Unexpected Successor: Difference between revisions
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* In ''Stardust'', after the king dies, his sons kill each other so the remaining one can take the throne. They all end up dead, but Tristan's mother reveals that she is the king's only daughter, meaning that Tristan is the only surviving male heir and thus, the new king.
* This is the fuel that drives the plot of Mr. Deeds (and by that virtue [[Mr. Deeds Goes to Town]]). Upon the untimely [[Family-Unfriendly Death|freezing-at-the-top-of-Everest]] of Preston Blake, the entirety of Blake Media and its [[Fiction 500|vast fortune]] now belongs to the only known relative of Blake, Longfellow Deeds (played by [[Adam Sandler]], or by Gary Cooper in the original film), a greeting card writer and pizza shop owner from a small town in New Hampshire. This is played twice, being that {{spoiler|in the climax of the film, when Deeds gives up and leaves town, he leaves the company up to his [[Evil Lawyer Joke|crapsack lawyer]], who tries to fire EVERYONE (here meaning 50 thousand employees). Just before he takes control, Deed's girlfriend pops back up with Blake's diary and a worker's manifest, which points to... Blake's longtime butler, John Turturro, who may very well be his son!}}
* Michael Corleone was
* Used as a one-off joke/[[Take That]] at the end of ''[[My Fellow Americans]]''. {{spoiler|Because they were corrupt and caught,}} The President and Vice President both resign. Former Presidents Kramer and Douglas (the protagonists) realize that that means the Speaker of the House is next in line, and Douglas remarks "Oh no, not '''him!'''". At the time of filming, the speaker was Newt Gingrich.
* ''[[Kull The Conqueror]]'' starts with the eponymous barbarian (played by [[Kevin Sorbo]]) being denied in joining the king's army, as all of them are noble-born. Then the king goes berserk and murders most of his successors before being mortally wounded by Kull. While the captain of the guard and a nobleman bicker over who should claim the crown, the king decides that all three should be punished and gives the crown to Kull before dying (believing that Kull will hate being king). The priesthood approves, and, suddenly, the captain of the guard must bow down before a barbarian he has just rejected from the army.
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** King Robert Baratheon hails from a cadet branch of the Targaryen line, so his succession was just as unlikely. By all accounts he graciously accepted the position of King after he smashed the Targaryen dynasty, but before he could even be crowned there were a few tense moments where anyone from Ned Stark, Tywin Lannister, and even Jaime Lannister could have proclaimed themselves king, but didn't. Then there's also the unfortunate fact the legitimate successor that he killed (Rhaegar Targaryen) would have been a perfectly decent king compared to his father Aerys.
** Later, in the North, Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North at the start of the books, has five legitimate children (three boys, two girls), an illegitimate son and a younger brother. Both brother and bastard son have taken the vows as members of the Night Watch and are therefore removed from succession (Jon Snow, the illegitimate son couldn't have inherited anyway). {{spoiler|After Lord Eddard is executed, Robb, his oldest son becomes King in the North (the old title his family held before the Tagaryen conquest). His younger brother Bran is his heir until he has children of his own. Then both younger brothers are presumed dead, and succession passes to the oldest sister. The younger sister is also considered dead by this point. Somewhat desperate, the young king decides to legitimize his brother (the uncle is also missing by now) and name him heir. He then dies. So, Jon Snow is the king in the north and doesn't know it... Talk about unlikely.}}
** Daenerys Targaryen has taken to calling herself "The Queen Across the Water", and has assumed the mantle of the Targaryen heir apparent in exile after her older brothers and nephew are each killed before they could assume the throne from their father/grandfather, King Ayres Targaryen II. As Dany hasn't reclaimed the realm of Westeros yet (the possibility of it even happening is still very much in doubt) she's more of an
*** In ''A Dance with Dragons'', we learn that {{spoiler|her nephew, Aegon Targaryen, actually survived and has been living in hiding, which makes ''him'' first in line for the Targaryen succession, as the eldest male descent of the last Targaryen king. This all only makes Dany ''even more'' unexpected.}}
* In ''[[I, Claudius]]'', Caligula is dead, and some of the conspirators who killed him are killing every member of Caligula's family they can find. The last thing they expect is the Praetorian Guard to declare Caligula's harmless uncle Claudius emperor.
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== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
* An arc in ''[[Doonesbury]]'' had the characters (during the Reagan administration) playing a computerized war game. Overreaction to a "Soviet provocation" results in nuclear war. In one of the last strips, the line of succession has resulted in Secretary of the Interior James Watt being
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** In later games in the [[Total War]] series, the game doesn't end, your country "merely" goes into civil war as any general with a drop of royal blood tries to claim the throne. The player is allowed to pick one of the claimants to make the ''de facto'' legitimate heir, and everyone else gets treated as a Rebel faction by the game. Players at risk of this have been known to marry a princess to their best general, which gives him a claim to the throne too. After all, if you're gonna have to fight your own guys, might as well do it with your best commander and biggest army. In in-game terms, this can result in a minor lord, knight, or even ''commoner'' being vaulted onto the throne.
* Peony in ''[[Tales of the Abyss]]''. He's the ''illegitimate'' son of the emperor, when his half brothers all die he ends up being shipped back to the capitol for [[Cram School]] a la governing, instead of going down a cadet line, or some other noble house. In this case, "unexpected" only describes an outside perspective, though: because The Score (the prophecy that controls the world's fate) is a completely accurate prediction of the future, Peony's father had been told that he would eventually ascend to the throne. That was why Peony was sent away from the court intrigues to live incognito, where he ran off from his guards to play with commoner children.
* ''[[Tactics Ogre]]'' is in love with this trope. The previous monarch, King Dorgalia, was a commoner who managed to become the first king of Valeria by defeating his biggest rival, King Roderick, in the middle of a bloody ethnic civil war. Dorgalia has a legimate son with a Bacrum noblewoman, but he dies at a young age and so does the Queen. This leaves Valeria in yet another civil war, which each one of the ethnic groups being led by a different pretender, all trying to become King. Ultimately it turns out that Catiua, the protagonist Denim's adopted sister, is the unknown bastard daughter of King Dorgalia, and thus the rightful Queen. Depending upon the ending, either she can be the
* A [[Succession Crisis]] in ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'' leaves nearly everyone with a semi-legitimate claim to the throne either dead or otherwise disposed of, paving the way for Delita, a once-poor [[Farm Boy|stable boy]] who worked his way up through the military via masterful [[Xanatos Speed Chess]], to take the throne of Ivalice by marrying Ovelia, the only surviving claimant just before her coronation. Ovelia's ascension was just as unlikely and just as masterfully orchestrated, only by powers beyond her own control. She too was a commoner who was [[Changeling Fantasy|switched at birth]] with the ''real'' Princess Ovelia, who had already died, and raised as the ailing king's younger sister. She was then used as a political pawn by Duke Goltana, who intended to place her on the throne, assume power as her regent, and then have her executed. Ultimately, Goltana is betrayed and murdered (by Delita), even though his faction wins the War of the Lions, so Ovelia ascends to the throne as a proper queen ... or would have, had Delita not married her and become king by default. {{spoiler|He then goes on to kill her, but that's just because she went crazy and tried to kill ''him'' first}}.
* ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'' sees command of the [[The Empire|Imperial]] army fall into the lap of Judge Zargabaath, the rarely seen low man on the Judge Magistrate totem pole simply because all the other Judges are either dead or have jumped ship.
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** The aforementioned line of succession is somewhat random. Currently, if something happens to Obama, the office passes first to Vice-President Biden, then Speaker Boehner. Okay so far. If something happens to all three, as of December 2011, the man the United States would turn to is...Daniel Inouye, the 85 year-old Senator from Hawaii who holds his position solely by virtue of being the longest-serving member of the majority party. (The spot was held by the even older Robert Byrd until his recent passing.) The Secretary of Homeland Security, who you'd think ought to be in charge after a decapitation strike, is ''last'' in the list. This is because the rest of the line of succession is determined by the age of the office, and since the Department of Homeland Security is the newest department, the Secretary of Homeland Security is last in line, while the fourth in line is the Secretary of State. (Besides, one imagines they'd be rather busy at that moment.)
* [[Gerald Ford]], the only ''truly'' unelected President Of The United States. All arguments about contested elections aside (and there are plenty), Ford was never elected to the vice presidency (he was appointed after Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned), then became president after [[Richard Nixon]] resigned. Then he lost his first election. All Gerald wanted to do was be Speaker of the House.
* Henry VII would not have been expected to be King. He was the half-nephew of the King at the time of his birth, Henry VI, but his claim actually came through his mother's side and was fairly weak. (She came from the line of a legitimized bastard.) Still, he was next in line after Henry VI's son Edward. Then Edward IV took over, and he had two sons of his own, not to mention two brothers. No one thought Henry Tudor could beat those odds. Possibly not a straight example since Henry himself forced his succession via a battle, but he was still an unlikely pretender
Of course, Henry VI's claim to the throne already was a bit iffy as his grandfather Henry IV had deposed (and probably ordered the murder of) Richard II and pushed aside the legitimate successor to become king. Henry VII made sure of the throne by marrying the most plausible other successor, Elizabeth of York.
* While we're discussing the Tudors, in 1547, when Henry VIII died, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots was 4th in line for the English Throne. With three healthy legitimate children alive, it was considered very unlikely the Stuarts would ever get a hold of the throne. All three of his legitimate heirs assumed the English throne at some point, and all three died childless. 56 years after the death of Henry VIII, [[The House of Stuart|James VI Stuart]] of Scotland assumed the English throne as James I.
* And then, the successors to the Stuarts, [[The House of Hanover]]. Due to the exclusion of Catholics from the succession by the Act of Settlement 1701 and the death of Queen Anne's children, the Prince of the German Electorate of Brunswick-Luneburg (also known as Hanover) was more or less handed the throne of Great Britain out of nowhere. This is why George I and George II spoke little to no English: George I and II were 41 and 18, respectively, when the Act of Settlement passed, making them second and third in line (after George I's mother Sophia), and were 54 and 31 when the throne passed to their house. This led to the development of government by the King's ministers rather than the monarch himself, and by the end of George I's reign, the general system used in Britain today had been developed under the guidance of the (unofficial) Prime Minister [[Sir Robert Walpole]]. So, indirectly, we have this trope to thank for the modern system of parliamentary
* The possibly greatest subversion of the trope was [[wikipedia:Ramiro II of Aragon|Ramiro II of Aragon]]. The fourth son of King Sancho, he wasn't expected to inherit or hold a political position at all and became a priest. However, all three of his elder brothers died without issue, two of them after having seized the crown. He was then literally taken from his abbey, given a Papal permission to abandon his vows so he could guarantee the survival of the dynasty and crowned. He complied, married, had a daughter, abdicated to her and had her married when she was ''1 year old''. With his deed accomplished in record time, he took the vows again and went back to his abbey.
* Invoked in the later two-thirds of the Qing dynasty of the [[Imperial China]]. Yongzheng emperor had his legitimacy consistently questioned due to the [[Succession Crisis]] in 1710-1720s (in which his father deposed the crown prince and did not set up any up to his death), and decided that while the monarch have the power to nominate any successor, there should not be ''any expectation'' for anyone to be one. The modus operandi is thus: every moment the emperor was alive, he was required to keep a succession will sealed and hidden somewhere in the palace, and would only be opened at the time the said emperor passed away. As a result, no heir would be ''publicly'' named, and while the emperor's personal preference may be apparent, it would never be any indication of who would be succeeding.
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