The Challenge:
ONE said:United Kingdom of the Angles and the Saxons
There is no singular POD, but essentially, the Danelaw stays Danish while Wessex and Mercia remain the predominate Anglo-Saxon kingdoms for longer. Also Edward the Confessor has a different reign and doesn't die in the same circumstances or time, avoiding the succession crisis that allowed for the Norman conquest. This kingdom of alt-England survives to modern day, but unable to expand northward or otherwise, and with much less power and influence.
Coat of arms: The division of the field into red and green represents the blood of war and the fertility of peace, and also the traditional Wessex and Mercian banners. The golden seven-pointed star represents the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. The supporters are also derived from the same traditional banners, being a golden wyvern for Wessex, and a silver wyrm for Mercia. The crown is the traditional heraldic "Saxon crown."
Background: The gold saltire on blue is traditionally a symbol of Mercia, while the white cross is a symbol of Edward the Confessor of Wessex, white being the color of purity and piety.
TWO said:United Kingdom of England and Ireland
Richard de Burgh, 6th Earl of Connaught and Ulster became the heir presumptive to his cousin, King Edward IV of England, once called the Black Prince, following the death of the King Edward's sons Edward and Richard from the bubonic plague, with King Edward himself plagued by dysentery contracted whilst campaigning in Spain. When Edward IV finally succumbed to his sickness, Richard de Burgh became King Richard II of England and a Lord of Ireland became the Lord of Ireland.
By the time of the Union of the Crowns, the arms of de Burgh had become inextricably associated with Ireland much in the same way as the Cross of Saint George had become for England, since its promotion by King Edward III.
THREE said:Flag of the United Kingdom of England, Normandy and Brittany
By the time Edward III came to the throne of England, Edward the Confessor had been venerated as England's saint for some time, even having been retrospectively attributed arms of a gold cross on an azure (blue) field. Some English armies had carried banners of these arms into battle and so the gold cross on blue was sometimes seen as the banner of the English army, as the blue cross on a white field of St. Michael was sometimes seen as the banner of the French army.
The new king, however, was, like his warrior grandfather Edward I, more enamoured of the warrior saint St. George, whose symbol, from the days of the crusades, was a red cross, usually on white. But the veneration of St. Edward remained strong amongst the English armies and although some did march with only the red-on-white cross, the majority merely added the red cross to their already existing banners and this slowly became the norm. By the end of Edward's reign, the red cross, fimbriated gold, on blue was recognised across the region as the flag of the English.
The end of the Sixty Years War saw England fully in control of its old lands of Normandy. The story goes that one of Edward IV's lords ordered the addition of two Norman leopards to the English flag just before the signing of the Treaty of Dreux in 1395, but for many years this addition was only seen on English flags in Normandy, not elsewhere.
Peace with France did not last long, with the Forty Years War breaking out in 1403. Rather than being a purely English-French war, however, Henry IV brought both the duchy of Brittany and the duchy of Flanders into alliance, marrying his heir (later Edward V) to Eleanor of Bretagne and his daughter to the young Duke of Flanders. This powerful bloc was too much for France to withstand and the 1444 Treaty of Lisieux confirmed the transfer of sovereignty of Normandy to the English king, as well as recognising Brittany as a full principality. Some historians conflate the Sixty and Forty Years Wars into one 'Hundred Years War' but others disagree. (Of course, French historians point out that England giving up its claim to full sovereignty of Aquitaine/Gascony as part of the Treaty of Lisieux, and its subsequent loss to France in the Gascon War of the early 16th Century, more than compensated France for losing Normandy; opinions remain divided to this day.)
The principality of Brittany entered into personal union with England in 1451 with the accession to both thrones of Francis I. This union resulted in the addition of the Breton 'Kroaz Du' (black cross on white) to the flag of the new United Kingdom, subordinate to the fimbriated red on gold. It is not fully clear if the two leopards of Normandy were 'officially' part of the flag at this time, though they were certainly common enough to be included in the first full heraldic description of the flag, in 1576.
.All my own work except the two leopards (lions passant guardant), from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Basse-Normandie.svg).
FOUR said:United Kingdom of the Brittons and Anglo-Saxons.
Cadwallon ap Cadfan of Gwynedd defeated Oswald of Northumbria in battle, securing his reconquest of Deira. Gweynedd moved on to integrate the petty Kingdoms in Southern Wales into a unified polity, making it possible for a united Brythonic Kingdom to form in what was OTL Wales and Northumbria.
The Kingdom of The Brittons survived until the Viking’s age, when the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms suffered heavily from their expansion, making themselves vulnerable to a Brittonic reconquest.
The last to be subdued were the Wessex, who declare their loyalty to the king of the Brittons in exchange for protection from the Vikings.
In the year 1066, the United Kingdom of the Brittons and Anglo-Saxons won itself peace after two glorious victories: one won in the north by King Gruffydd against the Vikings in Stamford Bridge, another by the King’s loyal subject, Prince Godwinson of Wessex, who pushed the sneaky William the Bastard into the sea, where he drowned with his horses.
So, when the legends of Arthur was written down, animosity between the Brittons and Anglo-Saxons became a distant memory. The tales about a fight between a white dragon (Anglo-Saxons) and a red dragon (Brittons) always ended up with a twist in which the two dragons finally worked together (or even becoming conjoined ) to defeat the Vikings. The two-dragons flag, created in the thirteenth century to represent the United Kingdom, were often attributed to Gruffydd, Godwinson or even Arthur.
