Belgium, Oh Belgium - Who Shall Claim Thee, Belgium?

Who Should Be the King?

  • Someone else I foolishly forgot to put (post who and why below!)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Prosper Louis, The Duke of Arenberg (Belgian noble)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Alfred, The Duke of Croy (Belgian noble)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Younger son of Willem III of the Netherlands

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    158
  • Poll closed .
The monarch will become a figurehead in due time. But as the country becomes democratic, how will the Walloons tolerate a system in which they will be outvoted like 6 to 1 by the Dutch speakers?

I know right now in Belgium, Wallonia has a ton of independence; according to Wikipedia "The Walloon Region's autonomy extends even to foreign policy; Wallonia is entitled to pursue its own foreign policy, including the signing of treaties, and in many domains even the Belgian federal government is not able to sign an international treaty without the agreement of the Parliament of Wallonia". So maybe generations of royal govenors will be able to negotiate a similar position for them in the Netherlands.

Wallonia was and is a huge moneymaking area: "In the 18th century, Wallonia was the second industrial power in the world, in proportion to its population and its territory, after the United Kingdom... currently Wallonia has some companies which are world leaders in their specialized fields, including armaments, glass production, lime and limestone production, cyclotrons, and aviation parts." From what I understand, this is part of the reason they have the independence they do. I think the monarchy could be persuaded to forgo a little control for a better overall economy / richer country.
 
Maybe having a second son / grandson marry a French Catholic princess and become the Govenor of Wallonia, and then having it maybe turn into a more or less hereditary position: his Catholic inclined half-French son marries a Belgian noble or Catholic princess and becomes the next governor, followed by his son and so on. Maybe they convert to Catholicism a bit down the line. The mainline Dutch marry a princess off there every now and then to remind everyone who is in charge, but the Wallonia line of the House of Orange more or less becomes Wallonian over time.
Maybe after the failed Belgian revolt William II's second son Alexander eventually marries Clementine of Orleans. She's liable to try and push her eldest son for an independent Belgium, but they won't know that in 1831/32. Maybe Wallonia gets split as a Grand Duchy and possibly gains its independence later as the result of Luxembourg-esque succession issue.
 
Maybe after the failed Belgian revolt William II's second son Alexander eventually marries Clementine of Orleans. She's liable to try and push her eldest son for an independent Belgium, but they won't know that in 1831/32. Maybe Wallonia gets split as a Grand Duchy and possibly gains its independence later as the result of Luxembourg-esque succession issue.

That could work very well - a good way to keep Wallonia happy but in line (independent within the group) until Mummy Clem gets her hands in and convinces them independence overall is better - it's a fifty-fifty shot on Willem and Charlotte's kid being a decent human being and if he's a Willem 2.0, Wallonia might find Alexander and Clementine's son a better deal. Especially if some Luxembourg-esque succession issues were to come up... a Queen Charlotte of the Netherlands isn't so impossible after all...
 
That could work very well - a good way to keep Wallonia happy but in line (independent within the group) until Mummy Clem gets her hands in and convinces them independence overall is better - it's a fifty-fifty shot on Willem and Charlotte's kid being a decent human being and if he's a Willem 2.0, Wallonia might find Alexander and Clementine's son a better deal. Especially if some Luxembourg-esque succession issues were to come up... a Queen Charlotte of the Netherlands isn't so impossible after all...
Yeah, maybe Willem III goes the way of Leopold II IOTL, one son who dies young/unmarried/childless (likely called Willem) and a plethora of daughters. Unlike the Brute of the Congo, Willem won't idly let his line be left behind as has-beens and never-weres. No, one of his girls (probably either called Charlotte for her mom/maternal grandmother, Anna for her paternal grandmother, or Wilhelmina after Daddy Dearest ala IOTL) will be on the throne damn it. So he messes with the succession law because dear lord what Dutchman wants to (eventually) be ruled over by a Catholic French speaker with a pushy mother when they could settle for a nice protestant Dutch girl. However, Wallonia and Luxembourg have clauses necessitating male-line inheritance and suddenly Clementine is (proverbially) dancing through the streets of Namur at the prospect of her husband (or if Alexander's already dead her son) being a double Grand Duke, which is close enough to King, as she counts down the days until her loathsome brother-in-law bites the dust and she can start planning the coronation.

Seriously, IOTL Clementine designed Ferdinand's crown in Bulgaria and went spending like mad. You know as soon as she gets to Wallonia she'll build a fabulous palace in Namur and do some dollar diplomacy to win them to her and Alexander's side. I'd pay money to see a scheming Willem and Clementine in the same room together as their spouses just sigh and wonder how fate dealt them such hands (Charlotte more so than Alexander, but I think he'd be a bit more torn about the Dutch/Wallonia breakup and a bit frustrated by Clementine practically dancing on the grave of the Dutch-Wallonian-Luxembourgish union in the name of getting a throne).
 
Yeah, maybe Willem III goes the way of Leopold II IOTL, one son who dies young/unmarried/childless (likely called Willem) and a plethora of daughters. Unlike the Brute of the Congo, Willem won't idly let his line be left behind as has-beens and never-weres. No, one of his girls (probably either called Charlotte for her mom/maternal grandmother, Anna for her paternal grandmother, or Wilhelmina after Daddy Dearest ala IOTL) will be on the throne damn it. So he messes with the succession law because dear lord what Dutchman wants to (eventually) be ruled over by a Catholic French speaker with a pushy mother when they could settle for a nice protestant Dutch girl. However, Wallonia and Luxembourg have clauses necessitating male-line inheritance and suddenly Clementine is (proverbially) dancing through the streets of Namur at the prospect of her husband (or if Alexander's already dead her son) being a double Grand Duke, which is close enough to King, as she counts down the days until her loathsome brother-in-law bites the dust and she can start planning the coronation.

Seriously, IOTL Clementine designed Ferdinand's crown in Bulgaria and went spending like mad. You know as soon as she gets to Wallonia she'll build a fabulous palace in Namur and do some dollar diplomacy to win them to her and Alexander's side. I'd pay money to see a scheming Willem and Clementine in the same room together as their spouses just sigh and wonder how fate dealt them such hands (Charlotte more so than Alexander, but I think he'd be a bit more torn about the Dutch/Wallonia breakup and a bit frustrated by Clementine practically dancing on the grave of the Dutch-Wallonian-Luxembourgish union in the name of getting a throne).

I almost started crying laughing when I read this as I pictured Big Brute Bill completely 180-ing into a full blown feminist to get his daughter on the throne. Considering Clementine, I think he'd have a fairly easy time convincing everyone to take Queen Anna / Charlotte / Wilhelmina over Clementine and Alexander's kid - like you said, a nice Protestant Dutch girl conveniently related to the Protestant super power of Great Britain vs a half-French Catholic leaning mama's boy conviently related to a minor branch of a great-ish power. Maybe that would be the price for the new queen to pay to get her Walloon cousin to not challenge her claim: "You get Wallonia and Luxembourg and make Belgium if you want, just leave me and the Netherlands alone". (With Clemetine gleefully designing crowns in the background and getting her "Mother of the King" sash pressed and ready to go).

I actually pictured Charlotte and Alexander bonding, so maybe they bond over their spouses in addition to everything else. They can have a weekly tea devoted to discussing what nonsense Willem and Clementine are up to that week. This is obviously going on at the same time as Clementine and Willem's weekly scheming meeting. Clementine -knowing the laws of Luxembourg and Wallonia full well- is probably the one to turn Willem onto the idea of changing the line of succesion to let his daughter inherit (why bother being another queen of the Protestant Netherlands when you can be the first queen / king's mother of Catholic, French and ridiculously wealthy Belgium?). The closeness of Alexander and Charlotte would probably make him support her daughter, even as he was torn up over the breakup, but he might try to offer up a solution like Queen Anna / Charlotte / Wilhelmina marrying her cousin to keep everything nice and together (right up till Clementine, Mama's Boy, and the Queen suo jure veto it).
 
Marry Alexander to Clementine and you will have a perfect future Grand Duke of Wallonia in the person of their son (Luxemburg speak French or German? Because at that point the reason for the split will be language not religion)
 
Marry Alexander to Clementine and you will have a perfect future Grand Duke of Wallonia in the person of their son (Luxemburg speak French or German? Because at that point the reason for the split will be language not religion)

Luxembourg speaks French and German officially, in addition to Luxembourgish, which is considered a variety of the Franconian language of the Moselle region. OTL Clementine made sure her son Ferdinand spoke multiple languages, so I feel like she would definitely get these three (in addition to Dutch) checked off the list. Luxembourg is also super Catholic (currently 87% of the country is Catholic) so a Catholic leaning, probably down to convert ruler with a definitely Catholic mother and wife would make him perfect.
 
Luxembourg speaks French and German officially, in addition to Luxembourgish, which is considered a variety of the Franconian language of the Moselle region. OTL Clementine made sure her son Ferdinand spoke multiple languages, so I feel like she would definitely get these three (in addition to Dutch) checked off the list. Luxembourg is also super Catholic (currently 87% of the country is Catholic) so a Catholic leaning, probably down to convert ruler with a definitely Catholic mother and wife would make him perfect.
An additional solution for the German speakers is to marry the Wallonian prince (likely called Guillaume) to a German princess (preferably an Austrian Archduchess, but a Saxon, Bavarian, or even Catholic Coburgs will do in a pinch). Depending on when Guillaume is born, you might even be able to get him a granddaughter of the Duke of Teschen as a bride.
Teschen Granddaughters available (born between 1836 -1857 ish, when Guillaume would hypothetically be born):
Archduchess Maria Theresia (1845)
Archduchess Mathilde (1849)
Maria Annunciata of Bourbon-Two Sicilies (1843) - Female line Granddaughter (along with all her Bourbon-Two Sicilies sisters below her)
Maria Immaculata of Bourbon-Two Sicilies (1844)
Maria Pia of Bourbon-Two Sicilies (1849)
Maria Louisa of Bourbon-Two Sicilies (1855)
Other Austrian Archduchesses and German Catholic princesses born in that same period
Anna of Saxony (1836) - Cousin of Franz Josef
Archduchess Marie Henriette (1836) - OTL suffering wife of Leopold II
Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria (1837) -OTL Empress Sissi
Stephanie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (1837)
Margaretha of Saxony (1840) - Sister of Anna
Maria Sophia of Bavaria (1841) - Sister of Sissi
Marie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (1845) - OTL mother of Albert I of Belgium
Sophie of Saxony (1845)
Maria Theresa of Austria-Este (1849)
Therese of Bavaria (1850)
Sophia Charlotte in Bavaria (1847) another sister of Sissi
Mathilde in Bavaria (1843) another sister of Sissi
 
Biggest challenge with the Eaglet is having him giving up his claim to the French throne. Than again, if there are certain not so moral people in his inner circle, they might even talk him into it and use Belgium as gateway into France. There are a lot of Bonaparte sympathizers and the new regime is highly unstable. So it might end with Bonaparte return to power just as it was in OTL-1848.
 
I know right now in Belgium, Wallonia has a ton of independence; according to Wikipedia "The Walloon Region's autonomy extends even to foreign policy; Wallonia is entitled to pursue its own foreign policy, including the signing of treaties, and in many domains even the Belgian federal government is not able to sign an international treaty without the agreement of the Parliament of Wallonia". So maybe generations of royal govenors will be able to negotiate a similar position for them in the Netherlands.

Modern Belgium is a federal state in part because the population is close to evenly split between Dutch and French speakers. ITTL that's much less true of this Dutch state - francophones would be like 15 % of the population. The XIX century Dutch state is not likely to grant that kind of autonomy to Wallonia and the Walloons can, moreover, look to France for assistance as France both 1) dislikes giving Amsterdam control of the entire Low Countries and 2) would like to expand for itself. As for the Dutch, they don't want war with France and don't really want to govern a bunch of francophone Catholics, even if their land has a lot of coal. The situation is set up for a separation. The Dutch might maintain control of Belgium in the 1830s but I think it's hard for this to last permanently.
 
Here's the wokest idea, no royals get it, Belgium becomes a free confederal republic.

But honestly, I came here to address an issue that seems to always pop up whenever Belgium is mentioned, and I have no idea why. If you think that the best thing that could be done with the nation is simply to partition it, give it all to the Netherlands, or anything of the sort simply because "it's not a real country", "rightful Dutch clay", or whatever other responses you could come up with, it honestly ignores the absolute joy that this nation can become, and has become. Belgium, quite literally, is a historical glitch, I am not even going to lie, a hyper complicated series of happenstances arranged perfectly for a Catholic Revolt to cue an identity in a nation who's identity in itself is a happenstance.

Belgium, howeever, is a blank slate, even more so than the Ubernetherlands, even more so than French Flanders, or whatever else you could do with the land. Every step this nation takes from it's inception is utterly unpredictable, in every sense, there is no set path for it, there is no end goal, it is literally an author's self insert in every TL that bothers to cover it because that was just how the set up of the nation was at it's inception. I don't understand Belgian hate on this site when Belgium itself seems to stand for what a lot of ATLs seem to stand for...

Past that, getting off my soap box, I think Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg und Gotha-Kohary could be rather neat.
 
Belgium, quite literally, is a historical glitch, I am not even going to lie, a hyper complicated series of happenstances arranged perfectly for a Catholic Revolt to cue an identity in a nation who's identity in itself is a happenstance.

I think this is overstating it. The Belgian provinces (other than Liège which was its own prince-bishopric) have a long shared history - under the Burgundians, the Spanish Habsburgs, the Austrian Habsburgs, the French, the Dutch, and then as their own state. And if they do not have a single national language, they did have a single religion (Catholicism) which historically mattered more to people. When they were given to the Dutch, they had not been united with them in nearly 250 years, and had a different religion than them. Plus the Dutch had destroyed the commerce of Antwerp by blockading it for 200 years.

It is not surprising to me that they revolted. But the outcome of the revolt could certainly be different.
 
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You might want to consider marrying the protestant queen Wilhelmina Anna Charlotte of the Netherlands to a male line cousin to appease the conservatives. Reigning Queen but the male line of the house of Nassau is maintained. Besides, cousin marriages were still quite normal in this time period.
 
You might want to consider marrying the protestant queen Wilhelmina Anna Charlotte of the Netherlands to a male line cousin to appease the conservatives. Reigning Queen but the male line of the house of Nassau is maintained. Besides, cousin marriages were still quite normal in this time period.

Maybe a surviving son of Frederik of the Netherlands and Louise of Prussia (keeps the Orange-Nassau name but without being first cousins) would do, but I don't know if the Queen marrying a Nassau would let her kids "jump" over their Catholic cousins for succession to Luxembourg and possibly Wallonia.

Because once Willem III dies the line of succession (for men) is as follows (excluding those who die off):
  1. Alexander of the Netherlands
  2. sons of Alexander
  3. Henry of the Netherlands
  4. Frederick of the Netherlands
  5. Frederik, Prince Consort of the Netherlands
  6. Sons of Frederik and Queen Charlotte/Anna/Wilhelmina
  7. Adolphus, Duke of Nassau (OTL winner of the Luxembourg Sweepstakes)
 
Maybe a surviving son of Frederik of the Netherlands and Louise of Prussia (keeps the Orange-Nassau name but without being first cousins) would do, but I don't know if the Queen marrying a Nassau would let her kids "jump" over their Catholic cousins for succession to Luxembourg and possibly Wallonia.

Because once Willem III dies the line of succession (for men) is as follows (excluding those who die off):
  1. Alexander of the Netherlands
  2. sons of Alexander
  3. Henry of the Netherlands
  4. Frederick of the Netherlands
  5. Frederik, Prince Consort of the Netherlands
  6. Sons of Frederik and Queen Charlotte/Anna/Wilhelmina
  7. Adolphus, Duke of Nassau (OTL winner of the Luxembourg Sweepstakes)
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederik_van_Oranje-Nassau_(1836-1846)

The only page I could find. It says he died in a gym accident. Poor luck for an otherwise healthy child. It says that he was joyful, healthy and somewhat robust child.
 
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederik_van_Oranje-Nassau_(1836-1846)

The only page I could find. It says he died in a gym accident. Poor luck for an otherwise healthy child. It says that he was joyful, healthy and somewhat robust child.
He's also of a reasonable age to be married off to his cousin (likely 4-10 years her senior). Although his survival might impact the prospects of his sister Louise as she and Marie might not be as great of heiresses with their brother around (and everyone pressuring Frederick to consolidate the wealth around his son and the Dutch grandkids).
 
You might want to consider marrying the protestant queen Wilhelmina Anna Charlotte of the Netherlands to a male line cousin to appease the conservatives. Reigning Queen but the male line of the house of Nassau is maintained. Besides, cousin marriages were still quite normal in this time period.

Maybe a surviving son of Frederik of the Netherlands and Louise of Prussia (keeps the Orange-Nassau name but without being first cousins) would do, but I don't know if the Queen marrying a Nassau would let her kids "jump" over their Catholic cousins for succession to Luxembourg and possibly Wallonia.

Because once Willem III dies the line of succession (for men) is as follows (excluding those who die off):
  1. Alexander of the Netherlands
  2. sons of Alexander
  3. Henry of the Netherlands
  4. Frederick of the Netherlands
  5. Frederik, Prince Consort of the Netherlands
  6. Sons of Frederik and Queen Charlotte/Anna/Wilhelmina
  7. Adolphus, Duke of Nassau (OTL winner of the Luxembourg Sweepstakes)

I was planning on marrying her to Prince Frederik (b. 1836), the second son of Prince Frederik and Princess Luise of Prussia. This way, the main line continues on in the male line (like you said, @Foadar,) but keeps Clementine and Alexander's kid pushed back in the line of succession.

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederik_van_Oranje-Nassau_(1836-1846)

The only page I could find. It says he died in a gym accident. Poor luck for an otherwise healthy child. It says that he was joyful, healthy and somewhat robust child.

Yeah, he and Charlotte would be a good match and provide happy, healthy, robust Protestant Dutch heirs. And while I know personalities aren't inherited, his parents seem to have been more laid back and easygoing than other *cough*Clemetine*cough* relatives, so it's not unreasonable to assume he too would be easygoing and more amiable to the idea of being a king consort instead of a king regent.

And her marriage to Frederik would not let her kids "jump over" in the line of succession. Lumxebourg / Wallonia would go to the next male heir in the main line according to the Nassau family pact, which only allows for agnatic (male-only) succession in the main line House of Nassau in former holdings of the Holy Roman Empire; "The pact did not apply to the succession in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, a state not regarded as formerly imperial. Luxembourg was thus inherited by the Weilburg branch, the only extant branch from that date onward"; in this situation, we have the male line of Alexander for Luxembourg to descend on.
 
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He's also of a reasonable age to be married off to his cousin (likely 4-10 years her senior). Although his survival might impact the prospects of his sister Louise as she and Marie might not be as great of heiresses with their brother around (and everyone pressuring Frederick to consolidate the wealth around his son and the Dutch grandkids).

I already gave Louise's OTL husband away to someone else, so she's gonna have a nice happy quiet life with a nice Prussian prince and have little princesses and princes
 
.....You mean incest monsters. Look at Louise's family tree.
Her parents were second cousins, her paternal grandparents were first cousins and were first cousins with her maternal grandfather. It's bad now, but at the time it was normal - Queen Victoria's children and grandchildren married and intermarried way more than this.
 
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