**Pre­tenders and Con­tenders**

From 1598 to 1613, Rus­si­a’s “Time of Trou­bles” saw at least three indi­vid­u­als, known as “False Dmit­ry,” claim­ing the throne, with the first False Dmit­ry seiz­ing it briefly. This chap­ter high­lights the his­tor­i­cal and ongo­ing occur­rences of indi­vid­u­als assert­ing rights to thrones or posi­tions they were not for­mal­ly enti­tled to, span­ning from ancient times to mod­ern days across var­i­ous coun­tries.

Louis Alphonse de Bour­bon leads a lux­u­ri­ous life as Span­ish nobil­i­ty while assert­ing he is the right­ful king of France, Louis XX, illus­trat­ing the per­sis­tent nature of such claims beyond the his­tor­i­cal con­text. Sim­i­lar­ly, in Brazil, Pedro Car­los claims the abol­ished Brazil­ian throne, under­scor­ing the chal­lenges monar­chies face even after their dis­so­lu­tion. The chap­ter fur­ther delves into his­tor­i­cal exam­ples, like the ancient Egypt­ian queen, Hat­shep­sut, who bold­ly declared her­self “king,” and the era of Queen Anne of Great Britain, who labeled her half-bro­ker, James Fran­cis Edward Stu­art, a “pre­tender” in 1708.

The Roman Empire’s 3rd cen­tu­ry cri­sis intro­duced a pletho­ra of pre­tenders to pow­er, as doc­u­ment­ed in the “His­to­ria Augus­ta,” reflect­ing the insta­bil­i­ty and pow­er strug­gles of the time. The nar­ra­tive of Mary Will­cocks, an Eng­lish­woman who tricked Almonds­bury’s res­i­dents into believ­ing she was the Princess of Cara­boo, illus­trates the audac­i­ty of imposters with no roy­al lin­eage.

The phe­nom­e­non of “antipopes” dur­ing the Mid­dle Ages, indi­vid­u­als claim­ing the papa­cy with­out elec­tion by the Col­lege of Car­di­nals, high­lights the con­test­ed nature of reli­gious lead­er­ship. In Rus­sia, fol­low­ing the exe­cu­tion of the roy­al fam­i­ly by com­mu­nists, claims to the throne con­tin­ued, notably by Maria Vladimirov­na, empha­siz­ing the endur­ing quest for lost monar­chy.

Fir­mus’s brief rebel­lion against Emper­or Aure­lian in CE 273 and the exis­tence of rival dynas­ties with­in the same coun­try rep­re­sent inter­nal chal­lenges to estab­lished author­i­ty. The chap­ter men­tions the relo­ca­tion of the papa­cy to Avi­gnon and Napoleon III’s suc­cess­ful claim to the French throne, show­cas­ing the com­plex­i­ty and vari­ances of con­tenders’ quests for pow­er.

Pre­tenders, often of noble or roy­al back­ground, dif­fer from imposters, who typ­i­cal­ly lack any roy­al lin­eage. Despite DNA evi­dence dis­prov­ing any Romanov sur­vivors post-1918, claims to their lega­cy per­sist, with sev­er­al women assert­ing they are Anas­ta­sia. This chap­ter encap­su­lates the endur­ing phe­nom­e­na of pre­tenders and con­tenders through­out his­to­ry, illus­trat­ing their impact on polit­i­cal and social land­scapes.