AHC: United Kingdom of Great Britain, Spain and Ireland

AsGryffynn

Banned
The ultimate Alternate History Challenge. With a POD no earlier than 1400 and no later than 1778, have the Kingdom of Spain unite together with the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to form the ultimate empire.

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Dios Salve a La Reina! Plus Ultra!
 

Shiva

Oddly enough I did have a wacky plotbunny for a Franco-Spanish-British Empire once, but it just seemed completely unrealistic.

This seems even more crazy, so I'm going to enjoy seeing what people come up with.
 

Kingfish

I think a good start for this would be to have Mary I producing an heir and living a bit longer. I don't know if Britain would have stayed Catholic though, which is necessary for the personal union to work. Unifying with Scotland may also be a little tricky.
 

Shiva

Kingfish said:
I think a good start for this would be to have Mary I producing an heir and living a bit longer. I don't know if Britain would have stayed Catholic though, which is necessary for the personal union to work. Unifying with Scotland may also be a little tricky.
Click to expand...

A Protestant Spain could be interesting to see... :D
 
Zorqal

Zorqal

I would assume that GB inherits Spain. Maybe Joanna of Castile marries a king or prince of England? Maybe Henry VIII marries Joanna, before either inherits. They have a son and it goes from there?
 
Uhura's Mazda

Uhura's Mazda

Banned
I'd personally go for something before England gets too Protestant. In a crazy-ass world, maybe the Duke of Berwick could conquer Britain under the auspices of Felipe V, but that's pretty ASB. Fun, though!

The Mary-having-a-son possibility is likely unworkable. Firstly because Britain would almost certainly become a secundogeniture, provided there were enough princes. Secondly because the Spanish Habsburgs would be hard pressed to survive with their history of inbreeding (although they might marry into British noble houses to pacify the nativists). Thirdly because of Protestantism, as previously mentioned. Fourthly because the English would never settle for being ruled by an absolute monarch across the Bay of Biscay, given their isolationism and penchant for Parliaments. A Spanish Armada scenario would probably fail for similar reasons.

A fifteenth century personal union would be the optimum solution, IMO. A prerequisites of this would seem to be a Lancastrian victory in the Wars of the Roses, the death of Edward of Westminster without issue and the exclusion of the Beauforts from the line of succession. The Beauforts didn't really have a candidate between the extinction of the male line in 1471 and the rise of Henry Tudor.

Therefore, someone like the Duke of Exeter could ask for Spanish assistance in a War of the Roses rematch sometime before his death in 1475 in return for naming Enrique IV or los Reyes Catolicos his heirs (his closest male relations at the time were the teenage Earls of Westmorland and Kent, and one of Gaunt's daughters married into the Castilian royal family). If this expedition succeeds and everyone keeps the agreement, then Isabella and Ferdinand become monarchs of England in the mid-1470s. For extras, this combined empire could either conquer Scotland and Portugal or get them by marriage. Portugal is easy: just have Miquel de la Paz survive. This would also butterfly or delay the Habsburg inheritance, of course - I'm sure France would have something to say about being completely surrounded by their lands!
 

Shiva

Uhura's Mazda said:
I'd personally go for something before England gets too Protestant. In a crazy-ass world, maybe the Duke of Berwick could conquer Britain under the auspices of Felipe V, but that's pretty ASB. Fun, though!

The Mary-having-a-son possibility is likely unworkable. Firstly because Britain would almost certainly become a secundogeniture, provided there were enough princes. Secondly because the Spanish Habsburgs would be hard pressed to survive with their history of inbreeding (although they might marry into British noble houses to pacify the nativists). Thirdly because of Protestantism, as previously mentioned. Fourthly because the English would never settle for being ruled by an absolute monarch across the Bay of Biscay, given their isolationism and penchant for Parliaments. A Spanish Armada scenario would probably fail for similar reasons.

A fifteenth century personal union would be the optimum solution, IMO. A prerequisites of this would seem to be a Lancastrian victory in the Wars of the Roses, the death of Edward of Westminster without issue and the exclusion of the Beauforts from the line of succession. The Beauforts didn't really have a candidate between the extinction of the male line in 1471 and the rise of Henry Tudor.

Therefore, someone like the Duke of Exeter could ask for Spanish assistance in a War of the Roses rematch sometime before his death in 1475 in return for naming Enrique IV or los Reyes Catolicos his heirs (his closest male relations at the time were the teenage Earls of Westmorland and Kent, and one of Gaunt's daughters married into the Castilian royal family). If this expedition succeeds and everyone keeps the agreement, then Isabella and Ferdinand become monarchs of England in the mid-1470s. For extras, this combined empire could either conquer Scotland and Portugal or get them by marriage. Portugal is easy: just have Miquel de la Paz survive. This would also butterfly or delay the Habsburg inheritance, of course - I'm sure France would have something to say about being completely surrounded by their lands!
Click to expand...

So if we go for an Isabella and Ferdinand ruled Union it would fall apart if, for no other reason, than a war with France that would result with England falling to a monarch of France's choice.

Nothing in the OP says that the Union has to last... It just has to be formed...
 
Corsair_Caruso

Corsair_Caruso

Kingfish said:
I think a good start for this would be to have Mary I producing an heir and living a bit longer. I don't know if Britain would have stayed Catholic though, which is necessary for the personal union to work. Unifying with Scotland may also be a little tricky.
Click to expand...

This was my idea about a year ago...

Corsair_Caruso said:
First thread on the site, very excited! Without further ado...

Philip, King of Spain, Portugal, and the Two Sicilies, marries Mary, Queen of England and Ireland. With their union, much of the power of Europe is united under their crowns. Mary died in 1558 without giving Philip an heir, but if she had, this child could have been the monarch of much of Western Europe, and possessed the largest colonial empire in history. How would this have changed the dynamics of the late sixteenth century?

Would this Anglo-Spanish Habsburg monarch have tried to make good his claim on the French throne?

Could he have returned England to the Catholic Church?

Could he have been named Holy Roman Emperor?

I seek your input!
Click to expand...

The idea seemed plausible to me at the time. Later comments indicated it seemed that Mary I had ovarian cysts, and these would need to be butterflied away.
 
Uhura's Mazda

Uhura's Mazda

Banned
Shiva said:
So if we go for an Isabella and Ferdinand ruled Union it would fall apart if, for no other reason, than a war with France that would result with England falling to a monarch of France's choice.

Nothing in the OP says that the Union has to last... It just has to be formed...
Click to expand...

Yeah, this a difficult union to pull off without a drastically weakened France. The logistics of governance alone mean that an absolute monarchy isn't feasible and there's going to have to be some autonomy in England - at any rate, Castile and Aragon remained separate until the Nueva Planta decrees. Two options: create a secundogeniture as soon as the opportunity arises, or let the magnates handle everything. As English nobles probably won't have much land or business interests in Iberia, this latter opens up a likelihood of a proto-nationalist revolt (probably supported by France).

Nevertheless, an Anglo-Iberian war against France would probably have the support of the HRE, so even if there's no Habsburg takeover through marriage, the French are going to be surrounded on three sides by hostile states. That's difficult to win for France, so I'd expect some sort of Angevin Empire Redux scenario - at least Normandy, Gascony and the Northwest - which would make the whole country basically contiguous and easier to manage (despite linguistic and cultural barriers) and increase the likelihood of survival. As long as the inevitable revolts in Britain are dealt with, of course.

The above is assuming that survival is actually required. If not, well... that's OTL. Philip of Spain was a crowned king of England, so that's a personal union right there. Political union, OTOH, requires the survival of the UKGBSI until at least the passage of Alt-Nueva Planta.
 

Falastur

I used to make up crazy storylines involving John of Gaunt realising his claim to Castile. He went there in 1386 with a small army but honestly his intention was never to conquer the country, it was to pose just enough of a threat to John of Castile that he could be paid a significant enough sum to go away that he could live in wealth for the rest of his life.

Now it'd be possible to actually have him succeed should John of Castile's army screw up in a major way and cause their own rout - genuinely bad tactics in battle happened enough in this era to make it unlikely yet vaguely plausible. The problem is that if he took the Castilian throne he would likely consider that a good enough birthright to pass onto his son, the RL Henry IV (of England) and so Henry himself would likely not really be that interested in returning to England to restore his family's honour.

The trick therefore would be somehow forcing Henry into returning to England, presumably by making him do so at a time when his future Castilian crown is still in question. I would speculate doing something like delaying John's bid for the Castilian crown by a couple of years then having Henry get involved with the Lords Appellant while John is just starting his campaign, leaving Henry a bit too involved in English affairs to withdraw, only for the Appellant thing to get blown even further out of control than it already did and have the Lords Appellant dethrone Richard and place Henry on the throne instead of Roger Mortimer, who was Richard's chosen heir but still only 15 years old in 1389. It's possible that John of Gaunt could even produce the treaty he made with Richard making Henry the heir to England, even though Richard had instantly overridden it with his own preference for Mortimer. The succession law in this period was just about fluid enough to allow for such legal trickery.

The problem with all of this is just that it's all heavily unlikely. You're relying on a lot of one in a million shots all happening at once.
 
JonasResende

JonasResende

Something I've seen is to have a more successful Angevin Aragon, and then Edward of Westminster marries Isabel of Castile, inherits the Angevin lands when Nicolas dies in 1473, and England when Henry VI or Edward IV dies.
 

Bee

Catherine of Aragon wasn't all that far from the Spanish succession. If the line of her elder sister is removed from the line of succession by her father in favor of that of Catherine, the stage is set. It's not impossible: Joanna was mentally ill, and Ferdinand might be worried that her insanity was hereditary.

To anticipate some objections: while Ferdinand was king in Aragon, but only regent in Castile, he could probably get the Castilian Cortes to back him up. There was a third living sister, Maria, but she was married to the king of Portugal, who Ferdinand may have wished to keep away from the Spanish throne. Again, there's a good chance the Cortes would agree with him. And there's also the consideration that Catherine had shown by far the most ability of Ferdinand and Isabella's daughters.
 
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