AHC: European royalty/nobility reciprocity extends to Asian, African, American royals and nobles?

raharris1973

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Germany was called "the stud farm of Europe" because if you needed to set somebody up on a new throne, you could always find an eligible Prince from a small principality there to take the job. Marriage alliances and the pool of desirable spouses among monarchs in Christian Europe was generally restricted to a pool of royal and aristocratic families which nonetheless was international, with their "credentials" being socially useful in multiple countries. Among European royals, marrying across the boundaries of Christian sects was not a deal-breaker for matches, for instance, German Protestant and Catholics were selected for royal titles and matches of Orthodox countries if they were willing to convert.

To some extent, directly on the borderlands of Christianity and Islam, some of these marriage alliances took place. However, this "reciprocity" to my knowledge never extended from say, France to Persia and back, and the system never included monarchs in Sub-Saharan Africa, India, China, Japan, Southeast Asia or the Americas.

What could have made it become a global system?

Also, did an equivalent to the European system operate within the Islamic world? And was there ever a system of royal reciprocity among East Asian states?
 
Germany was called "the stud farm of Europe" because if you needed to set somebody up on a new throne, you could always find an eligible Prince from a small principality there to take the job. Marriage alliances and the pool of desirable spouses among monarchs in Christian Europe was generally restricted to a pool of royal and aristocratic families which nonetheless was international, with their "credentials" being socially useful in multiple countries. Among European royals, marrying across the boundaries of Christian sects was not a deal-breaker for matches, for instance, German Protestant and Catholics were selected for royal titles and matches of Orthodox countries if they were willing to convert.

To some extent, directly on the borderlands of Christianity and Islam, some of these marriage alliances took place. However, this "reciprocity" to my knowledge never extended from say, France to Persia and back, and the system never included monarchs in Sub-Saharan Africa, India, China, Japan, Southeast Asia or the Americas.

What could have made it become a global system?

Also, did an equivalent to the European system operate within the Islamic world? And was there ever a system of royal reciprocity among East Asian states?

I am afraid, that's impossible, ASB.

But with a cartload of PoDs we can come close:
The ATL more successful European Christian Crusades create a patchwork of Christian states from Anatolia to Jerusalem, and from Egypt to the whole of North Africa. The independent Christian states
intermingle with independent Muslim states, I mean they exist side by side, when the Christian principalities ally with Muslim principalities against the other alliance of the Muslim polities with Christian polities. Actually something like that was in OTL for some time.
I mean it is not a war of the Christian alliances against Muslim alliances, it is a war of everybody against everybody, the alliances are more about immediate profit when the religion is not that important, more important are gain you can get right now.

And it is stalemate for centuries and centuries - I mean the Christians have no hope to win, and the Muslims don't have enough strength to push the Europeans back.
Under these circumstances the royal and noble reciprocity is almost inevitable to strengthen the alliances. The particulars are not clear, but probably that would mean the change of faith of the bride when it is a Muslim girl (because of the Christian monogamy of course); and the Christian bribes married into the Muslim family might keep their religion (because she is one of many in harem).
This tradition might spread into Europe proper for the same reasons or just because such marriages become ordinary things.
Here goes another elephant-size PoD - more religious tolerance in Europe.

If now in Europe royal and noble reciprocity with the Muslims is OK (with probable change of bribe's religion), so when the Europeans encounter other non-Muslim and non-Christian countries, this tradition might be transmitted to those royal and noble families.
But here we need another PoD - the politically and military stronger aborigines and weaker Europeans. The Europeans have to need the alliance with the powerful local royal dynasties and nobles.

I am not sure about reciprocity getting global, but close ))
 
Note that in the New World, it was not uncommon for native royal families to be incorporated into the local colonial aristocracy, either de jure (as with the Spanish Counts of Moctezuma) or de facto (plenty of Mexican settlements during the 16th century were essentially ruled by their traditional native rulers, only with tribute going to the Viceroy instead of the Aztecs, and with at least lip service being paid to Christianity; often conquistadors or prominent colonists would marry into royal families as well).

While the post-independence Haitian and Mexican monarchies never intermarried with European monarchies, the Brazilians did (although they were already part of the Portuguese royal family, so it was much less of a stretch).

In addition to the religion barrier (which is huge, and probably enough on its own to make this ASB on a wide scale without major religious changes), there was also a big difference in how Christian Europeans and the various Muslim or Chinese-influenced dynasties viewed monarchies and royal marriages. Neither of the latter had the same devotion to either primogeniture or monogamy, which complicates royal marriages significantly. A key aspect of royal marriages, after all, is the knowledge that if you marry your daughter to the King of X, the next King of X will likely be your grandson; when rulers have multiple consorts and unclear lines of succession, that makes it much less attractive. Intermarriage was used as a tool by both Muslims and Chinese, but in a very different way, and often with a much clearer implication of unequal status between the two parties (e.g. Christian Trebizond sending its princesses to be members of the Ottoman harem in order to buy favor, or a notable nomad leader being given a Chinese princess from a cadet line as a sign of imperial favor). More broadly, the mother's bloodline was generally much less important in the East than it was in the more genealogically obsessed West.
 
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