Who Has the Best Claim to the Title of Roman Emperor?

[Vetus Ordo]

Who Has the Best Claim to the Title of Roman Emperor?

Amusing video. Take your pic between 5 different candidates, to wit:

Jean-Christophe Napoléon, Karl von Habsburg, Felipe VI, Dündar Ali Osman or Andrew Romanov.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhu66Q8rfhI[/yt]

[TheReturnofLive]

Who Has the Best Claim to the Title of Roman Emperor?

Amusing video. Take your pic between 5 different candidates, to wit:

Jean-Christophe Napoléon, Karl von Habsburg, Felipe VI, Dündar Ali Osman or Andrew Romanov.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhu66Q8rfhI[/yt]

Neither - let's have the Pope establish a Russian Greek Rite Catholic Tsardom in Russia, and establish the Polish-Lithuanian-Muscovite Commonwealth run by the Jesuits. Something along the lines of "Russian Sunrise: Part 1 and 2," one of the most obsurd - I mean possible - books to have ever been written. We can have the "Putin" dynasty after God strikes Pope Francis with lightning, Pope Pius XIII ascends to the throne, consecrates Russia to the Immaculate Heart, and Putin converts to Russian Greek Rite Catholicism and he burns all the remaining Orthodox and Old-Believer heretics.

https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Sunrise-Part-One-Two/dp/B00FNCMNBY

(If something like this does somehow happen, I probably will revert to Catholicism and pledge my loyalty to the Pope)

[mikemac]

I thought Russian Sunrise was a pretty good fiction novel.

[Non Nobis]

I thought Russian Sunrise was a pretty good fiction novel.

Reading it did give me the impossible dream of a situation such as TheReturnofLive described.  Someday God will show us His (Catholic) solution and reasons for permitting the problems of the Church, and they will be far better than any fiction. They are worth waiting patiently for, walking by faith not by sight. We will know them in heaven even if not in this life.

[diaduit]

Did ye see this wedding took place last week. A Habsburg and Bonaparte descendents got married

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.vanityfair.com/style/2019/10/jean-christophe-bonaparte-countess-olympia-wedding/amp

[diaduit]

Also I pick the Habsburg line, I cried reading about poor Emperor Charles and his wife Zita after WW1. They were left penniless and she was expecting her 8th child when he died. I know my vote has an air of x factor to it (saddest story wins) but I'd love to see some retrospective justice done to him . Rip.

[Michael Wilson]

Did ye see this wedding took place last week. A Habsburg and Bonaparte descendents got married

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.vanityfair.com/style/2019/10/jean-christophe-bonaparte-countess-olympia-wedding/amp

Napoleon Fathered a child with Marie-Louise, Arch-Duchess of Austria; their son's name was Napoleon II; he was 21 years old at the time of his death (1811-1832).

[diaduit]

Did ye see this wedding took place last week. A Habsburg and Bonaparte descendents got married

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.vanityfair.com/style/2019/10/jean-christophe-bonaparte-countess-olympia-wedding/amp

Napoleon Fathered a child with Marie-Louise, Arch-Duchess of Austria; their son's name was Napoleon II; he was 21 years old at the time of his death (1811-1832).

He's a descendent from Napoleon's brother who was crowned king I think around mid 19th century.

[drummerboy]

Didn't watch the video yet but wouldn't it almost by default go to Karl von Hapsburg, due simply to the fact that the Hapsburg's had the longest continuous line (actually reigning in power that is, the empire being dissolved in 1920 vs 1786 [?] when Louis XVI was executed), and they, the Hapsburgs, have the most credible viable link to Charlemagne, of course crowned by the Roman Pontiff. 

Besides, I'm personally involved, as most of my ancestry comes from former Hapsburg lands (Bohemia and Austria), so of course have to root for my would be emperor...

[Prayerful]

Roman Emperors did not really have any concept of legitimacy, so certainly 'no simple, clear-cut answer.' Emperors usually took power because army officers saw an opening. In a way Napoleon Bonaparte captured some of sense of power as being the gift of fortune. Septimius Severus deposed and killed Didius Julianus, who bribed his way to power, but decided to be unaccountably mean with the Praetorian Guard, and not pay the promised donative, and so Septimius Severus was close by with troops. His hope of remaking the Guard with more loyal men proved futile, as shortly after his ill-fated and mutually hating Caracalla and Geta, the Praetorians continued to make and unmake Emperors until Constantine finally dissolved the unit and demolished their fortress, the Castra Praetoria. Maximus Thrax who was a sort of wandering circus strongman who impressed Septimius Severus enough to the given an army commission, was in a way an exemplar. This Goth or Thracian was a skillful soldier, and a fervent pagan and persecutor of Christians who retained loyalty among senators like later Emperor and arch-persecutor Decius, in spite of his violence towards the Senatorial class whose money he wanted and whose culture and snobbery he apparently loathed. Roman dynasties like the Julio-Claudians or heirs of Constantine or Theodosius were fairly sub-par.  The ability to weld violence and opportunity together made Emperors, not ancestry.

In comparison that bunch of cipher royals (the Spanish king no longer being the most Catholic King is appropriate with Felipe VI who probably is as Catholic as Macron, Trudeau or Francis)  and Euro-aristos don't strike me as being Emperor material. If Erdogan decided to make his neo-Ottoman fantasies real, as a distraction from economic and political problems, Dündar Ali Osman Osmano?lu could do exactly nothing. It is an interesting question but the answer doesn't really matter.