BTW: @TheBookwormBoy made up a story of William V's parents and he made sure he was an only child so he had no siblings to share the burden of losing your grandparents and parents within a fortnight of each other.
An Imperial Match: Anne Boleyn marries Charles V
- Thread starter pandizzy
- Start date
Damn William V seemed to have a troubled early reign, hopefully he'd be able to steer Britain through future turmoil.
Poor John. At least most of his children had happy marriages and the Tudor dynasty lasted way longer than in OTL. Were there ever female monarchs in England and Scotland in this timeline?
It's mention that the wine Zygmunt drank was meant for his wife so I assume the poisoner didn't mean to kill him.
Jocasta was named after Catherine Howard's mother.
It's mention that the wine Zygmunt drank was meant for his wife so I assume the poisoner didn't mean to kill him.
Epilogue III
The birth of Mademoiselle Anne de Valois seemed to be the prelude of young Isabella of Austria’s mental troubles. Much like her older sister Joanna and grandmother, she had great difficulties with depression and anxiety, which manifested in a deep religious faith, and an enormous dependency on her mother-in-law. The Dauphin despaired of what to make of his young wife, whose relationship with Mary Tudor the Younger, Queen of France bordered on that of a penitent and their confessor. The Queen exerted such influence on Isabella of Austria and by extent the Dauphin François that both were spurred to action against the rising trend of Protestants—or Huguenots, as they were contemporarily known—in France.
Events came to a head when François II of France (1546-1557) was assassinated by a Huguenot radicalist known simply as Jean de Lyon during a procession to Notre Dame to celebrate the engagement of Louis-Charles, Count of Montfort to Anne Beatrice of Savoy, an engagement which ultimately ended when the interests of France and Savoy irrevocably came to odds.
The violent assassination of his father sent the newly-instated François III (1557-1599) into a rage against the Huguenots, and the Dowager Queen Mary’s devotion to Catholicism stoked his fury to a fever pitch. Upon her untimely death of cancer in 1558, the English princess who would be known to the Huguenots as “Bloody Mary”, was rumoured to have convinced her son of a terrible evil.
The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Day
It was on the 23rd of August, 1558, the eve of St Bartholomew’s Day that François III ultimately acted. Having summoned Huguenots from every corner of France that would heed his call, the King declared there would be a summit to discuss the religious question and put an end to the debate of Catholicism versus Protestantism, as had begun at the Council of Trent some thirteen years before. François III welcomed the greatest theologians of the Huguenots’ numbers as well as many of his own people who had converted to the Calvinist faith, and set about destroying them.
Some historical records of dubious validity indicate the deaths over the next three days may have reached as high as twenty thousand Huguenots, and even those accounts seeking to absolve François III cannot deny there were at least some eight or nine thousand Huguenots put to death. Prominent Huguenots were burned at the stake, while lesser heretics were run through by roving bands of Swiss mercenaries bought by the crown or zealous Catholic neighbours. So violent was the massacre that Queen Isabella of Austria notably said to her ladies as they saw the chaos: “It is as if the very mouth of Hell has opened to spill its horrors upon us all.”
The massacre did not have its intended effect. Much to the frustration of François III, it began the French Wars of Religion (1557-1593) where the remaining Huguenots, led by Jean IV of Navarre, continually aroused trouble in the south of France with the aid of Louis, Duke of Gascony, the King’s own half-uncle. The Wars of Religion only came to an end with the ageing François III submitting to the Huguenots freedom of religion with the Edict of Nantes. This edict only brought temporary peace and was eventually revoked by his grandson François V some forty years later in another campaign that unfortunately managed to send Huguenots fleeing to Protestant Germany or the Baltics rather than face his violent rule.
Queen Isabella and her youngest son, Henri, who died at the age of two.
But the massacre had greater effects on the family. The mad Queen Isabella, pregnant with her fourth child at the time, declared that she could still hear the screaming Huguenots and that they intended to take her soul away for being married to their killer. For fear of their safety, her children were removed from her care after she reportedly attempted to attack the newborn Prince François, seeing him as a demon from hell and a Huguenot ‘reborn’ to taunt her with her complacency to their murder.
It took two years for her to recover her mental faculties and modern historians believe she may have suffered from postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis, exacerbated by each subsequent pregnancy. In twenty-five years, Isabella had fifteen children, most of whom were given over to the care of governesses for fear that she’d harm them.
By 1560, the people of Paris already spoke of ‘la reine folle’, or the mad queen, and how the halls of the royal palaces were filled with her screams. King Francis, who loved his wife, fervently prayed for a recovery and even after he had her removed from the Louvre, continued to visit her. Such meetings often ended with the Queen grasping her husband and refusing to let go, crying and begging for forgiveness.
But there was no avail. In 1579, she was permanently placed in Château de Vincennes for her own protection, surrounded by attendants that reported to the king alone. She was so isolated that her fifth daughter, Charlotte, was reportedly surprised to see that her mother was still alive in 1593 after the queen was brought to court to see her off to her marriage to King Philippe II of Burgundy.
La Reine Folle ultimately ended her life in a nunnery, having been placed there by her son, Louis XIII. Isabella of Austria reportedly refused to believe her husband had died for the sixteen years she outlived him. Often, she spoke to the nuns that attended to her of how her husband would ride out to see her every morning and blamed his failure to arrive on the weather or the affairs of state. When one inevitably attempted to tell her that the King was dead, she slapped them for their ‘insolence and lies’, refusing to believe them and to have them in her presence until the moment she forgot all that happened once again. Captivity, many said, had rendered her docile, and her granddaughter Nicole de Lorraine, who visited on her journey to Spain for marriage to Philip III, noted “She is the very picture of tranquillity. I believe I have never met a gentler soul.”
King Louis XIII had a more peaceful reign than his father. Unmarried when he came to the throne, he wed the Protestant Maria Anna of Brandenburg, reportedly as a show of good faith towards the Huguenots. The marriage was a failure, however, and it was childless, so the throne was inherited by his younger brother, François IV, who married the Catholic princess Elisabeth of Portugal. Their son François V would undo the majority of his uncle’s reforms within the first months of his reign, declaring that “God has not appointed me to this seat to see heretics live freely in these kingdoms.”
To this day, relations between Catholics and Protestants in France are problematic. In 2018, a young Protestant woman was killed for refusing to attend a mass demanded by her university, sparking week-long protests that caused 20,000 livres in damages on the capital alone. King Henri III has famously refused to comment on the allegations of police brutality during the protest and claimed the fifty deaths are ‘enemy propaganda’, despite evidence that several of the people killed in the riots were innocent bystanders swept up in the mob and attacked without cause.
No progress has been made towards the investigation of the person or persons unknown who killed the young woman, and a pitiful settlement of 800 livres was quietly paid to her family. The King has a low popularity, with many calling for his abdication in the name of his son, Philippe de Valois, or for the dissolution of the monarchy as a whole. The French royal family have refused to comment on the possibility of a national referendum and tensions rise as a whole in the nation.
King Henri, called The Butcher of Paris by his political enemies.
Dauphin Philippe, the hope of his house for a continual in the monarchy.
Events came to a head when François II of France (1546-1557) was assassinated by a Huguenot radicalist known simply as Jean de Lyon during a procession to Notre Dame to celebrate the engagement of Louis-Charles, Count of Montfort to Anne Beatrice of Savoy, an engagement which ultimately ended when the interests of France and Savoy irrevocably came to odds.
The violent assassination of his father sent the newly-instated François III (1557-1599) into a rage against the Huguenots, and the Dowager Queen Mary’s devotion to Catholicism stoked his fury to a fever pitch. Upon her untimely death of cancer in 1558, the English princess who would be known to the Huguenots as “Bloody Mary”, was rumoured to have convinced her son of a terrible evil.
The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Day
It was on the 23rd of August, 1558, the eve of St Bartholomew’s Day that François III ultimately acted. Having summoned Huguenots from every corner of France that would heed his call, the King declared there would be a summit to discuss the religious question and put an end to the debate of Catholicism versus Protestantism, as had begun at the Council of Trent some thirteen years before. François III welcomed the greatest theologians of the Huguenots’ numbers as well as many of his own people who had converted to the Calvinist faith, and set about destroying them.
Some historical records of dubious validity indicate the deaths over the next three days may have reached as high as twenty thousand Huguenots, and even those accounts seeking to absolve François III cannot deny there were at least some eight or nine thousand Huguenots put to death. Prominent Huguenots were burned at the stake, while lesser heretics were run through by roving bands of Swiss mercenaries bought by the crown or zealous Catholic neighbours. So violent was the massacre that Queen Isabella of Austria notably said to her ladies as they saw the chaos: “It is as if the very mouth of Hell has opened to spill its horrors upon us all.”
The massacre did not have its intended effect. Much to the frustration of François III, it began the French Wars of Religion (1557-1593) where the remaining Huguenots, led by Jean IV of Navarre, continually aroused trouble in the south of France with the aid of Louis, Duke of Gascony, the King’s own half-uncle. The Wars of Religion only came to an end with the ageing François III submitting to the Huguenots freedom of religion with the Edict of Nantes. This edict only brought temporary peace and was eventually revoked by his grandson François V some forty years later in another campaign that unfortunately managed to send Huguenots fleeing to Protestant Germany or the Baltics rather than face his violent rule.
Queen Isabella and her youngest son, Henri, who died at the age of two.
But the massacre had greater effects on the family. The mad Queen Isabella, pregnant with her fourth child at the time, declared that she could still hear the screaming Huguenots and that they intended to take her soul away for being married to their killer. For fear of their safety, her children were removed from her care after she reportedly attempted to attack the newborn Prince François, seeing him as a demon from hell and a Huguenot ‘reborn’ to taunt her with her complacency to their murder.
It took two years for her to recover her mental faculties and modern historians believe she may have suffered from postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis, exacerbated by each subsequent pregnancy. In twenty-five years, Isabella had fifteen children, most of whom were given over to the care of governesses for fear that she’d harm them.
By 1560, the people of Paris already spoke of ‘la reine folle’, or the mad queen, and how the halls of the royal palaces were filled with her screams. King Francis, who loved his wife, fervently prayed for a recovery and even after he had her removed from the Louvre, continued to visit her. Such meetings often ended with the Queen grasping her husband and refusing to let go, crying and begging for forgiveness.
But there was no avail. In 1579, she was permanently placed in Château de Vincennes for her own protection, surrounded by attendants that reported to the king alone. She was so isolated that her fifth daughter, Charlotte, was reportedly surprised to see that her mother was still alive in 1593 after the queen was brought to court to see her off to her marriage to King Philippe II of Burgundy.
La Reine Folle ultimately ended her life in a nunnery, having been placed there by her son, Louis XIII. Isabella of Austria reportedly refused to believe her husband had died for the sixteen years she outlived him. Often, she spoke to the nuns that attended to her of how her husband would ride out to see her every morning and blamed his failure to arrive on the weather or the affairs of state. When one inevitably attempted to tell her that the King was dead, she slapped them for their ‘insolence and lies’, refusing to believe them and to have them in her presence until the moment she forgot all that happened once again. Captivity, many said, had rendered her docile, and her granddaughter Nicole de Lorraine, who visited on her journey to Spain for marriage to Philip III, noted “She is the very picture of tranquillity. I believe I have never met a gentler soul.”
King Louis XIII had a more peaceful reign than his father. Unmarried when he came to the throne, he wed the Protestant Maria Anna of Brandenburg, reportedly as a show of good faith towards the Huguenots. The marriage was a failure, however, and it was childless, so the throne was inherited by his younger brother, François IV, who married the Catholic princess Elisabeth of Portugal. Their son François V would undo the majority of his uncle’s reforms within the first months of his reign, declaring that “God has not appointed me to this seat to see heretics live freely in these kingdoms.”
To this day, relations between Catholics and Protestants in France are problematic. In 2018, a young Protestant woman was killed for refusing to attend a mass demanded by her university, sparking week-long protests that caused 20,000 livres in damages on the capital alone. King Henri III has famously refused to comment on the allegations of police brutality during the protest and claimed the fifty deaths are ‘enemy propaganda’, despite evidence that several of the people killed in the riots were innocent bystanders swept up in the mob and attacked without cause.
No progress has been made towards the investigation of the person or persons unknown who killed the young woman, and a pitiful settlement of 800 livres was quietly paid to her family. The King has a low popularity, with many calling for his abdication in the name of his son, Philippe de Valois, or for the dissolution of the monarchy as a whole. The French royal family have refused to comment on the possibility of a national referendum and tensions rise as a whole in the nation.
King Henri, called The Butcher of Paris by his political enemies.
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Jesus f***ing Christ... With how much she suffered during the pregnancies that we saw, I can only imagine how horrible all the other pregnancies must have been to her...
A shame that Mary still dies aged just 42. Also, what happened to Katherine Parr ttl?
she continued writing her books in secret, confident that her husband and son's position wouldn't hurt her. And only modern historians have managed to pinpoint her as the most likely to be the famous frenchwoman author of protestant novels.
Cool cool. Glad to see that she survived through the religious turmoil
Good on her! We need more "I am smart and I will show you how smart I am. See my book? I wrote this! I am smart!" books from her.
Epilogue IV
Although his brother’s will intended for him to be emperor after his abdication, Ferdinand I was only accepted as ruler of the Holy Roman Empire in the Imperial Diet of May 1558. He was fifty-five, having recently suffered the death of his wife Anna and daughter Johanna during the interregnum, and relied heavily on his son Maximilian to maintain order in the empire. Some have suggested the new emperor still felt the pain of the loss of his friend, George I of Württemberg, who stepped away from the then-archduke when it was suggested that their friendship was the reason why young Archduke Georg was dead. This view, and the theory that the pair were lovers, has not been seen well by most historians, with George Boleyn’s main biographer, Charles Douglas, calling it “A load of hogwash.”
However, the Austrian Habsburgs continued to maintain close relationships with the Württemberger Boleyns in the following centuries, even raising them to the rank of an electoral principality in 1688. The two families often intermarried up until the male-line extinction of the Boleyns in 1769, which saw the inheritance of Württemberg by Emperor Ludwig I through his mother, Holy Roman Empress Anna Maria Bullen.
Emperor Ferdinand I died in 25 July 1564 at the age of sixty-one and was succeeded by his son Maximilian, who was thirty-eight. Maximilian II already had thirteen living children with his cousin and wife, Joanna of Austria. His eldest son and heir, also named Ferdinand, was also married to a cousin and had three children. They were both careful and tolerant towards the Protestants in Germany, which helped to assuage the tensions with Lutheran countries during the French Wars of Religion. Ferdinand’s eldest son would even end up marrying a distant relative, Anna Maria of Hesse, who was Lutheran, to showcase their friendship and brotherly relations with their neighbours.
Anna and Karl and their eldest children.
Emperor Maximilian II died in 1576 after a long period of illness and was succeeded by his son, who became Ferdinand II. His devoted wife, who spent days and weeks nursing him, succumbed to exhaustion and died of consumption two weeks after. They were buried together at Innsbruck.
Grave of Emperor Maximilian II and his wife.
The Holy Roman Empire notably remained under Habsburg rule from 1452 to its ultimate collapse in 1747, five years shy of its three-hundredth anniversary of Habsburg rule. The prolonged decline of the Holy Roman Empire paled in comparison to the Austrian Empire, which could not hope to attain the same longevity with its civil unrest, ineffective leadership, and periods of bankruptcy offset by rare moments of economic surplus.
Lasting only 147 years, 1894 saw the death of the Austrian monarchy with the War of the Dukes (1894). The scant remains of the once illustrious royal line are now headed by Friedrich von Habsburg, who ultimately found a new home in Arles. Friedrich, the sole great-grandson of the last Austrian Emperor of the same name, and his three children by his wife Liesl Schäfer; Heinrich, Sophie and Jakob, are the only legitimate Habsburgs recorded as of 2020, and enjoy a relatively peaceful existence out of the public eye. Most recently, in 2022, the family made international headlines when an aspiring paparazzo seeking pictures of the then-pregnant Liesl during a family outing was hospitalised by Friedrich. No official comments have been made by the Habsburg family as to the sex or name of their most recent child.
Seeking privacy and seclusion after nearly a millennium of great feats, the Habsburg family seems doomed to be forgotten, as so many former dynasties are. But at long last, they are at peace.
Friedrich von Habsburg and wife Liesl Schäfer in 2013 with their eldest child, Heinrich.
However, the Austrian Habsburgs continued to maintain close relationships with the Württemberger Boleyns in the following centuries, even raising them to the rank of an electoral principality in 1688. The two families often intermarried up until the male-line extinction of the Boleyns in 1769, which saw the inheritance of Württemberg by Emperor Ludwig I through his mother, Holy Roman Empress Anna Maria Bullen.
Emperor Ferdinand I died in 25 July 1564 at the age of sixty-one and was succeeded by his son Maximilian, who was thirty-eight. Maximilian II already had thirteen living children with his cousin and wife, Joanna of Austria. His eldest son and heir, also named Ferdinand, was also married to a cousin and had three children. They were both careful and tolerant towards the Protestants in Germany, which helped to assuage the tensions with Lutheran countries during the French Wars of Religion. Ferdinand’s eldest son would even end up marrying a distant relative, Anna Maria of Hesse, who was Lutheran, to showcase their friendship and brotherly relations with their neighbours.
- Juana of Austria (December 1526-) m. Maximilian of Austria (July 1526-);
- Ferdinánd von Österreich (June 1544-) b. Fernanda de Austria (March 1541-);
- Ferdinand Josef of Austria (October 1560-)
- Maria Anna of Austria (April 1562-)
- Maximiliana Maria of Austria (December 1563-)
- Anna von Österreich (January 1546-) b. Karl of Austria (June 1540-);
- Charles of Austria (December 1562-);
- Aloisia of Austria (November 1563-);
- Mária von Österreich (October 1547-) A novice in a convent.;
- Tamás von Österreich (September 1548 -) b. Margaret Stewart (June 1549-);
- Maria Eleonora of Austria (February 1564-)
- Erzsébet von Österreich (January 1550-) b. Johann Georg von Wettin (May 1548- );
- Matyas von Österreich (February 1551-). Twin to Lajos.
- Lajos von Österreich (February 1551-). Twin to Matyas;
- Margit von Österreich (August 1553-). A novice in a convent;
- Eleonóra von Österreich (January 1555-September 1555). Died a sickly infant;
- Károly von Österreich (September 1556-);
- Ilona von Österreich (December 1558-January 1560). Died of meningitis;
- Ulászló von Österreich (April 1560-);
- János von Österreich (March 1562-);
- Gizella von Österreich (February 1563-);
- Ágnes von Österreich (June 1564-).
- Ferdinánd von Österreich (June 1544-) b. Fernanda de Austria (March 1541-);
Anna and Karl and their eldest children.
Emperor Maximilian II died in 1576 after a long period of illness and was succeeded by his son, who became Ferdinand II. His devoted wife, who spent days and weeks nursing him, succumbed to exhaustion and died of consumption two weeks after. They were buried together at Innsbruck.
Grave of Emperor Maximilian II and his wife.
The Holy Roman Empire notably remained under Habsburg rule from 1452 to its ultimate collapse in 1747, five years shy of its three-hundredth anniversary of Habsburg rule. The prolonged decline of the Holy Roman Empire paled in comparison to the Austrian Empire, which could not hope to attain the same longevity with its civil unrest, ineffective leadership, and periods of bankruptcy offset by rare moments of economic surplus.
Lasting only 147 years, 1894 saw the death of the Austrian monarchy with the War of the Dukes (1894). The scant remains of the once illustrious royal line are now headed by Friedrich von Habsburg, who ultimately found a new home in Arles. Friedrich, the sole great-grandson of the last Austrian Emperor of the same name, and his three children by his wife Liesl Schäfer; Heinrich, Sophie and Jakob, are the only legitimate Habsburgs recorded as of 2020, and enjoy a relatively peaceful existence out of the public eye. Most recently, in 2022, the family made international headlines when an aspiring paparazzo seeking pictures of the then-pregnant Liesl during a family outing was hospitalised by Friedrich. No official comments have been made by the Habsburg family as to the sex or name of their most recent child.
Seeking privacy and seclusion after nearly a millennium of great feats, the Habsburg family seems doomed to be forgotten, as so many former dynasties are. But at long last, they are at peace.
Friedrich von Habsburg and wife Liesl Schäfer in 2013 with their eldest child, Heinrich.
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Oh hell yes good on Friedrich and Liesl for protecting their kids’ privacy (unlike many modern day royals…)
You are an absolute legend Izzy! Loved every moment of this! Can't wait for more with the plantagenets on your other story and what you will cook next!