History is nothing if not full of contingencies. Had not Princess Charlotte of Wales died from childbirth, then Victoria not only would not have succeeded as queen regnant: she would never have even existed. After all, her mother (born Princess Viktoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld) rejected the first proposal of her father, the Duke of Kent.

This is not to say that Victoria was *born to reign*: that's how one would characterize her only with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. As it was, she was one of several births witnessed in the British royal baby boom beginning from 1819 onward, in the wake of the Wales tragedy. And she happened to be the one who survived.

But it could just as easily have been one of her Clarence cousins -- the four legitimate children of her uncle and immediate predecessor on the throne, King William IV. After all, Victoria was born at a time when infant and childhood mortality rates were very high -- the reason why life expectancies back then were low. As it was, the longest-lived of them was the princess (born in December 1820, died in March 1821) who would have succeeded as Elizabeth II (House of Hanover), had she lived. Indeed, at the time of her christening, Londoners actually jumped the gun by dubbing her "Little Queen Bess".

It's anybody's guess as to what kind of queen regnant she would have made, but for her death in infancy, or what kind of reign either of her twin brothers would have had as king, had they not been miscarried. So in the final analysis, it's pointless to engage in historical speculations along these lines: they become virtually endless.

Even if Victoria hadn't become queen regnant, she could still have married Albert and had those nine children. And had he survived his older brother, she would have become the duchess consort of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Her children might still have made the marriages they did -- with the sad result of spreading the hemophilic gene. Who knows?

If it came to that, the Cambridge children (the grandchildren of King George III through his seventh sons) also owed their biological existence to the death of Princess Charlotte, since their parents completed the trio of rush weddings in 1818. In that case, the woman we know in history as Princess May of Teck, who eventually became the queen consort of King George V, would not have been born. And so forth ...

Interestingly enough, despite the fact that Prince George of Cumberland was also born in 1819, he did not owe his existence to the death of his cousin Charlotte, since his parents were already married by then (in 1815). As it was, his mother (born Duchess Friederike of Mecklenburg-Strelitz) was 37 years old at the time of her third marriage, and past the prime of her childbearing years. Her pregnancy was surprising and unexpected; but it resulted in the birth of a son and heir who was destined to become the last king of Hanover.

But he (the "blind king") could have become George V of Hanover AND Great Britain, had his Kent cousin -- like his Clarence cousins -- died in childhood: after all, Victoria suffered a near-fatal bout with typhoid fever, at the age of 11.

As it was, his grandson (the Duke of Brunswick) would marry Queen Victoria's great-granddaughter, Princess Viktoria Luise of Prussia. And so forth with our speculations ...