All Hail the King? How QAnon Is Backing a Conspiracy Theorist’s Bizarre Claim to the Throne of England

All Hail the King? How QAnon Is Backing a Conspiracy Theorist’s Bizarre Claim to the Throne of England Logically pin icon United States Published: Jul 22, 2020 5:16:18 PM All Hail the King? How QAnon Is Backing a Conspiracy Theorist’s Bizarre Claim to the Throne of England Investigation by Nick Backovic and Joe Ondrak. A bizarre story about a man laying claim to the throne of England is seeing a surge in popularity amongst conspiracy theorists this week, particularly with the fringe right-wing group QAnon. A man by the name of Joseph Gregory Hallett (referred to by some as King John III), who originally submitted a 34-page affidavit as his Statement of Claim to British Common Law Courts in April, claims that the ‘illegitimate conception of King George V’ left a bloodline of ‘flat lie royals’ on the throne since 1840. Hallett believes the throne is now rightfully his. According to Hallett, the British Royal Family was forced to sell their ‘breeding rights’ to the Rothschild family in the wake of the Battle of Waterloo to save themselves from bankruptcy and that the Rothschilds retained these rights up until 2019. Hallett’s theory revolves around a baseless claim that King George V was not actually the son of Edward VII but an illegitimate son of Tsar Alexander III of Russia, therefore breaking the royal lineage. Hallett adds that the Royal Family now has until July 30th to respond to his claim and that failure to do so would result in ‘passive acquiescence’ and ultimately abdication. Though Hallett has been preaching his 'message' for years, it caught the attention of QAnon in May 2020 and was amplified as a result. The most recent popularity surge can in part be explained by a series of videos produced by Digital Warrior Productions (whose associated Twitter account is entirely dedicated to QAnon conspiracies) including a 29-minute film entitled The Hidden King. In The Hidden King, Hallett, interviewed by David G. Mahoney, delves into how a complex set of numerological and gematric deductions somehow led him to the conclusion that he was the rightful king of England and beyond. In case this story wasn’t enough of a Dan Brown copyright infringement lawsuit in the making, the Digital Warrior Productions crew decided to take their ‘investigations’ to a cave in Portugal—where Hallett allegedly once lived for a total of 100 days—to track down a ‘treasure' he left behind. To make things even weirder, a 2014 blog post claimed that Hallett had in fact been abducted and murdered in June of that year after surviving no less than 12 previous assassination attempts.