On a dark and stormy December 22, 1715 (old calendar), King James VIII of Scotland, and III of England, set foot on Scottish soil for the first time in 27 years. He had been roving about in France plotting and searching for support to retake his Scottish and English throne after the death of his Protestant sister Queen Anne. Which was the big problem- James was as resolute a Catholic as his father James II had been. Father had fled England when William of Orange, his Protestant Dutch son-in-law, invaded. He joined up with his wife Mary of Modena and the little Prince of Wales in France, where Louis XIV treated him as the fellow monarch he was. But as far as the English Parliament was concerned James had abdicated his throne. James and his supporters said it wasn�t so.

His eldest sister Mary had then co-reigned with her husband William, and they both died without providing an heir. Their only Protestant nearest relation was his younger sister Anne. Anne had 17 children but none of them survived her. As her death approached the Whig government hurriedly brought in the next closest Protestant relative, George, the son of Sophie, Electress of Hanover.

But James had many adherents, Jacobite and others, who wanted a homegrown King. The problem was the Act of Settlement, which declared that all monarchs from now on must be Protestant, and must marry Protestants. James II got as far as invading Scotland before his venture fell apart, and he had died in Lorraine when the Prince of Wales was 13.

Despite the example of his father, James III made the same choice and would not renounce his religion for the sake of the monarchy. Jacobite loyalists and the Whigs in Parliament, (who only wanted a king to do their bidding), worked to raise armies in France, the Netherlands and Scotland. The object was to restore the Stuarts, and depose the House of Hanover. For years these characters plotted, lied, connived, intrigued and made threats and claims, until finally they convinced James, watching from afar, that his time had come. He had sailed from France and after days at sea eluding English vessels he and his five companions arrived at Peterhead. To his shock he found that the 10,000 man army promised was now 3,000, and that all the northern support had drifted away. He had been betrayed by his most trusted agent, Bolingbroke.

The Old Pretender was a gentleman and soldier of the old school, and he failed to take advantage of the fact that the person of the rightful king was actually on English soil. He failed to show sufficient strength of force. He didn�t appeal to the local powers for loyalty for his cause (which would have worked) when he first arrived. He also was too much of a gentleman to lay waste to the countryside in order to block the English troops heading up to capture him.

The Rising was over before it started and by February it became plain that James had better get safely away. He was the last of his Stuart line and if the Jacobite cause was to live to fight another day then he had better live himself. On February 4, 1716 he set sail from Montrose and landed back in France. It would be the same fate of his son, Bonnie Prince Charlie (Charles Edward Stuart), to try and fail again 30 years later.

From about the 12^th century on rules of succession had come into being; either sons followed fathers, or brothers followed brothers. However there was the exception of the usurper-royals, working the rules to convince everyone they were the legitimate heirs The English War of the Roses was fought between the Yorks and Lancasters because the laws of primogeniture were violated in 1399. Up until then the King had the prerogative of naming his own successor, who may not be the logical choice. Let�s see if I can make this simple for you.

1. Edward III and his queen Philippa had three sons, Edward (the Black Prince), Lionel (Duke of Clarence) and John of Gaunt (Duke of Lancaster).
2. The Black Prince had a son who became Richard II (reigned until 1399, was deposed and died 1400).
3. Lionel had a daughter named Philippa who married Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March. March�s son Roger had a daughter named Anne, who gave birth to Richard, Duke of York. Richard had three sons: Edward IV, George and Richard III.
4. Edward IV�s son Edward V succeeded his uncle Richard III in 1483. But it was then that this young princeling and his brother Richard Duke of York disappeared into the Tower of London, never to be heard from again. Or were they?
5. Edward and Richard�s sister Elizabeth married Henry Tudor, uniting the two Houses.
6. Back to the top: Henry IV was John of Gaunt�s son with Blanche of Lancaster. Henry�s son became Henry V. He married Katherine of Valois and their son Henry VI reigned nearly 40 years before being briefly deposed, and died in 1471 without an heir.
7. John of Gaunt married again to Katherine Roet. Their great-granddaughter was Margaret Beaufort.
8. Katherine of Valois married a second time to Owen Tudor. Their son Edmund Tudor married Margaret Beaufort.
9. Edmund and Margaret�s son was Henry Tudor.

In 1399 Henry, Earl of Derby deposed his cousin Richard II, convincing everyone with great effort that Richard was a bad example. However Henry was not the logical heir because Richard�s Uncle Lionel was older than Henry�s father John of Gaunt. Richard�s true heir was Lionel�s grandson Roger Mortimer.

Fast forward to 1483 when Edward IV died, leaving two brothers, George and Richard, who succeeded him as Richard III. But Edward had two sons and two daughters. The sons, aged 13 and 10, were imprisoned in the tower by their uncle, usurping the eldest�s rightful claim. But that was perfectly reasonable because, Richard declared, his brother�s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had been illegal because at the time of the marriage Edward had been contracted to marry someone else-therefore the children were illegitimate! He also had the son of his brother George Duke of Clarence imprisoned because Richard claimed that Edward IV himself had been the product of adultery, and wasn�t the real son of the Duke of York. Therefore, he pontificated, George�s heirs were guilty of treason by association. Whether these arguments were true or not, he held the brass ring from 1483-85.

Henry the Lancaster married Elizabeth the York after killing Richard III at Bosworth. But Henry was always plagued with Yorkist claimants, which he continued to suppress. The two that British schoolchildren learn about, but which are news to the rest of us, claimed to be the York heirs of Edward IV. They both turned out to be impersonators, but their stories were taken very seriously by the newborn House of Tudor, who was walking a fine line keeping all factions together.

Lambert Simnel claimed to be the son of George, Duke of Clarence, imprisoned by Richard III. The alleged Earl of Warwick first turned up in Ireland where his cause was supported by York interests there, plus possibly the Dowager Queen herself, now Henry VI�s mother-in-law. 2000 German mercenaries were brought over to Ireland, and Simnel was crowned Edward VI in Dublin. Coins were struck and a Parliament was summoned. The invasion of England commenced in June of 1487.

But Henry was having none of this. He trotted out the real Earl of Warwick to those who would know him. The fake Edward gained little English support, probably because German and Dutch forces embarking from Ireland, did. Henry made short work of this invading force at Stoke, and sentenced Simnel to life servitude in the Royal kitchens.

Enter another imposter in the mysterious person of a young Flemish male who eventually said his name was Piers Osbeck. But after years of indoctrination was convinced that he was really Prince Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. He confessed that he had been secreted from the Tower after his brother Edward was murdered, and had been wandering around Portugal in deep poverty since the age of about nine. When he was still a child he attached himself to the household of a Portuguese nobleman, who brought him to Ireland when he came as ambassador. Once there the wanderlust hit him again, and during one of his wanderings he had been mistaken for Limnel. Certain people, who he never exactly named, recognized his physical resemblance to the Duke, and taught him to be the Prince. In 1492 he headed to Antwerp, to his �aunt� Margaret, who maintained a Stuart court there.

Margaret hadn�t seen her nephew since he was seven years old, but she was a very religious woman and convinced herself that God had resurrected him and put him in her care for a reason. He was now 19 and ready to reclaim the York throne. She worked hard to have him accepted by European authorities and monarchs such as Isabella of Spain. There was even an arrangement for him to marry the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor. Over in England Henry VII kept a sharp eye on this gathering problem. He got ticked off with the Dutch over their support and placed an embargo on trade with them for a year.

In 1495, the Dutch, deciding he wasn�t worth it, sent �Richard� off on an expedition to claim his throne. He was met with great pomp and ceremony in Scotland by James III (shortly after his �coronation� at Scone), and married to a daughter of the old nobility. But it was necessary that James stay on good terms with Henry. A few skirmishes convinced both kings to patch things up. James sent Warbeck, wife and 30 followers off in a boat to Ireland. Osbeck mounted a landing in Cornwall and declaring himself Richard IV rode off to capture Exeter. He failed miserably, surrendering after a brief hideout in Beaulieu Abbey. Henry gave him the derisive nickname of Perkin Warbeck. He was held for two years, escaped twice and was eventually executed, along with the real Edward, Duke of Warwick, who had been getting in Henry�s hair as well.

Edward VI, son of Henry VIII, died young, but rumours still persisted that he lived, and was living somewhere, possibly Africa, waiting for the time when he would come back and claim his throne. This theory had legs because English Protestants then were horrified by the fact that with his death the dreaded Bloody Mary, who they secretly thought had him killed, would become Queen and unleash her promised reign of terror. No such rescue turned up.

Russian history has its share of royal fakes too. Take Ivan the Terrible�s successor for instance. Ivan had two sons and when he died in 1584 the eldest, Fyodor, succeeded him. His much younger brother Dimitri died under mysterious circumstances in 1591, probably on the orders of Fyodor�s brother-in-law Boris Godonov. Boris took the crown on Fyodor�s death in 1598. Five years later the servant of a Polish prince claimed he was Dimitri himself. As the Cossacks hated Godonov they supported him. So did the Poles after he converted to Catholicism.

In 1604 he began a march on Moscow, and the following year, after Boris died, he entered the city and was crowned Tsar. He reigned for a few months but then became an embarrassment. Those opposed to his Polish Catholic connections put it out that he was a false Tsar. An enraged mob stormed the palace, hanged the fake Dimitri, left his body in the courtyard for three days, burnt the corpse and fired his ashes by cannon toward Poland.

In 1921, a young woman who failed at suicide, and would never say who she was (although she was known as Anna Anderson), one day spoke, claiming to be Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Anastasia, daughter of the assassinated Tsar Nicholas II. She was supposed to have been assassinated along with the rest of her family in 1917. The Danish Ambassador convinced Nicholas�s sister Olga (then in exile in Denmark) to speak to her. For a while Olga wanted to believe in her, but there was the matter of the missing Romanov crown jewels that would be complicated by an existing heir, and Olga�s mother the Dowager Tsarina, refused to acknowledge �Mrs. Tschaikovsky� as her grand-daughter. The family dropped the matter in 1926, and Anna repudiated her claim in the 1970s. DNA testing found her to be simply a factory worker named Franziska Schanzkowska, which was suspected as far back as 1927.

There have been failures of those seeking to regain thrones they lost through their own cowardice or incompetence. There have been fakes who claimed to be descended through obscure routes to long dead monarchs of thrones no longer around. There have been pretenders to the thrones of Greece, Italy and even ancient Rome and Byzantium Looking for attention, wanting untold riches and power or just plain fantasists, hundreds of pretenders have come forward over the centuries. Some of them made claims based on connections to ancestors who never existed at all. Take the case of the present-day Stuart pretender.

Styling himself HRH Prince Michael James Alexander Stewart, 7th Duke of Albany, he traces his ancestry back in elaborate family trees going back to the early Celts. According to him he is descended from the son of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Now considering poor Anne lost her head over not being able to produce a Prince of Wales for Henry, that puts paid to that claim. But he doesn�t quit there. Also claiming that James II never officially abdicated his English throne, James III was the true King, not George I. Therefore his son, Charles Edward (the Young Pretender) was actually King Charles III.

Louis XIV of France had already suggested James III marry Princess Maria Clementina Sobieska of Poland. Louis died in 1715 and Louis XV�s Regent, the duc d�Orleans (you met him in the Jester�s previous two columns), not wanting to get on George I�s bad side, expelled James. He drifted to Rome and was taken in by Pope Clement XI. James� mother Mary died and the Pope himself, coincidentally, chose Princess Maria C. to marry James, the last of the Stuart main line. Despite alliances between Austria and England which tried hard to prevent this marriage, it took place in 1719.

The couple split up once over his affair with the Duchess of Inverness. Maria C. refused to have any Protestants around her at all. Albany claims that this marriage was dissolved, and that James remarried and there was a son who was brought up in secrecy, eventually fathering the Albany line However the reality is that James and Clementina got back together and had already had two sons, Prince Charles Edward and Henry. Henry grew up to be a Cardinal. Prince Charles Edward then succeeded his father as Charles III

He failed to regain the English throne in 1745 at Culloden. After five perilous months in the Scottish highlands, outrunning the troops on the hunt for his head, he made it back to France. He then embarked on an unimpressive career as a drunk and dandy about Europe.

Also according to Albany, Charles Edward�s first marriage to his mistress Clementina Walkinshaw was refuted, (although there is no record of the papal annulment that would have been necessary). His second to Princess Louise de Stolberg-Gueden (from which Albany claims to be descended) ended in divorce after the birth of a son. However many searches of the Vatican records have never shown any record of this marriage or of any births from it. There was also supposed to have been a third marriage. Well it�s complicated, and if you are interested he has written a 500-page book which explains it all, and nothing.

But whether all these be fakes, failures or both, they all believed their links to royal lines were legitimate, because if they didn�t believe it, or come to believe it, how could they effectively convince those who would help them? And so it continues because the romance of it appeals to those who would have it that history went another way.

But what is no fake is that the Jester hopes you all did not fail to have a lovely Christmastime, and that you will all enjoy a right royal splendid 2006.

God Bless those who serve overseas in war ravaged parts of the world in any capacity, and may they all come home safely.