An Anglo-Norwegian Union?

Hey Guys,

In this thread a discussion took place over my idea of having an Anglo-Danish-Norwegian Union. The general consensus was that it could work, but the aims of the English and Danish courts were far too different in their overall aims (England=New World, Denmark=German & Baltic States.) And in another recent discussion Cináed imagined a scenario that was intriguing.

Now I have a new idea. As I said in the first thread, there would be a marriage between Queen Elizabeth and Prince Frederick, children would come out of this and eventually King Edward VII of England and I of Denmark-Norway takes the throne after his parents die.

Skip forward two monarchs and there's unrest in the Kingdoms. The current King (Christian II of England, V of Denmark-Norway) wants to impose an Absolute Monarchy within all of his Kingdoms. But the English and Norwegians who've had a lot of their cultures shared over the past 3 monarchs (more-so than Denmark) don't want this, and after constant attempts by the King to impose absolute rule the peoples of England rebelled first, and then Norway. After 4 years of Civil War Denmark finally relented and after another month of talks, the Danish granted both Norway and England independence. After this the Danish king brings in Absolute rule within his only Kingdom left, while both England and Norway have to pick a new monarch to rule each of them. Not long after the representatives of the nations meet and declare themselves a single nation after another week of debating. Each kingdom within the Union shall have their own devolved parliament, but shall be united under a single one that will meet in each others parliaments once every month (i.e. London one month, Christiania the next.) In this TL the parliaments/Councils of each nation is much stronger due to the monarchs being in their separate Kingdoms for long periods of time. But the Monarch (who is now Edward VIII of England, II of Norway) still has quite large powers.

Overall in 1690 Denmark controls the Faroe Islands and Iceland still, but has lost control of England and Norway who've united after gaining independence from Denmark. This loss of manpower, money and waste of time on a civil war has cost Denmark dearly who now cannot sustain a Colonial Empire at the moment. While England has kept its previous colonies around the world, which were mainly from Anglo-Norwegian colonists (mainly English though) and barely any Danish.

What do you think?
 

Thande

Donor
I tend to think any joint monarch would pretty soon be an Englishman who happens to also rule Denmark and Norway, same as happened to the Hanoverians within 2/3 generations. For the same reason. England is the largest, richest and most prestigious possession and London is a more alluring and important court. Granted, Denmark is better off than Hanover in OTL, but still.
 
Harold Harada wins the battle of Stamford Bridge. Probably the best way for this scenario to work would be for Harold Godwin to go South and tackle William the Conqueror while he is fresh then tackle the Vikings by which time his army will be tired.

Or ealier on Alfred fails to defeat the Danes
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Harold Harada wins the battle of Stamford Bridge. Probably the best way for this scenario to work would be for Harold Godwin to go South and tackle William the Conqueror while he is fresh then tackle the Vikings by which time his army will be tired.

Or ealier on Alfred fails to defeat the Danes
Well, Harold would probably not remain king of Norway if he could seize England. He was only co-ruler with his nephew anyway.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
I tend to think any joint monarch would pretty soon be an Englishman who happens to also rule Denmark and Norway, same as happened to the Hanoverians within 2/3 generations. For the same reason. England is the largest, richest and most prestigious possession and London is a more alluring and important court. Granted, Denmark is better off than Hanover in OTL, but still.

I think you're wrong to a large extent. Yes the kings will in one or two generation turn more English than Low German* or Danish. But the Danish possesions aren't Hanover, and England anno 1580 aren't UK in the 18th century. Denmark-Norway are going make up 25% of the population in this new personal union rather than under 10% as Hanover did. Denmark at this point are also a elective Kingdom rather than hereditable as Hanover was. That mean that any king ignoring Denmark to the same extent as the British king ignored Hanover would soon lose power and be replaced with someone more willing to care for Danish interest. There also the fact that the best claims and most valuable potential gain lies Baltic and North German area, likely resulting in the king focusing on extenting his power there rather than on the British isle where the only potential gain are worthless Scotland (no insult to any Scots, but around 1600 almost any place in Europe was a better gain).

*It shouldn't be forgotten that the Oldenburgs also was Dukes of Holstein and important players in North Germany.
 
After 4 years of Civil War Denmark finally relented and after another month of talks, the Danish granted both Norway and England independence. After this the Danish king brings in Absolute rule within his only Kingdom left, while both England and Norway have to pick a new monarch to rule each of them. Not long after the representatives of the nations meet and declare themselves a single nation after another week of debating. Each kingdom within the Union shall have their own devolved parliament, but shall be united under a single one that will meet in each others parliaments once every month (i.e. London one month, Christiania the next.) In this TL the parliaments/Councils of each nation is much stronger due to the monarchs being in their separate Kingdoms for long periods of time. But the Monarch (who is now Edward VIII of England, II of Norway) still has quite large powers.

More of a niggle about semantics and mindsets than anything, but the highlighted bits raise questions to me:

Treating the first point first, if you think about the way that a revolt against royal power is going to work, there are two ways that a war could go. It pretty much has to start with Parliament really, since the nobility already by this point have lost so much day-to-day power that they have no reason to object to an autocracy - in fact they could gain from it. So Parliament decides they don't like the situation. They pretty much have to decide one of two things: either they decide that their issue is with the concept of the royal despotism, in which case you've made England a Republic, or they decide their issue is with the King himself in which case they will likely declare his throne vacated in place of a better candidate - but it would have to be someone with a claim to the throne (i.e. most likely not a noble or "any old prince from Europe") - in fact possibly the most preferable option would be offering the throne to a brother of the King, but under the very specific conditions that he must submit to a law restricting his powers, roughly like how the Act of Settlement forbids any Catholic to ever enter the line of succession. Norway is pretty much the same except that it probably has more scope for granting a local noble the Kingdom, due to its history of elective monarchy.

Anyway, either way, Denmark can't "grant England (and Norway) independence". That would imply that the Danish formerly "owned" England. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that the only things the King can do is agree to be restricted as a constitutional monarch (which destroys the whole removing-Denmark-from-the-union thing) or cede the throne, which lets England (and Norway) have the freedom to choose whatever they want to do next. As stated above, this either results in a Republic, or they will offer the throne under limited terms to another candidate.

So moving onto the second point, the niggle here is, like stated previously and in the original Anglo-Dano-Norway idea, England wanted nothing to do with Norway (and Denmark) so it wouldn't go willingly into a union. In fact, the whole concept of countries "voting to merge" is anachronistic - it didn't happen, and it wouldn't happen. There's no reason for it to happen, and if you presented the idea MPs, they would just look at you blankly and then ask why they should want to merge. Countries by and large wanted to focus on their own affairs, not anyone else's. If countries ever did seek to control other territories it was in the form of an empire - i.e. by annexation or suzerainty - and even then annexation only really happened to adjoining territories where they shared common requirements, and suzerainty was a way of exercising control without having to actually administer the foreign territory - i.e. you forced it to abide by your rules and do what you wanted, but let it run itself otherwise.

The catch here, the trick that you can manipulate, is that Parliaments have no authority over Personal Unions. They can't force their Kings to surrender their other thrones, just like in the modern day, a UK court couldn't force a British citizen to surrender assets held outside Britain, without requesting help from foreign countries where the assets are held. So if the English were to offer the throne to the King's brother or some such, and then the Norwegians were to decide that they wanted the protection that being with England gave them, and made the same offer, then you can force a union of the two countries. In the short term this allows for no united government, but over the course of centuries they could essentially draw close enough that Norway could start sending MPs to England (it's not really going to happen the other way around). This won't happen instantly, though. It would require several centuries, and enough shared history to persuade the English that the Norwegians both require their companionship, and have earned it. It's not something that could happen in a lifetime, nor in several, just like there was no way that Irish MPs were going to ever be admitted to the Westminster Parliament up until the point where after 500 years, Westminster started consolidating control over the whole British Isles. So your best bet is probably to just engineer a Personal Union and then over the centuries, have the ties between the countries slowly improve.

Actually, there's another thing: the Parliaments wouldn't be able to "meet at each others Parliaments once a month". The travel times between the two kingdoms would be so high that it would take most of a month for the MPs to make the journey. The end result would be a paralysed government, not meeting regularly enough to get anything done. Actually, this goes back to the other point, too: the English wouldn't want anything to do with Norway so they would likely just refuse to attend anything in Norway. As for the other way around, they would likely refuse the Norwegians any say in English affairs, believing Norway to be "insignificant". I really think your best bet would be that listed above...
 
I tend to think any joint monarch would pretty soon be an Englishman who happens to also rule Denmark and Norway, same as happened to the Hanoverians within 2/3 generations. For the same reason. England is the largest, richest and most prestigious possession and London is a more alluring and important court. Granted, Denmark is better off than Hanover in OTL, but still.

Agreed. Though I must note that Denmark is far more within reach than Hannover. Just a quick sea journey over rather than having to trudge across Germany too.
The heir as Prince of Jutland rather than of Wales?


I think you're wrong to a large extent. Yes the kings will in one or two generation turn more English than Low German* or Danish. But the Danish possesions aren't Hanover, and England anno 1580 aren't UK in the 18th century. Denmark-Norway are going make up 25% of the population in this new personal union rather than under 10% as Hanover did. Denmark at this point are also a elective Kingdom rather than hereditable as Hanover was. That mean that any king ignoring Denmark to the same extent as the British king ignored Hanover would soon lose power and be replaced with someone more willing to care for Danish interest. There also the fact that the best claims and most valuable potential gain lies Baltic and North German area, likely resulting in the king focusing on extenting his power there rather than on the British isle where the only potential gain are worthless Scotland (no insult to any Scots, but around 1600 almost any place in Europe was a better gain).
Not necessarily. The Hannoverians were pretty happy to have a English king who ignored them. It meant the nobility were free to rule the country as they saw fit.
If the Danes are anything like the English they'd love a absentee king who leaves them to rule themselves. Couldn't the Danes take him please? :p

But yeah, Denmark and the baltic were pretty important at the time. One of the major aspects of Henry VII's foreign policy was trying to get on good terms with the Danes to help along British trade in the baltic. And then with a bit of development and maybe expansion in the modern baltic countries this could potentially offer them a better route to Russia than the dangerous northern route too...again, quite a important tudor trading area.
 
British-Norwegian union happening in RoS sometime in the next 100 years. :cool:

Note: "British" as in "residing on the Island of Great Britain" as it's essentially an Anglicized Danelaw+Norway with smaller states (Ireland, Saxony, Katneyer) around it to the west making sure it's attention is on the North Sea region.
 
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Agreed. Though I must note that Denmark is far more within reach than Hannover. Just a quick sea journey over rather than having to trudge across Germany too.

*cough* Even in the period where Hanover didn't have a coastline (for much of the era of union, it did, thus making it entirely as easy to travel to as Denmark...moreso since Copenhagen requires a significant detour around Jutland) the extent of the distance needed to travel to reach Hanover was simply to sail down the wide part of the Elbe to Hamburg - not exactly trespassing on someone else's land since the Elbe is so wide at its mouth that Hamburg is/was considered a seaport - and then to march a whole 5 miles to the Hamburg/Hanover border. It's not much of a trek.
 
Hmm, how about during the Napoleonic era - say if Denmark allies with the UK, and at some point the Danish and British crowns merge during the early-mid 19th century?
 
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