AHC: Parliamentarian France, Absolutist England

With a POD no earlier than 1066 and no later than 1688) (the later the better), make it so that France has a tradition of parliamentarianism as opposed to England being the bastion of absolutism.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, I think an English victory in the Hundred Years' War may help.
 
For the English, there are a few of them, but the main one I can think of is that the Kings use the New World Colonies to raise money independently of Parliament, effectively taking away the primary power that Parliament has over the Monarchy. Though, the English Civil War MUST be avoided, otherwise it doesn't matter.

For the French, it's depressingly simple. The French could easily get themselves into a ton of debt after a disastrous war with Spain, the HRE, or both at once. The debt is so extreme that whatever King is in charge at the time is forced to call the estates-general. However, maybe civil unrest happens, maybe it's before the TYW and the Huguenots problem is not solved yet, nothing is able to get done, and they have to keep calling the estates-general year after year until it just becomes customary to call them and keep them in session the year over. Then you just need a stand-off between the two of them to end like the English Civil War, and you have a Parliamentary France and an England with a powerful King that could easily turn absolutist given the right monarchs.
 
Would a pre-colonial POD work for England? While the seeds for Parliament's ascendancy were laid by the Magna Carta, it didn't really come to fruition until the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution, I find. The Tudors after all were the closest OTL England got to absolutism being successful.
 
Would a pre-colonial POD work for England? While the seeds for Parliament's ascendancy were laid by the Magna Carta, it didn't really come to fruition until the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution, I find. The Tudors after all were the closest OTL England got to absolutism being successful.
Probably. However, you'd need an earlier POD for France to be more successful in gaining a Parliamentary System, as the estates-general gave up the Power of the Purse during the reign of Charles VII- it would be easier to find a way for them to keep that power than for them to somehow gain it back.
 
Top