Henry Viii holy roman emperor

So i was reading that henry viii threw in his gauntlet for the contested hre crown and at one point almost got it and maximillion was willing to consider him emperor as were many german princes. So lets say he gets lucky and outdoes both charles and francois and become Hre. How would this change european affairs and with more british involvement on the continent what happens?
 
This is not about luck but about money and realpolitics.

Where does he find the money to buy the Electors ?

And how does he avoid the Electors taking his money but still voting for Charles of Habsburg as they did OTL ?
 
This is not about luck but about money and realpolitics.

Where does he find the money to buy the Electors ?

And how does he avoid the Electors taking his money but still voting for Charles of Habsburg as they did OTL ?

Maybe the Electors could decide that they'd rather have an Emperor who's too busy in distant England to interfere much in the Empire itself?
 
Maybe the Electors could decide that they'd rather have an Emperor who's too busy in distant England to interfere much in the Empire itself?

Exactly. I read about it in a book called Europe that talked about the importance of the center and how various states tried controlling it from ottoman to modern times.
Forgot the name of the author, but he made a compelling case. I think henry could be the compdomise candidate.
 
Election of 1519
The 1519 election took place on June 28 in Frankfurt. It was one of the most hotly contested elections of the later Empire.

This election followed the death of Emperor Maximilian on January 12, 1519. There was no German contender; the two main candidates were Charles, a Duke of Burgundy who had recently become King of Spain, and Francis I, the King of France. Running as a dark-horse candidate was Henry VIII, King of England.

What about instead of bribing them with money, henry promises the electors more power.
 
That's not completely true, Charles was from a German dynasty (the house of Habsburg). However there was a possibility that his younger brother Ferdinand (more an infante of Castille & Aragon than German) would have been the Habsburg candidate bypassing Charles. Naturally Charles wasn't the biggest fan, but it would have given an emperor, who wouldn't neglect the Empire's interests too much.

ITTL Ferdinand might end up with the whole of Austria-Burgundy.
 
That's not completely true, Charles was from a German dynasty (the house of Habsburg). However there was a possibility that his younger brother Ferdinand (more an infante of Castille & Aragon than German) would have been the Habsburg candidate bypassing Charles. Naturally Charles wasn't the biggest fan, but it would have given an emperor, who wouldn't neglect the Empire's interests too much.

ITTL Ferdinand might end up with the whole of Austria-Burgundy.

But he was seen as a Spaniard rather then a true German. He might vote for his aunt's husband (Henry VIII)
 
But he was seen as a Spaniard rather then a true German. He might vote for his aunt's husband (Henry VIII)

No he won't, he like Henry will pursue his own dynastic interests first. IMHO Charles would sooner support Ferdinand's candidacy, if his own candidacy wouldn't be possible or chosen, since Ferdinand was a member of his house.
 
Election of 1519
The 1519 election took place on June 28 in Frankfurt. It was one of the most hotly contested elections of the later Empire.

This election followed the death of Emperor Maximilian on January 12, 1519. There was no German contender; the two main candidates were Charles, a Duke of Burgundy who had recently become King of Spain, and Francis I, the King of France. Running as a dark-horse candidate was Henry VIII, King of England.

What about instead of bribing them with money, henry promises the electors more power.

What power would Henry offer them? The princes of the Empire, especially the Electors, were already a law unto themselves a lot of the time and had considerable autonomy. I suspect that if Henry offered them more power they would just laugh in his face at how little he clearly understood the HRE.

The problem here is that people think the HRE elections could be played like modern-day elections, with electoral promises and compromise candidates and so on. The HRE elections were a very introverted thing. They didn't really want an Emperor who had no lands in the Empire, because the one thing the Empire needed to survive was to prevent external forces from getting reasons to interfere. Sure, in this election all of the candidates were kings of foreign powers but of the three only Charles already had a power base within the HRE limits, which made him close enough to an acceptable internal candidate. France was a known meddler in HRE affairs, and England simply had no right to get involved in Germany.

Additionally, once the Electors had whittled down the candidates to the list of who was acceptable, they were only really interested in two things - whether the Emperorship was established in a family, and how much money the candidates would give them. Henry had no money to spend on such things, so he had literally no chance, although as above he wouldn't have even been considered even if he had more money than God, because he still wasn't a German lord.
 
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