Are there any Catholic Stuarts who are not entitled to the throne of Great Britain

Answer

After the Glorious Revolution, the Catholic Stuart king James II was exiled, and replaced by William of Orange (William III) and Mary II, the Anglican son-in-law and daughter of that exiled king. In 1707 they were succeeded by the other king’s daughter, Queen Anne, who died childless 12 years later – her son had already died before she ascended the throne herself. The (now British) royal house passed to her distant cousin, George I, of the House of Hanover, who was related on his mother’s side through his grandmother. Thus came an end to the male Stuart line on the English throne.

The Act of Settlement of 1700/1701 wanted to regulate the succession to the throne in such a way that no other descendants of the exiled James II could ascend the throne – the dynastic disaster of the Stuarts was already felt coming, because Anne’s son had died just before. The Act, which was extended to the newly established Great Britain a few years later, stipulated, among other things, that the monarch must reconcile himself with the Church of England, not conquer foreign native lands, and not even leave the country without parliamentary permission – the latter made frequent traveler George I move in immediately after his accession to the throne.

James II had two older Protestant daughters (Mary II and Queen Anne) and three younger Catholic children (the illegitimate James Fitzjames, James of Wales and Louisa Maria Teresa). James of Wales and his son ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ led unsuccessful attempts to take the British throne. Charles Edward Stuart had one daughter out of wedlock, his brother had no children. After those Jacobist rebellions, that branch gave up all claims to the throne. Louisa Maria died young and without children, Fitzjames did have many children (the current French ducal house of Fitz-James and the Spanish Alvas) but was of course excluded from succession due to his extramarital origin.

So there is only a Catholic Stuart lineage left on paper, and certainly not through the male line or through actual claims. And that hypothetical line of inheritance is currently with the Bavarian Wittelsbach dynasty, more specifically with Franz Bonaventura Adalbert Maria Herzog von Bayern. He currently has no descendants. His brother does have a daughter, Sofie van Liechtenstein. And – now it gets interesting – she has a Swedish Protestant mother…