that marked the second half of 1911, he reorganized the army as well as the rationing system, hoping to improve the morale and efficiency of the army. His goal was to simply make this war look unwinnable to the British: if he could make their logistics ruinous while maintaining a facade of abundance, he could make the Rhine look like too big of a prey to swallow.
For this, he developed an extensive fleet of submarines: the British had to cross the Channel to maintain their positions, the Continentals didn't, so he'd do his best to undermine them at every occasion. In another effort to undermine the British war effort, and being well aware of the difficulties they were facing in the wake of colonial unrest, he sent advisors and informants to separatist movements across the Empire, while promising to his own oversea colonies that they would be granted self-rule. The final straw was the Emerald Plan, an infiltration of Irish Rights movements to radicalize them and offer them weapons. In the end, the massive riots and guerillas across the British Empire, the seemingly unwavering determination of the compact Rhenish Confederation and the crumbling logistics of the British Expeditionary Corp in Europe started, in Britain, to undermine public support for a war now seen as pointless and unlikely to reap any benefits, far from the easy retaliatory disbarkment in France that has originally been promised.
However, Kaiser Alexander I would not get to see the end of this war, as he died in February 1912 during a visit to the trenches, where an undercover British spy seized the occasion to shoot the Emperor to death. The Emperor died, sheltering the nurse he was discussing with seconds ago from the bullets of his murderer. He was succeeded by Joseph Leopold I, Grand Duke and Titular Elector of Würzburg.
Kaiser Joseph Leopold I, Grand Duke and Titular Elector of Würzburg[9] Most thought that a Hapsburg would never come to be the ruler of the Confederation of the Rhine, ever, but unexpected times are bound to yield unexpected results. After the news of the assassination of the Kaiser Alexander I, it appeared as though that Prince Eugen of Würrtemberg, after he gave his now infamous speech, "The Vengeful Rhine" which called for the avenging for the three assassinated Kaisers. However, Grand Duke Joseph Leopold of Würzburg convinced the electors that wrathful vengeance against Britain and Russia would only stoke even more resentment from the countries against the Rhine Kaiserreich. His arguments were convinced many as Joseph Leopold I was elected, nearly unanimously by the electors of the confederation.
With the approaching of the 1912 general election in the United Kingdom, Joseph Leopold sought for the Peace Coalition (made-up of Conservative, Liberal, and Labour party members who wanted peace with the Rhine and its allies) to win the election. A shrewd man, Joseph Leopold believed that it was better to ''... give a man a thousand little cuts than one big slash.'' Kaiser Joseph Leopold I ran fake stories of British extremists blowing up houses of government officials with children in them, which caused much anger in Britain, as they wanted to see their country and the war as righteous, not as a vile force of evil.
The Peace Coalition won in a landslide in the British general election of 1912, and soon an armistice was made, and a new peace followed, as well. The Kaiser also aided with the Rome Agreements, which ended the war between Hungary and the newly formed Kingdom of Anatolia and the Russian Civil War.
After peace was restored to Europe, the Kaiser led the Rhine Kaiserreich into an economic and cultural golden age. He liberalized many aspects of Rhenish society including the decriminalization of homosexuality, in 1921. However, with the Kaiser increasing liberalization of the country, the conservative elites off the Rhine Kaiserreich became increasingly alienated. In 1924, most electors forced the Kaiser to abdicate, and Joseph Leopold was replaced by King Eugen I of Württemberg.
King Eugen I of Württemberg[10] When Prince Eugen of Württemberg made his firebrand speech in 1912, he spoke for his own father, King Frederick II of Württemberg, to be the next Kaiser. The Prince was 27 at the time and a veteran of the War.
King Frederick II of Württemberg. r. 1888-1919
The Prince had never given up on his political advocacy for a more conservative, vengeful Kaiserreich and when his father died in 1919 and he became King Eugen I, the hopes of the younger conservative elites, who called themselves the Lineale Party, transferred from his father to the new King. By 1924 they gained enough power to force Joseph Leopold to abdicate and put Eugen on the throne at the age of 39.
The Kaiserreich changed now and went into a totally different direction. While it had already evolved from a Confederacy into a Federation, now the Kaiser and the Lineale made it a much more centralized Empire. He made the Imperial Palace in Halle his permanent residence and appointed a royal viceroy to fulfil his duties back in Stuttgart, the capital of Württemberg. Although the old states were not replaced nor their monarchs, they were either united or divided into different Kaiserreich 'regions.' (Small states were united and large ones divided.) The actual governance of a region was done by a ReichFuhrer appointed by the Kaiser and approved by the Federal legislature, which was little more than a rubberstamp. The Federal legislature had become this due to it being trimmed down. The actual electors who ruled in their various states now were just figureheads with no power, unless they also happened to be an appointed ReichFuhrer, which only occurred if they were one of the Lineale, who dominated the Council of Electors. The same was true of the democratically elected state legislatures, which had all power stripped from them except ceremonial duties and given to the ReichFuhrers and their staffs.
The first order of business of the new Kaiser and the Lineale was what came to be known as the Vereinigung der Vier, the 'Unification of the Four.' It began with the inclusion of Prussia in the Kaiserreich in 1928. This greatly increased the dominance of the conservative elites, as only the Prussian nobility who shared their values were added to the Council of Electors. In 1931 the Empire of Austria was dissolved and its various provinces added to the Kaiserreich. Both Prussia and Austria were added with the other German states passing a law for the Vereinigung. But the fourth addition was purely by force as German speaking Switzerland was just annexed by the Kaiserreich.
Some of the liberal reforms that had occurred were undone. Homosexuality was again outlawed, divorce was made very difficult, non German minorities were forced to swear loyalty oaths (and Jews and Romani were consider non Germans whether they spoke German or not,) and a centralized schooling system was imposed on the Kaiserreich that included a very strong element of teaching German patriotism.
The industrialization of the Empire now went full steam ahead to increase the military. As one of the ongoing policies of the Lineale was the further expanse of the Kaiserreich to include all territory where there were German speaking ethic groups, it seed more and more likely that the Kaiserreich would go to war with Hungary's Marxist Workers' Coalition of Socialist States (WCSS), as many German speaking people lived there and had for centuries and with the French Empire, as the Lineale consiered Dutch a German dialect.
This of course drove the former ally of France into a new alliance with Britain and the WCSS, which was allied with the Russian Socialist State.
The Kaiserreich was on the edge of war when those who'd opposed the Lineale and their Kaiser took to the streets in protest and general strikes. While the Lineale were convinced the Kaiserreich was stronger than other nations and would win a war quickly, many in the Expanded Empire thought this was folly. They knew that all their potential enemies had also built up their military and that this time the United States might side with the British.
The Revolution of 1938 declared the reforms of the last 14 years were null and void and ran its own new election for the federal legislature. Now there were two governments in Halle. But the Revolutionaries quickly took control, arrested most of the Lineale and forced the Kaiser to abdicate. Eugen not only was forced to give up being the Kaiser, but he had to abdicate his kingship, his cousin instead took the throne of Württemberg in Stuttgart. Eugen was given only one of the family's smaller castles and put under house arrest there. His former title of "Prince" was, however, granted him again.
With the arrest of the Lineale electors and their replacement by other sympatico with the Revolution, a new council of electors chose the Grand-Duchess Franziska of Mecklemburg to be Kaiserin. Now the question was would peace be made with France, Britain, Hungary, and Russia or not? Would the Vereinigung be undone or would one German Reich continue? Would the member states' power to govern be restored or the new system continue but liberalized and made democratic?
[11] Franziska von Mecklemburg was one of the newly installed nobles, having being highly and very vocally opposed to both her cousins, Frederick Franzis VI von Mecklemburg-Schwerin and Adolphus-Frederick VI von Mecklemburg-Sterlitz, who were both Linealen. The new Grand-Duchess of Mecklemburg, however, was at first supportive of the Conservative ideas of Eugen von Württemberg: she was as mad as he was at the liberal policies of Joseph Leopold von Würzburg and resented the forced separation between the Rhine Confederation and the other Germans. However, the reign of the one she invested so many hopes in in the first years soon transformed into a journey through the political spectrum: the young Conservative princess in her late teens had by 1938 evolved into an anti-Lineale protestor who embraced ideas ranging from moderate reformism to full blown progressivism. She had been instrumental to the ultimate downfall of Eugen I, working hard at undermining Lineale support in the Northeast.
She wasn't the favourite by far when the election cycle started, but her fiery candidacy speech had gained her the support of the one group that was usually left out in those matters: the crowd. And little by little, with a lot of passion and shaming of the opposition, she was elected by a small margin over the more moderate Ludwig of Bavaria, her supports in the Electoral Assembly hoping her oratory talents and public opposition to Lineale ideology would allow her to reassure the foreign powers. And, after sending a swarm of ambassadors and delegates to gain time with Britain, France, Russia and Hungary, she set out to solve the Swiss Question: in her opinion, there was no keeping Switzerland, and Germany would have to puke it if she didn't want to choke on it. Thus, canton by canton referendums were organized, and all the Swiss cantons chose independance, ridding the Empire of a first problem.
However, appeasement with the rest of Europe was harder to achieve: everyone had demands, and not all of them were reasonable. To appease France, she accepted to reevaluate the Rhine concession's border, accepting that French-speaking municipalities (including Saverne, Ferrette and Altkirch as well as a good chunk of the Vosges mountains) would be able to carry on referendums to reunite with Germany. To appease Britain, she accepted to partake in disarmament conferences. To appease Hungary, she accepted to demilitarize the boundary in exchange for guarantees for the German communities in Hungary. Russia, however, was a tougher client: what did the Socialist Council want that she could offer? In the end, a deal was struck that Russia and Germany would cooperate economically at the condition that worker protection laws would be passed in Germany.
Considering the future of Germany ... despite the personal feelings of the newly installed princes of the Empire, it was evident that the idea of unification was popular, and that reverting it was only going to create fuel for a potential Lineale reignition. It was thus agreed in backdoor discussions that German unity would be presented as a nonpartisan theme that every current party supports, regardless of personal feelings. However, that was pretty much the only domestic issue they could all agree on. While a lot of more moderate Princes wanted to purely revert to the pre-Eugen politics, there were also those who admitted that the administrative organization of the Linealen could be reformed and liberalized. Kaiserin Franziska disagreed with both. To her, going back to the executive supremacy of Princes was only going to lead to other terrible decisions in the future, and was simply not an option; but the Linealen had put on an administration that was essentially the negation of local particularities and of the Confederal nature of the government. Thus, she offered her own set of reforms: to her, the basic cell of the new German government should be the Municipality, the Princes acting as advisors, ceremonial figures and subsidizers, and the German government would proceed from those two authorities. To Kaiserin Franziska, Germany needed a new Constitution, even if it would take years ....
She would abdicate in 1967, after 29 frustrating years of attempting to make her vision of a new and better Germany come to life. In 29 years, the Imperial Constitution had garnered two fifths of the Imperial Assembly's votes: in the 1967 draft, the Constitution considers the realms (Counties to Kingdoms) and the municipalities as the two base units of the Empire, admits as its Legislative Assembly (but not Constitutional Assembly) a monocameral legislature based on proportional vote for one half and municipal delegates for the other, guarantees freedom of expression and faith, protects "individual property" and guarantees voting rights to anyone 17 years or older, it bans discriminations based on gender, ethnic background or faith, and it is accompanied by a "Social Contract" that defines a number of base protections for parents, children, workers, the environment, and a bunch of other stuff. Main points of disagreement include what power are given to the Princes, the existence or not of a Princely Assembly and its potential powers and the mode of election of the Kaiser of Kaiserin. But those are questions for a younger monarch. Franziska is 59, she's feeling old and her wit isn't as sharp as it used to be. Besides, she's the only on in this country that didn't get to enjoy life resuming after the rigors of Lineale social corsetry. The rest is up to the Constitutional Assembly. In absence of a proper structure to elect the next German Emperor, the Constitutional Assembly has been tasked to elect her successor. Her reign would be followed by Ferdinand I.
Kaiser Ferdinand I, Prince and Count of Isenburg, wearing his father's marshal clothes and medals, in 1968
[12] With the abdication of Kaiserin Franziska I, the electors were deadlocked as to who should be the next ruler of the Rhine. The debate over what powers of the princes should be, continued with no end in sight. After several days, Prince Ferdinand of Isenburg, a young and energetic prince, had emerged as a compromise candidate. He was easily elected as Kaiser as he promised that he would not interfere with the Rhenish government as they debated the potential powers of the princes of the Rhine Kaiserreich.
Kaiser Ferdinand I was more experienced as a social host than an administrator, which only caused exacerbated problems between several local governments, as the unclarity of which governmental bodies had what authorities increased. The Kaiser was much more interested in the social liberalization of Rhenish society and court. Aside from dismantling the court’s conservative etiquette, Ferdinand I also created the royal positions, known as the Grand Dignitaries, which were similar to the system of the French Empire.
In 1971, after having to deal with several intense arguments, Ferdinand I abdicated and returned to the Principality of Isenburg. He was succeeded by Friedrich, the Grand Duke of Baden.
Friedrich, Grand Duke of Baden[13] Friedrich was born in 1937, the eldest son of the heir to the throne of Baden, the latter Karl Gustav II. Friedrich took the throne as Grand Duke of Baden at the age of 24 in 1962. Friedrich had been elected to the Constitutional Assembly and had championed the aspects of the new Constitution being a parliamentary one with a legislature called the Bundestag and a Prime Minster and the elected Kaiser being a Constitutional Monarch, with the role of the Council of Electors, from then on to to select two of themselves to run in a general election by the entire populace to be the Kaiser. The Princes of the Reich were also allowed to run for the Parliament and to be elected Prime Minister, but if one member of the Bundestag and was chosen to run for Kaiser, her or she had to resign from office if elected. If he or she was not just a member of the Bundestag, but the Prime Minister or a member of the Cabinet, he or she had to resign from that before the election or refuse the nomination.
Friedrich was the leader of the Reform Party in the Bundestag and was Prime Minister when Ferdinand resigned. He was chosen by the Council of Princes to be one of the nominees to run for Kaiser and he accepted the nomination and resigned from being Prime Minister. Upon his election he then resigned from the Bundestag.
As the first Kaiser to be a fully constitutional monarch, (Ferdinand had officially been a ruling one at first in his reign until the Constitution was implemented,) Friedrich gave up politics upon being a Kaiser, but his background made him savvy in that realm and he often gave advice to the Prime Minister during their regular meetings, but this was always discreet and in private.
The Kaiser is now 83 and still a hale and hearty man. He has a large family, including his heir for the throne of Baden, Gustav Friedrich Anton, Earl of Baden, who is 48.
OOC: I'll start the second line to replace this one in a bit.
List of Monarchs of the Confederation of the Rhine
1806-1817: Karl Theodor I (House of Dalberg) [1]
1817-1825: Maximilian I Joseph (House of Wittelsbach) [2]
1825-1853: Ludwig I (House of Wittelsbach) [3]
1853-1863: Augusta I (House of Wettin) [4]
1863-1891: Frederick Napoléon I (House of Bonaparte) [5]
1891-1901: William I (House of Solms-Laubach) [6]
1901-1911: Christian Günther I (House of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen) [7]
1911-1912: Alexander I (House of Leuchtenberg) [8]
1912-1924: Joseph Leopold I (House of Hapsburg-Wurzbürg) [9]
1924-1938: Eugen I (House of Württemberg) [10]
1938-1967: Franziska I (House of Mecklemburg) [11]
1967-1971: Ferdinand I (House of Isenburg) [12]
1971-Present: Friedrich I (House of Zähringen]) [13]
Karl Theodor I, Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine,
Prince-Elector of Regensburg, Grand Duke of Frankfurt,
Prince of Aschaffenburg, Bishop of Constance, Regensburg, and Worms.
Karl Theodor was born as Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg, in Herrnsheim, near the city of Worms. Karl Theodor devoted himself to studying canon law and entered a career in the Church. Dalberg was distinguished with his patriotic attitude, whether in ecclesiastical matters or in his efforts to galvanize the machinery of the Holy Roman Empire. Karl Theodor became frustrated with the Empire’s inability to create an effective central government for Germany and turned to Napoleon Bonaparte.
In 1803, Karl Theodor became Arch-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire. Dalberg was also the new Elector of Mainz, but, in the same, the Electorate of Mainz was partioned amongst France, Hesse, the Nassaus, and Prussia. Dalberg retained the Aschaffenburg area and was made Prince of Aschaffenburg, he was also compensated with Regensburg and surrounding areas, becoming the Prince of Regensburg.
In early June of 1806, the Confederation of the Rhine was created. Soon, Holy Roman Emperor Francis II soon abdicated his title, ending the existence of the more than thousand-year-old imperial entity. Dalberg joined the Confederation of the Rhine. As a way to continue award states such as Baden, Bavaria, and Württemberg, who would be his main suppliers of soldiers from Germany, the Confederation of the Rhine was made to implement a system of an elective monarchy.
Dalberg was elected Prince-Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine by the rulers of Baden, Bavaria, Berg, Hesse-Darmstadt, Regensburg, Saxony, Westphalia, Württemberg, and Würzburg, at the urging of French Emperor Napoleon. A few weeks later, he was crowned as Karl Theodor I in a public ceremony in Frankfurt.
During his reign, Karl Theodor I lifted all restrictions on the Jewish people, and serfdom and socage were abolished. A code similar to the Napoleonic code was enacted, which did away with guilds. A universal metric system of weights and measures was introduced.
However, arguably the most influential thing that Karl Theodor I did was sending a very skilled diplomat, who was from the Principality of Reuss-Lobenstein to the Napoleonic court. The diplomat soon became one of the French Emperor’s closest advisors, convincing Napoleon to uphold the 1807 Treaty of Fontainebleau. He also convinced the Romanovs to have Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna of Russia marry Napoleon and form an alliance with France against Austria, which eventually resulted in the division of the Austrian Empire into various independent kingdoms, duchies, and principalities. Austria proper, itself, was reduced to the rank of a grand duchy.
In 1817, Karl Theodor I passed away peacefully in the city of Regensburg. The electors elected Maximilian I Joseph, King of Bavaria, as his successor.
Maximilian I Joseph, King of Bavaria
This adoption of an imperial title for the leader was diplomatically sold to the French with the argument that in ancient Rome when there was a 'junior' Emperor, he was called Caesar and the senior one was called Augustus. The diplomats who negotiated this with Paris presented the French Emperor a letter in which Maximillian addressed Napoleon as "My Augustus."
Maximilian used his new position to expand Bavaria into what had formerly been western Austria and the Tyrol. His main accomplishment for the Confederacy was establishing a single, unified "Army of the Rhine." When he died the Confederacy elected as its new Kaiser his son Ludwig.
Kaiser Ludwig I, Elector and King of Bavaria
Grand Duke of Salzburg, Duke of Franconia,
Duke in Swabia, Count Palatine of the Rhine.
Ludwig I supported the Greeks in their war of independence against the Ottoman Empire. Kaiser Ludwig also convinced the French Emperor to have France and its allies intervene in the war. After the war, Ludwig's second son, Otto, was elected King of Greece.
Throughout his reign, Ludwig I also encouraged the industrialization of the Confederation of the Rhine. As a patron of the arts and architecture, the Kaiser ordered the construction of many neoclassical buildings across the confederation.
Ludwig I abdicated after being embroiled in an extramarital affair with Marianna Florenzi, which caused a severe backlash against the House of Wittelsbach. The electors elected Augusta I, Queen Dowager of Saxony, as his successor.
Kaiserin Augusta I "the Unexpected"
Queen Augusta was indeed old: she was almost 70 years old and was in her youth expected to become Queen of Poland. These plans didn't go far, as Poland was instead partitioned, and she never got an occasion to marry her Polish suitor, Prince Jozef Poniatowski. But these plans might have very well led her to the Rhenish throne, as they had made her ambitious and had led her to take a huge interest in matters of state. She made herself inseparable from her father, who had become King of Saxony in 1806, and slowly but surely built up her influence, that crystallized in the Constitution of 1819. She had enticed her father to commit to reforms by reminding him of the Golden Liberty that had ruled their beloved Poland, but also pointing out the success of rationalizations that had propelled the French Empire forward. And among the administrative reorganizations and the economic reforms stood a small clause: a father who would die without male issue could transfer his possessions to his daughter instead. From any father, to any daughter. That is how she climbed to the throne of Saxony.
While Queen of Saxony, she worked very hard at industrializing her Kingdom, trying to replace Britain's role as the factory Russia relied on. Thus, she poured all the Royal Treasure into the creation of a company: the Köeniglisches Eisenbahnen und Fabriken Gemeinschaft, Royal Railroads and Factories Corporation. Her goal was to buy all the necessary infrastructure for Saxony to become a major industrial center, and it worked to a certain extent: her reign oversaw the construction of a dense network of railroads and canals that was comparable to the one of Northern England, and the steel production of Saxony rivaled the one of Silesia. She also tried to given her fellow women more rights, hoping that the more advanced her lady subjects' rights would be, the less she was likely to be challenged by her nephew for the throne.
Even though she had been elected on the assumption that she would just die quietly and allow for the situation to calm down after the abdication of King Ludwig I, awarding her the nickname of "Imperial Wedge" in England, she was quite proactive in her two main fields of expertise: industrializing and backstabbing people to get her position forward. The Napoleonic System that had held for nearly half a century was cracking more and more, and she used this opportunity to pull out concessions on the Elbe, Rhine and Weser from Napoleon II's clenched and rageful claws, using these new concessions to propel the Rhenish industry forward.
The joke is often made that she clinged to power so much she took three years to die from tuberculosis just to stay Empress for ten years, which would not really be below her ... When she drew her final breath, in November 1863, she had largely exceeded anything that was expected from her. She had never been married, so the question of the Confederal succession was once again up in the air, until the electors settled for Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia.
Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte,
King of Westphalia upon his election
The first King, Napoléon's younger brother, Jérôme Bonaparte, had been made the King of the state formed from other smaller states and parts of Prussia and of the former British Hanover in 1807. Jérôme had previously emigrated to America and married an American, but his brother forced him to return to France and annulled his marriage, making his first son unable to inherit. In 1803 Jérôme had married Princess Katharina Friederike of Württemberg, daughter of King Frederick I of Württemberg and through her mother, the Duchess Augusta of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, she was a grand niece of George III Hanover, King of Great Britain and the elector of Hanover before it was absorbed into Westphalia.
Jérôme I had never been a contender to the throne of Kaiser in the elections of 1817, 1825, or 1853. The other electors, despite their alliance with the French, didn't want a French Kaiser, a fact that Jérôme never could put behind him as King of Westphalia. But his son and heir, Frederick Napoléon Jérôme Bonaparte, the first born of his marriage with Queen Katharina, was born in 1815 in Cassel, the capitol of the Kingdom of Westphalia, and raised as a German prince.
As Jérôme I lived a long life to the age of 75, dying in 1860, Frederick Napoléon didn't become King of Westphalia until he was 45. As both the Royal Prince and as King, Frederick Napoléon had supported Kaiserin Augusta against his own cousin, Napoléon II of the French, over the Elbe, Weser, and Rhine Concessions, convincing the other electors he was a true German and not a toady of the French.
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon proved his mettle in the Rhenish-Prussian War of 1872 when the Prussian attempted to force the Confederacy into a union with Prussia with Berlin as senior state and the Kings of Prussia hereditary Kaisers. By then Prussia had absorbed Schleswig-Holstein and Swedish Pomerania to the north of the Confederacy as well as regions to the east.
The war was triggered when Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, the son of the late Prince Karl-Anton, announced that Sigmaringen was leaving the Confederacy and he swore allegiance to King Wilhelm I of Prussia as his Kaiser. His claim was that the Confederacy was actually little more than an alliance of independent states and Sigmaringen had the right to leave it and join with Prussia in a new, centralized Empire.
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon called for a meeting of the electors in Cassel to determine if this was their will, could member states leave the Confederacy or not. While they were deliberating, news came to the court that Prussian forces had not only entered Sigmaringen, but moved into the Elbe Concession on the right bank of the Elbe, which Kaiserin Augusta had seized from the French. It had been treated as its own small state, but both Westphalia and Sigmaringen claimed it as part of their state.
The electors agreed this Prussian occupation was an invasion of the Confederacy. Quickly they put forth the Cassel Declaration that the Confederacy of the Rhine was in truth an indivisible union, that the Elbe Concession was part of Westphalia, and that the Rhine Kaiserreich (a term used for the first time in the Declaration) was at war with Prussia.
At the same time, the Prussians invaded the Weser Concession (Frisian lands along the North Sea) and the low countries, still part of the French Empire. This, and the treatment of the French Imperial officials in the Elbe Concession by the Prussians, brought France into the war. When Kaiserin Augusta had taken the Concessions, she'd been advised by Frederick Napoléon to both pay France for them and to give the Imperial French officials in them a choice- remain in the Concessions, become citizens of the states they'd be annexed to, and receive a pension for life or emigrate to the French Empire. Part of this agreement, which Napoléon II had accepted begrudgingly, was that those who chose to stay in the Concession would remain citizens of France, having dual citizenship and could freely moved back and forth.
The Prussians now revoked this in the Elbe Confederacy, both the dual citizenship and the life time pensions.
The tension between the Rhine and France was gone.
The war at first went well for Prussia as their forces swept through the low lands into France proper, intending to conquer Paris and force France to surrender before invading the rest of the Rhine. But this changed when the Poles rebelled and the Russian Empire invaded Prussia from the east "To protect our Slavic cousins from the Huns."
The Army of the Rhine now attacked Prussia and the Prussian offensive collapsed. By late 1872 Berlin sued for peace. The Treaty of Paris established a new post war Europe. The Polish provinces of Prussia were annexed into the Russian Empire. Swedish Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein were added to the Rhine Kaiserreich and Sigmaringen was restored, with its former Hohenzollern rulers exiled to Prussia. Prussian rulers were denied the term of Kaiser. The provinces of the French Empire in the lowlands were restored to France.
After the Treaty of Paris, the Rhine Kaiserreich enacted more reforms to establish itself as more a federation than a confederacy or alliance. A federal government was established with limited powers- besides commanding the Army of the Rhine that had previously been established, now the federal government would have a democratically elected legislature that would govern over a unified postal system, financial system, and foreign affairs, including ambassadors. Each member state would also have a constitutional monarchal government. Finally, an Imperial Navy replaced the Frisian navy that had come with the Weser Concession. A written Constitution was agreed on also and it enshrined the practice that the Kaiser was always an elected position but added two new limitations. The first had been practiced but not established, the elected Kaiser must be a legitimate monarch of a member state. The second was that a supermajority of 2/3rds of the Electors could demand an abdication of a Kaiser or Kaiserin if needed. The Federal legislature would meet at Halle while the Kaiser would reign from the capital of his or her member state, but also have a residence in Halle.
Great Britain, the Swedish Empire, the Duchy of Austria, and the Hungarian Empire were also signatories to the Treaty of Paris as well as the states that had been at war. In the treaty, Great Britain finally officially ceded its Hanover claim. the Duchy of Austria was allowed to reclaim the term Kaiser for its monarch (an intentional slap in the face to Prussia,) and both Britain and Sweden were compensated for their ceded territories in the Rhine. (Hanover and Pomerania.)
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon now turned his attention to furthering the industrialization of the Rhine, the building of the Imperial Navy, and in the 1880s, the establishment of the Rhenish Colonial Empire in the Pacific and Sub-Sahara Africa (Tanzania, Rhenish Congo, Namibia, Kamerun, and Togo.)
Kaiser Frederick Napoléon had married while still the Royal Prince of Westphalia, a minor Württemberg Countess, Regina von Harken of Tettnang. They had many children.
The Kaiser died in 1891 at the age of 75. He was quite obese by then, unlike when he was younger, and he died of a heart attack. The Electors met and elected King William of Frisia to replace him.
Kaiser William I, King of Frisia, Prince of Erfurt, Hereditary Prince of Solms-Laubach
In 1874, Friedrich was elected as King of Frisia, by the Frisian Parliament. Ten years before, William was born in Erfurt City Palace. In 1889, King Friedrich I died of a stroke, and the 25-year-old William became the new ruler of Frisia. As King, William I recognize the rights of Peter II as Grand Duke of Oldenburg.
William was a massive supporter of Frederick Napoléon I's reforms of the Rhine Kaiserreich. When the Kaiser died in 1891, there were many candidates in the election of that year. However, the electors eventually selected the young and energetic King William I.
During the William ten-year long reign, he mended relations with Prussia. He also continued the expansion of the Rhenish Army and Navy. In 1901, Kaiser William I was assassinated by a train bomb from a Russian nationalist, while on a diplomatic voyage to the Kingdom of Nothern Lusitania. The electors elected Prince Christian Günther III of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen as his successor.
Christian Günther III, Hereditary Prince of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen
It so happened that one of the smallest states, the Principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen was ruled by one of the oldest and most renown families of the Kaiserreich, the House of Schwarzburg. The small principality might not have a lot of sway in the Kaiserreich, but the ruling family had prestige.
Christian Günther III, named after his great, great grandfather, succeed his grandfather, Günther Frederick Charles II (b. 1805, r. 1835-1889) in 1889 when the old Prince died at the age of 83. Christian was the son of Imperial Prince Charles Günther (1830-1872), who'd died in the Rhenish-Prussian War. Christian had been born in 1855 in the Sondershausen Palace and was 17 when his father died and he became heir. When he ascended to the throne of the small principality, he was 34, married to Princess Sophia Hilde of Saxe-Altenburg, and the father of three children.
His rule as a Prince had been unremarkable, but his participation at the Election of 1891 had riveted the other Electors. He'd dominated the coalition of the smaller states with his charisma and eloquence and had been the coalitions leader in advocating the then hoped for candidate from the smaller states, his father-in-law, Prince Heinrich Wettin of Saxe-Altenberg. The election had gone round and round in circles until finally Christian came away from a meeting with King William, one of the two candidates from the states formed out of the Concessions (the other was Prince Karl of Alsace-Lorraine,) that convinced him the Kaiserreich needed a young dynamic leader instead of an older man like his father-in-law or Prince Karl.
Christian, despite being from a landlocked principality, had believed in the need of a strong navy and had himself served in the Kaisserreich Navy as a young man. It was King's William's commitment to that and the awareness that the Kaiserreich needed a new modern fleet of steel plated, steam powered, Battleships that had convinced Christian to support him. When Christian spoke of this to the Electors it broke the deadlock between the three contenders and the young William was elected.
Swiftly the Kaiser made Christian the Minister of the Navy and it was the Prince who did the leg work in building the Navy. When the Kaiser was assassinated, the Electors had no question whom to select for the new Kaiser, being the first of his name as Kaiser.
The new Kaiser knew the threats now facing the Rhine and her German allies of Prussia and Austria. The Russian Nationalist who killed Kaiser William was not an isolated murderer. He was part of a Revolution that was sweeping through several states. While the Russian Empire fell apart into a terrible civil war, the Hungarian Empire's Revolution happened swiftly and as the Electors met in Halle in 1901, the Marxist Workers Coalition of Socialist States was being set up in Budapest, replacing the Empire that stretched from the Danube to the Aegean Islands Meanwhile the Swedish Empire went to war with the Russian Socialist State that was itself at war with the rump Russian Empire to its south that was still in control in Central Asia, the Caucuses, and Ukraine.
Shortly after that the tension between the French Empire and the British Empire over their colonial territories flashed into several conflicts in Africa and Asia. The two Empires faced each other in Europe, waiting for the other to attack.
Europe was a powder keg and the Kaiser had to lead his Reich into a new and strange Century as new and horrid weapons of war changed things.
The opinion of most in the three members of the Germanic Alliance was to stand with Sweden and the Russian Empire against the Russian Socialists. But Christian, the Rhenish Council of Electors, and the National Legislature all agreed that the last thing needed was war. Peace through strength was the motto of the new administration and the efforts to build the strongest Navy and modernize the Army continued. Over the next decade that meant armoured cars, machine guns, undersee ships, airships, and aeroplanes. It also meant expanding the use of radio and building new roads, railroads, and telephone lines.
But War did come in 1909 when a French ship that had been attacked at sea sought aid at Rhenish Zanzibar and then British ships attacked the African Rhenish colony. The local Rhenish officials had no choice but to defend their colony. When word reach London of this, the British decided the stalemate in Europe would not last if the Germanic Alliance was siding with the French and decisive action needed to occur to force an end before an ongoing war such as the Swedish-Russian Socialist-Russian Empire War just dragged on and on. So the British mounted an invasion of Frisia and Westphalia in an attempt to demolish the Rhenish Fleet before they could react.
They largely succeeded with those at port, but most of the fleet was in the Baltic and the Kaiser had ordered the North Sea fleet to sea.
This was the Hungarians' chance to attack the Ottomans and take Constantinople. Now Europe was involved in three separate wars and all of them had theatres outside Europe proper as Japan and the United States invaded Siberia and attacked the Russian Socialist State from the East.
A British expeditionary force invaded Frisia and then swept through the lowlands and took northern France before their advance was stopped short of Paris. As feared, this became another stalemate of giant armies facing each other as was happening in Russia. Trench warfare developed and the front went from the North Sea inland then ran to the south until it headed back west to the Bay of Biscay south of Brittany.
In 1911, the Kaiser was visiting Hamburg to inspect the fleet stationed there when a bombing raid killed him. In the middle of a war, another Kaiser had been killed.
[8] The Imperial election of 1911 saw the rise to the Imperial dignity of the Grand Duke of Frankfurt, Alexander von Leuchtenberg. A descendant of Eugène de Beuharnais, the Duke of Frankfurt and lieutenant of the Grande Armée, the young Grand Duke has a strong interest in military matters. He was serving as Marshall at the time of his election, and won the vote of the princes thanks to the ferocious campaigning of his wife Charlotte von Isenburg, who presented him as the obvious candidate for such a situation.
The Marshall-Emperor was delighted to learn this, as he had been blindsighted by what he perceived as shameful incompetence from several high ranking whom he couldn't demote without Imperial approval. Now he had it. During the months of stalemate that marked the second half of 1911, he reorganized the army as well as the rationing system, hoping to improve the morale and efficiency of the army. His goal was to simply make this war look unwinnable to the British: if he could make their logistics ruinous while maintaining a facade of abundance, he could make the Rhine look like too big of a prey to swallow.
For this, he developed an extensive fleet of submarines: the British had to cross the Channel to maintain their positions, the Continentals didn't, so he'd do his best to undermine them at every occasion. In another effort to undermine the British war effort, and being well aware of the difficulties they were facing in the wake of colonial unrest, he sent advisors and informants to separatist movements across the Empire, while promising to his own oversea colonies that they would be granted self-rule. The final straw was the Emerald Plan, an infiltration of Irish Rights movements to radicalize them and offer them weapons. In the end, the massive riots and guerillas across the British Empire, the seemingly unwavering determination of the compact Rhenish Confederation and the crumbling logistics of the British Expeditionary Corp in Europe started, in Britain, to undermine public support for a war now seen as pointless and unlikely to reap any benefits, far from the easy retaliatory disbarkment in France that has originally been promised.
However, Kaiser Alexander I would not get to see the end of this war, as he died in February 1912 during a visit to the trenches, where an undercover British spy seized the occasion to shoot the Emperor to death. The Emperor died, sheltering the nurse he was discussing with seconds ago from the bullets of his murderer. He was succeeded by Joseph Leopold I, Grand Duke and Titular Elector of Würzburg.
Kaiser Joseph Leopold I, Grand Duke and Titular Elector of Würzburg
With the approaching of the 1912 general election in the United Kingdom, Joseph Leopold sought for the Peace Coalition (made-up of Conservative, Liberal, and Labour party members who wanted peace with the Rhine and its allies) to win the election. A shrewd man, Joseph Leopold believed that it was better to ''... give a man a thousand little cuts than one big slash.'' Kaiser Joseph Leopold I ran fake stories of British extremists blowing up houses of government officials with children in them, which caused much anger in Britain, as they wanted to see their country and the war as righteous, not as a vile force of evil.
The Peace Coalition won in a landslide in the British general election of 1912, and soon an armistice was made, and a new peace followed, as well. The Kaiser also aided with the Rome Agreements, which ended the war between Hungary and the newly formed Kingdom of Anatolia and the Russian Civil War.
After peace was restored to Europe, the Kaiser led the Rhine Kaiserreich into an economic and cultural golden age. He liberalized many aspects of Rhenish society including the decriminalization of homosexuality, in 1921. However, with the Kaiser increasing liberalization of the country, the conservative elites off the Rhine Kaiserreich became increasingly alienated. In 1924, most electors forced the Kaiser to abdicate, and Joseph Leopold was replaced by King Eugen I of Württemberg.
King Eugen I of Württemberg
King Frederick II of Württemberg. r. 1888-1919
The Prince had never given up on his political advocacy for a more conservative, vengeful Kaiserreich and when his father died in 1919 and he became King Eugen I, the hopes of the younger conservative elites, who called themselves the Lineale Party, transferred from his father to the new King. By 1924 they gained enough power to force Joseph Leopold to abdicate and put Eugen on the throne at the age of 39.
The Kaiserreich changed now and went into a totally different direction. While it had already evolved from a Confederacy into a Federation, now the Kaiser and the Lineale made it a much more centralized Empire. He made the Imperial Palace in Halle his permanent residence and appointed a royal viceroy to fulfil his duties back in Stuttgart, the capital of Württemberg. Although the old states were not replaced nor their monarchs, they were either united or divided into different Kaiserreich 'regions.' (Small states were united and large ones divided.) The actual governance of a region was done by a ReichFuhrer appointed by the Kaiser and approved by the Federal legislature, which was little more than a rubberstamp. The Federal legislature had become this due to it being trimmed down. The actual electors who ruled in their various states now were just figureheads with no power, unless they also happened to be an appointed ReichFuhrer, which only occurred if they were one of the Lineale, who dominated the Council of Electors. The same was true of the democratically elected state legislatures, which had all power stripped from them except ceremonial duties and given to the ReichFuhrers and their staffs.
The first order of business of the new Kaiser and the Lineale was what came to be known as the Vereinigung der Vier, the 'Unification of the Four.' It began with the inclusion of Prussia in the Kaiserreich in 1928. This greatly increased the dominance of the conservative elites, as only the Prussian nobility who shared their values were added to the Council of Electors. In 1931 the Empire of Austria was dissolved and its various provinces added to the Kaiserreich. Both Prussia and Austria were added with the other German states passing a law for the Vereinigung. But the fourth addition was purely by force as German speaking Switzerland was just annexed by the Kaiserreich.
Some of the liberal reforms that had occurred were undone. Homosexuality was again outlawed, divorce was made very difficult, non German minorities were forced to swear loyalty oaths (and Jews and Romani were consider non Germans whether they spoke German or not,) and a centralized schooling system was imposed on the Kaiserreich that included a very strong element of teaching German patriotism.
The industrialization of the Empire now went full steam ahead to increase the military. As one of the ongoing policies of the Lineale was the further expanse of the Kaiserreich to include all territory where there were German speaking ethic groups, it seed more and more likely that the Kaiserreich would go to war with Hungary's Marxist Workers' Coalition of Socialist States (WCSS), as many German speaking people lived there and had for centuries and with the French Empire, as the Lineale consiered Dutch a German dialect.
This of course drove the former ally of France into a new alliance with Britain and the WCSS, which was allied with the Russian Socialist State.
The Kaiserreich was on the edge of war when those who'd opposed the Lineale and their Kaiser took to the streets in protest and general strikes. While the Lineale were convinced the Kaiserreich was stronger than other nations and would win a war quickly, many in the Expanded Empire thought this was folly. They knew that all their potential enemies had also built up their military and that this time the United States might side with the British.
The Revolution of 1938 declared the reforms of the last 14 years were null and void and ran its own new election for the federal legislature. Now there were two governments in Halle. But the Revolutionaries quickly took control, arrested most of the Lineale and forced the Kaiser to abdicate. Eugen not only was forced to give up being the Kaiser, but he had to abdicate his kingship, his cousin instead took the throne of Württemberg in Stuttgart. Eugen was given only one of the family's smaller castles and put under house arrest there. His former title of "Prince" was, however, granted him again.
With the arrest of the Lineale electors and their replacement by other sympatico with the Revolution, a new council of electors chose the Grand-Duchess Franziska of Mecklemburg to be Kaiserin. Now the question was would peace be made with France, Britain, Hungary, and Russia or not? Would the Vereinigung be undone or would one German Reich continue? Would the member states' power to govern be restored or the new system continue but liberalized and made democratic?
[11] Franziska von Mecklemburg was one of the newly installed nobles, having being highly and very vocally opposed to both her cousins, Frederick Franzis VI von Mecklemburg-Schwerin and Adolphus-Frederick VI von Mecklemburg-Sterlitz, who were both Linealen. The new Grand-Duchess of Mecklemburg, however, was at first supportive of the Conservative ideas of Eugen von Württemberg: she was as mad as he was at the liberal policies of Joseph Leopold von Würzburg and resented the forced separation between the Rhine Confederation and the other Germans. However, the reign of the one she invested so many hopes in in the first years soon transformed into a journey through the political spectrum: the young Conservative princess in her late teens had by 1938 evolved into an anti-Lineale protestor who embraced ideas ranging from moderate reformism to full blown progressivism. She had been instrumental to the ultimate downfall of Eugen I, working hard at undermining Lineale support in the Northeast.
She wasn't the favourite by far when the election cycle started, but her fiery candidacy speech had gained her the support of the one group that was usually left out in those matters: the crowd. And little by little, with a lot of passion and shaming of the opposition, she was elected by a small margin over the more moderate Ludwig of Bavaria, her supports in the Electoral Assembly hoping her oratory talents and public opposition to Lineale ideology would allow her to reassure the foreign powers. And, after sending a swarm of ambassadors and delegates to gain time with Britain, France, Russia and Hungary, she set out to solve the Swiss Question: in her opinion, there was no keeping Switzerland, and Germany would have to puke it if she didn't want to choke on it. Thus, canton by canton referendums were organized, and all the Swiss cantons chose independance, ridding the Empire of a first problem.
However, appeasement with the rest of Europe was harder to achieve: everyone had demands, and not all of them were reasonable. To appease France, she accepted to reevaluate the Rhine concession's border, accepting that French-speaking municipalities (including Saverne, Ferrette and Altkirch as well as a good chunk of the Vosges mountains) would be able to carry on referendums to reunite with Germany. To appease Britain, she accepted to partake in disarmament conferences. To appease Hungary, she accepted to demilitarize the boundary in exchange for guarantees for the German communities in Hungary. Russia, however, was a tougher client: what did the Socialist Council want that she could offer? In the end, a deal was struck that Russia and Germany would cooperate economically at the condition that worker protection laws would be passed in Germany.
Considering the future of Germany ... despite the personal feelings of the newly installed princes of the Empire, it was evident that the idea of unification was popular, and that reverting it was only going to create fuel for a potential Lineale reignition. It was thus agreed in backdoor discussions that German unity would be presented as a nonpartisan theme that every current party supports, regardless of personal feelings. However, that was pretty much the only domestic issue they could all agree on. While a lot of more moderate Princes wanted to purely revert to the pre-Eugen politics, there were also those who admitted that the administrative organization of the Linealen could be reformed and liberalized. Kaiserin Franziska disagreed with both. To her, going back to the executive supremacy of Princes was only going to lead to other terrible decisions in the future, and was simply not an option; but the Linealen had put on an administration that was essentially the negation of local particularities and of the Confederal nature of the government. Thus, she offered her own set of reforms: to her, the basic cell of the new German government should be the Municipality, the Princes acting as advisors, ceremonial figures and subsidizers, and the German government would proceed from those two authorities. To Kaiserin Franziska, Germany needed a new Constitution, even if it would take years ....
She would abdicate in 1967, after 29 frustrating years of attempting to make her vision of a new and better Germany come to life. In 29 years, the Imperial Constitution had garnered two fifths of the Imperial Assembly's votes: in the 1967 draft, the Constitution considers the realms (Counties to Kingdoms) and the municipalities as the two base units of the Empire, admits as its Legislative Assembly (but not Constitutional Assembly) a monocameral legislature based on proportional vote for one half and municipal delegates for the other, guarantees freedom of expression and faith, protects "individual property" and guarantees voting rights to anyone 17 years or older, it bans discriminations based on gender, ethnic background or faith, and it is accompanied by a "Social Contract" that defines a number of base protections for parents, children, workers, the environment, and a bunch of other stuff. Main points of disagreement include what power are given to the Princes, the existence or not of a Princely Assembly and its potential powers and the mode of election of the Kaiser of Kaiserin. But those are questions for a younger monarch. Franziska is 59, she's feeling old and her wit isn't as sharp as it used to be. Besides, she's the only on in this country that didn't get to enjoy life resuming after the rigors of Lineale social corsetry. The rest is up to the Constitutional Assembly. In absence of a proper structure to elect the next German Emperor, the Constitutional Assembly has been tasked to elect her successor. Her reign would be followed by Ferdinand I.
Kaiser Ferdinand I, Prince and Count of Isenburg, wearing his father's marshal clothes and medals, in 1968
Kaiser Ferdinand I was more experienced as a social host than an administrator, which only caused exacerbated problems between several local governments, as the unclarity of which governmental bodies had what authorities increased. The Kaiser was much more interested in the social liberalization of Rhenish society and court. Aside from dismantling the court’s conservative etiquette, Ferdinand I also created the royal positions, known as the Grand Dignitaries, which were similar to the system of the French Empire.
In 1971, after having to deal with several intense arguments, Ferdinand I abdicated and returned to the Principality of Isenburg. He was succeeded by Friedrich, the Grand Duke of Baden.
Friedrich, Grand Duke of Baden
Friedrich was the leader of the Reform Party in the Bundestag and was Prime Minister when Ferdinand resigned. He was chosen by the Council of Princes to be one of the nominees to run for Kaiser and he accepted the nomination and resigned from being Prime Minister. Upon his election he then resigned from the Bundestag.
As the first Kaiser to be a fully constitutional monarch, (Ferdinand had officially been a ruling one at first in his reign until the Constitution was implemented,) Friedrich gave up politics upon being a Kaiser, but his background made him savvy in that realm and he often gave advice to the Prime Minister during their regular meetings, but this was always discreet and in private.
The Kaiser is now 83 and still a hale and hearty man. He has a large family, including his heir for the throne of Baden, Gustav Friedrich Anton, Earl of Baden, who is 48.
OOC: I'll start the second line to replace this one in a bit.
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What if the first child of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragorn, Henry, Duke of Cornwall, hadn't died in infancy but became king?
Monarchs of England
1509-1547: Henry VIII (House of Tudor)
1547-1563: Henry IX (House of Tudor) [1]
[1] Henry IX Tudor had prepared all his life to be King. He grew up with close relations with both his mother and his father. He was close to his younger sister, Mary Tudor, and like all in his family, especially his father, was a devout Catholic.
He married Catherine Hapsburg, the younger sister of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, and his maternal cousin, in 1525 on her 18th birthday, January 14, when Henry was just 14. Their marriage was fruitful and friendly, although there was little passion. But by the time Henry became King in 1547 at the age of 36, they had five children, three of them sons.
Henry kept England at peace during his reign. He increased the power of the Church and through his efforts the Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits, became vital in the English Church. England became a center of the Counter Reformation.
Henry died from a boating accident on the Thames on Easter Day 1563 when he was 52.
Monarchs of England
1509-1547: Henry VIII (House of Tudor)
1547-1563: Henry IX (House of Tudor) [1]
He married Catherine Hapsburg, the younger sister of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, and his maternal cousin, in 1525 on her 18th birthday, January 14, when Henry was just 14. Their marriage was fruitful and friendly, although there was little passion. But by the time Henry became King in 1547 at the age of 36, they had five children, three of them sons.
Henry kept England at peace during his reign. He increased the power of the Church and through his efforts the Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits, became vital in the English Church. England became a center of the Counter Reformation.
Henry died from a boating accident on the Thames on Easter Day 1563 when he was 52.
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What if... James II fled to America?
Kings of Virginia
1688-1701: James I (House of Stuart) [1]
1701-1743: James II (House of Stuart) [2]
1743-1745: James III (House of Waldegrave) [3]
[1] In the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, James II, his family, and some of his loyal followers fled to England's holdings in North America, where a loyalist army would be built up. With military aid from France and Spain, James is crowned King James I of Virgina, and would set out to establish a hold over his new kingdom, and making plans to one day return to his rightful throne in Britain.
James' reign would see steady immigration to French and Spanish colones and back, the establishment of a Virginian Parliament and a wave of population exchange between Protestants and loyal Catholics.
James I would die in September of 1701, with the Kingdom of Virginia and claim to the British crown going to his thirty-one-year-old son, James II.
[2] James, Crown Prince of Virginia and Mary, Princess Royal of Virginia were born in 1688 in London and 1692 in France whilst their father secured his position in Virginia. The two suffered from smallpox in 1699 and both died.
However, when James I had fled to Virginia, one of James' illegitimate sons, the Duke of Berwick, had joined them. Faced with an absence of heirs, the King was provided with two options - either put his niece, Anne, Duchess of Savoy, above his own daughter (Anne, as his elder daughter Mary had since died) or, legitimise the Duke of Berwick. As negotiations with Anne and her husband Victor Amadeus II of Savoy were frosty at best, Anne demanded recognition of her husband as King Regnant rather than King Consort, and the Virginian Parliament were wary of subjugation to another European crown, the King legitimize the unmarried Duke of Berwick. By the time of the Kings death, the Duke had been married to Maria Anna of Soissons, a Savoyard from the junior Savoy-Carignano branch of the family. This had cause to upset his niece and her husband further as they would not be rulers of Sardinia and Savoy until much later and their precedence at the Court of the Old Dominion, should they ever attend, would be lower than Mary.
Anne and Victor Amadeus II would continue to challenge the validity of the claim of the "House of FitzJames" to the throne of Virginia, attempting to raise support from France and Spain but these attempts to claim came to nothing given that the Kings and Queens of Great Britain held precedence, were legitimate male preference primogeniture used to determine validity.
In 1736, upon the death of her uncle, Eugene of Savoy, Queen Mary inherited substantial money and land holdings in Austria. To benefit Virginia, Mary was convinced by her husband to sell off these holdings at optimum prices. Whilst this frustrated many in Austria, the decision was seem as a sacrifice by the citizens of Virginia and popularised the Queen who had, by that point, been at her husband's side for 35 years and had born him two sons and a daughter between 1703 and 1710.
James II would learn of his half-sister Anne of Great Britain's death in 1714, and the succession of his sickly nephew, William III and IV, who has surprised everyone by surviving childhood, marrying and producing issue. When the Parliament of Virginia legitimized James II in 1700, Westminster had not and thus James had no succession rights in the UK.
To prevent any question of succession ahead of the birth of his own children, James II had the Parliament of Virginia recognised his brother and sister, Henry and Henriette, in 1702 and had Henry invested as Great Steward of Williamsburg.
James II died in 1743 at the age of 73 at the Williamsburg Palace (although the Parliament was based in Richmond, the King had preferred the Williamsburg residence) in the company of his brother. His wife would outlive him by 20 years, and he would be succeeded by ______ , his ______.
King James III of Virginia
[3] James Waldegrave was born in 1684 to Henrietta and Henry Waldegrave, who was the 1st Baron Waldegrave. When he was five years old, Henry Waldegrave died, and James Waldegrave inherited his father’s titles. He and Henrietta moved to the Kingdom of Virginia in 1700. Two years later, he and his mother were both legitimized by the Parliament of Virginia. In 1716, Prince James married the daughter of a wealthy Virginian landowner. In 1726, he was a part of a hunting expedition, which resulted in the death of one of King James II’s sons, Prince John of Virginia.
Prince James served as the Virginian Ambassador to Austria from 1729 to 1732, and he served as the Virginian Ambassador to France from 1730 to 1736.
In late 1742, with the death of the King’s first-born and childless son, Francis, died in a naval ship accident, James II of Virginia attempted to have Parliament to ensure that his last-living child, Charlotte, who had no children, and who had annulled her marriage with her spouse. However, the King died only four months later, and the Parliament of Virginia had not recognized the rights of Charlotte. And so, the fifty-eight-year-old prince became King James III of Virginia.
During James III’s short reign, he began the expansion of the Virginian Navy. In 1744, he also slightly expanded the western territories of the Kingdom of Virginia. King James III died in 1745, and a succession crisis ensued between the eldest daughters of King James II, King James III, and Prince Henry FitzJames, who all claimed that they were the rightful monarch of Virginia. In the end, the Parliament of Virginia selected _________ as the next monarch of Virginia.
Kings of Virginia
1688-1701: James I (House of Stuart) [1]
1701-1743: James II (House of Stuart) [2]
1743-1745: James III (House of Waldegrave) [3]
[1] In the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, James II, his family, and some of his loyal followers fled to England's holdings in North America, where a loyalist army would be built up. With military aid from France and Spain, James is crowned King James I of Virgina, and would set out to establish a hold over his new kingdom, and making plans to one day return to his rightful throne in Britain.
James' reign would see steady immigration to French and Spanish colones and back, the establishment of a Virginian Parliament and a wave of population exchange between Protestants and loyal Catholics.
James I would die in September of 1701, with the Kingdom of Virginia and claim to the British crown going to his thirty-one-year-old son, James II.
[2] James, Crown Prince of Virginia and Mary, Princess Royal of Virginia were born in 1688 in London and 1692 in France whilst their father secured his position in Virginia. The two suffered from smallpox in 1699 and both died.
However, when James I had fled to Virginia, one of James' illegitimate sons, the Duke of Berwick, had joined them. Faced with an absence of heirs, the King was provided with two options - either put his niece, Anne, Duchess of Savoy, above his own daughter (Anne, as his elder daughter Mary had since died) or, legitimise the Duke of Berwick. As negotiations with Anne and her husband Victor Amadeus II of Savoy were frosty at best, Anne demanded recognition of her husband as King Regnant rather than King Consort, and the Virginian Parliament were wary of subjugation to another European crown, the King legitimize the unmarried Duke of Berwick. By the time of the Kings death, the Duke had been married to Maria Anna of Soissons, a Savoyard from the junior Savoy-Carignano branch of the family. This had cause to upset his niece and her husband further as they would not be rulers of Sardinia and Savoy until much later and their precedence at the Court of the Old Dominion, should they ever attend, would be lower than Mary.
Anne and Victor Amadeus II would continue to challenge the validity of the claim of the "House of FitzJames" to the throne of Virginia, attempting to raise support from France and Spain but these attempts to claim came to nothing given that the Kings and Queens of Great Britain held precedence, were legitimate male preference primogeniture used to determine validity.
In 1736, upon the death of her uncle, Eugene of Savoy, Queen Mary inherited substantial money and land holdings in Austria. To benefit Virginia, Mary was convinced by her husband to sell off these holdings at optimum prices. Whilst this frustrated many in Austria, the decision was seem as a sacrifice by the citizens of Virginia and popularised the Queen who had, by that point, been at her husband's side for 35 years and had born him two sons and a daughter between 1703 and 1710.
James II would learn of his half-sister Anne of Great Britain's death in 1714, and the succession of his sickly nephew, William III and IV, who has surprised everyone by surviving childhood, marrying and producing issue. When the Parliament of Virginia legitimized James II in 1700, Westminster had not and thus James had no succession rights in the UK.
To prevent any question of succession ahead of the birth of his own children, James II had the Parliament of Virginia recognised his brother and sister, Henry and Henriette, in 1702 and had Henry invested as Great Steward of Williamsburg.
James II died in 1743 at the age of 73 at the Williamsburg Palace (although the Parliament was based in Richmond, the King had preferred the Williamsburg residence) in the company of his brother. His wife would outlive him by 20 years, and he would be succeeded by ______ , his ______.
King James III of Virginia
Prince James served as the Virginian Ambassador to Austria from 1729 to 1732, and he served as the Virginian Ambassador to France from 1730 to 1736.
In late 1742, with the death of the King’s first-born and childless son, Francis, died in a naval ship accident, James II of Virginia attempted to have Parliament to ensure that his last-living child, Charlotte, who had no children, and who had annulled her marriage with her spouse. However, the King died only four months later, and the Parliament of Virginia had not recognized the rights of Charlotte. And so, the fifty-eight-year-old prince became King James III of Virginia.
During James III’s short reign, he began the expansion of the Virginian Navy. In 1744, he also slightly expanded the western territories of the Kingdom of Virginia. King James III died in 1745, and a succession crisis ensued between the eldest daughters of King James II, King James III, and Prince Henry FitzJames, who all claimed that they were the rightful monarch of Virginia. In the end, the Parliament of Virginia selected _________ as the next monarch of Virginia.
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A point -
Why would Parliament have to recognise the succession rights of James II's children, given they are legitimate ?
And why would they ignore the rights of Henry FitzJames/Stuart children, given that they are also legitimate? And Henry Stuart himself is still alive upon James II's death.
Why would Parliament have to recognise the succession rights of James II's children, given they are legitimate ?
And why would they ignore the rights of Henry FitzJames/Stuart children, given that they are also legitimate? And Henry Stuart himself is still alive upon James II's death.
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