Prince Imperial Louis Napoleon marries into Windsor

What if he becomes an Anglican and marries into Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha ? He isn´t killed in the Zulu war aswell.
 
Not a bad idea. Inasmuch as his widowed mother the Empress Eugenie and Queen Victoria had befriended each other during the Great Exhibition of 1850 and would stay good friends with each other to the end, I could imagine the Prince Imperial possibly considering wanting to marry one of Victoria's daughters- either the older but fetching Louise or the plainer but younger Beatrice. However; as much as Victoria sympathized with the Prince Imperial and Empress, what would it have gained Victoria to have had one of her daughters marry the son of a deposed monarch -especially since France became a staunch Republic after the Franco-Prussian War was over and done?
Also, the Spanish-born Empress Eugenie herself had been a VERY devout Catholic and had kept that faith quite close to her as a means to cope with the late Emperor's flagrant infidelities. Hence, the Prince Imperial more or less would have had to considered it a virtual certainty that he'd have been disowned by his surviving parent had he openly expressed a wish to renounce Catholicism and even had he had a separate income, would he have been willing to risk that?
The terrible irony is becoming a soldier-of-fortune for the nation that had given him and his mother a comfortable refuge may have been one of the few fates the Prince Imperial could see for himself besides puttering around and hoping to eventually see if the parents of a Catholic princess would be interested in arranging a marriage to the exiled heir of a lost Empire.
 
Not a bad idea. Inasmuch as his widowed mother the Empress Eugenie and Queen Victoria had befriended each other during the Great Exhibition of 1850 and would stay good friends with each other to the end, I could imagine the Prince Imperial possibly considering wanting to marry one of Victoria's daughters- either the older but fetching Louise or the plainer but younger Beatrice. However; as much as Victoria sympathized with the Prince Imperial and Empress, what would it have gained Victoria to have had one of her daughters marry the son of a deposed monarch -especially since France became a staunch Republic after the Franco-Prussian War was over and done?
Also, the Spanish-born Empress Eugenie herself had been a VERY devout Catholic and had kept that faith quite close to her as a means to cope with the late Emperor's flagrant infidelities. Hence, the Prince Imperial more or less would have had to considered it a virtual certainty that he'd have been disowned by his surviving parent had he openly expressed a wish to renounce Catholicism and even had he had a separate income, would he have been willing to risk that?
The terrible irony is becoming a soldier-of-fortune for the nation that had given him and his mother a comfortable refuge may have been one of the few fates the Prince Imperial could see for himself besides puttering around and hoping to eventually see if the parents of a Catholic princess would be interested in arranging a marriage to the exiled heir of a lost Empire.

Eugenie as much as she liked Victoria, was pushing for her son to marry one of Isabel II of Spain's daughters - as a way of linking the previous ruling house of France (the Bourbons) and the Bonapartes, by which she hoped that the "fifth house of France" would take root in French soil in the person of her son or her grandson. She wrote this in a letter to someone (Sophie of the Netherlands?) about the Prince Imperial's christening (granted this was in retrospect, but it shows what a cherished ambition it was of hers). Eugenie was conservative (at least more conservative than her husband) and a staunch monarchist - I think as much as she might've liked said match if she had no other option, but until she'd exhausted all other avenues, the match would've stayed on paper.
 
iirc, Louis Napoleon was keeping an account of 1,000,000 British pounds at the Bank of England (or Baring Bank?). At least the imperial family would not have major financial problems
 
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