Effects of British-French Union?

An idea I had involves a union between France and Britain were to occur in the 13th century via a successful First Baron Revolt. Now how does this effect the rest of Europe during the centuries after, especially considering it butterflies the Hundred Years' War?
 

Saphroneth

Banned
The Union would assumingly also involve Scotland, unless the French opposed the English desires to invade it for some reason (in fact, they'd probably help).

I have this urge to say "Perfidious Francais"...

So, after the dust settles from that, there's a single ruler controlling Great Britain and a substantial chunk of modern France.
Now, this is interesting - the British portion is going to naturally gravitate towards a naval outlook, because you need a ship to get anywhere else. It may well end up being the monetary turbine of the union.
The French portion, now, the French portion could probably be described as "very potent" militarily, without having to beat her head against longbows for most of a century. I could see "natural borders" on the Rhine, partly because there's little other competition for the lowlands...
 

GdwnsnHo

Banned
Any Rebellion by the British/English/Scottish ill be terrifying if they have the fleet on their side - and if it becomes the monetary turbine of the union as suggested - a solid Islander rebellion could cripple France in the future.

On the other hand - the new world just got a hell of a lot more 'French'....

I'm not entirely sure that a state with a huge land power/focus, and the navally focused island province could stay coherent - I'd fear the two cultures, even after attempts to make them similar, would be too different. It could end up with a French King/Emperor constantly having to hold court in different places over the year to ensure the Islanders don't rebel.
 
It could end up with a French King/Emperor constantly having to hold court in different places over the year to ensure the Islanders don't rebel.

which wouldn't exactly be the end of the world.

After a while, the nobility will intermarry and hold substantial estates on both sides of the channel, which would give the state a lot more stability.
 
So how does this effect the rest of Europe? Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, Ireland, and such? They are said in this thread of having a very effective military, both navy and army, so maybe some king tries to go all out and conquering? What king would be liable to do so?
 
^ The Anglo-French kingdom would be very strong, but given the difficulties of force projection during the Middle Ages I don't think we'd see Europe-wide conquering sprees any time soon. France expanding to the Rhine is pretty plausible, but it's also worth remembering that before the rise of the unitary state each extra duchy claimed would mean another set of nobles to placate/cajole/win over, which might prove too much for a weak king. Another possibility is that one of the rulers would split the kingdom between his sons, a la the Hapsburg Empire; in which case the obvious split would be Britain-the Continent, so we'd probably just see England and France going their different ways once again.
 
Even with England-wins-HYW scenarios the general consensus seems to be that even by that stage, so long after 1066, the English nobility was still so 'French' (well, strictly speaking Norman) that the matter of two different cultures wouldn't be an issue; the nobility would be largely of the same culture. A French nobility would rule French peasants in the Plantagenet kingdom's Continental possessions and a French nobility would rule English peasants in England. In this scenario, with the union occurring even earlier and without the Hundred Years' War to give the French such a strong hatred of the English, that would therefore seem to be even less of an issue. Unless we're positing major peasant rebellions then it's the nobility who will choose whether or not to rebel, and I don't especially see why they would. For all that we might think of England and France being inevitable rivals, in this situation their proximity could be a strength for Anglo-French cooperation rather than a weakness; commercial links across the Channel could grow so strong that separation would be very difficult indeed.

The population of France at this point exceeded that of Great Britain by such a vast amount that I wouldn't think that the fleet would be so 'British'; indeed, even if the proportion of 'Britons' who joined the fleet was twice as high as that of 'Frenchmen', the French would still be dominant in numbers there.

The biggest butterfly, barring the New World (and I agree that Britain-France will hold even greater lands in the New World than Great Britain and France put together did IOTL, since it won't undergo costly wars between Great Britain and France), will be European power politics. Britain-France will be incredibly powerful, more so (I think) than any other country in Europe unless we posit an HRE with strong central authority. That means that the entire balance of power is shot to pieces. I'd suspect that Britain-France will often face large groups of nations as its enemies.

As for the point about a split between sons, well, I don't deny that it's possible, but that would be sort of going against the spirit of the OP, wouldn't it?
 
I honestly think that Britain would rebel after awhile, once they realized they where very much the junior partner in this arrangement (which They almost certainly will be given the French's crippling demographic weight in Europe, let along compared to Britain in this era.
 
Under Henry II England had more French territory than the French King and look what happened, by the time his youngest son (John) died most of it was lost.

I would have thought that the same would happen if a new Kingdom occured 50 years later it may shine bright for a brief instance but would soon disappear.

This would be especially true if France took some of Englands ability to raise taxes, it would be too rich a target for younger sons etc. not to rebel and seize their own slice.

I forsee a new Hundred Years War, but this time as a French civil war with the English breaking away very quickly and just selling their swords to the highest bidder.

If this is the case then Spain would be stronger but unlikely to hold the Spanish Netherlands.
 
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