Perspective: Questions of legitimacy, female rule and queenship are the stuff of both history and fiction.
The crux of the entire series revolves around the issue of succession, a theme that pervades almost every episode and drives the storyline throughout the first season. From the outset, the old and good king Jaehaerys, who has no surviving children, is tasked with naming a successor from among his grandchildren.
There are several different forms of primogeniture that have been practiced throughout European history. In England , the monarchy traditionally followed what is referred to as male-preference primogeniture, which bestows the throne unto the firstborn male child. The firstborn son would be first in line to inherit, and then the second and so on. For example, when King Richard I of England died without any legitimate children in 1199, his younger brother Prince John became king.
However, this move broke from a precedent set years earlier by one of Edward III’s predecessors that legally acknowledged the right of royal women to inherit the throne: by this statute, Lionel’s daughter Philippa should be next in line, as the children of the second son would outrank John . The crown passed to Henry IV, John’s son, after Richard was deposed.
These fears were realized in 1688 when the royal couple’s son James Francis Edward Stuart was born. With the birth of this new heir, the line of succession would be firmly in the hands of papists. As a result, several Protestant noblemen helped orchestrate a political coup, deposing King James and placing his oldest daughter Mary on the throne with her husband William in what has been referred to as the Glorious Revolution.