Only Hendrik married (twice) but no child was born from either marriage. I don't believe any pregnancies were mentioned. His second wife remarried after his death and had two daughters from that marriage.
Had any of these four men or Prince Frederik had a living son that son would have succeeded instead of Wilhelmina and Adolph.
Her uncle Alexander was considered as a husband for Victoria of Kent by her uncle William IV and even for Isabel II of Spain. But no real attempts were made by either of his parents to marry him off.
Hendrik married first Amalia of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, a niece of Queen Adelaide through her mother. His second wife was Marie of Prussia, sister of the Duchess of Connaught. Hendrik's sister-in-law queen Sophie speculates in her letters about him proposing to Mary Adelaide of Cambridge. Later to be the mother of Mary of Teck.
Wiwill was sent to Russia but neither he or the intended bride were interested to take things further. I still have not been able to find out who the intended Russian bride was. His mother was keen to have him marry one of Victoria's daughters and either Alice or Helena would have suited her. Somehow those arranging the young prince of Orange's schedule decided to let him first go to the Paris of Napoleon III before visiting the British royals at Osborne House. He was also in the picture for Alexandra of Denmark as well as her youngest sister Thyra. There may have been an engagement with an English lady but in the end his desired bride countess Mathilde of Limburg-Stirum was not acceptable for either one of his parents and the government who could have paved the way for the couple refused to do so.
Alexander proposed to princess Frederica of Hanover and like his brother and father inquired after princess Thyra of Denmark. There is also the story that somehow he might have been interested in the infanta Maria Anna of Portugal who later ended up marrying Guillaume IV of Luxembourg. Though i find this latter candidate unlikely. His step-mother Emma of Waldeck-Pyrmont would have been suitable for him. I believe they would have suited each other well.
In the end five princes of the Netherlands who all lived long enough to escape the high infant mortality rates, failed to produce a male heir and that is why 76 years of male sovereigns The Netherlands started it's almost 123 years of successful female monarchs. Even a decade in his reign the current king still has trouble to match the success his mother, grandmother and great-grandmother made of their reigns.
Surviving children, nieces, nephews, and siblings (even younger) has been nothing unusual in history -- given the traditionally high rates of mortality among the young. But surviving GRANDCHILDREN (or great-nieces and great-nephews) is extremely rare -- except, of course, in cases involving infants or young children.
Consider the first two children born to the Petit-Dauphin of France (grandson of the famous Sun King Louis XIV): they both died within the lifetime of even a GREAT-grandfather. But that was no surprise, since one was an infant and the other a small child.
The fact was that two of the three sons born to King Willem III did survive to adulthood: nobody expected them to predecease their father -- much less their great-uncle. Although longevity is not entirely unheard of, in the days before modern medicine (it bears repeating that life expectancy statistics have been highly skewed in history because of high infant and childhood mortality rates), Prince Frederik would have had to live to the age of 93, in order to succeed his nephew to the Dutch throne. I do not personally know of any royal in history who lived that long.
In the end, the biggest factor contingent to the succession of the future Queen Wilhelmina was the death of her last half-brother -- something of a fluke.
Well Frederik did outlive quite a few of his male relatives:
Brother Willem II
Nephew prince Alexander
Nephew prince Ernst-Casimir
Nephew prince Hendrik
Great nephew Prince of Orange (Wiwill)
Great nephew prince Maurits
and he was only survived by:
Nephew Willem III ( by about 9 years)
Great Nephew prince of Orange (Alexander) by about 3 years
So he came pretty close. No only in the Kingdom of his father: The Netherlands but also as a potential king of the Belgians and King of Greece.
without surviving sons his heirs reign or reigned over:
Denmark
Norway
Belgium
Luxembourg
Albania
There are numerous twists and "what-ifs" in royal history like that: the list is endless. And it was not as though Frederik, who belonged to a previous generation, was expected to survive King Willem III -- a nephew. As it was, the latter outlived his uncle by nearly a decade.
In the end, I wanted to focus only on what DID happen: the actual ACCESSION of second sons -- not what might have happened under alternative scenarios.
Of course, Prince Frederik grew up as a *spare*, and in another thread I did bring up cases where such persons would have succeeded had they lived -- something we could say with hindsight. His situation might have been comparable to that of Prince Gustaf of Sweden, second son of King Oscar I, whose older brother (King Carl XVI) died without any surviving male issue. Certainly a younger brother stands a greater chance of surviving an older brother, than an uncle stands of surviving a nephew ...
Prince Frederik of the Netherlands, the second son of King Willem I declined to become king of Greece. Had he lived longer he would have become king of the Netherlands.
His nephew Willem III died in 1890 having outlived all three of his sons with his first wife Sophie. The youngest died in 1884. Had Willem III died a year later and had Frederik survived he would have become king.
From Frederik's marriage to his first cousin Louise of Prussia four children were born. Louise, Willem, Frederik and Marie.
Both sons died as children. Louise married Carl Bernadotte the oldest son of Oscar I of Sweden and Norway. When her husband succeeded she became Queen of both nations.
She died in 1871 so would not have been her father's heiress. Neither would her only surviving child Louisa Bernadotte by marriage crown princess and later queen of Denmark, mother of Christian X of Denmark and Haakon VII of Norway, grandmother of Olav V of Norway, his wife Martha of Sweden, Frederik IX of Denmark and Astrid, queen of the Belgians.
The heiress of Frederik of the Netherlands would have been his younger daughter Marie. The semi salic law speaks of the female closest to the last sovereign so as a daughter she would go before her niece.
Marie married Wilhelm von Wied brother of the first Queen of Romania (Elisabeth/Carmen Sylva). Their oldest son Frederik (II) married princess Pauline of Wurttemberg herself a first cousin of Wilhelmina of the Netherlands.
When was the last time a second son succeeded to throne as sovereign, in each of the various European dynasties? Of course, one should be careful in qualifying the position of *second son* in a family, for reasons that infant and childhood mortality rates have traditionally been very high throughout history. So to be practical, I'm restricting discussion only to royals who survived at least early childhood -- meaning the first 10 years of life. If, say, a prince was technically born as the third son to his parents, but one of his older brothers was stillborn, then he basically counts as a second son.
UK: King George VI
Norway: none since the house of Glücksburg came to the throne (King Haakon VII doesn't count, despite being born a second son, for reasons that the particular point of focus here is the Norwegian throne to which he got elected -- not Danish, which he never occupied)
Denmark: none since the house of Glücksburg came to the throne (it would have been Prince Knud, but for the 1953 constitutional amendment that changed the succession law)
Sweden: none since the house of Bernadotte came to the throne (King Oscar II was born as the third son of King Oscar I, with both older brothers surviving to adulthood)
The Netherlands: none since the house of Orange came to the throne
Belgium: King Albert II
Spain: King Carlos IV (his own second son and namesake attempted to claim the throne, thereby igniting the Carlist wars in the country, but never succeeded)
Luxembourg: none since the house of Nassau-Weilburg came to the throne
Liechtenstein: Prince Franz I
Monaco: can anybody fill me in on this?
What about the non-reigning houses? I believe that in Portugal, it was King Luis I; in Russia, it was Czar Alexander III.
I'm less clear about German and Italian houses -- excepting the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria, where that distinction would be King Otto.
Austria is tricky, because the Habsburgs were originally Holy Roman emperors (elected), and the dynasty branched out -- just like the Bourbons.
Is all this correct? Can anybody fill me in on the dynasties of Germany and Italy?
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