Succession To The Throne : Some Thoughts On The Subject by Alfred N.Muggins : Part 1

      Prince Harry had found himself a bride from America, an actress, of all professions. Old King Henry would never have been allowed to marry an actress, although some might say that he did marry one in practice – Anne Boleyn. It could well have been that part of the reason he got rid of her was that she was a bit too much of an actress, and thought she could influence the running of the Kingdom through Henry, and having her own father Thomas Boleyn as one of Henry’s leading ministers.

    He wondered how Old Henry would have got on with a new wife like Meghan Markle? Probably she would have tried to take over his Kingdom and got her head chopped off even sooner than Anne Boleyn had. The similarities seemed quite fitting to Alfred, but perhaps, as always, his imagination was just getting a little too much the better of him, and running away with itself (he could not help the music flooding into his mind of the Rolling Stones playing ‘Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)’ pleasantly distracting him, or even the Temptations, whose song it actually was originally).

     But it all might have gone differently. Meghan might have been able to provide the King with the strong sons he so much wanted? This was something Alfred could not quite fully understand, but after all he was not a King himself, responsible for safeguarding the realm with a strong line of succession. Alfred thought it might have been nice if Henry had had a few daughters, because what could be nicer than daughters? They could have played happily together in the beautiful gardens of Henry’s Palaces and helped each other to govern the Kingdom fairly as they grew older.

      Why did Henry really need sons anyway? Was he trying to create a royal football team? In reality the daughters he did produce were every bit as effective rulers as the son Edward VI and other sons he might have had would have been, although the Succession admittedly remained a bit dodgy for both Mary and Elizabeth.

      Elizabeth finally cracked the Succession problem by giving England to a Scottish King when she died in 1603, who was in the lineage. This also solved the problem of disputes between England and Scotland, as the Scots could no longer complain that they were not ‘top dog’ in the relationship, although unfortunately that did not stop a lot of Scots from continuing to complain over the following 400 years.