I realize, of course, that there are no guarantees. The two brothers were separated in age by only a year: although fraternal succession has been a common occurrence in royal history, it usually does not involve siblings close in age. Usually, the throne passes to the next generation: you've seen this in Hesse-Darmstadt (Grand Duke Ludwig III was succeeded by his nephew, son of his younger brother Karl) and Prussia (Frederick the Great was also succeeded by a nephew through a younger brother).
As such, it would have been a toss-up as to which brother died first, under the hypothetical scenario where Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent left the UK to settle in the land of her
German husband and cousins. Regardless of whether she managed to become the duchess consort of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and mother of a reigning duke there, she could still have contributed to the British royal succession by producing a daughter who married a hypothetical son, heir, and successor to the would-be Queen Elizabeth II (daughter of King William IV).
After all, the Cambridge marriage (which came to naught in producing an heir to succeeded to the British or Hanoverian throne as sovereign) produced a daughter who became a queen consort.
But it could also have resulted in introducing the hemophilic gene to the British royal family ... Given the statistics on infant and childhood mortality, I think the most reasonable point of speculation is the one where one of the Clarence children (there were four altogether) survived to adulthood, while Victoria (the only legitimate child of the Duke of Kent) was the one who died young.
Who knows? History would then focus on the great queen and remarkable reign of Elizabeth II (Hanover), as well as her descendants.
But if we maintain the real birth and death dates, Victoria would have been a mere footnote in history books .
Ernest would have survived Albert, and Victoria would not have been even the Dowager-Duchess.
Strictly the Duchess-Mother of Duke Edward of Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha and his siblings .
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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?
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