Phil and Liz

What if, following a successful Armada invasion and the capture of London by Spanish forces, Philip II had renewed his offer of marriage to Elizabeth I first made thirty years earlier?
 
It would be insulting to Elizabeth, so she would refuse - conquering the country wouldn't grant Philip marriage rights unless he was really desperate to engineer such a unison. However, with England subdued he could take what he wanted anyway, and he had a claim to the throne, so he wouldn't need this marriage. Also, with both of them around the age of 60, one wonders what Philip would gain. By this point I think he was so sick of Elizabeth and her foreign policy that they would refuse to be seen with each other anyhow ;)
 
It would be insulting to Elizabeth

Well, Philip had married Elizabeth's sister, he was clearly the marrying kind (four previous outings), and had been a widower for some years. The prospect might have appealed to him both on personal grounds (gaining reparations for a rebuff suffered in the past) as well as political grounds (securing a better deal for English Catholics). And as for Elizabeth, who knows? A last chance at marriage (with a ready-made pretext - force majeure) and possibly a damage-limitation exercise for the English/Protestant cause. With London occupied by Spanish troops, she wasn't in a position to be too proud.
 
You make good points, of course, but I'm still unconvinced. Philip's marriages, unlike Henry VIII, were all political, to gain a strategic or psychological advantage (by tying himself to a rival dynasty), whereas with Liz defeated he had little to gain. Liz was well past childbearing age, so a marriage to her would serve little traditional purpose, and by this point she had already tied herself down with her speeches about being married to her kingdom, which she declared herself to be uniquely devoted to. Also, the Protestant cause is effectively ended, at least inasmuch as it will be relegated to the status of hunted religion as Catholicism was in OTL England, given London falling. Marrying Philip wouldn't help secure their status, Phil would use it to force her conversion, depriving England of both a leader and a potential martyr - which Liz was quite happy to be if it advanced the Protestant cause. And Philip had given his (claimed) crown of England to his (Catholic) daughter so he wouldn't be exerting any control there anyway. Likely she would be carted back to him in Spain, where he could make sure that she could no longer cause him any trouble.

Again, I see your point, I'm just not quite sure I see it the same way. I guess it's possible, though.
 
I guess it depends on what personal qualities we attribute to the two of them. In one of the fictional portrayals of Phil 'n' Liz mentioned in the Wikipedia biog of Philip, she apparently flirted with him while he was married to her sister Mary. Historians seem to regard Philip as having been intelligent and reasonable (by the standards of his time). As you note, by 1588 both of them are aged around 60, and both have been on the throne for quite a while, and are probably weary of it. One could imagine - how shall I put it? - personal affinities.
 
She did, yes, but I think most biographers tend to put this down to a flirtatious personality and a want to put herself in the market while she was young - this was before she was Queen and before she had made the decision to devote herself solely to England. Remember that she had dashes with various English nobles whom she also never married. Philip did propose to her shortly after Mary's death, and she did consider it a respectable amount. Indeed, it's possible that she could have accepted, though it would have put her Protestant agenda at a considerable disadvantage from the very start, and might have forced her foreign policy to be stillborn. However, she and Philip then guided their respected countries through a very hostile period. I just can't see lingering schoolgirl fantasies remaining there. Any such marriage in 1588 would be entirely political, in my mind.
 
Fair enough. As mature adults, they are almost certainly thinking mainly in political terms - what course of action would be best to advance the causes I stand for? Philip would almost certainly be able to see political gain in marrying the English head of state (as opposed to, say, deposing her). Elizabeth, however, to some imponderable extent stunned by the collapse of English defences, might be persuaded to believe that her foreign policies had been wrong, had indeed contributed to the present disaster. She would be psychologically as well as politically vulnerable. And faced with a man she had known and perhaps liked in the past, who appeared reasonable and conciliatory, and who indeed was proposing a union from which some personal as well as political gain might be obtained, it's at least possible that she might be tempted.
 
Say his daughter Isabella, for whom he was attempting to claim England, died then such a marriage would make sense - it would give him just as much chance of nominating a successor as Liz, However, Parliament would be interesting - I'd forgotten about them. Historically, Spanish kings had a lot of wars of words with Parliaments (or rather the Spanish "cortes'") but rather than purging their members or forcing them under control rather only ever exercised a "legal battle" where both sides recognised the authority of each other, which suggests that Philip wouldn't believe it within his right to dissolve Parliament as Charles I did. This means Parliament might get in the way a bit. Otherwise...hmm...MQofS is dead, so we can't make an intrigue factor there. If a lot of Catholic nobles came out of the woodwork and tried to force a marriage from the English side to control their errant Queen, it could work out. Also, if the stress of losing the war broke Liz' spirit, that should at least help the cause, giving her something to believe in, even if it was a false hope.
 
Ah, but might not such a marriage have made sense even if Isabella did not die? She was unmarried at the time. Perhaps Philip could have offered Elizabeth a deal as part of their own union, offering to marry his daughter to a designated English heir of her choice. (Fantasising now). This would create a union of the defeated English and victorious Spanish states, enabling them to keep the French rabble down and freeing them up to exploit the New World more ruthlessly.
 
haha...now that would be interesting. Such a deal could backfire drastically on the Spanish, which would be entertaining to say the least. But since Phil would be unlikely to allow any such union to be on the Protestant terms, or even potentially so, again it leaves Liz in a no-win situation.
 
That's one of the beauties of human behaviour - the consequences of our actions are so often at odds with our intentions (that's a more elegant way of saying that Sod's Law Rules). And if Philip imposes a deal on what he considers to be his own terms, a canny Elizabeth might well accept, aware that the outcome would in all likelihood be very different from what the Spanish king intended.
There's a neat two-header to be worked out of this, though it might involve crediting Philip with rather more self-awareness than he in fact possessed. Elizabeth was, I suspect, a fairly shrewd old bird well able to give as good as she got.
 
What did Philip stand to gain if his invasion of England had been successful (the Armada having defeated the English fleet) and his armies captured Queen Elizabeth? How would he have taken it from there?
 
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