I think it’s time to talk about the time James II and VII nearly became King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was an elective double crown; Louis XIV (the Putin of his day) offered to fix the election for James, then an exile in Paris

Poland-Lithuania was supposed to be a consolation prize for James, from whom Louis had been forced to withdraw recognition as the legitimate King of England, Scotland and Ireland by the terms of the Peace of Ryswick

In the end, James turned down the chance to rule Poland-Lithuania, considering that it would mean renouncing his claim to his British and Irish thrones; this was something James was not prepared to do

So Louis instead fixed the election for his relative François Louis, Prince of Conti - whose dithering meant that a rival candidate, Augustus II of Saxony, arrived in Poland and had himself proclaimed king first

But what would have happened if James had said yes, and become Poland-Lithuania’s first English king?

Knowing James II, he would probably have dithered just as much as the Prince of Conti and Augustus II would have ended up as King of Poland anyway…

But if James had secured the Polish throne, he would have been plunged straight into Poland-Lithuania’s wars with the Ottoman Empire in Moldavia and Sweden in the north; although James had some naval credentials, he was hardly a great land commander (remember that nosebleed?)

Overall, the thought of James as King of Poland is a pretty grim one, and he would probably have made a hash of it. In any case, his reign would not have been long as he died in September 1701

A coda to the story: in the end, the Stuarts *did* become Polish through the 1719 marriage of James Francis Edward Stuart to Clementina Sobieski, the granddaughter of King Jan III Sobieski. Prince Charles Edward Stuart and his brother Henry Benedict were thus half Polish