Again, I have quite a head canon here, especially about how Leonora of Portugal came to be, so do let me know if you need anything
List of monarchs III
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This time I shall take you up on that offer. I don't need anything specific so whatever you got is fine.Again, I have quite a head canon here, especially about how Leonora of Portugal came to be, so do let me know if you need anything
Sebastian of Portugal married Marguerite de Valois in 1570, they had a son, Manuel II of Portugal, in 1573, who married Catherine of England (b.1578) in 1592. Leonora is Manuel and Catherine's second daughter, born 1599. I know Leonora has an older brother and an older sister, but I never named them/chose their years of birth, so if you want to make them the heir's namesakes, feel free.
If I've understood this right -
a) Mary of England, b. 1615, r. 1553 to 1558, m. Philip I of England (and II of Spain)
a) Mary of England, b. 1615, r. 1553 to 1558, m. Philip I of England (and II of Spain)
1) Joanna of England and the Netherlands, b. 1555, r. 1558 to 1630, m. Francis III of France (prev. Hercule, Duke of Anjou)
a) Joanna, Lady Royal of England, b. 1574, d. 1606, m. Charles, Count of Soissons, no surviving issue
b) Isabella of England and the Netherlands, b. 1575, r. 1630 to 1649, m. Philip William, Prince of Orange (d. 1634)
1) Margaret, Lady Royal of England
2) Lady Anne of Orange-Nassau
3) John II of England and the Netherlands, prev. Duke of Richmond etc, b. 1596, r. 1649 to 1658, m. Infanta Leonor of Portugal
x) seven children who survived to adulthood, from 1615
4) Lady A
5) Lady B
6) Maurice of England and the Netherlands, b. 1600, d. pre. 1649, m. Charlotte de la Tremoille
a) Lord Maurice of Orange-Nassau, claimant as Prince of Orange, b. 1623, d. 1651, married
1) William Henry of Orange-Nassau, b. 1651
7) Child
8) Child
9) Lady Joanna of Orange Nassau, b. 1609
c) Lady Catherine Tudor-Habsburg, b. 1578, m. Manuel II of Portugal
1) Infante X
2) Infanta Y
3) Infanta Leonor of Portugal, b. 1599, m. John II of England and the Netherlands (1596 to 1658)
x) for issue, see line of John
b) Elizabeth Tudor, b. 1533, d. 1603, m. Ferdinand, Arch Duke of Further Austriax) possible issue
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Monarchs of England:
1553-1558: Mary I (Tudor) with Philip I (Habsburg)
Monarchs of England and the Low Countries:
1558-1630: Joanna I (Tudor-Habsburg) [1]
1630-1649: Isabella I (Tudor-Habsburg) / (House of Orange-Nassau) [2]
1649-1658: John II (Tudor-Habsburg)/(House of Orange-Nassau) [3]
1658-1666: Philip II (Tudor-Habsburg)/(House of Orange-Nassau) [4]
[4] Named after his mother's brother, Philip was born in 1615. As a boy, Philip loved nothing more than to play sports and party. He was a lover of the finer things. He had his first mistress at age seventeen when he was named viceroy of Ireland. The woman in question was Elizabeth Butler. He was infatuated with him and wanted to marry her. That was out of the question for two reasons, first being she was Irish and the second she had already wed her first cousin, James Butler. His parents wasted no time separating the pair, even sending Philip to Wales in order to keep him from doing something foolish.
Much to Philip's displeasure, he was wed to Cecilia Renata of Austria. In an act of rebellion, Philip continued to have mistresses and would even acknowledge his bastards, something that appalled his conservative parents, not to mention Queen Joanna of England who made it clear that if Philip did not shape up, he would be disinherited. Luckily for Philip, Joanna was soon replaced by his doting grandmother, Isabella. Isabella saw Philip's behavior as something he would grow out of, gently coaxing him into being more discreet with his mistresses especially when his wife arrived in England in 1637.
Despite still harboring a grudge for being forced to give up the only woman he would ever love (or so he claimed), Philip treated Cecilia with respect and kindness even if he did not love her nor was he faithful to her. Cecilia was a quiet unassuming woman, known for her generosity, and kindness. She and Philip would have only one surviving child before she died in 1644 of childbed fever.
Philip stayed a widower until a year after his grandmother's death, and the new King John wanted his son to marry again. This would lead to an argument with father and son as the Prince of Wales had no interest of being tied down for a second time. However, Maurice's rebellion distracted them as they both traveled to the Netherlands to put down the uprising.
For the rest of his father's reign, Philip resisted getting married again, insisting that his child with Cecilia was soon to be of age to be married (His hypocrisy has been pointed out by many a historian). By 1558, Prince Philip had won the argument, mostly because his father had died. Once he became king, Philip changed absolutely nothing about his lifestyle, continuing to enjoy fine wine, fine food, and fine women. It came little surprise to anyone that the king only lasted eight years, dying of gout in 1666.
_____would take the crown after his death.
a) Mary of England, b. 1615, r. 1553 to 1558, m. Philip I of England (and II of Spain)
1553-1558: Mary I (Tudor) with Philip I (Habsburg)
Monarchs of England and the Low Countries:
1558-1630: Joanna I (Tudor-Habsburg) [1]
1630-1649: Isabella I (Tudor-Habsburg) / (House of Orange-Nassau) [2]
1649-1658: John II (Tudor-Habsburg)/(House of Orange-Nassau) [3]
1658-1666: Philip II (Tudor-Habsburg)/(House of Orange-Nassau) [4]
[1]
Queen Joanna I of England, Ireland & the Netherlands as portrayed (by Romola Garai) in a 2022 biopic, "Joanna"
Joanna, named after her great-grandmother and great-aunt (who was the same person) Joanna of Castile, was born in April 1555 ten months after her parents' wedding. Her birth was celebrated by Catholics in England and she was doted upon by her mother, who knew she would never have another child. Her father was also reportedly overjoyed at her birth and declared himself to be happier on the occasion than he would have been at the birth of a son. He already had a male heir, Carlos, Prince of Asturias, but father and son had never developed a close rapport and frequently lived in conflict with one another. Shortly after her baptism, her aunt Elizabeth agreed to a marriage with Ferdinand of Austria, the second son of Ferdinand I and Anne of Bohemia and Hungary and she would leave England, never to return. As a princess of England, infanta of Spain, and archduchess of Austria, Joanna had many suitors even as a baby. And she was a very beautiful baby, who bore a striking resemblance to Katherine of Aragon, her maternal grandmother, with her red hair and blue eyes. Intelligent and aware of her high social status, she was said to have gone through her coronation at the age of three without any fuss. Throughout her life, she exchanged many letters with her father, and her portraits were sent and put into his book of hours. She had a very good education consisting of arithmetic, canon and civil law, classical literature, genealogy and heraldry, history, philosophy, religion, and theology. Politics and mathematics were included as she grew older, and she would never need an interpreter in her life.
At the age of fourteen, she married the youngest son of the king of France, the duke of Alencon Hercule Francois. Again this marriage met with protests which were violently suppressed. They had a formal relationship with little romance between them, but they did their duty and would eventually have three healthy children. After her final childbirth, she would never see her husband again as he returned to succeed his older brother as the king of France and this suited her (and England) just fine. She poured all of her love into her children and trained each of them to be the successors to herself and her husband, she dreamed of splitting her realms to her close family like her grandfather Charles V (and nobody had the nerve to tell her that this was not going to be popular).
She inherited England, Ireland, and the Netherlands from both her parents. Described as a woman "dedicated to compromise and conciliation in public affairs", she was staunchly Catholic but did not continue her mother's persecutions. She would establish a good relationship with her older cousin, Mary of Scotland, and found that the Irish adherence to Catholicism suited her very well. She allowed free travel into England by the Irish and maintained diplomatic relations with the Tsardom of Russia and the Barbary states. She reversed the gradual dispossession of large holdings belonging to several hundred native Catholic nobility and other landowners in Ireland. As an older woman, she would frequently travel between England, Ireland, and the Netherlands and left her adult children in charge as regents.
Her rule of the Netherlands coincided with the recovery of agriculture and saw the strengthening of royal power, stimulating the growth of Habsburg authority and largely succeeding in reconciling xenophobic sentiments. She was also a patron of the arts and the grand palaces she built for herself in her various domains still stand to this day. When she died on a cruise back to England, she was sincerely lamented by many of her subjects; she was praised as the heroine of the Catholic cause and the ruler of a golden age. The triumphalist image that Joanna had cultivated towards the end of her reign, against a background of factionalism and military and economic difficulties, was taken at face value and her reputation inflated. Joanna's reign became idealised as a time when crown, church and parliament had worked in constitutional balance. She had understood that a monarch ruled according to popular consent and therefore always worked with parliament and advisers she could trust to tell her the truth—a style of government that her successors failed to follow.
An elderly Queen Isabella of England, Ireland & the Netherlands as portrayed by Barbara Marten in 2022 Starz drama, "Becoming Isabella"
(2) Joanna I of England and her husband, Francis III of France, only produced three children - all daughters. Whilst Joanna ensured all three were raised to succeed both herself and their father, she knew that there was no practical method in which they would succeed in France as France practiced strict salic law. And thus, eventually, the marital possivilities for each daughter were brought up and Joanna fought against the obvious Habsburg matches - the eldest, Lady Joanna, would marry the Count of Soissons, a cousin of Henri of Navarre, the French First Prince of the Blood, whilst the second, Lady Isabella, would marry Philip William, the Prince of Orange, and the youngest, Lady Katherine, would marry King Manuel II of Portugal.
The Count and Countess of Soissons would be childless, with Lady Joanna dying in childbirth in 1606, this meant that Lady Isabella would succeed their mother in England and the Netherlands. Her marriage to the Prince of Orange, twenty one years older than she was, was a political match - this ensured a secure powerbase in the Spanish Netherlands against the House of Orange Nassau who had been seeking a Dutch state independent of the Spanish or English.
Isabella and Philip William were appointed as Viceroy to the Netherlands for much of her mothers reign until her sisters death, at which point they were recalled to London where Isabella was often charged as Regent whilst Philip William was made an Admiral of the Fleet and relied upon as an important advisor on Dutch state matters.
By the time that Joanna died and Isabella succeeded her, the new Queen and the Prince of Orange had produced nine children, and were blessed with eight grandchildren. Isabella was fifty five at her coronation and would have a relatively short rule of nineteen years - she would pass in 1649, having succeeded her husband by fifteen years, at the age of seventy four.
Joanna had navigated a balance between crown and state, but influenced by her husband's Republican sympathies, Isabella began ceding more power to the Privy Council and to Parliament to rule on her behalf. It was during Isabella's time that the maxim that "Her Majesty Reigns, but it is Parliament that Rules" began to circulate and that would remain a central tenet of English government for some time to come.
She would be succeeded by her eldest son, John.
View attachment 768343
John II at the time of his marriage to Infanta Leonora of Portugal in 1613.
[3] Born in 1596 as the third child, but eldest surviving son, of Isabella I and her older husband the Prince of Orange, John was ten years old when his aunt Joanna died. From that day on, his childhood was shaped by the knowledge that he would one day inherit England and the Netherlands from his grandmother, Queen Joanna. He accompanied his parents to England, as did his two elder sisters, the Lady Margaret and the Lady Anna. His, at that point, three younger siblings, including the six-year-old Lord Maurice, remained in the Hague, which, according to many historians, was the root of much of John’s later trouble with the United Provinces.
Three months after arriving in England, upon his eleventh birthday, John was created Duke of Richmond and named Viceroy of Ireland by his grandmother and sent to Dublin to learn to rule. He spent much of the next two decades there, although he returned to London in 1609 to stand as godfather to his youngest sister, the Lady Joanna, and then again in 1613, when, at the age of seventeen, he married his first cousin, Infanta Leonora of Portugal.
There was some worry that Leonora wouldn’t be able to give John children, for she was slight and sickly, but that soon proved unfounded, for in 1615, the sixteen-year-old Vicereine of Ireland gave birth to a healthy son. She would be pregnant eleven more times over the next twenty-two years, though only seven of her children eventually made it to adulthood.
John’s mother, Isabella, died in 1649, and the new monarch immediately found himself embroiled in a rebellion. The aristocrats of the Netherlands who hadn’t seen John since he turned eleven, and who had slowly been converting to Calvinism without the close supervision of their Prince, declared themselves unwilling to accept John as their monarch.
Instead, they proposed to elect John’s nephew Maurice, son of his younger brother and said brother’s wife, Charlotte de La Tremoille. Maurice, born in 1626, was 23 at the time of John’s accession, had been raised in the Hague, and, while nominally Catholic, was more than willing to convert to Calvinism if it gained him the Netherlands, his mother having been a Calvinist prior to her marriage to Maurice Senior. He is reported to have said, “The Hague is worth a Service of the Word”, when he heard of the Provinces’ plans.
Incandescent with rage, John promptly raised an army of 10,000 loyal Catholic men, summoned from all over England and Ireland, put them under the command of the Duke of Ormond, whom he knew from his time in Ireland, and sent them to the Netherlands, to put down his nephew’s uprising.
It was a long, bitter battle, one that raged for almost three years, but, by the winter of 1651, it was all over. Maurice the Younger was dead, killed whilst trying to flee the siege of Alkmaar, and his heir, Lord William Henry, was just nine months old. Deprived of their figurehead, the Calvinist resistance fell apart, and one by one, the provinces returned to the Catholic fold and English control.
Still, John wasn’t taking any more chances with the Dutch and their divided loyalties. No sooner had his troops returned to London in triumph than he packed up his Court and moved his capital to Leiden, in order to be closer to his rebellious subjects. He would spend the rest of his reign traveling around the Seventeen Provinces, and died at Slot Zuylen Castle near Utrecht in 1658, at the age of 63.
He was succeeded by his son, Philip.
Queen Joanna I of England, Ireland & the Netherlands as portrayed (by Romola Garai) in a 2022 biopic, "Joanna"
Joanna, named after her great-grandmother and great-aunt (who was the same person) Joanna of Castile, was born in April 1555 ten months after her parents' wedding. Her birth was celebrated by Catholics in England and she was doted upon by her mother, who knew she would never have another child. Her father was also reportedly overjoyed at her birth and declared himself to be happier on the occasion than he would have been at the birth of a son. He already had a male heir, Carlos, Prince of Asturias, but father and son had never developed a close rapport and frequently lived in conflict with one another. Shortly after her baptism, her aunt Elizabeth agreed to a marriage with Ferdinand of Austria, the second son of Ferdinand I and Anne of Bohemia and Hungary and she would leave England, never to return. As a princess of England, infanta of Spain, and archduchess of Austria, Joanna had many suitors even as a baby. And she was a very beautiful baby, who bore a striking resemblance to Katherine of Aragon, her maternal grandmother, with her red hair and blue eyes. Intelligent and aware of her high social status, she was said to have gone through her coronation at the age of three without any fuss. Throughout her life, she exchanged many letters with her father, and her portraits were sent and put into his book of hours. She had a very good education consisting of arithmetic, canon and civil law, classical literature, genealogy and heraldry, history, philosophy, religion, and theology. Politics and mathematics were included as she grew older, and she would never need an interpreter in her life.
At the age of fourteen, she married the youngest son of the king of France, the duke of Alencon Hercule Francois. Again this marriage met with protests which were violently suppressed. They had a formal relationship with little romance between them, but they did their duty and would eventually have three healthy children. After her final childbirth, she would never see her husband again as he returned to succeed his older brother as the king of France and this suited her (and England) just fine. She poured all of her love into her children and trained each of them to be the successors to herself and her husband, she dreamed of splitting her realms to her close family like her grandfather Charles V (and nobody had the nerve to tell her that this was not going to be popular).
She inherited England, Ireland, and the Netherlands from both her parents. Described as a woman "dedicated to compromise and conciliation in public affairs", she was staunchly Catholic but did not continue her mother's persecutions. She would establish a good relationship with her older cousin, Mary of Scotland, and found that the Irish adherence to Catholicism suited her very well. She allowed free travel into England by the Irish and maintained diplomatic relations with the Tsardom of Russia and the Barbary states. She reversed the gradual dispossession of large holdings belonging to several hundred native Catholic nobility and other landowners in Ireland. As an older woman, she would frequently travel between England, Ireland, and the Netherlands and left her adult children in charge as regents.
Her rule of the Netherlands coincided with the recovery of agriculture and saw the strengthening of royal power, stimulating the growth of Habsburg authority and largely succeeding in reconciling xenophobic sentiments. She was also a patron of the arts and the grand palaces she built for herself in her various domains still stand to this day. When she died on a cruise back to England, she was sincerely lamented by many of her subjects; she was praised as the heroine of the Catholic cause and the ruler of a golden age. The triumphalist image that Joanna had cultivated towards the end of her reign, against a background of factionalism and military and economic difficulties, was taken at face value and her reputation inflated. Joanna's reign became idealised as a time when crown, church and parliament had worked in constitutional balance. She had understood that a monarch ruled according to popular consent and therefore always worked with parliament and advisers she could trust to tell her the truth—a style of government that her successors failed to follow.
An elderly Queen Isabella of England, Ireland & the Netherlands as portrayed by Barbara Marten in 2022 Starz drama, "Becoming Isabella"
(2) Joanna I of England and her husband, Francis III of France, only produced three children - all daughters. Whilst Joanna ensured all three were raised to succeed both herself and their father, she knew that there was no practical method in which they would succeed in France as France practiced strict salic law. And thus, eventually, the marital possivilities for each daughter were brought up and Joanna fought against the obvious Habsburg matches - the eldest, Lady Joanna, would marry the Count of Soissons, a cousin of Henri of Navarre, the French First Prince of the Blood, whilst the second, Lady Isabella, would marry Philip William, the Prince of Orange, and the youngest, Lady Katherine, would marry King Manuel II of Portugal.
The Count and Countess of Soissons would be childless, with Lady Joanna dying in childbirth in 1606, this meant that Lady Isabella would succeed their mother in England and the Netherlands. Her marriage to the Prince of Orange, twenty one years older than she was, was a political match - this ensured a secure powerbase in the Spanish Netherlands against the House of Orange Nassau who had been seeking a Dutch state independent of the Spanish or English.
Isabella and Philip William were appointed as Viceroy to the Netherlands for much of her mothers reign until her sisters death, at which point they were recalled to London where Isabella was often charged as Regent whilst Philip William was made an Admiral of the Fleet and relied upon as an important advisor on Dutch state matters.
By the time that Joanna died and Isabella succeeded her, the new Queen and the Prince of Orange had produced nine children, and were blessed with eight grandchildren. Isabella was fifty five at her coronation and would have a relatively short rule of nineteen years - she would pass in 1649, having succeeded her husband by fifteen years, at the age of seventy four.
Joanna had navigated a balance between crown and state, but influenced by her husband's Republican sympathies, Isabella began ceding more power to the Privy Council and to Parliament to rule on her behalf. It was during Isabella's time that the maxim that "Her Majesty Reigns, but it is Parliament that Rules" began to circulate and that would remain a central tenet of English government for some time to come.
She would be succeeded by her eldest son, John.
View attachment 768343
John II at the time of his marriage to Infanta Leonora of Portugal in 1613.
[3] Born in 1596 as the third child, but eldest surviving son, of Isabella I and her older husband the Prince of Orange, John was ten years old when his aunt Joanna died. From that day on, his childhood was shaped by the knowledge that he would one day inherit England and the Netherlands from his grandmother, Queen Joanna. He accompanied his parents to England, as did his two elder sisters, the Lady Margaret and the Lady Anna. His, at that point, three younger siblings, including the six-year-old Lord Maurice, remained in the Hague, which, according to many historians, was the root of much of John’s later trouble with the United Provinces.
Three months after arriving in England, upon his eleventh birthday, John was created Duke of Richmond and named Viceroy of Ireland by his grandmother and sent to Dublin to learn to rule. He spent much of the next two decades there, although he returned to London in 1609 to stand as godfather to his youngest sister, the Lady Joanna, and then again in 1613, when, at the age of seventeen, he married his first cousin, Infanta Leonora of Portugal.
There was some worry that Leonora wouldn’t be able to give John children, for she was slight and sickly, but that soon proved unfounded, for in 1615, the sixteen-year-old Vicereine of Ireland gave birth to a healthy son. She would be pregnant eleven more times over the next twenty-two years, though only seven of her children eventually made it to adulthood.
John’s mother, Isabella, died in 1649, and the new monarch immediately found himself embroiled in a rebellion. The aristocrats of the Netherlands who hadn’t seen John since he turned eleven, and who had slowly been converting to Calvinism without the close supervision of their Prince, declared themselves unwilling to accept John as their monarch.
Instead, they proposed to elect John’s nephew Maurice, son of his younger brother and said brother’s wife, Charlotte de La Tremoille. Maurice, born in 1626, was 23 at the time of John’s accession, had been raised in the Hague, and, while nominally Catholic, was more than willing to convert to Calvinism if it gained him the Netherlands, his mother having been a Calvinist prior to her marriage to Maurice Senior. He is reported to have said, “The Hague is worth a Service of the Word”, when he heard of the Provinces’ plans.
Incandescent with rage, John promptly raised an army of 10,000 loyal Catholic men, summoned from all over England and Ireland, put them under the command of the Duke of Ormond, whom he knew from his time in Ireland, and sent them to the Netherlands, to put down his nephew’s uprising.
It was a long, bitter battle, one that raged for almost three years, but, by the winter of 1651, it was all over. Maurice the Younger was dead, killed whilst trying to flee the siege of Alkmaar, and his heir, Lord William Henry, was just nine months old. Deprived of their figurehead, the Calvinist resistance fell apart, and one by one, the provinces returned to the Catholic fold and English control.
Still, John wasn’t taking any more chances with the Dutch and their divided loyalties. No sooner had his troops returned to London in triumph than he packed up his Court and moved his capital to Leiden, in order to be closer to his rebellious subjects. He would spend the rest of his reign traveling around the Seventeen Provinces, and died at Slot Zuylen Castle near Utrecht in 1658, at the age of 63.
He was succeeded by his son, Philip.
[4] Named after his mother's brother, Philip was born in 1615. As a boy, Philip loved nothing more than to play sports and party. He was a lover of the finer things. He had his first mistress at age seventeen when he was named viceroy of Ireland. The woman in question was Elizabeth Butler. He was infatuated with him and wanted to marry her. That was out of the question for two reasons, first being she was Irish and the second she had already wed her first cousin, James Butler. His parents wasted no time separating the pair, even sending Philip to Wales in order to keep him from doing something foolish.
Much to Philip's displeasure, he was wed to Cecilia Renata of Austria. In an act of rebellion, Philip continued to have mistresses and would even acknowledge his bastards, something that appalled his conservative parents, not to mention Queen Joanna of England who made it clear that if Philip did not shape up, he would be disinherited. Luckily for Philip, Joanna was soon replaced by his doting grandmother, Isabella. Isabella saw Philip's behavior as something he would grow out of, gently coaxing him into being more discreet with his mistresses especially when his wife arrived in England in 1637.
Despite still harboring a grudge for being forced to give up the only woman he would ever love (or so he claimed), Philip treated Cecilia with respect and kindness even if he did not love her nor was he faithful to her. Cecilia was a quiet unassuming woman, known for her generosity, and kindness. She and Philip would have only one surviving child before she died in 1644 of childbed fever.
Philip stayed a widower until a year after his grandmother's death, and the new King John wanted his son to marry again. This would lead to an argument with father and son as the Prince of Wales had no interest of being tied down for a second time. However, Maurice's rebellion distracted them as they both traveled to the Netherlands to put down the uprising.
For the rest of his father's reign, Philip resisted getting married again, insisting that his child with Cecilia was soon to be of age to be married (His hypocrisy has been pointed out by many a historian). By 1558, Prince Philip had won the argument, mostly because his father had died. Once he became king, Philip changed absolutely nothing about his lifestyle, continuing to enjoy fine wine, fine food, and fine women. It came little surprise to anyone that the king only lasted eight years, dying of gout in 1666.
_____would take the crown after his death.
a) Mary of England, b. 1615, r. 1553 to 1558, m. Philip I of England (and II of Spain)
1) Joanna of England and the Netherlands, b. 1555, r. 1558 to 1630, m. Francis III of France (prev. Hercule, Duke of Anjou)
a) Joanna, Lady Royal of England, b. 1574, d. 1606, m. Charles, Count of Soissons, no surviving issue
b) Isabella of England and the Netherlands, b. 1575, r. 1630 to 1649, m. Philip William, Prince of Orange (d. 1634)
1) Margaret, Lady Royal of England
2) Lady Anne of Orange-Nassau
3) John II of England and the Netherlands, prev. Duke of Richmond etc, b. 1596, r. 1649 to 1658, m. Infanta Leonor of Portugal
a) Philip II of England and the Netherlands, b. 1615, r. 1658 to 1666, m. Cecilia Renata of Austria (d. 1644)
1) a child, born between 1637 and 1644
x) six other children who survived to adulthood
4) Lady A
5) Lady B
6) Maurice of England and the Netherlands, b. 1600, d. pre. 1649, m. Charlotte de la Tremoille
a) Lord Maurice of Orange-Nassau, claimant as Prince of Orange, b. 1623, d. 1651, married
1) William Henry of Orange-Nassau, b. 1651
7) Child
8) Child
9) Lady Joanna of Orange Nassau, b. 1609
c) Lady Catherine Tudor-Habsburg, b. 1578, m. Manuel II of Portugal
1) Infante X
2) Infanta Y
3) Infanta Leonor of Portugal, b. 1599, m. John II of England and the Netherlands (1596 to 1658)
x) for issue, see line of John
b) Elizabeth Tudor, b. 1533, d. 1603, m. Ferdinand, Arch Duke of Further Austriax) possible issue
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One of John's youngest three siblings is a Joanna, b.1609, and as per the next post by @Violet Rose Lily Leonora's older brother is called Phillip, but apart from that, yes, that's right as far as I can see
a) Mary of England, b. 1615, r. 1553 to 1558, m. Philip I of England (and II of Spain)
1) Joanna of England and the Netherlands, b. 1555, r. 1558 to 1630, m. Francis III of France (prev. Hercule, Duke of Anjou)
a) Joanna, Lady Royal of England, b. 1574, d. 1606, m. Charles, Count of Soissons, no surviving issue
b) Isabella of England and the Netherlands, b. 1575, r. 1630 to 1649, m. Philip William, Prince of Orange (d. 1634)
1) Margaret, Lady Royal of England
2) Lady Anne of Orange-Nassau
3) John II of England and the Netherlands, prev. Duke of Richmond etc, b. 1596, r. 1649 to 1658, m. Infanta Leonor of Portugal
a) Philip II of England and the Netherlands, b. 1615, r. 1658 to 1666, m. Cecilia Renata of Austria (d. 1644)
1) a child, born between 1637 and 1644
x) six other children who survived to adulthood
4) Lady A
5) Lady B
6) Maurice of England and the Netherlands, b. 1600, d. pre. 1649, m. Charlotte de la Tremoille
a) Lord Maurice of Orange-Nassau, claimant as Prince of Orange, b. 1623, d. 1651, married
1) William Henry of Orange-Nassau, b. 1651
7) Child
8) Child
9) Lady Joanna of Orange Nassau, b. 1609
c) Lady Catherine Tudor-Habsburg, b. 1578, m. Manuel II of Portugal
1) Infante X
2) Infanta Y
3) Infanta Leonor of Portugal, b. 1599, m. John II of England and the Netherlands (1596 to 1658)
x) for issue, see line of John
b) Elizabeth Tudor, b. 1533, d. 1603, m. Ferdinand, Arch Duke of Further Austriax) possible issue
Monarchs of England:
1553-1558: Mary I (Tudor) with Philip I (Habsburg)
Monarchs of England and the Low Countries:
1558-1630: Joanna I (Tudor-Habsburg) [1]
1630-1649: Isabella I (Tudor-Habsburg) / (House of Orange-Nassau) [2]
1649-1658: John II (House of Orange-Nassau) [3]
1658-1666: Philip II (House of Orange-Nassau) [4]
1666-1689; Stephen II (House of Orange-Nassau) [5]
Jack Huston as Stephen II in BBC drama "Union" about the King's plan for a union of his crowns
(5) Stephen of England and the Netherlands, born 1640 to Philip II and a distant cousin, Cecilia Renata of Austria (she could trace her lineage to Elizabeth Tudor), as their only child. At the point of his birth, his great grandmother was Queen (to 1649) so his father was simply the Duke of Cambridge until 1649 when he became Prince of Wales when Stephen's grandfather became King John II. By the time Stephen became Prince of Wales in 1658, he was eighteen and his marriage to Sibylle of Saxony had already been arranged by his grandfather and his father - the German noblewoman had been considered as a second wife for the Prince of Wales, but Philip resisted and had convinced John II that the young woman was a better match for his son.
Stephen would eventually become King at the age of 26, with Sibylle having only provided him with a single child, a daughter named [ insert name ]. Whilst much of Stephen's childhood had been spent at his grandfather's preferred capital in Leuden, Stephen alternated between London and Leuden and proposed a union of his two nations - the United Kingdoms of England, Ireland and the Netherlands, or simply the United Kingdom. This gained opposition in both states - with son of Maurice, Duke of York, William Henry, being particularly vocal about the union. The unmarried William Henry was still periodically championed as the rightful King of the Netherlands, so Stephen had William brought to his court and married to Catherine of Sussex, a granddaughter of the elderly Margaret, Lady Royal, and a second cousin of Stephen and the Duke's who frequented Stephens English Court, gifting William Henry both lands and further titles upon the marriage but only should he remain resident in England, far away from his old stomping grounds of Leuden and the Seventeen Provinces and unable to stir up political turmoil.
Stephen would reign for only 23 years, until 1689, whe he would be succeeded by __________ after suffering from a bout of pneumonia.
a) Mary of England, b. 1615, r. 1553 to 1558, m. Philip I of England (and II of Spain)
-- 1) Joanna of England and the Netherlands, b. 1555, r. 1558 to 1630, m. Francis III of France (prev. Hercule, Duke of Anjou)
1553-1558: Mary I (Tudor) with Philip I (Habsburg)
Monarchs of England and the Low Countries:
1558-1630: Joanna I (Tudor-Habsburg) [1]
1630-1649: Isabella I (Tudor-Habsburg) / (House of Orange-Nassau) [2]
1649-1658: John II (House of Orange-Nassau) [3]
1658-1666: Philip II (House of Orange-Nassau) [4]
1666-1689; Stephen II (House of Orange-Nassau) [5]
[1]
Queen Joanna I of England, Ireland & the Netherlands as portrayed (by Romola Garai) in a 2022 biopic, "Joanna"
Joanna, named after her great-grandmother and great-aunt (who was the same person) Joanna of Castile, was born in April 1555 ten months after her parents' wedding. Her birth was celebrated by Catholics in England and she was doted upon by her mother, who knew she would never have another child. Her father was also reportedly overjoyed at her birth and declared himself to be happier on the occasion than he would have been at the birth of a son. He already had a male heir, Carlos, Prince of Asturias, but father and son had never developed a close rapport and frequently lived in conflict with one another. Shortly after her baptism, her aunt Elizabeth agreed to a marriage with Ferdinand of Austria, the second son of Ferdinand I and Anne of Bohemia and Hungary and she would leave England, never to return. As a princess of England, infanta of Spain, and archduchess of Austria, Joanna had many suitors even as a baby. And she was a very beautiful baby, who bore a striking resemblance to Katherine of Aragon, her maternal grandmother, with her red hair and blue eyes. Intelligent and aware of her high social status, she was said to have gone through her coronation at the age of three without any fuss. Throughout her life, she exchanged many letters with her father, and her portraits were sent and put into his book of hours. She had a very good education consisting of arithmetic, canon and civil law, classical literature, genealogy and heraldry, history, philosophy, religion, and theology. Politics and mathematics were included as she grew older, and she would never need an interpreter in her life.
At the age of fourteen, she married the youngest son of the king of France, the duke of Alencon Hercule Francois. Again this marriage met with protests which were violently suppressed. They had a formal relationship with little romance between them, but they did their duty and would eventually have three healthy children. After her final childbirth, she would never see her husband again as he returned to succeed his older brother as the king of France and this suited her (and England) just fine. She poured all of her love into her children and trained each of them to be the successors to herself and her husband, she dreamed of splitting her realms to her close family like her grandfather Charles V (and nobody had the nerve to tell her that this was not going to be popular).
She inherited England, Ireland, and the Netherlands from both her parents. Described as a woman "dedicated to compromise and conciliation in public affairs", she was staunchly Catholic but did not continue her mother's persecutions. She would establish a good relationship with her older cousin, Mary of Scotland, and found that the Irish adherence to Catholicism suited her very well. She allowed free travel into England by the Irish and maintained diplomatic relations with the Tsardom of Russia and the Barbary states. She reversed the gradual dispossession of large holdings belonging to several hundred native Catholic nobility and other landowners in Ireland. As an older woman, she would frequently travel between England, Ireland, and the Netherlands and left her adult children in charge as regents.
Her rule of the Netherlands coincided with the recovery of agriculture and saw the strengthening of royal power, stimulating the growth of Habsburg authority and largely succeeding in reconciling xenophobic sentiments. She was also a patron of the arts and the grand palaces she built for herself in her various domains still stand to this day. When she died on a cruise back to England, she was sincerely lamented by many of her subjects; she was praised as the heroine of the Catholic cause and the ruler of a golden age. The triumphalist image that Joanna had cultivated towards the end of her reign, against a background of factionalism and military and economic difficulties, was taken at face value and her reputation inflated. Joanna's reign became idealised as a time when crown, church and parliament had worked in constitutional balance. She had understood that a monarch ruled according to popular consent and therefore always worked with parliament and advisers she could trust to tell her the truth—a style of government that her successors failed to follow.
An elderly Queen Isabella of England, Ireland & the Netherlands as portrayed by Barbara Marten in 2022 Starz drama, "Becoming Isabella"
(2) Joanna I of England and her husband, Francis III of France, only produced three children - all daughters. Whilst Joanna ensured all three were raised to succeed both herself and their father, she knew that there was no practical method in which they would succeed in France as France practiced strict salic law. And thus, eventually, the marital possivilities for each daughter were brought up and Joanna fought against the obvious Habsburg matches - the eldest, Lady Joanna, would marry the Count of Soissons, a cousin of Henri of Navarre, the French First Prince of the Blood, whilst the second, Lady Isabella, would marry Philip William, the Prince of Orange, and the youngest, Lady Katherine, would marry King Manuel II of Portugal.
The Count and Countess of Soissons would be childless, with Lady Joanna dying in childbirth in 1606, this meant that Lady Isabella would succeed their mother in England and the Netherlands. Her marriage to the Prince of Orange, twenty one years older than she was, was a political match - this ensured a secure powerbase in the Spanish Netherlands against the House of Orange Nassau who had been seeking a Dutch state independent of the Spanish or English.
Isabella and Philip William were appointed as Viceroy to the Netherlands for much of her mothers reign until her sisters death, at which point they were recalled to London where Isabella was often charged as Regent whilst Philip William was made an Admiral of the Fleet and relied upon as an important advisor on Dutch state matters.
By the time that Joanna died and Isabella succeeded her, the new Queen and the Prince of Orange had produced nine children, and were blessed with eight grandchildren. Isabella was fifty five at her coronation and would have a relatively short rule of nineteen years - she would pass in 1649, having succeeded her husband by fifteen years, at the age of seventy four.
Joanna had navigated a balance between crown and state, but influenced by her husband's Republican sympathies, Isabella began ceding more power to the Privy Council and to Parliament to rule on her behalf. It was during Isabella's time that the maxim that "Her Majesty Reigns, but it is Parliament that Rules" began to circulate and that would remain a central tenet of English government for some time to come.
She would be succeeded by her eldest son, John.
View attachment 768343
John II at the time of his marriage to Infanta Leonora of Portugal in 1613.
[3] Born in 1596 as the third child, but eldest surviving son, of Isabella I and her older husband the Prince of Orange, John was ten years old when his aunt Joanna died. From that day on, his childhood was shaped by the knowledge that he would one day inherit England and the Netherlands from his grandmother, Queen Joanna. He accompanied his parents to England, as did his two elder sisters, the Lady Margaret and the Lady Anna. His, at that point, three younger siblings, including the six-year-old Lord Maurice, remained in the Hague, which, according to many historians, was the root of much of John’s later trouble with the United Provinces.
Three months after arriving in England, upon his eleventh birthday, John was created Duke of Richmond and named Viceroy of Ireland by his grandmother and sent to Dublin to learn to rule. He spent much of the next two decades there, although he returned to London in 1609 to stand as godfather to his youngest sister, the Lady Joanna, and then again in 1613, when, at the age of seventeen, he married his first cousin, Infanta Leonora of Portugal.
There was some worry that Leonora wouldn’t be able to give John children, for she was slight and sickly, but that soon proved unfounded, for in 1615, the sixteen-year-old Vicereine of Ireland gave birth to a healthy son. She would be pregnant eleven more times over the next twenty-two years, though only seven of her children eventually made it to adulthood.
John’s mother, Isabella, died in 1649, and the new monarch immediately found himself embroiled in a rebellion. The aristocrats of the Netherlands who hadn’t seen John since he turned eleven, and who had slowly been converting to Calvinism without the close supervision of their Prince, declared themselves unwilling to accept John as their monarch.
Instead, they proposed to elect John’s nephew Maurice, son of his younger brother and said brother’s wife, Charlotte de La Tremoille. Maurice, born in 1626, was 23 at the time of John’s accession, had been raised in the Hague, and, while nominally Catholic, was more than willing to convert to Calvinism if it gained him the Netherlands, his mother having been a Calvinist prior to her marriage to Maurice Senior. He is reported to have said, “The Hague is worth a Service of the Word”, when he heard of the Provinces’ plans.
Incandescent with rage, John promptly raised an army of 10,000 loyal Catholic men, summoned from all over England and Ireland, put them under the command of the Duke of Ormond, whom he knew from his time in Ireland, and sent them to the Netherlands, to put down his nephew’s uprising.
It was a long, bitter battle, one that raged for almost three years, but, by the winter of 1651, it was all over. Maurice the Younger was dead, killed whilst trying to flee the siege of Alkmaar, and his heir, Lord William Henry, was just nine months old. Deprived of their figurehead, the Calvinist resistance fell apart, and one by one, the provinces returned to the Catholic fold and English control.
Still, John wasn’t taking any more chances with the Dutch and their divided loyalties. No sooner had his troops returned to London in triumph than he packed up his Court and moved his capital to Leiden, in order to be closer to his rebellious subjects. He would spend the rest of his reign traveling around the Seventeen Provinces, and died at Slot Zuylen Castle near Utrecht in 1658, at the age of 63.
He was succeeded by his son, Philip.
[4] Named after his mother's brother, Philip was born in 1615. As a boy, Philip loved nothing more than to play sports and party. He was a lover of the finer things. He had his first mistress at age seventeen when he was named viceroy of Ireland. The woman in question was Elizabeth Butler. He was infatuated with him and wanted to marry her. That was out of the question for two reasons, first being she was Irish and the second she had already wed her first cousin, James Butler. His parents wasted no time separating the pair, even sending Philip to Wales in order to keep him from doing something foolish.
Much to Philip's displeasure, he was wed to Cecilia Renata of Austria. In an act of rebellion, Philip continued to have mistresses and would even acknowledge his bastards, something that appalled his conservative parents, not to mention Queen Joanna of England who made it clear that if Philip did not shape up, he would be disinherited. Luckily for Philip, Joanna was soon replaced by his doting grandmother, Isabella. Isabella saw Philip's behavior as something he would grow out of, gently coaxing him into being more discreet with his mistresses especially when his wife arrived in England in 1637.
Despite still harboring a grudge for being forced to give up the only woman he would ever love (or so he claimed), Philip treated Cecilia with respect and kindness even if he did not love her nor was he faithful to her. Cecilia was a quiet unassuming woman, known for her generosity, and kindness. She and Philip would have only one surviving child before she died in 1644 of childbed fever.
Philip stayed a widower until a year after his grandmother's death, and the new King John wanted his son to marry again. This would lead to an argument with father and son as the Prince of Wales had no interest of being tied down for a second time. However, Maurice's rebellion distracted them as they both traveled to the Netherlands to put down the uprising.
For the rest of his father's reign, Philip resisted getting married again, insisting that his child with Cecilia was soon to be of age to be married (His hypocrisy has been pointed out by many a historian). By 1558, Prince Philip had won the argument, mostly because his father had died. Once he became king, Philip changed absolutely nothing about his lifestyle, continuing to enjoy fine wine, fine food, and fine women. It came little surprise to anyone that the king only lasted eight years, dying of gout in 1666.
_____would take the crown after his death.
Queen Joanna I of England, Ireland & the Netherlands as portrayed (by Romola Garai) in a 2022 biopic, "Joanna"
Joanna, named after her great-grandmother and great-aunt (who was the same person) Joanna of Castile, was born in April 1555 ten months after her parents' wedding. Her birth was celebrated by Catholics in England and she was doted upon by her mother, who knew she would never have another child. Her father was also reportedly overjoyed at her birth and declared himself to be happier on the occasion than he would have been at the birth of a son. He already had a male heir, Carlos, Prince of Asturias, but father and son had never developed a close rapport and frequently lived in conflict with one another. Shortly after her baptism, her aunt Elizabeth agreed to a marriage with Ferdinand of Austria, the second son of Ferdinand I and Anne of Bohemia and Hungary and she would leave England, never to return. As a princess of England, infanta of Spain, and archduchess of Austria, Joanna had many suitors even as a baby. And she was a very beautiful baby, who bore a striking resemblance to Katherine of Aragon, her maternal grandmother, with her red hair and blue eyes. Intelligent and aware of her high social status, she was said to have gone through her coronation at the age of three without any fuss. Throughout her life, she exchanged many letters with her father, and her portraits were sent and put into his book of hours. She had a very good education consisting of arithmetic, canon and civil law, classical literature, genealogy and heraldry, history, philosophy, religion, and theology. Politics and mathematics were included as she grew older, and she would never need an interpreter in her life.
At the age of fourteen, she married the youngest son of the king of France, the duke of Alencon Hercule Francois. Again this marriage met with protests which were violently suppressed. They had a formal relationship with little romance between them, but they did their duty and would eventually have three healthy children. After her final childbirth, she would never see her husband again as he returned to succeed his older brother as the king of France and this suited her (and England) just fine. She poured all of her love into her children and trained each of them to be the successors to herself and her husband, she dreamed of splitting her realms to her close family like her grandfather Charles V (and nobody had the nerve to tell her that this was not going to be popular).
She inherited England, Ireland, and the Netherlands from both her parents. Described as a woman "dedicated to compromise and conciliation in public affairs", she was staunchly Catholic but did not continue her mother's persecutions. She would establish a good relationship with her older cousin, Mary of Scotland, and found that the Irish adherence to Catholicism suited her very well. She allowed free travel into England by the Irish and maintained diplomatic relations with the Tsardom of Russia and the Barbary states. She reversed the gradual dispossession of large holdings belonging to several hundred native Catholic nobility and other landowners in Ireland. As an older woman, she would frequently travel between England, Ireland, and the Netherlands and left her adult children in charge as regents.
Her rule of the Netherlands coincided with the recovery of agriculture and saw the strengthening of royal power, stimulating the growth of Habsburg authority and largely succeeding in reconciling xenophobic sentiments. She was also a patron of the arts and the grand palaces she built for herself in her various domains still stand to this day. When she died on a cruise back to England, she was sincerely lamented by many of her subjects; she was praised as the heroine of the Catholic cause and the ruler of a golden age. The triumphalist image that Joanna had cultivated towards the end of her reign, against a background of factionalism and military and economic difficulties, was taken at face value and her reputation inflated. Joanna's reign became idealised as a time when crown, church and parliament had worked in constitutional balance. She had understood that a monarch ruled according to popular consent and therefore always worked with parliament and advisers she could trust to tell her the truth—a style of government that her successors failed to follow.
An elderly Queen Isabella of England, Ireland & the Netherlands as portrayed by Barbara Marten in 2022 Starz drama, "Becoming Isabella"
(2) Joanna I of England and her husband, Francis III of France, only produced three children - all daughters. Whilst Joanna ensured all three were raised to succeed both herself and their father, she knew that there was no practical method in which they would succeed in France as France practiced strict salic law. And thus, eventually, the marital possivilities for each daughter were brought up and Joanna fought against the obvious Habsburg matches - the eldest, Lady Joanna, would marry the Count of Soissons, a cousin of Henri of Navarre, the French First Prince of the Blood, whilst the second, Lady Isabella, would marry Philip William, the Prince of Orange, and the youngest, Lady Katherine, would marry King Manuel II of Portugal.
The Count and Countess of Soissons would be childless, with Lady Joanna dying in childbirth in 1606, this meant that Lady Isabella would succeed their mother in England and the Netherlands. Her marriage to the Prince of Orange, twenty one years older than she was, was a political match - this ensured a secure powerbase in the Spanish Netherlands against the House of Orange Nassau who had been seeking a Dutch state independent of the Spanish or English.
Isabella and Philip William were appointed as Viceroy to the Netherlands for much of her mothers reign until her sisters death, at which point they were recalled to London where Isabella was often charged as Regent whilst Philip William was made an Admiral of the Fleet and relied upon as an important advisor on Dutch state matters.
By the time that Joanna died and Isabella succeeded her, the new Queen and the Prince of Orange had produced nine children, and were blessed with eight grandchildren. Isabella was fifty five at her coronation and would have a relatively short rule of nineteen years - she would pass in 1649, having succeeded her husband by fifteen years, at the age of seventy four.
Joanna had navigated a balance between crown and state, but influenced by her husband's Republican sympathies, Isabella began ceding more power to the Privy Council and to Parliament to rule on her behalf. It was during Isabella's time that the maxim that "Her Majesty Reigns, but it is Parliament that Rules" began to circulate and that would remain a central tenet of English government for some time to come.
She would be succeeded by her eldest son, John.
View attachment 768343
John II at the time of his marriage to Infanta Leonora of Portugal in 1613.
[3] Born in 1596 as the third child, but eldest surviving son, of Isabella I and her older husband the Prince of Orange, John was ten years old when his aunt Joanna died. From that day on, his childhood was shaped by the knowledge that he would one day inherit England and the Netherlands from his grandmother, Queen Joanna. He accompanied his parents to England, as did his two elder sisters, the Lady Margaret and the Lady Anna. His, at that point, three younger siblings, including the six-year-old Lord Maurice, remained in the Hague, which, according to many historians, was the root of much of John’s later trouble with the United Provinces.
Three months after arriving in England, upon his eleventh birthday, John was created Duke of Richmond and named Viceroy of Ireland by his grandmother and sent to Dublin to learn to rule. He spent much of the next two decades there, although he returned to London in 1609 to stand as godfather to his youngest sister, the Lady Joanna, and then again in 1613, when, at the age of seventeen, he married his first cousin, Infanta Leonora of Portugal.
There was some worry that Leonora wouldn’t be able to give John children, for she was slight and sickly, but that soon proved unfounded, for in 1615, the sixteen-year-old Vicereine of Ireland gave birth to a healthy son. She would be pregnant eleven more times over the next twenty-two years, though only seven of her children eventually made it to adulthood.
John’s mother, Isabella, died in 1649, and the new monarch immediately found himself embroiled in a rebellion. The aristocrats of the Netherlands who hadn’t seen John since he turned eleven, and who had slowly been converting to Calvinism without the close supervision of their Prince, declared themselves unwilling to accept John as their monarch.
Instead, they proposed to elect John’s nephew Maurice, son of his younger brother and said brother’s wife, Charlotte de La Tremoille. Maurice, born in 1626, was 23 at the time of John’s accession, had been raised in the Hague, and, while nominally Catholic, was more than willing to convert to Calvinism if it gained him the Netherlands, his mother having been a Calvinist prior to her marriage to Maurice Senior. He is reported to have said, “The Hague is worth a Service of the Word”, when he heard of the Provinces’ plans.
Incandescent with rage, John promptly raised an army of 10,000 loyal Catholic men, summoned from all over England and Ireland, put them under the command of the Duke of Ormond, whom he knew from his time in Ireland, and sent them to the Netherlands, to put down his nephew’s uprising.
It was a long, bitter battle, one that raged for almost three years, but, by the winter of 1651, it was all over. Maurice the Younger was dead, killed whilst trying to flee the siege of Alkmaar, and his heir, Lord William Henry, was just nine months old. Deprived of their figurehead, the Calvinist resistance fell apart, and one by one, the provinces returned to the Catholic fold and English control.
Still, John wasn’t taking any more chances with the Dutch and their divided loyalties. No sooner had his troops returned to London in triumph than he packed up his Court and moved his capital to Leiden, in order to be closer to his rebellious subjects. He would spend the rest of his reign traveling around the Seventeen Provinces, and died at Slot Zuylen Castle near Utrecht in 1658, at the age of 63.
He was succeeded by his son, Philip.
[4] Named after his mother's brother, Philip was born in 1615. As a boy, Philip loved nothing more than to play sports and party. He was a lover of the finer things. He had his first mistress at age seventeen when he was named viceroy of Ireland. The woman in question was Elizabeth Butler. He was infatuated with him and wanted to marry her. That was out of the question for two reasons, first being she was Irish and the second she had already wed her first cousin, James Butler. His parents wasted no time separating the pair, even sending Philip to Wales in order to keep him from doing something foolish.
Much to Philip's displeasure, he was wed to Cecilia Renata of Austria. In an act of rebellion, Philip continued to have mistresses and would even acknowledge his bastards, something that appalled his conservative parents, not to mention Queen Joanna of England who made it clear that if Philip did not shape up, he would be disinherited. Luckily for Philip, Joanna was soon replaced by his doting grandmother, Isabella. Isabella saw Philip's behavior as something he would grow out of, gently coaxing him into being more discreet with his mistresses especially when his wife arrived in England in 1637.
Despite still harboring a grudge for being forced to give up the only woman he would ever love (or so he claimed), Philip treated Cecilia with respect and kindness even if he did not love her nor was he faithful to her. Cecilia was a quiet unassuming woman, known for her generosity, and kindness. She and Philip would have only one surviving child before she died in 1644 of childbed fever.
Philip stayed a widower until a year after his grandmother's death, and the new King John wanted his son to marry again. This would lead to an argument with father and son as the Prince of Wales had no interest of being tied down for a second time. However, Maurice's rebellion distracted them as they both traveled to the Netherlands to put down the uprising.
For the rest of his father's reign, Philip resisted getting married again, insisting that his child with Cecilia was soon to be of age to be married (His hypocrisy has been pointed out by many a historian). By 1558, Prince Philip had won the argument, mostly because his father had died. Once he became king, Philip changed absolutely nothing about his lifestyle, continuing to enjoy fine wine, fine food, and fine women. It came little surprise to anyone that the king only lasted eight years, dying of gout in 1666.
_____would take the crown after his death.
Jack Huston as Stephen II in BBC drama "Union" about the King's plan for a union of his crowns
(5) Stephen of England and the Netherlands, born 1640 to Philip II and a distant cousin, Cecilia Renata of Austria (she could trace her lineage to Elizabeth Tudor), as their only child. At the point of his birth, his great grandmother was Queen (to 1649) so his father was simply the Duke of Cambridge until 1649 when he became Prince of Wales when Stephen's grandfather became King John II. By the time Stephen became Prince of Wales in 1658, he was eighteen and his marriage to Sibylle of Saxony had already been arranged by his grandfather and his father - the German noblewoman had been considered as a second wife for the Prince of Wales, but Philip resisted and had convinced John II that the young woman was a better match for his son.
Stephen would eventually become King at the age of 26, with Sibylle having only provided him with a single child, a daughter named [ insert name ]. Whilst much of Stephen's childhood had been spent at his grandfather's preferred capital in Leuden, Stephen alternated between London and Leuden and proposed a union of his two nations - the United Kingdoms of England, Ireland and the Netherlands, or simply the United Kingdom. This gained opposition in both states - with son of Maurice, Duke of York, William Henry, being particularly vocal about the union. The unmarried William Henry was still periodically championed as the rightful King of the Netherlands, so Stephen had William brought to his court and married to Catherine of Sussex, a granddaughter of the elderly Margaret, Lady Royal, and a second cousin of Stephen and the Duke's who frequented Stephens English Court, gifting William Henry both lands and further titles upon the marriage but only should he remain resident in England, far away from his old stomping grounds of Leuden and the Seventeen Provinces and unable to stir up political turmoil.
Stephen would reign for only 23 years, until 1689, whe he would be succeeded by __________ after suffering from a bout of pneumonia.
a) Mary of England, b. 1615, r. 1553 to 1558, m. Philip I of England (and II of Spain)
-- 1) Joanna of England and the Netherlands, b. 1555, r. 1558 to 1630, m. Francis III of France (prev. Hercule, Duke of Anjou)
a) Joanna, Lady Royal of England, b. 1574, d. 1606, m. Charles, Count of Soissons, no surviving issue
b) Isabella of England and the Netherlands, b. 1575, r. 1630 to 1649, m. Philip William, Prince of Orange (d. 1634)
-- 1) Margaret, Lady Royal of England
x) a granddaughter marries William Henry, Duke of York
-- 2) Lady Anne of Orange-Nassau
-- 3) John II of England and the Netherlands, prev. Duke of Richmond etc, b. 1596, r. 1649 to 1658, m. Infanta Leonor of Portugal
a) Philip II of England and the Netherlands, b. 1615, r. 1658 to 1666, m. Cecilia Renata of Austria (d. 1644)
-- 1) Stephen II of England and the Netherlands, b. 1640, r. 1666 to 1689, m. Sibylle of Saxony (b. 1647, d. 1688)
x) only one daughter, born pre. 1666
x) six other children who survived to adulthood
-- 4) Lady A
-- 5) Lady B
-- 6) Maurice, Duke of York, b. 1600, d. pre. 1649, m. Charlotte de la Tremoille
a) Lord Maurice of Orange-Nassau, claimant as Prince of Orange, b. 1623, d. 1651, married
-- 1) William Henry, Duke of York, b. 1651, m. Catherine of Sussex, a granddaughter of Margaret, Lady Royal
-- 7) Child
-- 8) Child
-- 9) Lady Joanna of Orange Nassau, b. 1609
c) Lady Catherine Tudor-Habsburg, b. 1578, m. Manuel II of Portugal
-- 1) Infante X
-- 2) Infanta Y
-- 3) Infanta Leonor of Portugal, b. 1599, m. John II of England and the Netherlands (1596 to 1658)
x) for issue, see line of John
b) Elizabeth Tudor, b. 1533, d. 1603, m. Ferdinand, Arch Duke of Further Austriax) has issue, descendant is Cecilia Renata of Austria
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Monarchs of England:
1553-1558: Mary I (Tudor) with Philip I (Habsburg)
Monarchs of England and the Low Countries:
1558-1630: Joanna I (Tudor-Habsburg) [1]
1630-1649: Isabella I (Tudor-Habsburg) / (House of Orange-Nassau) [2]
1649-1658: John II (House of Orange-Nassau) [3]
1658-1666: Philip II (House of Orange-Nassau) [4]
1666-1689: Stephen II (House of Orange-Nassau) [5]
1689-1720: Katherine I (House of Orange-Nassau) [6]
[6]
Katherine I of England, Ireland and the Netherlands, as portrayed by Isolda Dychauk in 2022 film
Born in 1665, Katherine was the only surviving child of Stephen and Sibylle and doted upon by both, she was used to traveling back and forth between the countries she would rule one day. To add on to another potential realm, she had been married to the much older king of Scotland, Charles II after his first wife Catherine of Braganza died of a miscarriage. The relationship was more father-daughter than romantic couple, but she proved a fruitful wife and bore three surviving children. After her widowhood she remarried to a distant cousin, the younger William of York, the heir of William Henry and Catherine of Sussex. She had another seven children with him, but her second marriage was much more tumultuous than her first and William of Sussex was often exiled from wherever the queen was during their violent fights.
Marital adventures that made for such excellent court gossip aside, she revived the itinerant court that had been so popular in the early middle ages. She brought parts of the parliament with her as she ruled her vast domains (for Charles often left her as regent as he approached old age). Though nearly hyper-competent and certainly very efficient, she was still only one woman and could not cope with constant demands and the stirring resentment against a frequently absentee monarch. So, she did what Joanna I had done, and delegated to her ten children. Unfortunately, her issue were not always as good a politician as she herself was, resulting in another conflict with the Ottoman Empire (and a war with France was brewing on the horizon, barely suppressed by a betrothal of one of her daughters to their Dauphin).
In fact, her bitter relationship with her successor would come to mark the final years of her reign, as she would increasingly see her heir as incompetent and unworthy of her thrones. (No one dared to tell her that it was just her perception.) Regardless of this, she did not try to change the order of succession, instead devoting her twilight years into patronage of the arts and architecture. After another screaming argument with her heir, she would collapse of a heart attack and die, leaving ___ to succeed.
a) Mary of England, b. 1615, r. 1553 to 1558, m. Philip I of England (and II of Spain)
-- 1) Joanna of England and the Netherlands, b. 1555, r. 1558 to 1630, m. Francis III of France (prev. Hercule, Duke of Anjou)
a) Joanna, Lady Royal of England, b. 1574, d. 1606, m. Charles, Count of Soissons, no surviving issue
b) Isabella of England and the Netherlands, b. 1575, r. 1630 to 1649, m. Philip William, Prince of Orange (d. 1634)
-- 1) Margaret, Lady Royal of England
x) a granddaughter marries William Henry, Duke of York
-- 2) Lady Anne of Orange-Nassau
-- 3) John II of England and the Netherlands, prev. Duke of Richmond etc, b. 1596, r. 1649 to 1658, m. Infanta Leonor of Portugal
a) Philip II of England and the Netherlands, b. 1615, r. 1658 to 1666, m. Cecilia Renata of Austria (d. 1644)
-- 1) Stephen II of England and the Netherlands, b. 1640, r. 1666 to 1689, m. Sibylle of Saxony (b. 1647, d. 1688)
x) Katherine I of England and the Netherlands, b. 1665, r. 1689 to 1720, m. Charles II of Scotland (b. 1630, d. 1685) [a], m. William of York (b. 1670, d. 1700)
-- ten surviving children
x) six other children who survived to adulthood
-- 4) Lady A
-- 5) Lady B
-- 6) Maurice, Duke of York, b. 1600, d. pre. 1649, m. Charlotte de la Tremoille
a) Lord Maurice of Orange-Nassau, claimant as Prince of Orange, b. 1623, d. 1651, married
-- 1) William Henry, Duke of York, b. 1651, m. Catherine of Sussex, a granddaughter of Margaret, Lady Royal
-- 7) Child
-- 8) Child
-- 9) Lady Joanna of Orange Nassau, b. 1609
c) Lady Catherine Tudor-Habsburg, b. 1578, m. Manuel II of Portugal
-- 1) Infante X
-- 2) Infanta Y
-- 3) Infanta Leonor of Portugal, b. 1599, m. John II of England and the Netherlands (1596 to 1658)
x) for issue, see line of John
b) Elizabeth Tudor, b. 1533, d. 1603, m. Ferdinand, Arch Duke of Further Austria
x) has issue, descendant is Cecilia Renata of Austria
1553-1558: Mary I (Tudor) with Philip I (Habsburg)
Monarchs of England and the Low Countries:
1558-1630: Joanna I (Tudor-Habsburg) [1]
1630-1649: Isabella I (Tudor-Habsburg) / (House of Orange-Nassau) [2]
1649-1658: John II (House of Orange-Nassau) [3]
1658-1666: Philip II (House of Orange-Nassau) [4]
1666-1689: Stephen II (House of Orange-Nassau) [5]
1689-1720: Katherine I (House of Orange-Nassau) [6]
[1]
Queen Joanna I of England, Ireland & the Netherlands as portrayed (by Romola Garai) in a 2022 biopic, "Joanna"
Joanna, named after her great-grandmother and great-aunt (who was the same person) Joanna of Castile, was born in April 1555 ten months after her parents' wedding. Her birth was celebrated by Catholics in England and she was doted upon by her mother, who knew she would never have another child. Her father was also reportedly overjoyed at her birth and declared himself to be happier on the occasion than he would have been at the birth of a son. He already had a male heir, Carlos, Prince of Asturias, but father and son had never developed a close rapport and frequently lived in conflict with one another. Shortly after her baptism, her aunt Elizabeth agreed to a marriage with Ferdinand of Austria, the second son of Ferdinand I and Anne of Bohemia and Hungary and she would leave England, never to return. As a princess of England, infanta of Spain, and archduchess of Austria, Joanna had many suitors even as a baby. And she was a very beautiful baby, who bore a striking resemblance to Katherine of Aragon, her maternal grandmother, with her red hair and blue eyes. Intelligent and aware of her high social status, she was said to have gone through her coronation at the age of three without any fuss. Throughout her life, she exchanged many letters with her father, and her portraits were sent and put into his book of hours. She had a very good education consisting of arithmetic, canon and civil law, classical literature, genealogy and heraldry, history, philosophy, religion, and theology. Politics and mathematics were included as she grew older, and she would never need an interpreter in her life.
At the age of fourteen, she married the youngest son of the king of France, the duke of Alencon Hercule Francois. Again this marriage met with protests which were violently suppressed. They had a formal relationship with little romance between them, but they did their duty and would eventually have three healthy children. After her final childbirth, she would never see her husband again as he returned to succeed his older brother as the king of France and this suited her (and England) just fine. She poured all of her love into her children and trained each of them to be the successors to herself and her husband, she dreamed of splitting her realms to her close family like her grandfather Charles V (and nobody had the nerve to tell her that this was not going to be popular).
She inherited England, Ireland, and the Netherlands from both her parents. Described as a woman "dedicated to compromise and conciliation in public affairs", she was staunchly Catholic but did not continue her mother's persecutions. She would establish a good relationship with her older cousin, Mary of Scotland, and found that the Irish adherence to Catholicism suited her very well. She allowed free travel into England by the Irish and maintained diplomatic relations with the Tsardom of Russia and the Barbary states. She reversed the gradual dispossession of large holdings belonging to several hundred native Catholic nobility and other landowners in Ireland. As an older woman, she would frequently travel between England, Ireland, and the Netherlands and left her adult children in charge as regents.
Her rule of the Netherlands coincided with the recovery of agriculture and saw the strengthening of royal power, stimulating the growth of Habsburg authority and largely succeeding in reconciling xenophobic sentiments. She was also a patron of the arts and the grand palaces she built for herself in her various domains still stand to this day. When she died on a cruise back to England, she was sincerely lamented by many of her subjects; she was praised as the heroine of the Catholic cause and the ruler of a golden age. The triumphalist image that Joanna had cultivated towards the end of her reign, against a background of factionalism and military and economic difficulties, was taken at face value and her reputation inflated. Joanna's reign became idealised as a time when crown, church and parliament had worked in constitutional balance. She had understood that a monarch ruled according to popular consent and therefore always worked with parliament and advisers she could trust to tell her the truth—a style of government that her successors failed to follow.
An elderly Queen Isabella of England, Ireland & the Netherlands as portrayed by Barbara Marten in 2022 Starz drama, "Becoming Isabella"
(2) Joanna I of England and her husband, Francis III of France, only produced three children - all daughters. Whilst Joanna ensured all three were raised to succeed both herself and their father, she knew that there was no practical method in which they would succeed in France as France practiced strict salic law. And thus, eventually, the marital possivilities for each daughter were brought up and Joanna fought against the obvious Habsburg matches - the eldest, Lady Joanna, would marry the Count of Soissons, a cousin of Henri of Navarre, the French First Prince of the Blood, whilst the second, Lady Isabella, would marry Philip William, the Prince of Orange, and the youngest, Lady Katherine, would marry King Manuel II of Portugal.
The Count and Countess of Soissons would be childless, with Lady Joanna dying in childbirth in 1606, this meant that Lady Isabella would succeed their mother in England and the Netherlands. Her marriage to the Prince of Orange, twenty one years older than she was, was a political match - this ensured a secure powerbase in the Spanish Netherlands against the House of Orange Nassau who had been seeking a Dutch state independent of the Spanish or English.
Isabella and Philip William were appointed as Viceroy to the Netherlands for much of her mothers reign until her sisters death, at which point they were recalled to London where Isabella was often charged as Regent whilst Philip William was made an Admiral of the Fleet and relied upon as an important advisor on Dutch state matters.
By the time that Joanna died and Isabella succeeded her, the new Queen and the Prince of Orange had produced nine children, and were blessed with eight grandchildren. Isabella was fifty five at her coronation and would have a relatively short rule of nineteen years - she would pass in 1649, having succeeded her husband by fifteen years, at the age of seventy four.
Joanna had navigated a balance between crown and state, but influenced by her husband's Republican sympathies, Isabella began ceding more power to the Privy Council and to Parliament to rule on her behalf. It was during Isabella's time that the maxim that "Her Majesty Reigns, but it is Parliament that Rules" began to circulate and that would remain a central tenet of English government for some time to come.
She would be succeeded by her eldest son, John.
View attachment 768343
John II at the time of his marriage to Infanta Leonora of Portugal in 1613.
[3] Born in 1596 as the third child, but eldest surviving son, of Isabella I and her older husband the Prince of Orange, John was ten years old when his aunt Joanna died. From that day on, his childhood was shaped by the knowledge that he would one day inherit England and the Netherlands from his grandmother, Queen Joanna. He accompanied his parents to England, as did his two elder sisters, the Lady Margaret and the Lady Anna. His, at that point, three younger siblings, including the six-year-old Lord Maurice, remained in the Hague, which, according to many historians, was the root of much of John’s later trouble with the United Provinces.
Three months after arriving in England, upon his eleventh birthday, John was created Duke of Richmond and named Viceroy of Ireland by his grandmother and sent to Dublin to learn to rule. He spent much of the next two decades there, although he returned to London in 1609 to stand as godfather to his youngest sister, the Lady Joanna, and then again in 1613, when, at the age of seventeen, he married his first cousin, Infanta Leonora of Portugal.
There was some worry that Leonora wouldn’t be able to give John children, for she was slight and sickly, but that soon proved unfounded, for in 1615, the sixteen-year-old Vicereine of Ireland gave birth to a healthy son. She would be pregnant eleven more times over the next twenty-two years, though only seven of her children eventually made it to adulthood.
John’s mother, Isabella, died in 1649, and the new monarch immediately found himself embroiled in a rebellion. The aristocrats of the Netherlands who hadn’t seen John since he turned eleven, and who had slowly been converting to Calvinism without the close supervision of their Prince, declared themselves unwilling to accept John as their monarch.
Instead, they proposed to elect John’s nephew Maurice, son of his younger brother and said brother’s wife, Charlotte de La Tremoille. Maurice, born in 1626, was 23 at the time of John’s accession, had been raised in the Hague, and, while nominally Catholic, was more than willing to convert to Calvinism if it gained him the Netherlands, his mother having been a Calvinist prior to her marriage to Maurice Senior. He is reported to have said, “The Hague is worth a Service of the Word”, when he heard of the Provinces’ plans.
Incandescent with rage, John promptly raised an army of 10,000 loyal Catholic men, summoned from all over England and Ireland, put them under the command of the Duke of Ormond, whom he knew from his time in Ireland, and sent them to the Netherlands, to put down his nephew’s uprising.
It was a long, bitter battle, one that raged for almost three years, but, by the winter of 1651, it was all over. Maurice the Younger was dead, killed whilst trying to flee the siege of Alkmaar, and his heir, Lord William Henry, was just nine months old. Deprived of their figurehead, the Calvinist resistance fell apart, and one by one, the provinces returned to the Catholic fold and English control.
Still, John wasn’t taking any more chances with the Dutch and their divided loyalties. No sooner had his troops returned to London in triumph than he packed up his Court and moved his capital to Leiden, in order to be closer to his rebellious subjects. He would spend the rest of his reign traveling around the Seventeen Provinces, and died at Slot Zuylen Castle near Utrecht in 1658, at the age of 63.
He was succeeded by his son, Philip.
[4] Named after his mother's brother, Philip was born in 1615. As a boy, Philip loved nothing more than to play sports and party. He was a lover of the finer things. He had his first mistress at age seventeen when he was named viceroy of Ireland. The woman in question was Elizabeth Butler. He was infatuated with him and wanted to marry her. That was out of the question for two reasons, first being she was Irish and the second she had already wed her first cousin, James Butler. His parents wasted no time separating the pair, even sending Philip to Wales in order to keep him from doing something foolish.
Much to Philip's displeasure, he was wed to Cecilia Renata of Austria. In an act of rebellion, Philip continued to have mistresses and would even acknowledge his bastards, something that appalled his conservative parents, not to mention Queen Joanna of England who made it clear that if Philip did not shape up, he would be disinherited. Luckily for Philip, Joanna was soon replaced by his doting grandmother, Isabella. Isabella saw Philip's behavior as something he would grow out of, gently coaxing him into being more discreet with his mistresses especially when his wife arrived in England in 1637.
Despite still harboring a grudge for being forced to give up the only woman he would ever love (or so he claimed), Philip treated Cecilia with respect and kindness even if he did not love her nor was he faithful to her. Cecilia was a quiet unassuming woman, known for her generosity, and kindness. She and Philip would have only one surviving child before she died in 1644 of childbed fever.
Philip stayed a widower until a year after his grandmother's death, and the new King John wanted his son to marry again. This would lead to an argument with father and son as the Prince of Wales had no interest of being tied down for a second time. However, Maurice's rebellion distracted them as they both traveled to the Netherlands to put down the uprising.
For the rest of his father's reign, Philip resisted getting married again, insisting that his child with Cecilia was soon to be of age to be married (His hypocrisy has been pointed out by many a historian). By 1558, Prince Philip had won the argument, mostly because his father had died. Once he became king, Philip changed absolutely nothing about his lifestyle, continuing to enjoy fine wine, fine food, and fine women. It came little surprise to anyone that the king only lasted eight years, dying of gout in 1666.
_____would take the crown after his death.
Jack Huston as Stephen II in BBC drama "Union" about the King's plan for a union of his crowns
(5) Stephen of England and the Netherlands, born 1640 to Philip II and a distant cousin, Cecilia Renata of Austria (she could trace her lineage to Elizabeth Tudor), as their only child. At the point of his birth, his great grandmother was Queen (to 1649) so his father was simply the Duke of Cambridge until 1649 when he became Prince of Wales when Stephen's grandfather became King John II. By the time Stephen became Prince of Wales in 1658, he was eighteen and his marriage to Sibylle of Saxony had already been arranged by his grandfather and his father - the German noblewoman had been considered as a second wife for the Prince of Wales, but Philip resisted and had convinced John II that the young woman was a better match for his son.
Stephen would eventually become King at the age of 26, with Sibylle having only provided him with a single child, a daughter named Katherine. Whilst much of Stephen's childhood had been spent at his grandfather's preferred capital in Leuden, Stephen alternated between London and Leuden and proposed a union of his two nations - the United Kingdoms of England, Ireland and the Netherlands, or simply the United Kingdom. This gained opposition in both states - with son of Maurice, Duke of York, William Henry, being particularly vocal about the union. The unmarried William Henry was still periodically championed as the rightful King of the Netherlands, so Stephen had William brought to his court and married to Catherine of Sussex, a granddaughter of the elderly Margaret, Lady Royal, and a second cousin of Stephen and the Duke's who frequented Stephens English Court, gifting William Henry both lands and further titles upon the marriage but only should he remain resident in England, far away from his old stomping grounds of Leuden and the Seventeen Provinces and unable to stir up political turmoil.
Stephen would reign for only 23 years, until 1689, when he would be succeeded by his daughter, Katherine after suffering from a bout of pneumonia.
Queen Joanna I of England, Ireland & the Netherlands as portrayed (by Romola Garai) in a 2022 biopic, "Joanna"
Joanna, named after her great-grandmother and great-aunt (who was the same person) Joanna of Castile, was born in April 1555 ten months after her parents' wedding. Her birth was celebrated by Catholics in England and she was doted upon by her mother, who knew she would never have another child. Her father was also reportedly overjoyed at her birth and declared himself to be happier on the occasion than he would have been at the birth of a son. He already had a male heir, Carlos, Prince of Asturias, but father and son had never developed a close rapport and frequently lived in conflict with one another. Shortly after her baptism, her aunt Elizabeth agreed to a marriage with Ferdinand of Austria, the second son of Ferdinand I and Anne of Bohemia and Hungary and she would leave England, never to return. As a princess of England, infanta of Spain, and archduchess of Austria, Joanna had many suitors even as a baby. And she was a very beautiful baby, who bore a striking resemblance to Katherine of Aragon, her maternal grandmother, with her red hair and blue eyes. Intelligent and aware of her high social status, she was said to have gone through her coronation at the age of three without any fuss. Throughout her life, she exchanged many letters with her father, and her portraits were sent and put into his book of hours. She had a very good education consisting of arithmetic, canon and civil law, classical literature, genealogy and heraldry, history, philosophy, religion, and theology. Politics and mathematics were included as she grew older, and she would never need an interpreter in her life.
At the age of fourteen, she married the youngest son of the king of France, the duke of Alencon Hercule Francois. Again this marriage met with protests which were violently suppressed. They had a formal relationship with little romance between them, but they did their duty and would eventually have three healthy children. After her final childbirth, she would never see her husband again as he returned to succeed his older brother as the king of France and this suited her (and England) just fine. She poured all of her love into her children and trained each of them to be the successors to herself and her husband, she dreamed of splitting her realms to her close family like her grandfather Charles V (and nobody had the nerve to tell her that this was not going to be popular).
She inherited England, Ireland, and the Netherlands from both her parents. Described as a woman "dedicated to compromise and conciliation in public affairs", she was staunchly Catholic but did not continue her mother's persecutions. She would establish a good relationship with her older cousin, Mary of Scotland, and found that the Irish adherence to Catholicism suited her very well. She allowed free travel into England by the Irish and maintained diplomatic relations with the Tsardom of Russia and the Barbary states. She reversed the gradual dispossession of large holdings belonging to several hundred native Catholic nobility and other landowners in Ireland. As an older woman, she would frequently travel between England, Ireland, and the Netherlands and left her adult children in charge as regents.
Her rule of the Netherlands coincided with the recovery of agriculture and saw the strengthening of royal power, stimulating the growth of Habsburg authority and largely succeeding in reconciling xenophobic sentiments. She was also a patron of the arts and the grand palaces she built for herself in her various domains still stand to this day. When she died on a cruise back to England, she was sincerely lamented by many of her subjects; she was praised as the heroine of the Catholic cause and the ruler of a golden age. The triumphalist image that Joanna had cultivated towards the end of her reign, against a background of factionalism and military and economic difficulties, was taken at face value and her reputation inflated. Joanna's reign became idealised as a time when crown, church and parliament had worked in constitutional balance. She had understood that a monarch ruled according to popular consent and therefore always worked with parliament and advisers she could trust to tell her the truth—a style of government that her successors failed to follow.
An elderly Queen Isabella of England, Ireland & the Netherlands as portrayed by Barbara Marten in 2022 Starz drama, "Becoming Isabella"
(2) Joanna I of England and her husband, Francis III of France, only produced three children - all daughters. Whilst Joanna ensured all three were raised to succeed both herself and their father, she knew that there was no practical method in which they would succeed in France as France practiced strict salic law. And thus, eventually, the marital possivilities for each daughter were brought up and Joanna fought against the obvious Habsburg matches - the eldest, Lady Joanna, would marry the Count of Soissons, a cousin of Henri of Navarre, the French First Prince of the Blood, whilst the second, Lady Isabella, would marry Philip William, the Prince of Orange, and the youngest, Lady Katherine, would marry King Manuel II of Portugal.
The Count and Countess of Soissons would be childless, with Lady Joanna dying in childbirth in 1606, this meant that Lady Isabella would succeed their mother in England and the Netherlands. Her marriage to the Prince of Orange, twenty one years older than she was, was a political match - this ensured a secure powerbase in the Spanish Netherlands against the House of Orange Nassau who had been seeking a Dutch state independent of the Spanish or English.
Isabella and Philip William were appointed as Viceroy to the Netherlands for much of her mothers reign until her sisters death, at which point they were recalled to London where Isabella was often charged as Regent whilst Philip William was made an Admiral of the Fleet and relied upon as an important advisor on Dutch state matters.
By the time that Joanna died and Isabella succeeded her, the new Queen and the Prince of Orange had produced nine children, and were blessed with eight grandchildren. Isabella was fifty five at her coronation and would have a relatively short rule of nineteen years - she would pass in 1649, having succeeded her husband by fifteen years, at the age of seventy four.
Joanna had navigated a balance between crown and state, but influenced by her husband's Republican sympathies, Isabella began ceding more power to the Privy Council and to Parliament to rule on her behalf. It was during Isabella's time that the maxim that "Her Majesty Reigns, but it is Parliament that Rules" began to circulate and that would remain a central tenet of English government for some time to come.
She would be succeeded by her eldest son, John.
View attachment 768343
John II at the time of his marriage to Infanta Leonora of Portugal in 1613.
[3] Born in 1596 as the third child, but eldest surviving son, of Isabella I and her older husband the Prince of Orange, John was ten years old when his aunt Joanna died. From that day on, his childhood was shaped by the knowledge that he would one day inherit England and the Netherlands from his grandmother, Queen Joanna. He accompanied his parents to England, as did his two elder sisters, the Lady Margaret and the Lady Anna. His, at that point, three younger siblings, including the six-year-old Lord Maurice, remained in the Hague, which, according to many historians, was the root of much of John’s later trouble with the United Provinces.
Three months after arriving in England, upon his eleventh birthday, John was created Duke of Richmond and named Viceroy of Ireland by his grandmother and sent to Dublin to learn to rule. He spent much of the next two decades there, although he returned to London in 1609 to stand as godfather to his youngest sister, the Lady Joanna, and then again in 1613, when, at the age of seventeen, he married his first cousin, Infanta Leonora of Portugal.
There was some worry that Leonora wouldn’t be able to give John children, for she was slight and sickly, but that soon proved unfounded, for in 1615, the sixteen-year-old Vicereine of Ireland gave birth to a healthy son. She would be pregnant eleven more times over the next twenty-two years, though only seven of her children eventually made it to adulthood.
John’s mother, Isabella, died in 1649, and the new monarch immediately found himself embroiled in a rebellion. The aristocrats of the Netherlands who hadn’t seen John since he turned eleven, and who had slowly been converting to Calvinism without the close supervision of their Prince, declared themselves unwilling to accept John as their monarch.
Instead, they proposed to elect John’s nephew Maurice, son of his younger brother and said brother’s wife, Charlotte de La Tremoille. Maurice, born in 1626, was 23 at the time of John’s accession, had been raised in the Hague, and, while nominally Catholic, was more than willing to convert to Calvinism if it gained him the Netherlands, his mother having been a Calvinist prior to her marriage to Maurice Senior. He is reported to have said, “The Hague is worth a Service of the Word”, when he heard of the Provinces’ plans.
Incandescent with rage, John promptly raised an army of 10,000 loyal Catholic men, summoned from all over England and Ireland, put them under the command of the Duke of Ormond, whom he knew from his time in Ireland, and sent them to the Netherlands, to put down his nephew’s uprising.
It was a long, bitter battle, one that raged for almost three years, but, by the winter of 1651, it was all over. Maurice the Younger was dead, killed whilst trying to flee the siege of Alkmaar, and his heir, Lord William Henry, was just nine months old. Deprived of their figurehead, the Calvinist resistance fell apart, and one by one, the provinces returned to the Catholic fold and English control.
Still, John wasn’t taking any more chances with the Dutch and their divided loyalties. No sooner had his troops returned to London in triumph than he packed up his Court and moved his capital to Leiden, in order to be closer to his rebellious subjects. He would spend the rest of his reign traveling around the Seventeen Provinces, and died at Slot Zuylen Castle near Utrecht in 1658, at the age of 63.
He was succeeded by his son, Philip.
[4] Named after his mother's brother, Philip was born in 1615. As a boy, Philip loved nothing more than to play sports and party. He was a lover of the finer things. He had his first mistress at age seventeen when he was named viceroy of Ireland. The woman in question was Elizabeth Butler. He was infatuated with him and wanted to marry her. That was out of the question for two reasons, first being she was Irish and the second she had already wed her first cousin, James Butler. His parents wasted no time separating the pair, even sending Philip to Wales in order to keep him from doing something foolish.
Much to Philip's displeasure, he was wed to Cecilia Renata of Austria. In an act of rebellion, Philip continued to have mistresses and would even acknowledge his bastards, something that appalled his conservative parents, not to mention Queen Joanna of England who made it clear that if Philip did not shape up, he would be disinherited. Luckily for Philip, Joanna was soon replaced by his doting grandmother, Isabella. Isabella saw Philip's behavior as something he would grow out of, gently coaxing him into being more discreet with his mistresses especially when his wife arrived in England in 1637.
Despite still harboring a grudge for being forced to give up the only woman he would ever love (or so he claimed), Philip treated Cecilia with respect and kindness even if he did not love her nor was he faithful to her. Cecilia was a quiet unassuming woman, known for her generosity, and kindness. She and Philip would have only one surviving child before she died in 1644 of childbed fever.
Philip stayed a widower until a year after his grandmother's death, and the new King John wanted his son to marry again. This would lead to an argument with father and son as the Prince of Wales had no interest of being tied down for a second time. However, Maurice's rebellion distracted them as they both traveled to the Netherlands to put down the uprising.
For the rest of his father's reign, Philip resisted getting married again, insisting that his child with Cecilia was soon to be of age to be married (His hypocrisy has been pointed out by many a historian). By 1558, Prince Philip had won the argument, mostly because his father had died. Once he became king, Philip changed absolutely nothing about his lifestyle, continuing to enjoy fine wine, fine food, and fine women. It came little surprise to anyone that the king only lasted eight years, dying of gout in 1666.
_____would take the crown after his death.
Jack Huston as Stephen II in BBC drama "Union" about the King's plan for a union of his crowns
(5) Stephen of England and the Netherlands, born 1640 to Philip II and a distant cousin, Cecilia Renata of Austria (she could trace her lineage to Elizabeth Tudor), as their only child. At the point of his birth, his great grandmother was Queen (to 1649) so his father was simply the Duke of Cambridge until 1649 when he became Prince of Wales when Stephen's grandfather became King John II. By the time Stephen became Prince of Wales in 1658, he was eighteen and his marriage to Sibylle of Saxony had already been arranged by his grandfather and his father - the German noblewoman had been considered as a second wife for the Prince of Wales, but Philip resisted and had convinced John II that the young woman was a better match for his son.
Stephen would eventually become King at the age of 26, with Sibylle having only provided him with a single child, a daughter named Katherine. Whilst much of Stephen's childhood had been spent at his grandfather's preferred capital in Leuden, Stephen alternated between London and Leuden and proposed a union of his two nations - the United Kingdoms of England, Ireland and the Netherlands, or simply the United Kingdom. This gained opposition in both states - with son of Maurice, Duke of York, William Henry, being particularly vocal about the union. The unmarried William Henry was still periodically championed as the rightful King of the Netherlands, so Stephen had William brought to his court and married to Catherine of Sussex, a granddaughter of the elderly Margaret, Lady Royal, and a second cousin of Stephen and the Duke's who frequented Stephens English Court, gifting William Henry both lands and further titles upon the marriage but only should he remain resident in England, far away from his old stomping grounds of Leuden and the Seventeen Provinces and unable to stir up political turmoil.
Stephen would reign for only 23 years, until 1689, when he would be succeeded by his daughter, Katherine after suffering from a bout of pneumonia.
[6]
Katherine I of England, Ireland and the Netherlands, as portrayed by Isolda Dychauk in 2022 film
Born in 1665, Katherine was the only surviving child of Stephen and Sibylle and doted upon by both, she was used to traveling back and forth between the countries she would rule one day. To add on to another potential realm, she had been married to the much older king of Scotland, Charles II after his first wife Catherine of Braganza died of a miscarriage. The relationship was more father-daughter than romantic couple, but she proved a fruitful wife and bore three surviving children. After her widowhood she remarried to a distant cousin, the younger William of York, the heir of William Henry and Catherine of Sussex. She had another seven children with him, but her second marriage was much more tumultuous than her first and William of Sussex was often exiled from wherever the queen was during their violent fights.
Marital adventures that made for such excellent court gossip aside, she revived the itinerant court that had been so popular in the early middle ages. She brought parts of the parliament with her as she ruled her vast domains (for Charles often left her as regent as he approached old age). Though nearly hyper-competent and certainly very efficient, she was still only one woman and could not cope with constant demands and the stirring resentment against a frequently absentee monarch. So, she did what Joanna I had done, and delegated to her ten children. Unfortunately, her issue were not always as good a politician as she herself was, resulting in another conflict with the Ottoman Empire (and a war with France was brewing on the horizon, barely suppressed by a betrothal of one of her daughters to their Dauphin).
In fact, her bitter relationship with her successor would come to mark the final years of her reign, as she would increasingly see her heir as incompetent and unworthy of her thrones. (No one dared to tell her that it was just her perception.) Regardless of this, she did not try to change the order of succession, instead devoting her twilight years into patronage of the arts and architecture. After another screaming argument with her heir, she would collapse of a heart attack and die, leaving ___ to succeed.
a) Mary of England, b. 1615, r. 1553 to 1558, m. Philip I of England (and II of Spain)
-- 1) Joanna of England and the Netherlands, b. 1555, r. 1558 to 1630, m. Francis III of France (prev. Hercule, Duke of Anjou)
a) Joanna, Lady Royal of England, b. 1574, d. 1606, m. Charles, Count of Soissons, no surviving issue
b) Isabella of England and the Netherlands, b. 1575, r. 1630 to 1649, m. Philip William, Prince of Orange (d. 1634)
-- 1) Margaret, Lady Royal of England
x) a granddaughter marries William Henry, Duke of York
-- 2) Lady Anne of Orange-Nassau
-- 3) John II of England and the Netherlands, prev. Duke of Richmond etc, b. 1596, r. 1649 to 1658, m. Infanta Leonor of Portugal
a) Philip II of England and the Netherlands, b. 1615, r. 1658 to 1666, m. Cecilia Renata of Austria (d. 1644)
-- 1) Stephen II of England and the Netherlands, b. 1640, r. 1666 to 1689, m. Sibylle of Saxony (b. 1647, d. 1688)
x) Katherine I of England and the Netherlands, b. 1665, r. 1689 to 1720, m. Charles II of Scotland (b. 1630, d. 1685) [a], m. William of York (b. 1670, d. 1700)
-- ten surviving children
x) six other children who survived to adulthood
-- 4) Lady A
-- 5) Lady B
-- 6) Maurice, Duke of York, b. 1600, d. pre. 1649, m. Charlotte de la Tremoille
a) Lord Maurice of Orange-Nassau, claimant as Prince of Orange, b. 1623, d. 1651, married
-- 1) William Henry, Duke of York, b. 1651, m. Catherine of Sussex, a granddaughter of Margaret, Lady Royal
-- 7) Child
-- 8) Child
-- 9) Lady Joanna of Orange Nassau, b. 1609
c) Lady Catherine Tudor-Habsburg, b. 1578, m. Manuel II of Portugal
-- 1) Infante X
-- 2) Infanta Y
-- 3) Infanta Leonor of Portugal, b. 1599, m. John II of England and the Netherlands (1596 to 1658)
x) for issue, see line of John
b) Elizabeth Tudor, b. 1533, d. 1603, m. Ferdinand, Arch Duke of Further Austria
x) has issue, descendant is Cecilia Renata of Austria
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@1-800-wandsthetic can I get some clarification on your timeline. Charles II of Scotland (who, despite being thirty years older, is hardly elderly) dies in 1685, three years before Catherine becomes queen, and yet her rule over her vast domains include being regent for Scotland appointed by Charles despite him already being dead.
Also when did she marry Charles and when did she marry William?
Also when did she marry Charles and when did she marry William?
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Katherine and Charles had five children, presumably one of them succeeds in Scotland and Katherine acts as Regent for one of them, but when he's alive he leaves her as Regent. I'm not seeing the issue here.
The William marriage is odd, he's stated to be the heir of William Henry and Catherine or Sussex (but this would make him William of York, not William of Sussex) and given that William Henry was born in 1651, and the pair weren't married until the late 1660's/early 1670s, quite how William was born in 1660, I don't know.
Additionally - "In fact, her bitter relationship with her successor would come to mark the final years of her reign, as she would increasingly see her heir as incompetent and unworthy of her thrones ..." - does rather dictate the character of tye next monarch as well as the fact that the individual was known for some years ahead.
The dating of Katherine's birth to 1660 when her mother was only born in 1547 and would have only been thirteen when she gave birth.
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Naturally, she was regent for Scotland BEFORE she became queen regnant (which still counts for her vast domains because she DID rule over Scotland in this TL)
Edited so that William of York is born later.
Yes, I know Sibylle would have been 13. I was very much picturing this as Margaret Beaufort + Henry VII. Also, that line is Katherine's perception of her heir. Could just be an old woman being stubborn. I didn't exactly think she'd be an accurate narrator, which the next person can subvert.
That was under very special circumstances. Impregnating thirteen-year-olds was not the norm. They usually waited until the woman was at least fifteen if not older.
I mean, any later and her marriage with Charles II begins to look near impossible. I suppose there were bigger age gaps. I will edit her birth-date.
Why not just have Charles die later? Or have only three kids instead of five?
Sure. Edited. (That word includes the line of Katherine's heir, too)
I think I missunderstood your point. Sadly, there were couples with bigger age gapes. Louis XII was thirty-four years older than Mary Tudor. I think everything is sorted now. I shall claim.