Who Would Be King of America if George Washington had been made a monarch?

Today I'm going to explore the question, who would be king of America today if George Washington had been made a monarch? The first thing you need to know is that there is no easy answer to this question. George Washington did not have any biological children, so even if there had been a King George I of America, it's not immediately clear who his successor might have been. That's why I've come up with not one, but three different scenarios based on three different relatives that he might have chosen. And the second thing you need to know is that this video is not meant to be taken seriously. Like all of my Who Would Be King videos, I'm doing this just for fun and perhaps to teach a bit of history along the way. Now it is true that in 1782, a US Army officer by the name of Colonel Louis Nicola did write a letter suggesting to George Washington that he accept the title of king. But Washington strongly rejected the idea and since then, the idea of an American monarchy has never been seriously suggested. But let's have some fun anyway. I've labeled the three lines that we're going to trace, the Senior Line, the Custis-Lee Line, and the Mount Vernon Line, and we're going to look at each one in turn. Before we look at the potential heirs of George Washington, let's first quickly look at his ancestors. The first member of the Washington family to live in what is now the United States was John Washington. He was born in England and first arrived in the colony of Virginia in 1657. There he ran a tobacco plantation, was a colonel in the local militia, and was elected to serve in the colonial government. As a plantation owner in early America, he obviously was also a slave owner, as was George Washington a few generations later. John's estate was inherited by his eldest son Lawrence who was George Washington's grandfather. Lawrence married Mildred Warner who happened to be a 12th generation descendant of King Edward III of England. This means that George Washington, like most US presidents, had a little bit of royal blood in him. Lawrence died when his middle son Augustine was just 4 years old. So Augustine, who was George Washington's father, was actually raised by some other relatives until he turned 18, after which he inherited some of the land previously owned by Lawrence and John. Augustine married twice. With his first wife, Jane Butler, he had two sons, as well as a few children who died young. So these two individuals here were half-brothers to George Washington. After his first wife died, Augustine married Mary Ball, George Washington's mother. Together, they had four sons, of which George was the oldest, and a daughter named Betty. Augustine died when George was only 11. At that point, his older half-brother Lawrence inherited the father's estate. Lawrence served in a war against Spain known as the War of Jenkins' Ear and ended up naming part of his land after his commanding officer, Edward Vernon. So from this point forward, the main Washington property was known as Mount Vernon. Lawrence had four children but all four died very young so when he himself died, the land was split between the next two eldest brothers, Augustine Jr. and George. August Jr. was supposed to get the main property, Mount Vernon, but he opted to take a different piece of land instead and this is why George Washington, the third son, ended up with the main estate. There is obviously a lot that I could say about George Washington, being that he is one of the most famous people in US history, but let me just hit the highlights. George served during the French and Indian War, in which the British defeated New France. He then ran his plantation, becoming very rich and becoming involved in politics. As tensions grew between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies, he sided with the revolutionaries and was eventually chosen to serve as the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Of course, the Americans won that war and George Washington ended up serving as USA's first president. Now here's where we're going to depart from actual history and enter alternative history. Let's imagine that instead of becoming president, he was made king and reigned until his death in 1799. What would have happened next? Of the three possibilities that I'm going to suggest with you, let's start with the one that I think is the least likely to have happened. It's the scenario shown in the middle in grey. As I mentioned, George Washington did not have any biological children. However, he did have stepchildren and adopted children. After the French and Indian War, he married a widow named Martha. Martha had two young children from her first marriage, John and his sister Patsy. These two became George Washington's stepchildren and were raised at Mount Vernon. John, however, died from an illness during the American Revolution. His two youngest children, one of which was his only son, were then adopted by George and Martha – Martha being the biological grandmother and George being the step-grandfather. That adopted son, born the same year that his father died, had been named after George Washington, his full name being George Washington Park Custis, Park Custis being the name he inherited from his biological father's line. When George Washington became president, young George was only 8 years old. He was raised in the presidential mansions and was thus a member of the very first First Family. But if George had been king instead of president, would he have chosen his adopted son as his successor, especially since this George was so young? Probably not, but let's imagine that he did. What would have happened next? Well, his adopted son would have reigned as George II for a very long time, 58 years, and then the throne would have passed to his only surviving child, Mary. And guess who the queen's royal consort would have been? None other than Robert E. Lee, the famous general who led the Confederates during the US Civil War. Now, we're dealing with alternative history here, so if America had been a monarchy instead of a republic, would it have even had a civil war? Perhaps in that scenario, you would have had a republican north, separating from a royal south. But let's imagine the country remained together, remained a monarchy, and ended up abolishing slavery without the civil war. What would have happened then? Well, Queen Mary would have reigned until her death in 1873, and then the firstborn son of Robert Lee, named George Washington Custis Lee, would have become George III. In real life, he didn't have any children, so let's assume in this alternative history that that was still the case. The throne would then have passed to his nephew, who was the third person to have the name Robert E. Lee. But in this scenario, he would be the first Robert to have been king, so he would have been King Robert I. Now obviously, if all of this had happened, you'd probably have ended up with different marriages, different children, and different lifespans. But again, we're just assuming that everything stays the same, except for the existence of a monarchy. In this case, Robert I would have been followed by his brother, who would have become George IV, and then by his son, Robert E. Lee IV, who would have been Robert II. Now, I wasn't able to confirm whether Robert E. Lee IV is still living or not. Maybe someone can let us know in the comments. If he is, he's currently 95, and according to this scenario, would be a longer reigning monarch than Queen Elizabeth II. If he's since passed away, the king, according to this first scenario, would therefore be his eldest son, Robert E. Lee V. This Robert E. Lee is a high school athletics director and was actually in the news recently, stating that he was supportive of the statues of his famous great-great-grandfather being torn down. Okay, so that was the Custis-Lee line, and like I said, is probably the least plausible of these scenarios to have occurred. The second line that we're going to look at is the line shown in red. I call it the senior line because it follows the senior-most biological line starting from George Washington's father, Augustine. In most royal dynasties, if a king dies without a legitimate biological heir, the throne usually passes to a younger brother or the younger brother's heir because kings usually don't have any older brothers because if you're the king, you were either the oldest brother to start with or your older brother died without any heirs and that's why you ended up as king. But in this case, King George I would have had an older brother with an heir and I think there's a good argument to be made that he would have passed the throne on to that senior biological line rather than to an adopted line or to the line of his eldest younger brother. Although Augustine Jr. was only his half-brother, whereas Samuel Washington was his full brother, Augustine Jr. and George shared the same father and therefore Augustine Jr.'s son, William, would have been seen as being the most senior male in the whole Washington family. In fact, George Washington's nephew, William, was the first name listed among the executors of George Washington's will. So if we imagine that William would have been the next king of America, the line would have proceeded as follows. There would have been King William I for 11 years, King Bushrod for 12 years, King Spotswood for 34 years, and then a King Bushrod II for a nice long 53 years. And these unusual names certainly would have set the American monarchy apart as being unique. But from this point, there are two different ways that history could have gone. I think it's most likely that if America had adopted a monarchy, it would have adopted a system of male preference primogeniture like Great Britain had at the time of the Revolution. Male preference primogeniture means that the throne always goes to a son unless there aren't any sons and in that case, it can go to a daughter. So this Bushrod Washington did not have any sons and therefore in this scenario, he likely would have been followed by a Queen Estella. Estella didn't have any children though so the throne after her would have passed to her male cousin named Lee before passing to Lee's daughter who would have become Queen Odell. After Queen Odell, we would get the current Queen which would be Queen Brinda. So under this scenario, we now have a Queen Brinda reigning since the year 2000 and we would have a new royal house, the House of Hansen named after her father, the husband of Odell. Now at this point, I should mention that all of the names at the bottom of this chart are all real people who live in the real world as private citizens. I'm therefore not going to give you much information about them because I don't want people tracking them down and doing what Tony Robinson did in Britain's Real Monarch. In that documentary, he showed up at some guy's house in Australia and said, hey, guess what? You're the real King of England. So yeah, please don't do anything like that. Now for those of you who are curious as to what would have happened had a male-only system been used, in that case the throne would have passed from Bushrod II to his brother who would have become King James and then it once again would have gone to King Lee, although in this scenario, King Lee would have reigned a little longer and would have been followed by his cousin's son, William, who would have become William II. But here, something interesting happens. William was actually the last male-only descendant of Augustine Jr. and therefore upon his death, the line actually would have jumped to a male descendant of George Washington's eldest younger brother, Samuel. So even if we had gone with George's younger brother to start with and had followed a strictly male-only succession, we would have ended up with this same person here eventually. And that person would have been King Paul. He would have reigned for 20 years and would have been succeeded by his son Richard, who would be King Richard and the current king. Note that this male-only scenario is the only one in which we get a House of Washington still in place. Okay, so that's kind of scenario 2a and 2b. We still have one more scenario to look at and it's shown in green on the right hand side and personally, I think it's the most plausible of them all, remembering of course that none of these theories are actually all that plausible. I call this last line of descent the Mount Vernon Line and as far as I know, it's never been suggested by anyone else in any various imaginary scenarios, whereas these lines have. The Mount Vernon scenario is based on looking at the will of George Washington for a clue as to who he might have chosen as his royal successor. In his will, he left the bulk of his estate, not to his eldest nephew, but to this nephew here named Bushrod, a different Bushrod than this Bushrod over here. The inheritance included the main Mount Vernon property, which is why I call this the Mount Vernon Line, but it also included all of the private papers of George Washington. We can therefore conclude that Bushrod must have been someone that George trusted and admired a great deal. Bushrod is also the only person in the Washington family, other than George Washington, to hold a really high ranking position in the US government. Bushrod served on the Supreme Court from 1798 to his death in 1829. He was appointed by the second US President, John Adams. Therefore, in this alternative world that we are imagining, I think there would be a strong case to be made that Bushrod was the kind of person that George Washington might have chosen as his royal successor. So, if he had, what would have happened next? Basically, we just have to trace the ownership of the Mount Vernon property. Bushrod didn't have any children, so after he died, Mount Vernon was inherited by his nephew, John Augustine Washington II. So we would have had a King Bushrod for 30 years and then a King John I for 26 years followed by a King John II for just 6 years. If we go back to actual history for a moment, I should mention that John A. Washington III was actually a Confederate officer. He died during the Civil War. He was also the last private owner of the Mount Vernon estate. He was unable to keep up with the maintenance of the property and so he petitioned both the federal government and the state government to purchase the estate in order to make it a historical site. Neither showed any interest though and therefore, instead, he ended up selling it to the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, who has owned it ever since and currently runs it as a charity. But back to the imaginary scenario. If John had been made king, he would have been followed by a King Lawrence or perhaps nicknamed King Larry and then by three more Johns. We would have gotten a John III, a John IV, and a John V. Now according to my research, this John A. Washington died in 2009 and left no biological heirs. So to find the most senior heir after this point, we'd actually have to go back a few generations and then trace down another branch of the family where we'd end up with a Mary Washington, who coincidentally served in several leadership positions over the years in the National Society of Washington Family Descendants. Now I wasn't able to find her obituary, so I assume she's still living. If she's not, the next person in line would be her son Lawrence. So we'd get a King Larry II. If anyone has any better information about this particular branch here, you can mention that in the comments. So there you have it. I've given you three possible scenarios, resulting in four possible candidates for the throne of America today if George Washington had been made king. Which line do you think would have been most likely? Do you support Queen Brenda, King Robert, King Richard, or Queen Mary? Let me know in the comments. If you find history, genealogy, and monarchies interesting, be sure to subscribe to the channel. If you check the playlists, you'll find that I have videos covering the family trees of famous dynasties from all over the world. And to see what else I'm up to, follow me on Twitter or Instagram. Thanks for watching.