"The queen [Anne] shewed me a letter wrote in the king of France's own hand, upon the death of her sister; in which there was the highest character that ever was given to any princess of her age. Mr. Richard Hill came straight from the earl of Godolphin's... to me with the news, and said it was the worst that ever came to England. I asked him why he thought so. He said it had been happy if it had been her brother; for then the queen might have sent for her and married her to prince George, who could have no pretensions during her own life; which would have pleased every honest man in the kingdom, and made an end of all disputes for the future." - William Legge, 1st Earl of Dartmouth on Louisa Maria's death.
"If It Had Been Her Brother..."
Monarchs of England, Scotland and Ireland (-1707)
Anne (Stuart) 1702-1707
Monarchs of Great Britain and Ireland (1707-)
Anne (Stuart) 1707-1714
George I and Mary III (Hanover and Stuart) 1714-1727
Mary III (Stuart) 1727-1741
William IV (Hanover-Stuart) 1741-1775
William V (Hanover-Stuart) 1775-1784
Edward VII (Hanover-Stuart) 1784-1829
Mary IV (Hanover-Stuart) 1829-
Hanoverian Claimants to the British Throne (1727-) [Officially relinquished in 1832]
George II (Hanover) 1727-1760
George III (Hanover) 1760-1767
George IV (Hanover) 1767-1830
Henry IX (Hanover) 1830-1837
Charlotte (Hanover) 1837-
The Hanoverian Claim is now relinquished by that lineage, by the wise Henry in 1832 upon seeing the disaster that it brought the House of Hanover. Nevertheless, there are those unreconstructed Whig 'Commonwealthmen' who heavily disdain the 'crypto-Papist' Hanover-Stuarts that they would fuel the Hanoverian ambitions against the Parliamentary Settlement that declared that Mary's son with George I, the young Prince William, would be the heir.
The fact that William favoured the Tories, an abrupt shift from his father's pro-Whig favour which his mother dutifully continued in a lesser manner, fuelled those who believed the Hanover-Stuarts were just the ultimate success of the Old Pretender from beyond the grave, and the bitterness of Prince George, now King of Hanover, merely enabled those. The man never liked his father and his father him, hence why the elder George so easily accepted the Settlement declaring his children with Mary his English heirs, and it was why George rose his banners upon his step-mother's death.
Declaring William IV a 'false pretender' and accumulating those Whigs alienated by William's known Tory favour, he plunged England into the first of three Hanoverian Risings. Primarily based in the south of England, it would in many ways reflect the older Civil War loyalties, but this loyalty was weaker with Parliament fleeing north, declaring its ultimate loyalty with King William. George would be crowned in Westminster, but be forced to flee barely two years later as defeat upon defeat came after him, especially as the French made their move.
Mary was beloved in France, and George I was actually a cousin to the French Regent and actively worked with him to end the Spanish threat for good. With Spain defeated, Europe saw its jigsaw pieces shifting once again. The younger George garnered support with fellow German states and dug deep in the Hanoverian militia for the first rising, which made Louis XV calculate that if he backed the Hanover-Stuarts, Britain wouldn't work against France as much as otherwise. Legend has it that as the French approached London on William's invitation, George ordered the burning of the Palace of Westminster to 'reward Parliament like traitors are due'. Going up in ashes with it was the last bit of Whig support for the Hanoverians. Almost going up with it was a copy of the Magna Carta stored in a nearby building, but it was saved by French soldiers. That's how the popular myth tells it anyway.
After the defeat of the "Hanoverian Rising" and Hanover having the House of Hanover be replaced with a more... pliant head of state, the Tories entered a period of political ascendancy that lasted for decades. "George II" would wander around Europe, increasingly more interested in drink and mistresses than in a second try at his claim. Britain under the Tory Ascendancy in many ways reversed the Glorious Revolution, vesting more power into the monarch and away from the Parliament, which was now supposedly "non-partisan" with the old labels ostensibly gone. Nobody believed that.
With William IV settling in his role, Louis XV would find to his displeasure but not to his surprise that the traditional rivalries reignited, even if Britain were not eager to work with Germans those days. Indeed, the Tories and King William IV preferred to keep Britain aloof from the continent, preferring to focus on their imperial and trade policies rather than anything to do with the continent. This led to more of a focus on colonial expansion, and it led to a spark that led to a confrontation between Britain and France in the Ohio Valley due to colonial speculation.
With the Tories deploring the idea of raising an expensive army [which would need taxes] for some distant colonial output, it declined to send an army, rather preferring to send negotiators to the French which concluded with what the British Government deemed an amenable settlement that permitted mutual profit. This was considered a betrayal of the colonies and cultivate a belief that the Hanover-Stuarts were "in the pocket of the French". Such a small confrontation was widely published by outraged American press. The French being seen as having "won", led to a growth of resentment, as well as the escalation of normal anti-Catholicism to fervent levels in the Thirteen Colonies.
And in 1762, with the death of the first of the Hanoverian Pretenders, his grandson arrived in the Colonies in disguise. To the Americans, he was noted to be an intelligent and charismatic man who managed to quickly dominate the Congress and they quickly acclaimed him as the "true" King, crowning him George III, King of Great Britain, of Ireland and of America. That last bit was important, although historians doubt he would have genuinely followed up on this once he seized full power in Britain. The Continental Congress under President George Washington rose militia and declared an "uprising for the true liberty and security of the American People and the restoration of the true King of England".
The fact the Tories had to commit a volte-face and bring back a powerful army fractured them. The "Court Tories" that stayed in power were arguably just absolutist Whigs in how they accepted the Whig idea of a centralised state. The so-called "Non-Partisan Era" died quickly, and many ex-Whigs arrived into power. The Cabinet would achieve its modern prominence as it took on more and more duties in the war. The Second Hanoverian Rising was expensive to put down, and more or less broke the possibility of permanent British colonies in America.
After the war finished, William IV was noted to look much tired and having age catch up with him. An increased disinterest in further ruling started the modern age of "cabinet rule" and the rise of the cabinet as the true ruling force of Britain. At the head was his son Prince William, who ended up being crowned William V. However, he proved a sickly monarch, although one who desired to command his cabinet. After nine years, his Lord-President found him collapsed over his writing desk. This led to a rushed coronation for his son Edward as Edward VII.
The Edwardian Era is widely considered one of Britain's golden ages. A young uncertain man crowned in his twenties became the white-haired "Grandfather of the Empire", it is an era commonly recalled in many period dramas as one of turbulent romanticism. Helping the calm start to this era was the fact that the Hanoverian pretender after the execution of "George III" was his infant son. Commonly styled by the lingering Hanoverians as George IV, this boy was commonly brought up to believe that his destiny was to restore his throne. His brother William Henry noted that "George is surrounded by sycophants every minute of every day, bitter that our father was killed by the Stuarts. I worry for him, when his company is that deluded."
Under Edward VII, Britain became industrious, prosperous and yet greatly alone. The French Revolution in 1799 upset many and forced Britain, after so long, to be dragged back to continental matters. Forging ad hoc pacts with Austria, Russia and Prussia to put down the radicals, it forced the rise of a clear leader figure in the cabinet, which ended up the Lord-President of the Council in a natural elaboration of their role as presiding over the privy council. It is in this uncertain time of external war and internal peace that many a modern period drama prospers.
The third and last of the Hanoverian Risings was during this time. And it was the most pathetic excuse of a rising ever. The pretender, holed up in Sweden, purchased the use of a considerable company of mercenaries to take over London and declare it restored for the true King. There were one or two MPs and Lords sympathetic to the Hanoverians still, but the plot was caught out and the mercenaries utterly failed, and only in the end killed one man in their final battle. Unfortunately for all, that man was Crown Prince William. He died leaving behind a sole daughter, who immediately became heir. The final pretender to hold the claim would die of a heart attack while in a drunken fight in 1830.
As many coalitions were formed to defeat the French, Edward VII grew to dislike what he labelled as the "monkey parliament" and ceded all governmental duties he had to the Lord President, who was described by Edward, first factitiously then genuinely, as the "viceroy regnant", which would end up the official title of the head of government way later on as Tory concepts of a more powerful monarch grew to shift to a more powerful lord-president serving as viceroy. The first "viceroy regnant" would be that member of a long and loyal Tory dynasty, William Pitt the Younger, who would serve all the way to the fifth year of Edward's successor. When the French were finally defeated, Edward made clear he wanted Pitt to stay.
The ageing king, now in his sixties, grew more irritable and isolated with time, before succumbing to a quick illness and closing his eyes in 1829. He would not live long enough to see the final end to the Hanoverian dispute, to the famous "Audience of the Bloodlines" where William Henry, supposed claimant to the throne via the Hanoverian line as "Henry IX", swore fealty to Mary IV as the true monarch of Britain and abandoned all his claims ending the century-long divide between the eldest and youngest sons of George of Hanover.
William Henry would die in 1837, seeing the two lines reconciled at long last, and according to modern Hanoverians, which yes they still exist and are as tiresome as you believe they are, the claim went to his daughter who they deemed to be Queen Charlotte the First. Charlotte never expressed any interest in the throne, preferring to emphasise that her father renounced their claim and she plans to keep it that way. Meanwhile, her cousin Alexandria, marriage prospects now much bolstered by William Henry's reconciliation, would marry a German nobleman from present-day Thuringia in 1840.