The need for a male heir led him to contract a second marriage to Yolande de Dreux on 1 November 1285.

He was the long-awaited male heir, and was named Alexius as a fulfilment of the AIMA prophecy.

Peter's only male heir, future king Fernando of Portugal, was a sickly child, while the illegitimate children sired with Inês thrived.

In 1474, King Henry IV of Castile died without a male heir.

Still without a male heir, Aegeus asked the oracle at Delphi for advice.

The last five chapters are exclusively concerned with land: instructions for the extermination of the Canaanites, the demarcation of the boundaries of the land, how the land is to be divided, holy cities for the Levites and " cities of refuge ", the problem of pollution of the land by blood, and regulations for inheritance when a male heir is lacking.

It would also have given a male heir an indisputable claim to the throne.

Because all of the five children he fathered with his first and fourth wife were daughters, he would have no lawful male heir to his throne.

Still without a son and in danger of being left with no male heir, facing substantial opposition to Eleanor from many of his barons and her own desire for divorce, Louis had no choice but to bow to the inevitable.

Elizabeth was the only child of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, who did not bear a male heir and was executed less than three years after Elizabeth's birth.

Her older half-sister, Mary, had lost her position as a legitimate heir when Henry annulled his marriage to Mary's mother, Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry Anne and sire a male heir to ensure the Tudor succession.

After the duke died without a male heir in 1447, fighting broke out to restore the so-called Ambrosian Republic.

The fulfilment of the promise to each patriarch depends on having a male heir, and the story is constantly complicated by the fact that each prospective mother – Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel – is barren.

When, in 1688, James produced a male heir, everything changed.

Left without male heirs, Henry took the unprecedented step of making his barons swear to accept his daughter Empress Matilda, widow of Henry V, the Holy Roman Emperor, as his heir.

Lacking any male child and heir Augustus married his only daughter Julia to his nephew Marcus Claudius Marcellus.

At the time, the union between Sweden and Norway under one monarch, together with the fact that King Frederick VII of Denmark had no male heir, gave rise to the idea of reuniting the countries of the Kalmar Union, except for Finland.

Raymond and Bohemond were King Baldwin's nearest male relatives in the paternal line, and could have claimed the throne if the king died without an heir or a suitable replacement.

daughters from their father, except when there is no male heir.

He gave orders for the birth to be announced with all the solemnity usually accorded to the arrival of a male heir.

By the time Mary was nine years old, it was apparent that Henry and Catherine would have no more children, leaving Henry without a legitimate male heir.

Disappointed at the lack of a male heir, and eager to re-marry, Henry attempted to have his marriage to Catherine annulled, but Pope Clement VII refused his requests.

* 1890 – King William III of the Netherlands dies without a male heir and a special law is passed to allow his daughter Princess Wilhelmina to become his heir.

The son and heir of a prominent family marries a girl who has tell-tale shadows on the half-moons of her finger nails.

It was the trial of oleomargarine heir Minot ( Mickey ) Jelke for compulsory prostitution in New York that put the spotlight on the international play-girl.

After the death of his brother-in-law, Henry II, margrave of a small area on the Elbe called the Saxon Northern March, in 1128, Albert, disappointed at not receiving this fief himself, attacked Udo, the heir, and was consequently deprived of Lusatia by Lothar.

Baldwin III died on 10 February 1163 and the kingdom passed to Amalric, although there was some opposition among the nobility to Agnes ; they were willing to accept the marriage in 1157 when Baldwin III was still capable of siring an heir, but now the Haute Cour refused to endorse Amalric as king unless his marriage to Agnes was annulled.

Upon arriving at Archduke Franz Ferdinand's country seat, château Konopiště, on a semi-official visit, they promptly proceeded to do away with one of the Austro-Hungarian heir presumptive's priceless golden pheasants, thereby almost causing an international incident.

Upon the death of her husband Henry on 6 July 1189, Richard was his undisputed heir.

She feared that the French planned to invade England and put Mary, Queen of Scots, who was considered by many to be the heir to the English crown, on the throne.

Mountbatten's qualification for offering advice to this particular heir to the throne was unique ; it was he who had arranged the visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to Dartmouth Royal Naval College on 22 July 1939, taking care to include the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret in the invitation, but assigning his nephew, Cadet Prince Philip of Greece, to keep them amused while their parents toured the facility.

Honorius died of edema on 15 August 423, leaving no heir.

; Forgotten Futures VII: Tsar Wars: Based on the late 19th century novels of George Griffith, Tsar Wars is a setting for the struggle between the anarchist Terror and the forces of oppression in the early 20th Century, and the return of the Tsar's heir to the utopia of 2030 AD.

During his Danube sojourn ( Drinkwater suggests in 255 or 256 ) he proclaimed his elder son Valerian II Caesar and thus official heir to himself and Valerian I ; the boy probably now joined Gallienus on campaign and when Gallienus moved west to the Rhine provinces in 257 remained behind on the Danube as the personification of Imperial authority.

Edward's failure to produce an heir caused a furious conflict over the succession on his death in 1066.

In 1956 he was elected Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party and became Leader of the House, and from this point on he was generally acknowledged as Menzies ' heir apparent.

With his adoption on 25 February 50 AD, Nero became heir to the throne.

Nehru, the man and politician made such a powerful imprint on India that his death on 27 May 1964, left India with no clear political heir to his leadership ( although his daughter was widely expected to succeed him before she turned it down in favour of Shastri ).

Jahangir soon after had to fend off his son, Prince Khusrau Mirza, when he attempted to claim the throne based on Akbar's will to become his next heir.

Luthor decides to fake his own death by piloting a prototype jet on a proposed trip around the world and crashing it in the Andes ; this is merely a cover for the removal of his brain from his cancer-ridden body and the growth of a cloned body around it, whereupon he passes himself off as his hitherto unknown, illegitimate 21-year-old son and heir, Lex Luthor II.

The loss of a potential heir weighs heavily on Luthor's mind, particularly when he is dying of cancer ; while mulling over his fate, Luthor visits Jerry's gravesite.

By tradition the territory was conferred on the heir to the throne to govern during his apprenticeship.

In 1357 Orhan's eldest and most experienced son and likely heir, Suleyman Pasha, died after injuries sustained from a fall from a horse near Bolayir on the coast of the sea of Marmara.

The Anonymous Valesianus tells an account about his choosing of a successor: Anastasius could not decide which of his three nephews should succeed him, so he put a message under a couch and had his nephews take seats in the room, which also had two other seats ; he believed that the nephew to sit on the special couch would be his proper heir.