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Do you know this man? He is the rightful King of England
.. according to some, at least. But who is he? No, he is not a close relative of Chris Walken. He is His Royal Highness Franz Bonaventura Adalbert Maria Herzog von Bayern, or Franz, Duke of Bavaria, for short. But he is also known, at least among people who consider themselves Jacobites, as King Francis II of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland ... and the rightful heir to the throne of England.
To understand how this mild-mannered aristocrat (who spent part of his childhood in a Nazi concentration camp) with no legally-enshrined noblesse, is connected (in the minds of some) to the throne of England, we have to go back in time to the year 1688. England had been a Protestant country since Henry the VIII's Reformation Parliament in 1529 -- almost one hundred and fifty tumultuous years. And the past 83 years of that time was characterized by the deeply-conflicted relationship between the English Parliament (composed of the leading aristocrats of England) and the King. After the last Tudor monarch Elizabeth I died without issue, the throne was assumed by the king of Scotland, who became known as James I of England and the founder of the Stuart line in Britain. The Stuarts brought with them a tradition of asserting claims of the divine right of kings, which rankled (to say the least) the independent-minded and largely Protestant Parliament. By the reign of Charles I, the conflict had grown so intense that war broke out between Royalist and the Parliamentary forces. The English Civil War (or wars, more accurately), which lasted from 1642-1651, led eventually to the beheading of King Charles. For a brief period afterward (1649-1660) England was ruled by no king; but the ineffectiveness and cruelty of the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell so soured belief in Parliamentary rule, that monarchism again became fashionable. So it was that in 1660, the next Stuart king, Charles II returned from his exile in the Netherlands, to a restored monarchy.
From the 1660s through the 1680s, things between Parliament and the Stuarts went somewhat better. However, by the late '80s, a full-blown crisis was developing. When Charles II died suddenly of kidney disease in 1685, he left no legitimate heirs, and the throne was assumed by his younger brother, James II -- who some ten years earlier had converted to Roman Catholicism. The notion of being ruled by a Catholic king did not appeal to the Parliament in the slightest. But James did little to assuage Parliament's ire: he allowed Roman Catholics to hold high office, and received representatives from Rome. But it was his suspension of religious laws limiting the practise of Roman Catholicism and some forms of Protestantism in England (the Declaration of Indulgence) in 1687 that proved the straw to break the camel's back. In the early summer of 1688, a small contingent of Protestant noblemen approached William of Orange, the reigning stadtholder (or regent) of the Netherlands. William was an arch-protestant and an efficient ruler with experience in war, but his greatest asset was that he was married to Mary Stuart, the daughter of Charles II, and niece of James II. The meeting led eventually to William and Mary's landing in England with a small military force, and in 1689, they were declared co-regents, the throne having been absented by a fleeing James II.
These events, which came to be known as the Glorious Revolution, marked a change not only in dynasty, but in the power balance between the king and the Parliament. They are often pointed to as the beginnings of England's modern system of constitutional monarchy. But they also herald the beginning of another set of very different beliefs about who should rule England. For James II Stuart himself never accepted the terms under which the English Parliament had declared his abdication of the throne. And though he was decisively defeated on the battlefield in the Battle of the Boyne, he went to his death in 1701 believing that the crown of England was rightfully his. This belief was passed on to his son James and his grandson Charles ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") who both made unsuccessful military attempts at regaining their crown. But it was not just pretenders to the throne who took up the Stuart cause. Jacobitism (from the Latin form of the name James) was to persist long afterwards. It was perpetuated, in part, by foreign powers as a means of destabilizing British politics, but also by Scottish nationalists (who looked to the Stuarts as the legitimate rulers of Scotland), and in later times by a romantic and perhaps nostalgic view of kingship. There remain, to this day, some who identify themselves as Jacobites.
All of this, however, does not answer the question of how the throne of England can be traced to Duke Franz. To understand this, we must look at the complex rules of succession, whereby noble titles are passed down, from generation to generation, and can even be passed from wife to husband, much like inherited china or other family heirlooms. When Prince Charles II died in 1788, the Stuart claim passed on to his younger brother Henry, a relatively pacific Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. Henry accepted the title, but outside of calling himself Henry IX, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, he did nothing to actually reclaim the throne. When Henry died in 1807, the claim passed to his second-cousin Charles Emmanuel of Savoy. Charles Emmanuel was himself the hereditary heir to another empty throne, that of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, which had been overthrown by the French under Napoleon in 1796. Charles Emmanuel abdicated his claim to the throne of Sardinia after the death of his wife in 1802, becoming a Jesuit novitiate; upon his death in 1819, his younger brother Victor Emmanuel became the next-in-line to possess the Stuart claim; thence it was passed hereditarily through the family of Savoy, then through marriage in 1867 to then through marriage in 1867 to Ludwig III, the last king of Bavaria. When Bavaria became part of the Weimar Republic in 1918, the Stuart claim was held by Ludwig's son Rupprecht. Rupprecht is our Franz's father. Thus, the logic of aristocratic succession has enabled the Stuart line to live on, in belief at least, long after the Henry IX, the last to sign his letters with "R" for "Rex" had passed away.
To my knowledge, Duke Franz has never publicly made any claim to the British Throne. And the remaining Jacobites do not seem to be interested in staging another rebellion to bring him back to power. Yet, interestingly enough, were he to do so, he might find some competition right in his own country. For Franz is not the only German semi-noble who maintains a claim (however slender) to Windsor Castle. For example, in Hildesheim, Germany, lives Prince Ernest August of Hanover (full name, Ernst August Andreas Philipp Constantin Maximilian Rolf Stephan Ludwig Rudolph, age 24), who is 386th in succession to House Windsor , being a direct descendent of Queen Victoria's daughter Victoria (who married Kaiser Wilhelm II). That's really only 30 or so re-enactments of Kind Hearts and Coronets away from royal rule.
Act repeal could make Franz Herzog von Bayern new King of England and Scotland
Daily Telegraph
Gordon Brown is considering repealing the 1701 Act of Settlement as a way of healing a historic injustice by ending the prohibition against Catholics taking the throne.
But doing so would have the unforeseen consequence of making a 74-year-old German aristocrat the new King of England and Scotland.
Without the Act, Franz Herzog von Bayern, the current Duke of Bavaria, would be the rightful heir to the British Crown under the Stuart line.
The bachelor, who lives alone in the vast Nymphenberg Palace in Munich, is the blood descendant of the 17th-century King Charles I.
"If it [the Act] goes then the whole Catholic line is reinstated," said Prof Daniel Szechi, a lecturer in early modern history at the University of Manchester.
"Franz becomes the rightful claimant to the throne. We would just exchange one German family for another one."
The Act was introduced as part of the power struggle between Parliament, the Christian churches and the monarchy, then dominated by the House of Stuart.
It prohibits any Roman Catholic from having access to the throne, even through marriage. Once a person marries a "Papist" they shall be "for ever incapable to inherit, possess or enjoy the Crown", it asserts.
READ MORE
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1584184/Act-repeal-could-make-Franz-Herzog-von-Bayern-new-King-of-England-and-Scotland.html 
