Elector Prince

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The title electoral prince referred to the hereditary prince and presumptive heir to the throne of a secular electorate and can be understood analogously to the crown prince . The wife of an electoral prince bore the title of electoral princess by marriage .

On the basis of inheritance law stipulations made in the Golden Bull of Emperor Charles IV of 1356, the so-called patrilineal primogeneity ( Lex Salica ) was laid down in the secular electoral principalities of the Holy Roman Empire . This means that the inheritance of a secular elector - title, territory, regalia, voting rights and privileges - only had to pass to the eldest male relative of the deceased elector, i.e. his agnate . Ideally, this was the eldest son and, if there were no male descendants, the next eldest brother of the elector, etc. However, if a dynastic line that provided the elector was foreseeable extinction, the title could move entire families far away. After the only son of Elector Karl Philipps von der Pfalz from the Neuburg line died giving birth and all of the Elector's brothers had joined the clergy, his second degree uncle (1695), then his second cousin ( 1708), then his third-degree nephew (1732) and finally his third-degree grand-nephew (1733) electoral prince of the Palatinate, only the latter being able to survive the elector and thus become elector himself. If the electoral prince was still a minor when he took office as elector - according to the Golden Bull he came of age at the age of 18 - a spa administrator ruled in his name until he reached the age of majority , the next adult male agnate of the elector, e. B. his uncle.