What If?

Tantalizing as it might be, historians should never start playing the “what if” game.  (You know, that alternative history game in which you change one little fact and then try to speculate how much that would have changed later events).  If the Democrats hadn’t split the ticket in 1860, would the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, still have been elected?  If George Washington had been killed in the French and Indian War, would the United States have lost the Revolutionary War?  My God!  We might be speaking British today!

I have nothing against alternative history, and for a lot of people, it is harmless speculation.  Harry Turtledove has made a profitable career writing some wonderful novels about alternative history.  Alas, historians simply know too many obscure historical links, chance meetings of historical figures, and strange coincidences—too many variables.  If a historian starts thinking along those lines, there is simply no stopping point.  Before long, the poor historian is up in the middle of the night, wondering if his Aunt Sally would have been a tea cart if she’d had wheels.…or if fish ever get thirsty….or why they call it “life” insurance?

Unfortunately, even though I know the risks, I have one of those nagging little “what if” questions I can’t let go of.  And like every good historian, I’m going to start at the very beginning.

England has had male preference primogeniture since the Norman invasion in the 11th century.  Male preference primogeniture means that royal titles and entailed estates are inherited by the first-born male heir, if one exists (although, failing that, the first-born female heir can inherit).  Curiously, the law doesn’t mention who inherits if one of the ancestors is a horse, which seems clearly the case for the current British monarch, King Charles III.  

For centuries, the male heir to the throne had first rights, even if his older sister was brighter and more capable (as they quite often were).  The rule was obviously sexist, it was frequently self-defeating and it lasted far longer than it should have.  And when the law was finally changed, it was, of course, for even more self-serving reasons.

On October 10, 2010, Prince William and Kate Middleton became engaged and they were married some six months later.  Kate Middleton was attractive, articulate, and very popular.  And there was obviously a 50% chance that their first child would be female, resurrecting up for the first time in more than a century that old primogeniture law about shoving females to the rear of the royal bus.  The popularity of the British monarchy was already somewhat in decline, the Queen was old, and it was easy to see that the eventual coronation of (then) Prince Chuck would not be an overwhelming success.  Well, the law was changed in 2013 with the Succession to the Crown Act of 2013, just in time for the arrival of Prince William and Princess Kate’s first child, the current Prince George of Wales.  Since the royal tricycle motor was male, it turns out the rush was for nothing.  The next child was female, so technically, she is now third in line for the throne, beating out her younger brother.

But, what if that Succession Act had been passed earlier, say right after Queen Victoria married Prince Albert?  Queen Victoria was popular, and she had proven to be a good monarch, so why not stop the prejudice against female heirs to the throne?  

If the primogeniture law had been changed in the nineteenth century, upon Queen Victoria’s death in January, 1901, her son Edward would not have become king, instead her eldest daughter, Victoria, would have become the second Queen Victoria.  Unfortunately, Queen Victoria II would have ruled for only a very few months, before she passed away and the crown passed to her eldest son, Wilhelm.  Now, things get really interesting:   if Wilhelm had grown up to be the King of England, he would not have become Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.  

Note.  Queen Victoria, the first one, not the imaginary second one, managed to marry her children off to all the monarchies of Europe.  In the first World War, the King of England, The Kaiser of Germany, and the Tsar of Russia were all her grandchildren, thus first cousins.  The war was quite literally a grotesque family feud.

As Kaiser, Wilhelm was incredibly jealous of his uncle, Edward VII of England, and after Edward died in 1910, he was jealous of his first cousin, King George V, too.  Kaiser Wilhelm did not start World War I by himself, but he certainly pushed the rapid militarization of Germany that was copied widely in Europe.  He deliberately went out of his way to hike tensions between Germany and Great Britain.

Okay, I admit it: historians are deeply divided about whether the Kaiser was truly guilty of starting the war, and though the Allies wanted to try him for war crimes (particularly for the brutal massacre of Belgian civilians), the Kaiser never stood trial.  At the end of the war, he fled to the Netherlands at the invitation of a sympathetic Queen Wilhelmina.  Though the Allies tried repeatedly to have the Kaiser extradited, the Queen held her ground, saying that such extradition would violate the Netherlands’ neutrality.  The Kaiser spent the rest of his life living in a castle there, surrounded by his vast wealth.

The bottom line, however, is that the Kaiser was certainly partly at fault, and if he had been the King of England instead of the Kaiser, the war—had there been one—would have certainly been very different.  Perhaps his inferiority complex would even have been assuaged and the militarization of Europe would have never happened.  

If the first World War had never occurred, then the Tsar would not have been discredited by early military defeats and the entire Russian Revolution may never have happened.  Lenin would have been unable to come back to Moscow, the rise of Communism would never have happened, and there would have never been a Soviet Union.And if the First World War had never happened, then the horrible provisions of the Versailles Treaty would have never been imposed, thus—perhaps—leading to…no World War II?  And most important, if that one little law had been enacted when it should have been…. then none of us would have ever heard of Charles, his son Harry or Harry’s publicity-obsessed wife, Meghan.

Oh, and if you are interested in the continuation of the above thread, the current English Monarch would be Queen Friederike Thyra Marion Wilhelmine Dorothea von der Osten.  She is pictured at right (and, for the record, she is the one in the middle).  I have no idea what she’s like, but she has to be better than Charles, Harry, and Meghan.