Edward IV married Lady Eleanor Talbot

Teejay

Gone Fishin'
The POD is that between the Battle of Towton and time in OTL he first meets Elizabeth Woodville. Edward IV marries the Lady Eleanor Talbot and then has it publicly announced.

I wonder how Richard Neville (The Kingmaker) would have reacted to this marriage. Because Eleanor's mother Margaret was the half-sister of his wife (Anne Beauchamp), therefore Eleanor Talbot was the Kingmaker's niece.

Not to mention that Eleanor unlike Elizabeth Woodville had only two siblings still alive namely Sir Humphrey Talbot and Elizabeth Duchess of Norfolk. Only Humphrey befitting a sibling of the Queen would need to be given at least an Earldom.
 
Well assuming he did (and I am one who doesn't believe in the pre-contract at all) then Warwick is going to have almost the same complaints as in OTL and they had little really to do with the King's marriage.

1) THe King and Warwick were opposed over foreign alliances - Warwick wanted a pro-French alliance (sealed with the King's marriage) to negate French support for Margaret of Anjou whilst the King favoured the more traditional Anglo-Burgundian alliance.
2) Warwick and his family benefited hugely in financial terms from their support of the House of York - they were by far the biggest beneficiaries in the 1460s and certainly wanted more.
3) Eleanor has a big disadvantage in Warwick's eyes (even more than Elizabeth Wydeville and her large family) - his hold on the Beauchamp despenser inheritance of his wife -was due to her being the full sister of the last Beauchamp Earl of Warwick - that ruling that as the full-blood sister she should inherit the lot had not gone down well with her older half-sisters which of course included Eleanor's mother - who believed they should have been treated as co-heirs.
 
Not to mention that if EdIV DOES marry Lady Talbot, Richard of Gloucester can't go around claiming Eddy's kids are illegitimate.
 

Teejay

Gone Fishin'
Well assuming he did (and I am one who doesn't believe in the pre-contract at all) then Warwick is going to have almost the same complaints as in OTL and they had little really to do with the King's marriage.

The POD assumes Edward IV in OTL did not marry Eleanor Talbot. Although Edward IV promising to marry or even marrying "privately" Eleanor Talbot, so that he could sleep with her sounds plausible to me. I suspect he did much the same thing initially with Elizabeth Woodville.

I believe the difference was that Edward stayed with Elizabeth, instead of discarding her like he did with the other women he was involved with.

All this would explain the brief imprisonment of Bishop Robert Stillington in the Tower of London in 1478. Stillington had informed George, Duke of Clarence of Edward's involvement with Eleanor Talbot. Interestingly enough Stillington was imprisoned again by Henry VII after the Battle of Bosworth.
 
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