Which law barred Victoria from inheriting Hanover?

Salic law barred Queen Victoria from inheriting Hanover, whose succession rules excluded women from the throne while a male-line heir remained. More precisely, Hanover followed a semi-Salic form of succession, commonly called Salic law in accounts of Victoria’s accession.

Britain and Hanover had shared a monarch since George I became king of Great Britain in 1714. That personal union ended in 1837 when William IV died. Victoria inherited the British crown because British succession law allowed her to reign, but Hanover passed to her paternal uncle Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland.

The separation was therefore not a rejection of Victoria’s British claim. It reflected the fact that the two realms had different constitutional and dynastic rules. Ernest Augustus became King of Hanover, while Victoria became the last British monarch of the House of Hanover.

The term “Salic law” can cause confusion because the original medieval Salian legal texts concerned inheritance of land, not a universal rule for every monarchy. In nineteenth-century German states, however, related male-preference or male-only succession principles were applied to dynastic inheritance, producing the result seen in Hanover.