Prince Michael Stewart of Scotland

Official Home Page of the Royal House of Stewart

In June 1992, HRH Prince Michael James Alexander Stewart, 7th Count of Albany (Scotland) was elected President of the European Council of Princes -- a constitutional advisory body within the European Union. In this regard, he succeeded the Imperial and Royal House of Habsburg Austria, who had retained the office from 1946. The new appointment held significant political implications for Scotland because, in unanimously electing Michael of Albany, some 32 sovereign houses openly proclaimed the continuing de jure Scots monarchy to an international audience; a royal dynasty which, according to British academic historians, had long been extinct.

The Council's recognition of a royal Stewart (Stuart) came as no surprise in Europe, but it was a startling revelation to many people in America, Britain and the Commonwealth, who had heard little about the exiled Stewarts since the days of Bonnie Prince Charlie. However, in a direct line from King Robert II (founder of the Royal House of Stewart in 1371), Prince Michael is the seventh legitimate descendant from Charles Edward Stuart, and is the prior legal claimant in the Scottish succession, as confirmed by document under International Law.

For nearly 200 years it was officially portrayed in Britain that the Scots royal line ended while in exile. But this disinformation was a product of Georgian and Victorian propaganda; a deceit which, until fairly recent times, was sustained by consecutive Westminster governments. Dutiful historians have long perpetuated the myth that Charles Edward Stuart and his brother, Henry Benedict, were the last of the succession; claiming that the Scottish heritage was passed to the Royal House of Sardinia in 1807. But the legitimate Stuart line did not become extinct, and the dynastic legacy was legally inherited by no other house. It was transferred only in the minds of fearful Westminster politicians who schemed and plotted to safeguard their alternative Germanic regime; the House of Hanover.

One might ask why there was any need to create a diverted succession;for when other royal lines have truly expired, they have been allowed to disappear quite naturally. No one politically contrived to preserve their successions in other family descents unless there were relevant female-line marriages. But there was no such marriage in the Stuart succession; the Georgian Parliament quite simply undertook to manufacture a situation by misappropriating Wills and Testaments to their own strategic advantage. Why would they do that? Because, after nearly a century of Hanovarian rule in Britain, the exiled Stuarts still posed an enormous threat in terms of their continued popularity at a social level, and this was most embarrassing to King George III and his ministers.

Not surprisingly, the Scots had been most displeased at the loss of their traditional royal dynasty in 1688, and from that time a series of related revolts took place; the Jacobite Risings. Perhaps the best known of these remains the unsuccessful campaign of 1745, led by the deposed King James VII's grandson, Charles Edward Stuart; fondly remembered as Bonnie Prince Charlie. The exiled Charles Edward died in 1788, by which time the Stuarts were widely supported not only in Scotland, but in England, Wales and Ireland. Stuart support was also widespread abroad, particularly in America, where Scots Jacobites had been at the forefront of the War of Independence. It was, therefore, thought expedient by the Georgian ministers to pretend that the descendant Stuart line had terminated at Charles death. His royal inheritance was said to have passed to his brother Henry, a childless cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church; and then when Henry died in 1807 the direct family succession was declared extinct by the Westminster Parliament.

The fact was, however, that not only was Charles Edward legally married at his death to Marguerite Audibert, Comtesse de Masillan, he also had a legitimate son by their marriage and a son who succeeded him as the 2nd Count of Albany. Both Charles Edward and his brother Henry had specifically nominated this son, Edward James, Count Stuarton, in their wills; but the British Government chose to disregard the nominations. Instead, they submitted that the Stuart heritage had passed to an ex-king of Sardinia, who actually wrote to Westminster denouncing the falsehood because he knew the Stuart heir to be alive and well. Notwithstanding this, the politicians pursued their deceitful course, and now the Stuart legacy is reckoned to have progressed to the Duke of Bavaria.

In reality, had the Stuart line truly become extinct there would have been absolutely no need for any Hanovarian strategy to a diverted succession; the line would simply have concluded with Charles Edward, and that would have been the end of it. As it was, the diversionary tactic was deemed necessary to maneuver Prince Edward James out of the picture as far as the British people were concerned.

From that time, there were a number of Jacobite attempts to reintroduce Stuart awareness in Britain, but one way or another those attempts were confounded by Hanovarian agents. In Europe, however, the story has been rather different, and having succeeded as the 7th Count of Albany, Prince Michael Stewart elected to return to Scotland in 1976. In the footsteps of his illustrious ancestor, Bonnie Prince Charlie, he returned specifically to champion the Scottish Nation in its continued struggle for justice and a rightly deserved recognition on the world stage. Now, after more than two decades he is still in Scotland, and has met with no substantial opposition from the Westminster Government or the reigning Royal House.

Next spring, Prince Michael's book "Scotland - The Forgotten Kingdom" will be internationally released by Element Books, and this will provide a distinctly new insight into Scottish affairs, being a blow-by-blow account of family record and experienced fact, rather than the politically contrived fiction which has become so familiar.

Sir Laurence Gardner
Chevalier Labhran de Saint Germain
Presidential Attache to the European Council of Princes

JAMES VI (I of England) - 1567-1625
= Anne of Denmark

CHARLES I - 1625-1649
= Henriette Marie de France

JAMES VII(II) [2nd son] - 1688-1701
= Marie Este of Modena

JAMES VIII(III) [Titular King] - 1701-1766
= Marie Clementina Sobieska of Poland

CHARLES III EDWARD - 1766-1788 - 1st Count of Albany
= Marguerite Dee Audibert de Lussan, Comtesse de Massillan [2nd Wife]

EDWARD JAMES STEWART - 2nd Count, Prince & High Steward of Scotland - 1786-1845
= Maria Emmanuel Pasquini

HENRY EDWARD BENEDICT - 3rd Count, Prince & High Steward of Scotland - 1809-1869
= Agnes Beatrix de Pescara

CHARLES BENEDICT JAMES - 4th Count, Prince & High Steward of Scotland - 1829-1887
= Louise Jeanne Francoise Dalvray

JULIUS ANTHONY HENRY - 5th Count, Prince & High Steward of Scotland - 1874-1941
= Marie Joanna Vandenbusch

JULIUS JOSEPH JAMES OF ANNANDALE - Prince of Scotland [2nd son] - 1906-1985
= Germaine Elisa Segers de la Tour; Auvergne - Princes of Sedan, Duchess of Albany

RENEE JULIENNE - Lady Derneley, Princess Royal of Strathearn - 1934-
= Baron Gustave Lafosse de Chatry

MICHAEL JAMES ALEXANDER STEWART - 7th Count of Albany, Prince & High Steward of Scotland - 1958