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* [[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.▼
▲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 democracy—used in some form by the vast majority of democratic states in existence today.
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