Cole, Prince of Mackinac

Cole, Prince of Mackinac, is the heir to the Grand Duchy of Michigan and Mackinac Island. He is twelve years old.

He became heir in 2024, at the age of eight, on the day an aircraft came down and killed both of his parents. His father was Grand Duke Justin’s younger brother and was the heir to the Grand Duchy; his mother died in the same crash. The title passed to Cole before the funerals, by the ordinary operation of the Michigan settlement and without anybody having to decide anything.

He lives on Mackinac Island, in the household of his uncle and of the Grand Duchess Diane, who is Regent of the Grand Duchy and who is also, in every practical sense, the person bringing him up. He attends an ordinary school.

This article is short, and its shortness is deliberate.

What is published, and what is not

Cole is a child. The Register’s account of him is confined to the facts that are constitutional, which is to say the succession, the guardianship, and the arrangements the Grand Duchy has made on his behalf.

The household’s practice is the same and is stricter than that of any comparable house in the Realm. It discloses his position, his residence, his guardians and the fact that he is at school. It discloses nothing about his character, his friendships, his schoolwork, his health or his grief, and it has declined to do so consistently since 2024, including on occasions when a warmer disclosure would have served the house.

He appears in public a few fixed times a year and no more. The occasions are known in advance, they are short, and the household has refused every request to extend them. Photographs outside those occasions are not supplied, and the Grand Duchy’s press has largely, though not entirely, respected the position.

The Register follows the household here rather than working around it. A boy who lost his parents in public at eight and acquired a constitutional position in the same hour has a reasonable claim on being left alone until he is old enough to be answerable for something, and there is nothing in his life so far that the public has a legitimate interest in knowing.

The succession he stands in

The House of Mackinac is a cadet line of the House of Hanover, descended from George III in the male line and seated on Mackinac Island since 1836, and Cole is now the whole of its next generation.

Justin is seventy-two and childless. Cole’s father was the last member of the reigning generation left in the house besides the Grand Duke himself, his sister having left it on her marriage. The 2024 crash therefore did something no accident has done to any other polity in the Realm: it reduced an entire dynastic line to one child in a single afternoon.

Since 2027 the Grand Duchy has been under a regency, constituted on Justin’s certified progressive illness and exercised by the Grand Duchess Diane. The regency is designed to continue directly into a minority regency on the Grand Duke’s death, so that Michigan does not have to constitute a new one at the moment it is least able to.

Cole will not come of age until the middle of the 2030s. The Grand Duchy is contemplating a regency that may run for a decade, and the argument now running in the Estates of Michigan is about that: whether one person should hold both regencies, whether a regency of such length should carry a fixed review, and whether the guardianship of the heir and the government of the Grand Duchy ought to be separated in law even though they cannot be separated in fact.

The argument is not about whether Michigan should have a Grand Duke. Almost nobody in the polity is making that case, and the debate has stayed on the machinery rather than the institution.

The one thing that is said about him

The household has made a single substantive statement about Cole since 2024, and it was about his schooling.

He attends an ordinary school, on the settled practice of the grand-ducal houses of the Realm, and the household confirmed this in terms that made clear it was not a courtesy but a decision that would be defended. Security exists, is risk-based and is heavier than that around any comparable child in the Realm, for reasons the Grand Duchy has not been asked to justify.

The school has never been named publicly and the household has said it will not be.

Trivia

  • In-Universe Cole became Prince of Mackinac in 2024, aged eight, on the day an aircraft killed both of his parents. The title passed to him before the funerals, by the ordinary operation of the Michigan settlement, without anybody having to decide anything.
  • In-Universe The crash reduced an entire dynastic line to one child in a single afternoon. Grand Duke Justin is seventy-two and childless, and Cole's father was the last of the reigning generation left in the house besides the Grand Duke himself.
  • In-Universe The woman who is Regent of the Grand Duchy is also the woman raising its heir, in the same house on the same island. Michigan has concluded that no better arrangement was available and that the alternative would have moved a bereaved child out of the only settled home he has.
  • In-Universe He appears in public a few fixed times a year. The occasions are announced in advance, they are short, and the household has refused every request to extend them, including on occasions when a warmer disclosure would have helped the house.
  • In-Universe His school has never been named and the household has said it will not be. He attends an ordinary one, on the settled practice of the grand-ducal houses, and the confirmation was issued in terms making clear this was a decision that would be defended rather than a courtesy.
  • In-Universe Cole will not come of age until the middle of the 2030s, so Michigan is contemplating a regency that may run a decade. The argument in the Estates is about the regency and not about the crown: whether one person should hold both regencies, and whether guardianship and government can be separated in law when they cannot be separated in fact.
  • Design This article is deliberately the shortest of any heir in the Register, and the brevity is the point. The household discloses the succession, the guardianship and the schooling and refuses everything else, and the Register follows it rather than working around it. A child who lost his parents in public and acquired a constitutional position in the same hour is owed that.

See also

Categories

People · Polities · The Crown