Throughout the first two seasons of Outlander, we watched as the Jacobites tried to put a different King on the throne. Who did they want to be King of Great Britain?
The books do follow the real history of the time. The Battle of Culloden really happened, and yes, the British won. However, the actual man the Jacobites wanted to put on the throne didn’t fight in any of the battles of the ’45.
Bonnie Prince Charlie wasn’t the intended King in Outlander
It’s easy to think that the Jacobites wanted to put Bonnie Prince Charlie on the throne. Charles Stuart was there to “lead” the men, not that he did a very good job of it. He didn’t know Britain all that well, and he certainly didn’t really understand Scottish culture.
Yet, he wasn’t going for the crown for himself. He would say in Outlander that he was fighting for his father’s right on the throne. From the beginning, he made it clear that he believed his father should be King of Britain.
Who was Bonnie Prince Charlie’s father?
Charles Stuart’s father was James Francis Edward Stuart. He was the only son of James II of England and Mary of Modena. Before James came two sisters, Mary and Anne.
Shouldn’t that have made James the rightful King of England and Scotland? Well, yes, sort of. The problem was that James II and Mary of Modena were Roman Catholic. By this point, England and Scotland were Protestant lands. James was sure to be raised Catholic, and that didn’t work for most of the people.
There were also many rumors spread by the Protestants at the time of James’s birth. Before this, his mother had been through nine pregnancies that ended in miscarriages, stillbirths, and one with a child who died after just a few days. With the news of James being born, the Protestants believed that the child actually died and an imposter child was brought in. After all, only Catholics were there for the birth.
Then there was the rumor that James II wasn’t the father. That would make the new prince illegitimate.
There were attempts to quell the rumors, but nothing could put out that wildfire. It didn’t help that the British Protestants weren’t happy already having a Catholic monarch on the throne. The thing that appeased them was the belief that Mary would be queen, and she had been raised Protestant.
In the end, William of Orange led the Glorious Revolution, backed by the English and the Scots. James II and his family were forced to flee, except for Mary and Anne who were welcomed by the Protestants. William married Mary and the two ruled together. When they didn’t have any children, the crown passed to Anne.
The Catholic Scots viewed James Francis Edward Stuart as the rightful heir
However, there was a problem with the Catholics. Mostly the Scots, although there were some Irish and English, wanted to see a Catholic monarch back on the throne. They supported the claim that James Francis Edward Stuart had. It led to him being dubbed James III of England and James VIII of Scotland. By the Protestants, he was known as “The Old Pretender.”
And so started the Jacobite revolutions. The first one didn’t take place until after Anne’s death, though. Maybe he could have smoothly walked into the crown had he converted to Protestantism, but he refused. He believed others should change their sentiments to him. So, with the Protestant England refusing him the throne, they looked elsewhere.
It led to the Hanoverian line landing the crown. This angered many, and it led to the Jacobite rebellions. James did come to Scotland for the first rebellion in 1715. However, as he saw that it was a losing cause, he fled back to France. This led to some Scots gaining some ill feelings toward him, but not all of them. There were others who believed that the Stuarts should have remained on the throne. They fought to put James on the throne.
James didn’t come across for the second attempt. It was Bonnie Prince Charlie, who would have been James’s heir to the throne had the Jacobites succeeded. However, after Culloden, the relationship between father and son also suffered. James made Charles’s brother a Cardinal, effectively ending the attempts to put the Stuarts back on the throne, especially since Charles didn’t have any legitimate heirs at the time.
Sure enough, the fight for the Jacobites ended after Charles’s death. Without a legitimate heir and Henry being a Cardinal, meaning celibacy, there were no more of James’s children to fight for the throne.