german monarchy

[thegasgooner]

Why are our oyal Family descended from Germans?

[jno]

Because after the last of the Stuarts died, the nearest heir was German. Given the way they intermarry, it's probably better to think of royalty generally as a multinational conglomerate rather than one from a specific country. The current dynasty has been here since 1714, so you could probably start regarding them as British if you wanted. After all, where do your ancestors come from?

[thegasgooner]

Scotland and Israel - weird eh!
But I'm not asking for free board and lodgings in Buckingham Palace am I :)
Cheers for the answer it's to settle an argument at work

[dundurn]

Strictly speaking the Stuarts didn't die out. James II was kicked out and his daughters Mary (and her husband William of Orange) and Anne ruled in his stead. The Act of Succession had been passed banning any Roman Catholic from becoming King or Queen. After the death of Queen Anne without surviving children there were many Stuarts alive and well and living on the Continent, and quite a few relations still iving in the UK, but the majority of them were Catholic. The nearest Protestant relative was a descendant of a daughter of King James I who had married into the German nobility. The whole point of the rebellions of 1715 and 1745 was that Jacobites considered that James II and later his son (also James) and his sons Charles and Henry were legitimately Kings of the UK. There are still Stuarts alive today who by birth have a better claim to rule the UK than does our present Queen.

[jno]

well, as dundurn says, it's because they were next in line. Specifically, George I was a great-grandson of James I, first of the Stuart kings. As well as the daughters who took over from him until their deaths, James II had a son - but he was suspected of not being James's son but of being smuggled into the house in a bedwarming pan. This was probably totally untrue but it provided an excuse to expel James and, when his daughters had died, to offer the throne to German George.

As to who has a 'right' to the throne, who can say? Parliament would not have accepted James's Catholic son, legitimate or not.

[Octavius]

From at least the early Middle Ages royals have chosen or been required to marry other royals, who have been almost inevitably foreigners.

For example, Spain came to be ruled by Habsburgs, who were German, and then by Bourbons, who were French. Elizabeth of England's rival, and sometime brother-in-law, Philip II of Spain, had only one Spanish grandparent, and, being blond, he took after his Flemish / Belgian grandfather.

The British monarchy is no different. The Queen can trace her descent from the Saxon king Alfred, heroic defender of Wessex against the Danes and also from the 11th-century Scottish king Malcolm Canmore - but there have been rivers of foreign blood since. Royalty are among the most successful of immigrants.

The last monarch to have been as much as half-English by birth and heredity was Queen Anne (1702-14). Her father, James, Duke of York made what was considered a misalliance, marrying a commoner, Anne Hyde, whose father had been a mere lawyer, though as Charles II's chief minister he was created Earl of Clarendon. None of Anne's 17 children lived to adulthood. So when she died in 1714, it was necessary to import, as her nearest Protestant relation, George, Elector of Hanover. The British monarchy therefore became German.

[Boris71w]

Well, George Ist was the great grandchild of James Ist, same as Charles II, James II, Mary II, William III and Anne so, technically it was the German Royal family of Hannover that was descended from the English Royal family. Almost no English monarch has marrried an English person so you can call them descended from French royalty and you'd be just as accurate (or inaccurate) as saying they are German. Great 'English' historic figures such as Richard Lionheart, Edward I 'the Hammer of the Scots', Henry III or Henry V were all at least half-French, some 3/4 French. Nevertheless, the Queen is one of the few people in England who can PROVE descent from Anglo-Saxons and so is more English than any of us

[McNoodle]

But Prince Philip was German, brought up by his aunty who married one of Hitlers top generals... apparently.

[Boris71w]

Well, according to some wierd arab looney!. Philip was actually born in Greece but was brought up in Paris and then England. He was a prince of the House of Oldenburg which is mostly Danish and partly German and was invited by Greece to take the throne.

All his sisters married Germans most of who were indeed military officers in the 2nd World War but, until he was about 12, he was brought up by his mother who was English, born in Windsor Castle and sister of Louis Mountbatten, who was honoured by Israel for saving Jewish refugees in Nazi-occupied Greece