Mary I of England

What if Henry VIII had never left the Roman Catholic Church and died when he did IOTL, Mary was his only legitimate child, and she died childless when she did IOTL? Would England's fate be happier than IOTL? Would it be more peaceful? I suppose Mary Queen of Scots would be next, most likely with a long reign.
 
What if Henry VIII had never left the Roman Catholic Church and died when he did IOTL, Mary was his only legitimate child, and she died childless when she did IOTL? Would England's fate be happier than IOTL? Would it be more peaceful? I suppose Mary Queen of Scots would be next, most likely with a long reign.

If H-8 remains Catholic then Mary's life situation, marriage prospects, health, and eventual reign - unless Henry & Catherine have a TTL surviving son, will change. Mary may be revered today as Maria Glorianna.
 
And when Mary dies childless the throne goes to the Stewarts in Scotland by the way of descendency from Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII.
 
If H-8 remains Catholic then Mary's life situation, marriage prospects, health, and eventual reign - unless Henry & Catherine have a TTL surviving son, will change. Mary may be revered today as Maria Glorianna.

Ok, but I don't allow for other heirs or longer life for either Henry or Mary. Maybe if her health improves she has an accident. And how could she do better than Philip II?

Now maybe I might allow them to have a healthy son. And then another 25 years for Mary in the bargain. Would he be King of England and Spain?
 
This requires a pretty fundamental change in attutide from Henry. Simply put, I consider it essentially impossible for Henry to remain Catholic and have Mary as his only heir during his full reign barring a sudden bout of infertility.

Henry wanted a son. More than anything else really. If Catherine gives him a son who survives longer than a few months, then he'll stay Catholic but Mary is not the heir. If Papal elections go differently (also quite unlikely given Habsburg strength in Italy), and he gets a divorce/annulment, then he probably stays Catholic but Mary is still not the heir and Henry is looking to get a son by another wife.

The closest I can probably think of here is that Catherine of Aragon gives birth to a healthy male heir after Mary was born, but then late in Henry's life the son dies from illness or in an accident. Henry is now obviously too old and infirm to consider marrying again (or he tries but dies before the marriage can be agreed to) leaving Mary as heir.

The only problem with that is that Mary is probably a fundamentally differnt person to OTL.
 
If everybody's dieing as OTL, Henry VIII would have already remarried following Catherine of Aragon's death. To echo the above posts;

1) For him not to divorce Catherine, she needs to give him a son. Once she dies, you can do what you want with the son, although obviously he needs to die childless sometime for Mary to be Queen.

2) Once Catherine dies, he's likely to remarry almost immediately. Maybe this second wife is childless too, or the children die.

I reckon by the late 1530s he'd most likely marry Mary - be it to James of Scots, or Edward Courtenay, or to a foreign prince. A peaceful end to his marriage with Catherine would likely mean a pro-Habsburg second match to one of her nieces or great-nieces.
 
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