Who Would Be King of the United States If George Washington Had Become a Monarch?

The young George Wash­ing­ton may nev­er have hacked up his father’s cher­ry tree and refused to lie about it, but his life nev­er­the­less offers plen­ty of deeds both vir­tu­ous and ade­quate­ly doc­u­ment­ed. It was no small thing, for instance, to refuse to seek a third term as the first Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca — much less to exchange that title for “King of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.” As every enthu­si­ast of Amer­i­can his­to­ry knows, this set the prece­dent, only once vio­lat­ed and there­after writ­ten into law, of a two-term lim­it. But as every enthu­si­ast of alter­nate Amer­i­can his­to­ry has won­dered, what would have hap­pened had Wash­ing­ton become king? And if the U.S. monar­chy had remained intact for the past 227 years, who would rule it today?

In the Use­fulCharts video above, Matt Bak­er explains a series of dif­fer­ent suc­ces­sion sce­nar­ios. While none is high­ly plau­si­ble in itself, they togeth­er give an idea of the lines along which Amer­i­can monar­chi­cal his­to­ry could have played out, at least assum­ing that every oth­er event played out exact­ly the same way as it has in our real­i­ty.

One of the first com­pli­cat­ing fac­tors is that Wash­ing­ton him­self had no bio­log­i­cal descen­dants. Giv­en that, we can trace down a the­o­ret­i­cal roy­al lin­eage start­ing with his adopt­ed son, born from his wife Martha’s first mar­riage; with the nephew he select­ed as the pri­ma­ry heir of his estate; or with the senior-most heir of his father (own­er of the notion­al cher­ry tree). Not that any of those major paths through the chart of Wash­ing­ton’s indi­rect descen­dants is nec­es­sar­i­ly straight­for­ward either.

The whole mat­ter seems at least as com­pli­cat­ed as fig­ur­ing out who would be the Roman emper­or if Rome had nev­er fall­en, an exer­cise Bak­er works through in anoth­er Use­fulCharts video pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. The pos­si­bil­i­ties for the Amer­i­can monarch in 2026 come down to King Robert III, or Robert E. Lee V (and great-great grand­son of Robert E. Lee); Queen Bryn­da, or Bryn­da Hansen; King Richard, or Richard Wash­ing­ton; and King Lar­ry II, or Lawrence Shaffn­er, the descen­dant of George Wash­ing­ton’s nephew Bushrod. Bak­er finds that Shaffn­er is the most con­vinc­ing can­di­date for the job, which is hard to deny. Even apart from the rel­e­vant famil­ial, polit­i­cal, and legal fac­tors, con­sid­er that name again. King Lar­ry: apart from the title, how much more Amer­i­can could it pos­si­bly sound?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Who Would Be Emper­or If the Roman Empire Still Exist­ed Today?

How George Wash­ing­ton Became Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States: It Was Weird­er Than You Think

George Washington’s 110 Rules for Civil­i­ty and Decent Behav­ior

What We Can Learn from Past Pres­i­dents

A Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry of Amer­i­ca (1861): Fea­tures George Wash­ing­ton Punch­ing Tigers, John Adams Slay­ing Snakes & Oth­er Fan­tas­tic Scenes

A Visu­al Time­line of World His­to­ry: Watch the Rise & Fall of Civ­i­liza­tions Over 5,000 Years

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.