Okay this is what I have so far. I'll expand on it while writing of course.
Please be nice when pointing out any errors although I DO want to know about them.
Also I was thinking of having Louis I of Scotland marry the Daughter of the Earl of Kildare, getting the Irish into the act but worry that might be reaching a bit too far. I've heard that by the 15th century the earls of Kildare, Desmond and Ormonde control between them almost the whole of southern Ireland. The exception is the area immediately round Dublin, known as the pale, where English rule prevails under the lord deputy, a representative of the king.
1423 Louis de Valois, who would be Louis XI, the Spider King, was born.
1424 Margaret Stewart is born in Dec. and is given in marriage to the 13 year old Louis, Duc d’Anjou, and 9th Dauphin on 24 June 1436. Instead of casual clothes he wears his finest and takes the time to talk to her making a good impression on the like minded Margaret.
1437 Assassination attempt on James I is unsuccessful unlike in OTL. James takes the hint and stops trying to centralize power. He lives another seventeen years until 1454.
1439 At sixteen Louis is sent by his father to direct the defense of Languedoc against the English, and to put down the brigandage in Poitou, he succeeds with the covert help and advice of his wife who has been creating an intelligence web of her own devising but his full knowledge and endorsement. He learns that the nobles will want him to try to become regent supplanting his father but she shows him that the troops are insufficient for the task. He refuses their offer but doesn’t betray them to the king. He does blackmail them to help fund the intelligence web.
1441 Fighting the English with help of some of his wife’s countrymen.
1443 At twenty aided his father to suppress the revolt of the count of Armagnac. He comes home to find his wife pregnant with his son whom he names Louis after himself.
1444 A.D. He led an army of from 20,000 mercenaries and brigands against the Swiss of the canton of Basel. The heroism of some two hundred Swiss, who for a while held thousands of the French army at bay, made a great impression on the young prince. After an ineffective siege of Basel, he made peace with the Swiss confederation, and led his soldiers into Alsace to ravage the country of the Habsburgs, who refused him the promised winter quarters. I’m thinking he takes a fair bit of loot and takes some of the more disciplined and effective mercenaries into his service in his territory. Margaret would be dead this year in OTL of a fever but instead lives on in this TL. Her brother James, who became James II of Scotland in OTL dies instead at fourteen. James I is still king, not having been assassinated.
1444-1453 In these intervening years they retire to the Dauphine, his hereditary territory in the southeast of France, and start running it as if it were an autonomous kingdom. He comes to understanding with the Swiss and gets the local nobles firmly on his side or under his thumb. Louis and Margaret set out to govern his principality as though it were an independent state. He dismissed the governor; he determined advantageously to himself the boundaries between his state and the territories of the duke of Savoy and of the papacy; and he enforced his authority over perhaps the most unruly nobility in Western Europe, both lay and ecclesiastical. The right of private warfare was abolished; the bishops were obliged to give up most of their temporal jurisdiction, the scope of their courts was limited, and appeals to Rome were curtailed. On the other hand, Louis granted privileges to the towns and consistently used their alliance to overthrow the nobility. He watched the roads, built new ones, opened markets, protected the only bankers of the country, the Jews, and reorganized the administration so as to draw the utmost revenue possible from the prosperity thus secured. Charles VII starts worrying that the people like his bright and ambitious son better than he and he starts planning a Royal procession to the city Louis has made his home. It is a thinly disguised attempt to bring a large number of troops with him when he requires Louis come back to court. Charles comes to visit his son sooner than in OTL but Louis has a very similar reaction. It is clear to both Louis and Margaret that he is worried about a coup and even though they do not plan one, they do not want to take chances on Royal Mercy so they flee to her father in Scotland.
1453 They flee to Scotland where shortly after they arrive James I dies and Margaret becomes Queen. Her brother James has already been dead some years of disease. Louis is Prince Consort and now that he is “the power behind the throne” sets his formidable will to expanding his own intelligence apparatus. He squashes all rumors about the coincidental nature of the king’s death the year after they arrive and builds goodwill both in secret and in public as he is also her general and his battle plans in case of English attack are widely considered genius.
1461 He gets word that Charles VII is dying and that his brother will get to Paris first. He arranges for riots and public condemnation to delay the coronation. Meanwhile he gathers an army of Scots and mercenaries and sets sail leaving his son to watch out for his mother’s interests in Scotland. Charles the Bold is one of his allies in the endeavor. He arrives in Paris after his father’s death but his planned diversions have kept Charles, Duc de Berry from assuming the throne. Agents provocateur has spread rumors and suspicions about the king dying so soon after the Duc de Berry’s arrival in Paris. He settles the unrest, crowns himself king, and has his brother imprisoned on suspicion of treason and regicide. After he and his troops have secured Paris he names his eighteen year old son the tenth Dauphin and proclaims he will be king of both Scotland and France.
After a somewhat biased trial he executes his brother in public before the crowd.
