Matilda marries Stephen?

What if, when Henry II of England makes his daughter Matilda his heir, he marries her to his nephew Stephen, making them his heirs jointly instead?

Yes, I know Stephen was married - though I'm not sure when the marriage took place - but she could easily die in childbirth, etc. I could see this staving off civil war, but if it works out long term probably depends on whether or not Stephen's prior marriage occurs and if he has sons by his first wife as well as with Matilda. The half-brothers might well come to blows.

But of course, one major upshot is, no Plantagenets, which changes English history completely.
 
Their children gets declared illegitimate.Getting a papal dispensation during this period is hard--especially when Matilda and Stephen are first cousins.
 
Their children gets declared illegitimate.Getting a papal dispensation during this period is hard--especially when Matilda and Stephen are first cousins.
And even if they do get a papal dispensation, the reality is that the Anarchy was going to happen in some form as soon as you get a weak king.

The problem with the immediate post-Conquest setup was that most power lay with the King and the Church, and the nobility was hamstrung. You had people owning vast amounts of land, but it was split up into 20 different pockets in ten different counties, and you just couldn't establish a power-base as a nobleman. It also led to rivalries between nobles because of unclear property divisions, jealousy, "Your guy in that village killed my guy in the next village", etc. Now, obviously, when the monarch is strong, those rivalries are subjected to the rule of the King's Law. Not so when you have a weak king like Stephen. In that case, you're going to get these rivalries building up into a civil war with two sides, with some people changing sides from time to time when they get their vengeance on one enemy and want to turn on another enemy. In fact, the first stage in what we would call the endgame of the Anarchy was when Geoffrey de Mandeville and Miles of Gloucester signed their own treaty in the late 1140s.

So you're going to get a dispute between nobles which has the end result of limiting the power of the King in relation to the nobles - and that's what we see in the basic narrative of the early Plantagenet kings as well. There are a bunch of other factors which led to the Anarchy, of course, but that was the major one, and much more important than whether women could succeed to the throne or whatever - remember, Stephen wasn't even the male heir, he had an older brother called Theobald. It was literally a case of Stephen being opportunistic enough to take advantage of the situation, and the nobles being opportunistic enough to accept a King who would allow them to carry out their own attacks on their neighbours.

So ultimately, if Stephen marries Matilda, that just changes the character of the Anarchy instead of getting rid of it entirely - maybe it happens when some rebels rally around Theobald of Blois, but remember, fifty years later, a similar situation ended in some barons inviting Louis VIII over to be King, so it's not really a matter of WHO IS THE RIGHTFUL KING.
 
The crown replies by telling the Pope to take long walk off a short pier?

He excommunicates them and places the realm of England under an Interdict, hints at the French that if they seize the English nobles assets in France it will have the Papal Blessing, and shops around the idea of a 'Holy League' against the 'most perverse and vile monarchs of Aengland' and hint that he will support whoever wins as the new King of England.
 
That'll please the Scots who then try to take all England north pf the Humber, and the Welsh who try to take a chunk of the Midands, Deven and Cornwall.
 
He excommunicates them and places the realm of England under an Interdict, hints at the French that if they seize the English nobles assets in France it will have the Papal Blessing, and shops around the idea of a 'Holy League' against the 'most perverse and vile monarchs of Aengland' and hint that he will support whoever wins as the new King of England.

The Angevins might be inclined to harass Normandy too- they haven't been reconciled to Henry ITTL, and are still aggrieved over his refusal to return the dowry of William Adelin's widow (who was Fulk's daughter). Though whether or not Fulk still goes east to Jerusalem will effect things there.
 
He excommunicates them and places the realm of England under an Interdict, hints at the French that if they seize the English nobles assets in France it will have the Papal Blessing, and shops around the idea of a 'Holy League' against the 'most perverse and vile monarchs of Aengland' and hint that he will support whoever wins as the new King of England.

Didn't the pope do that with John anyway? It wasn't especially successful OTL (who remembers King Lewis of England if you ask them straight out? Only the history buffs and the people on this board)
 
Didn't the pope do that with John anyway? It wasn't especially successful OTL (who remembers King Lewis of England if you ask them straight out? Only the history buffs and the people on this board)

Didn't that fail only when John signed England to the Pope and received it back from him as a fief, or was that a different occassion?
 
Didn't that fail only when John signed England to the Pope and received it back from him as a fief, or was that a different occassion?
John only saved his throne because he pledged England as a papal fief.That and him dying conveniently--which made his nobles more accepting of his son.
 
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