Fernando VII Has a Son?

As it says on the tin, Ferdinand VII has a son with one of his four wives. Obviously, the older the boy is on his accession the more things are likely to be different.

So, if we look at the obstetric history of his wives:

1) Maria Antonietta of Naples

Miscarriage (1804)
Miscarriage (1805)

2) Maria Isabel of Portugal

Maria Luisa Isabel (1817-1818)

3) Maria Josefa of Saxony

4) Maria Cristina of the Two Sicilies

Isabel II (1830-)
Luisa Maria (1832-)

If any of the girls are born as a surviving prince of the Asturias, what might the effects on Spain be without a series of Carlist Wars?
 
Come on, I know this isn't a common POD, but I thought it could be interesting.

This could be a highly interesting POD, not just in the way your thinking. If Fernando VII had a son with his first wife, id before Napoleon's invasion, perhaps the Emperor would place the baby on the throne with a Bonaparte or Marshal as Regent.

If not, then at the very least we'd see a unified Spain without three separate civil wars. Of course it depends on which of Fernando's wives is the mother and how old the boy is when he becomes King. If he's a male Isabel II (ie Isabel is a boy) then I think we'd see low-level chaos, with fighting between Infante Carlos and the Queen Mother over the regency.

In my opinion the best bet would be Maria Josefa Amelia. She's the most remote blood wise of Fernando's four wives so that would mean the least inbreeding. Assuming the Prince of Asturias is born in around 1820-21 he'd be old enough to rule on his own at his father's death. However I think we'd see a conservative backlash among the Spanish government, similar to what the Carlists wanted. With a son there's no need to court the liberals for backing the repeal of Salic law.
 
This could be a highly interesting POD, not just in the way your thinking. If Fernando VII had a son with his first wife, id before Napoleon's invasion, perhaps the Emperor would place the baby on the throne with a Bonaparte or Marshal as Regent.


I quiet like your idea, so the POD is 1804, Princess Maria Antonia, wife of Prince Ferdinand of Asturias, has given birth to a healthy baby boy, called Charles Ferdinand de Borbón.

He is beloved by his grandfather, Charles IV and gives him the royal title of Prince of Girona. The new child was seen as a blessing for the royal family as talks of revolts from the citizens of Spain.

However the baby could not calm all the citizens as they were still feeling the economic troubles and were not happy with King Charles IV's ineptitude, riots, and a popular revolt at the winter palace Aranjuez, in 1808 forced the king to abdicate on 19 March, in favor of his son.

Ferdinand took the throne as Ferdinand VII, but was mistrusted by Napoleon, who had 100,000 soldiers stationed in Spain by that time. The ousted King, having appealed to Napoleon for help in regaining his throne, was summoned before Napoleon in Bayonne, along with his son, in April 1808. Napoleon forced both Charles and his son to abdicate, declaring the four year old, Prince Charles as the new king of Spain, as Charles V with Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, who had been crowned King of Naples on 30 March 1806, as Regent of Spain.
 
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I quiet like your idea, so the POD is 1804, Princess Maria Antonia, wife of Prince Ferdinand of Asturias, has given birth to a healthy baby boy, called Charles Ferdinand de Borbón.

He is beloved by his grandfather, Charles IV and gives him the royal title of Prince of Girona. The new child was seen as a blessing for the royal family as talks of revolts from the citizens of Spain.

However the baby could not calm all the citizens as they were still feeling the economic troubles and were not happy with King Charles IV's ineptitude, riots, and a popular revolt at the winter palace Aranjuez, in 1808 forced the king to abdicate on 19 March, in favor of his son.

Ferdinand took the throne as Ferdinand VII, but was mistrusted by Napoleon, who had 100,000 soldiers stationed in Spain by that time. The ousted King, having appealed to Napoleon for help in regaining his throne, was summoned before Napoleon in Bayonne, along with his son, in April 1808. Napoleon forced both Charles and his son to abdicate, declaring the four year old, Prince Charles as the new king of Spain, as Charles V with Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, who had been crowned King of Naples on 30 March 1806, as Regent of Spain.

While this would stabilize Napoleon's control of Spain for a time, it wouldn't save him from ultimately losing. So what happens to Charles V?
 
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I quiet like your idea, so the POD is 1804, Princess Maria Antonia, wife of Prince Ferdinand of Asturias, has given birth to a healthy baby boy, called Charles Ferdinand de Borbón.

He is beloved by his grandfather, Charles IV and gives him the royal title of Prince of Girona. The new child was seen as a blessing for the royal family as talks of revolts from the citizens of Spain.

However the baby could not calm all the citizens as they were still feeling the economic troubles and were not happy with King Charles IV's ineptitude, riots, and a popular revolt at the winter palace Aranjuez, in 1808 forced the king to abdicate on 19 March, in favor of his son.

Ferdinand took the throne as Ferdinand VII, but was mistrusted by Napoleon, who had 100,000 soldiers stationed in Spain by that time. The ousted King, having appealed to Napoleon for help in regaining his throne, was summoned before Napoleon in Bayonne, along with his son, in April 1808. Napoleon forced both Charles and his son to abdicate, declaring the four year old, Prince Charles as the new king of Spain, as Charles V with Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, who had been crowned King of Naples on 30 March 1806, as Regent of Spain.

Spain didn't give Princely/Ducal titles to its Royal family (Seville and Cádiz being notable acceptation) so he'd just be Infante Carlos.

While this would stabilize Napoleon's control of Spain for a time, it wouldn't save him from ultimately losing. So what happens to Charles V?

Why wouldn't that work? The entire reason for the Spanish national uprising against the French was the enthronement of Joseph Bonaparte. Keep the Bourbons on the throne and Napoleon should be good, at least in Spain. Although a different Regent would be best (a French Marshal perhaps, something that's not an obvious Bonaparte takeover).
 
While this would stabilize Napoleon's control of Spain for a time, it wouldn't save him from ultimately losing. So what happens to Charles V?
This would stabilize Spain, as they would see this as a better deal then just a French man on the throne.
And really it could. Without Spain getting upset, there would be no Peninsula War, meaning Napoleon does not have to worry about sending his army back to Spain, instead he can concerntrate on Britain and Eastern Europe.

As for Charles V, if Napoleon does lose, he is kept as co-monarch along side his re-instated father, Fernando VII, which he does until Charles V is 29, when his father dies and he becomes the sole King of Spain.

Spain didn't give Princely/Ducal titles to its Royal family (Seville and Cádiz being notable acceptation) so he'd just be Infante Carlos.
My bad, I do hate, how each royal family does things differently, but hey hoe, who am I to argue with royalty lol.

Why wouldn't that work? The entire reason for the Spanish national uprising against the French was the enthronement of Joseph Bonaparte. Keep the Bourbons on the throne and Napoleon should be good, at least in Spain. Although a different Regent would be best (a French Marshal perhaps, something that's not an obvious Bonaparte takeover).[/QUOTE]

Or what about Joseph Bonaparte being joint Regent, with a loyalist Spaniard?
Such as - Mariano Luis de Urquijo, François Cabarrus, Juan O'Donojú or Francesc Antoni de la Dueña y Cisneros?
The problem with a French Marshal, eg. Joachim Murat, is that they would still be seen as a Bonaparte.
 
Why wouldn't that work? The entire reason for the Spanish national uprising against the French was the enthronement of Joseph Bonaparte. Keep the Bourbons on the throne and Napoleon should be good, at least in Spain. Although a different Regent would be best (a French Marshal perhaps, something that's not an obvious Bonaparte takeover).

No, it wouldn't ultimately work because Napoleon will be defeated since he was at war with every major power in Europe. At some point he'd have to invade Russia and that would be his curtain call.
 
Napoleon's defeat is not written in stone. Under the guise that there's no Iberian war, Napoleon has greater military resources to throw at his adventures elsewhere.

Austria was enthused to attack in 1809 partially because they saw it an opportune time while Napoleon was having troubles in Spain. No Iberian conflict could mean a delay in Austria's attack. Delay it to dovetail with Russia's belligerence and now you have a situation where the war is not taken to Moscow, but instead fought in Europe and/or along the Russian border (doesn't make sense for Russia to withdraw if France is occupied fighting Austria). remember the 2 keys for Napoleon's defeat were the Spanish Ulcer and the Russian Winter. eliminate both of those, and Nap's fortunes could change dramatically.

At the same time, the Portugal takeover is a rousing success (I still maintain that the Portugal takeover was part of the military takeover of Spain, so if I still to my guns, Portugal is butterflied, but it's immaterial for my point) and Britain has no place to build up the British/Portuguese/Spanish army which was one of the keys to defeating Nap. Alternately, if Portugal is butterflied, and there's no invasion, Britain is still denied the OTL place to build up a military. Instead, they go ahead with the OTL planned (but never carried out) invasion of Venezuela, where they likely get bogged down, or at least occupied.
 
to me, the question is what happens when young Chuck comes of age? Does Joseph simply withdraw into the night? doubtful. Nap was setting up his family to be kings (beholden and subordinate to Nap), not temporary regents.
 
to me, the question is what happens when young Chuck comes of age? Does Joseph simply withdraw into the night? doubtful. Nap was setting up his family to be kings (beholden and subordinate to Nap), not temporary regents.

In 1808, Charles V is 4, we have at least 12 years before he is 16 and at a legal age to rule so by 1824 there is loads of ways for Spain to assassinate Regant Joseph.
 
Napoleon's defeat is not written in stone. Under the guise that there's no Iberian war, Napoleon has greater military resources to throw at his adventures elsewhere.

Napoleon's Empire would last longer but it would eventually contract whether he went along with it or not. He had unleashed nationalism in Europe and I'm pretty sure the Italians were not going to be content with playing second fiddle to Paris and having their cultural treasures continued to be stolen for Napoleon's court (along with the Pope himself) and their man-power and taxes spent to prop up Napoleon's sisters and her husbands. In the treaty that created the Kingdom of Italy it had even be stipulated that at some point the Italian and French thrones would be separate and not under one person past Napoleon. Then there's Germany with the decadent "Kingdom of Westphalia" that so overspent itself under Jerome that Napoleon was furious. Will the Germans having gotten a taste of unification basically continue to be used as a way to pay for the Empire in manpower (tens of thousands of men) and pay-off money?Will the Dutch continue to accept the loss of their independence all so they could continue being a mere handful of departments in an Empire that spoke a different language?

And that's not even going in Napoleon's other mistakes in Spain. It's not just that he put his brother on the throne of Ferdinand and Isabella and kept control by literally burning cities to the ground and looting churches and raping women (Nappy really didn't care these things were happening - Joseph did, he wrote letter after letter to his brother complaining the French soldiers were destroying any chance of the Spanish coming to grips with the new regime). Napoleon also annexed outright Catalonia to France and was planning on doing the same to Navarre, ignoring his own statutes that called for the physical integrity of Spain when Joseph was made king. What exactly will stop him from such annexations of over a quarter of Spain even under a child-king?
 
Ferdinand VII has a deep interest in the reign of Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand V.
His wife, Queen Maria Josepha Amalia has a son born in September of 1820.
Ferdinand announces that his son shall be named Juan after Juan, Prince of the Asturias, the son of Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand V.
Prince Juan shall become King Juan III of Spain.
 
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