Category talk:Pretenders (Fictional Work)

To what throne or thrones did Isabella and Albert pretend? The English? While our definition is none too exclusive I'm pretty certain someone who actually sits on the throne and controls all or most of the kingdom is not a pretender, even if he sits there illegally. (Though I guess that precludes us from calling Gilmer a pretender. Maybe not, though: He only controlled the capital, and none too securely at that.)  Otherwise. . . Plantagenets, or rather aristocrats whose family ties to that line, were about as distant and dodgy as Henry VII's, no more and no less, maintained that Henry VII was a pretender and wanted to restart the Wars of the Roses in order to replace him. Some of them were still hanging around when Henry VIII came to power: Was he a pretender? (He reacted to such accusations with all the fury and bombast of someone who might have been nagged by a belief that they could be true. His meddling in the investigations and trials of the Duke of Buckingham and the Countess of Salisbury, which both resulted in convictions on charges of high treason and executions, were flagrant miscarriages of justice.)

And Elizabeth was certainly a pretender: Mary Queen of Scots called her such (however reluctantly). She had the support of Henri II of France, the Pope, and quite a large segment of Catholic England in doing so. But step into England at any point after Elizabeth's coronation and there was no doubt who was actually in charge.

And of course Napoleon's claim to the French monarchy was damn near as pretentious as Gilmer's. Turtle Fan 20:38, February 7, 2011 (UTC)