Once again hello to everyone. just in case you aren't familiar with me yet, my name is Charles and I joined this forum a couple of weeks ago. I previous posted a TL (which I will continue to work on) detailing what would happen if Arthur Tudor the older brother Henry VIII survived and became king in Henry's place. On this thread, I will post another survival scenario, this one with a Medieval PoD.
Now I never have really been that much of a fan of the Middle Ages compared to other areas of history such as the First Global Age/Early Modern Era. So you might be thinking, why the hell would I make a TL with a PoD on the Middle Ages? Well, the other day I was bored and so was my friend Jimmy so he invited me over to his house and I accepted. So Jimmy and I did what any other college guy would do, we ordered a pizza and watched a movie on Netflix. Now unlike me, Jimmy doesn't have the Instant Queue so he gets the movies on DVD mailed to him ONE AT A TIME. The movie he happened to have that day was one that I've seen several times before, Braveheart. I think you can see where I'm going with this one.
Anyway if you haven't seen the movie, you can look up its summary on Wikipedia. It's basically a Mel Gibson flick about William Wallace, Robert the Bruce and those guys fighting for Scottish independence against England under Edward I Longshanks. Anyway, after I watched this film for the third or so time I thought: all these events wouldn't happen if it wasn't for the untimely death of one particular seven year old Norwegian girl.
Alright, by this point half of you are probably calling me crazy thinking "how the hell does a seven year old Norwegian girl dying cause the English to conquer the Scots?" Don't worry if you are one of these people, I probably would've been in the same boat as you three years ago. Anyway this mystery girl I'm referring to is Margaret, the disputed Queen of Scotland from 1286 to 1290 popular referred to as the "Maid of Norway" considering her father was the king of that country.
In OTL, Margaret died on her journey from her native Norway to Scotland. Since she never actually set foot in Scotland, she is only considered a "disputed" queen. WI Margaret survives her journey to Scotland becoming the official Queen of the Scots and later marries King Edward II of England (whom she was betrothed to in OTL). In my newly created timeline, Margaret and Edward get married in 1300 at the ages of 17 and 15 respectively. The subsequently have three children that survive: two daughters Margaret (b. 1304) and Eleanor (b. 1311) as well as one son Edward (b. 1307). The son Edward eventually succeeds his father as Edward III of England and his mother as Edward of Scotland. Edward also becomes king of Norway in 1319 after the death of his great-uncle Haakon V in place of OTL Magnus VII who still becomes king of Sweden. This happens after Edward II issues an ultimatum to the Sweden specifically Magnus's mother Ingenborg that an Anglo-Scottish combined alliance would attack Sweden if his son doesn't become king of Norway. The Swedes accept the ultimatium and let Edward become the Norwegian king. Due to controlling such a huge territory, Edward III (called "the great") unites his land to form the Great Northern Empire (GNE). However, when Edward the Great dies, letting each of his nations to have autonomy, he makes each of his five surviving sons the king of a different country. His eldest son Edward becomes Edward IV of England, his second son Alexander IV of Scotland, his third son Eric II of Norway, his fourth son David I of Wales and his youngest son William I of Ireland. The GNE however still existed after Edward the Great's death. What would happen is when one GNE died, a council of nobles would elect a new GNE from one of the five kings of the countries in the Empire.
So what do you think of this TL so far?