Hmm... this is the big question: how loyal can the country be to Catholic monarchs instated by the French? The answer is probably not very, but what shade of not very are we talking? Long-time disgruntlement that eventually fizzles away, or rebellions and assassinations? I can see anything from long-term Stuart rule (eventually as Protestants) to a second English Civil War and another Cromwell and all that. I really don't know enough to say, but I am really interested in trying to figure it out.
Here's another question I should have posed but didn't: do the French dare keep troops in Britain to protect the new Jacobite regime? I feel like it would be offered by Louis but that James would decline it, knowing how bad that would make him look. What are your thoughts?
What I meant was France keeping the Austrian Netherlands afterwards - without Britain conquest of the Austrian Netherlands should be significantly easier for France than OTL. I'm not really sure what to make of it. Louis returned it IOTL to appear more diplomatic and gain further concessions for its allies, but with Britain ruled by French-instated monarchs France is in a much stronger position than OTL, and Louis might not care so much for appearances.
Well if it's Austria v. everyone, the odds of Prussia joining France and ending on the losing side is pretty low. That said there probably isn't a good enough casus belli for Frederick to join Louis a second time, outside of extending his Silesian conquests into Moravia and Bohemia.
Would that be in character for James, to be a symbolic king when he believed so much in the divine right of kings stuff? I understand that politically he might be somewhat tied even after replacing Parliament with Jacobites and Tories, but he strikes me as someone who would want his impact felt once he finally became king. Or maybe more accurately it strikes me as human nature that he want to make his impact felt as king after having been exiled from his "rightful kingship" his whole life to that point.
And this is just musing a bit, but your note on the Act of Union (which I agree btw, that James wouldn't try and re-separate the kingdoms legally) just made me think of Thomas Jefferson opposing the First Bank of the US vehemently until he became President himself. Just the way of politics.
Any ideas on who Charles would be married to? I can't see him marrying a daughter of Louis XV, because of how politically bad that looks. But he's got to marry a Catholic while James is alive. Maybe the youngest daughter of Philip V of Spain, Maria Antonia Ferdinanda?
Is there any chance I wonder for Charles to agree to convert to Protestantism while James is alive, and then for him to marry say Prince Frederick's eldest daughter Augusta to merge the Stuarts and Hanoverians and end the feud? I almost wonder if in a civil war scenario if something like that ends up happening.
I suppose that Henry Stuart not becoming a cardinal is the only thing we can know for certain won't happen.
Absolutely. If Frederick is the one whom the British want to restore, I've got to wonder how much if at all George II would help him try and reclaim the throne from the Jacobites.