AHC: Greater Spain

Hey guys,i'm up with a new challenge:
Have a Spain that has also Portugal,Roussillon,Haute Cerdagne,French Basque Country,all of Macaronesia and the gulf of Guinea Islands ( Bioko, São Tomé, Príncipe e Annobón.)
How would history have developed,with a stronger Spain and without Portugal?
 
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Zlorfik

Banned
Well, the 30 years war and its aftermath were what cost Spain the regions of Roussillon, Haute Cerdagne, and Portugal. If you can butterfly it away, or somehow keep the Spanish completely out of it, you end up with a much more powerful Spain, one that has a better chance of holding onto/taking the remaining areas you mentioned.
 
If you could make the Netherlands and Franche Comte a THIRD Habsburg domain, rather than an outlier of Spain then Spain itself has more freedom of action. Could the regents have established a kind of permanence, perhaps if they were able to put down the United Provinces?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
If you could make the Netherlands and Franche Comte a THIRD Habsburg domain, rather than an outlier of Spain then Spain itself has more freedom of action. Could the regents have established a kind of permanence, perhaps if they were able to put down the United Provinces?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

Or better yet have it so the damn lands go to the Austrian branch of the family, Spain has no right to the region as far as I'm concerned, it just makes no sense to me why it didn't go to the austrian branch which holds the Imperial Crown and of which those lands are part of the HRE too.
 
Or better yet have it so the damn lands go to the Austrian branch of the family, Spain has no right to the region as far as I'm concerned, it just makes no sense to me why it didn't go to the austrian branch which holds the Imperial Crown and of which those lands are part of the HRE too.

Because inheritance law.
 
This is quite easy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afonso,_Prince_of_Portugal

Have this young Prince not die. Have his wife Isabella inherit the thrones of Castile and Aragon after the death of her Brother John. Then combine the crowns of Iberia under the House of Aviz.

Have the Kingdom of Spain hold Navarre and use the wealth of the Americas not on futile war in the low countries but instead maintain Aragon's Mediterranean Empire of the Naples, Sardinia, Sicily and maybe even Corsica. And have the wealth focus on the Portuguese spice islands and ports. Have the population of Spain also strengthen their control on these territories.

Once nationalism kicks in about 200 years later Spain invested its wealth and people more appropriately and maintains control of the islands in the Atlantic and elsewhere.

Simples.
 
Well, you could have Portugal and Spain unite earlier with Miguel de Paz with a dynasty eventually reaching into the Mediterranean and most or all of the New World.

Perhaps the maximum would be as follows:

-Phillip II unites Spain and Portugal with Mary Tudor marrying him and (divergence) becoming pregnant with a son who is born in April 1555.

-Mary herself dies in childbirth, the son is named Henry for her father and becomes Henry IX of England and Spain upon Philip's death in 1598.

-Henry has the personality more of Charles V instead of his father, eventually reaching a compromise with the Dutch while governor there and permitting nominal Catholic rule with unwritten Protestant autonomy.

-Henry marries Margaret Valois in 1572 and they begin a family. Her male line dies out and Henry becomes king of France in 1580, starting the Habsburg (West) line.

-Upon the death of his father Phillip, Henri is king of England, Ireland, France, Netherlands, Franche-Comte, Naples, Milan, the Philippines, most of the islands of the Mediterranean, and all but a handful of outposts in the Western Hemisphere.

-Because of the ascension of Henri to the throne of France the Spanish armies opposed to them were used by Phillip to conquer Genoa and Savoy, permitting almost all of northern and southern Italy to be reunited

-With the declaration of the new Western Roman Empire in 1600 and establishment of Latin as the language of all state documents/court proceedings/government publications, smaller Italian states gravitate to Henry and permit an early unification of the peninsula by 1607. Its capital is based at Geneva as it does not belong to any one of the major kingdoms in question while being on major trade routes.

-Pope Marcellus III, formerly Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, exchanges control of the Exarchate of Rome (the Church-owned lands in the Papal States outside of Rome itself) for secured control of key appointments and autonomy of Rome itself, a roughly 30 mile area around it, and reaffirmed control over the Church with limited interference by the Emperor over Church affairs.

-Habsburg marriage of the two branches of second cousins once removed (Robert I, son of Henri, and Anne of Austria, daughter of Charles II) brings Austria, most German states, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, and other areas to Western control in 1593 with their marriage

-Ottoman miscalculations lead (like OTL) to parts of the Balkans coming back to Christian control in 1605 and (unlike OTL) again in 1625

-By the time of his death in 1628 at age 73, Henri has five surviving daughters, four surviving sons (two of whom are fit to govern with one having Down syndrome and another the madness of the Valois family, the eldest succeeds as Robert I of the Western Empire), and his wife Margaret dies within a month of him.

-Robert I inherits an Empire including but not limited to: Portugal, Spain, France, England, Ireland, Netherlands, Milan, Genoa, Savoy, Naples, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, German principalities, Austria, Croatia, Dalmatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Transylvania, Bosnia, Serbia, Wallachia, Moldova, and Italy. All technically under a Spanish Hapsburg.
 
-Robert I inherits an Empire including but not limited to: Portugal, Spain, France, England, Ireland, Netherlands, Milan, Genoa, Savoy, Naples, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, German principalities, Austria, Croatia, Dalmatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Transylvania, Bosnia, Serbia, Wallachia, Moldova, and Italy. All technically under a Spanish Hapsburg.

Well damn, you united all of Europe and fulfilled Charles the Vth's dream of universal empire. Such an empire would most certainly break down quickly if it ever formed, but would fit so well with the Hapsburg motto: "Leave the waging of wars to others! But you, happy A̶u̶s̶t̶r̶i̶a̶ Spain, marry; for the realms which Mars awards to others, Venus transfers to you."
 
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