A thousand pardons for my unplaned hiatus, here is a new update. All hail Crookshanks!
"He stood for all, a shining knight in a dark age, cut down by the foul servants of a man who knows no honor. May God have mercy on that man's soul, for his body shall find only death at my hands!-Richard "Crookshanks" Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, on his brother George of Clarence.
In England, King Edward IV’s health takes a marked turn for the worse in February. Despite being only forty five years old, King Edward’s health has been on a slow downhill slide ever since he managed to retake London from the Lancastrians. Overeating and similar overindulgences can be blamed for the most part in this trend, though the exact cause in the sudden worsening of the king’s condition in 1488 is unknown, and given the events immediately following his death poisoning is a fair possibility, though such a thing has never been explicitly proven. By late April it is clear that the king is on his last legs, and word is sent out to his son Edward Longshanks, currently living in Lancashire as the region’s duke (1).
At age 22, Longshanks is an ideal candidate for the throne. A battletested and brave young man, he served with distinction while attempting to restore his father to the throne, fighting right alongside the elder Edward at the decisive Battle of Luton which solidified the Yorkist return in the south. Unfortunately for the gallant young Edward, he is not alone in the hunt for the throne. In addition to having a sixteen year old younger brother in Edmund, Duke of the Pale, and several sisters, he has his two uncles to contend with. The elder uncle at age thirty nine, George, Duke of Clarence and Earl of Connaught, has long lived in his brother’s shadow. Rather than fighting beside him, George provided a political anchor for the Yorkist cause in Ireland, and played an invaluable support role during Edward IV’s final restoration, but largely was not credited with the achievement. He had since fallen from the king’s good graces, finally being recalled to London and put under virtual house arrest after a failed attempt to revolt against the king for greater autonomy. The younger uncle at age thirty five is Richard, Duke of Gloucester and Warwick, the latter of which he was awarded for his exemplary service in the war to restore King Edward. Unlike his brother, he has been loyal to the king almost to a fault, being privately mocked by many as his brothers little minion or the like. Although his position is strong in northern and western England, Gloucester suffers from a hunched back and a crooked leg, leading many to joking reference him as “Crookshanks”, particularly when mentioning him alongside Prince Edward Longshanks.
The machinations of succession begin long before King Edward IV draws his last breath. For perhaps as long as he has been in London, and possibly even longer, George of Clarence has been searching for allies among the nobles and clergy. With King Edward incapacitated, Clarence moves with great haste to solidify his alliances and create a plan that could allow him to prevent the succession of the much more popular Edward Longshanks. The first part of the plan is obvious, namely he attempts to stop word of the king’s imminent death from reaching his son. Ultimately King Edward IV dies on June 19th, by which time his son has still received no word of his father’s condition, thanks to Clarence’s agents. When Longshanks does finally find out, it is Richard of Gloucester who informs him. Richard, having received some word of the king’s death and guessed that something was amiss when the younger Edward was not immediately crowned, decided to deliver the information in person.
Clarence wastes no time in launching his plan into action. Only a week after Edward IV’s death, while most of the population was still unaware that the king has died at all, Clarence came forth with his allies among the clergy, most notably Richard Hill, the Bishop of London, with supposedly damning evidence against the legitimacy of King Edward IV. He claims that Edward’s true father was not Richard, Duke of York, but a common archer who bedded his mother while his father was on campaign at Pontoise (2). The claim is scandalous, and coming out at the same time as the official news of King Edward’s death the combined shock throws London into a confused frenzy. It is using this smokescreen of chaos that the Duke of Clarence has himself hastily crowned as King George I of England on June 23rd, justifying his coronation by the fact that, if his claims about Edward’s paternity were true, he would be the rightful heir to the throne.
The events in London happen with such haste as to catch Prince Edward and Richard Crookshanks off guard, and news of the full extent of Clarence’s treachery comes to the pair at the end of a sword. Hoping to catch his two most powerful opponents in a compromised position, Clarence sends out riders loyal to him to take the pair into custody. The two, together with their retinue, are intercepted by a company of knights loyal to Clarence near Stafford, under the command of the latter’s Irish-born bastard son Henry of Galway. Rather than attempt to capture them alive, Galway and his men, in the guise (albeit a poor one) of brigands ambush the Prince without mercy. Outnumbered and unprepared, Prince Edward and Richard of Gloucester attempt to flee the ambush as soon as the reality of the situation dawns on them. They manage to force their way out into the open, but Prince Edward’s horse is injured in the process. In the confusion he is ridden down. To this day stories are told of the final stand of the unhorsed Prince Longshanks, some claiming that as many as fifty of the conspirators fell at his hands, and that he was only finally killed when a crossbowman shot a bolt through his neck to spare the remaining knights from death at his hands, but all tales of gallantry aside the prince did not survive the day, and his death on July 4th is still considered a day of ill omen in the English influenced parts of the world today.
Regardless of the truth of the gallantry of the last stand of prince Edward Longshanks, his death proved to be a great enough distraction to Galway and his men to allow his uncle Richard Crookshanks to slip through their fingers. Upon escaping, Richard quickly made his way to his Duchy in Warwickshire. Once there, he raised up forces loyal to him, and charged his brother George of Clarence with the murder of King Edward IV and his son Edward Longshanks. Invoking the memory of King Edward and his son, Richard gains much popular support both in his lands and further afield. For all his deformities, Richard Crookshanks is a man of war, and a skilled leader, and under the current circumstances becomes a popular candidate for the throne, especially in the north of England, where stories of King Edward’s restoration campaigns and his own role in them are remembered as stories of knightly valor and courage. Amidst the chaos, King Edward IV’s surviving son, the young Edmund, Duke of the Pale, is forgotten, as the people look to Richard as a capable and experienced leader who can actively safeguard their interests.
With some 6,000 men levied from Gloucestershire and Warwickshire, Richard, after realizing that the areas between his lands and London are fairly entrenched in their support of Clarence, decides to solidify his own support base in northern England, and in so doing gather a much larger force to fight under him. In order to defend his lands while he seeks support in Northern England, Richard proposes a marriage between his son Thomas (Age 11) and Elizabeth, daughter of Prince Gwilym of Wales in exchange for aid in defense of Gloucestershire and Warwickshire. The proposal is accepted, and several companies of Welsh soldiers come to aid in the defence of Richard's land. Leaving half of his forces for defensive purposes under James Tyrell, Richard takes 3,000 men to the north to seek support, taking his son with him. Many of the towns throw open their gates in support of Richard, proclaiming him as King Richard III. When they reach York on November 7th, it too throws open the gates, and in the Cathedral Richard is proclaimed as king, and his son Thomas named the new Duke of York. For King George, his forces are not strong enough to move troops offensively, and so he is forced to prepare and wait for the inevitable hammer strike of Richard’s attack.
In France, tensions between King Charles VIII and his eldest son John of Burgundy come to a head over the issue of succession to the French throne. Although John has been heir to the Duchy of Burgundy since his early childhood, he has never been named as the heir to the Kingdom of France in any official capacity. The reason for this is obvious, as Charles blatantly favors his younger, healthier, and astoundingly tall son, Philip, over John. Having expected his sickly and bespectacled eldest son to die shortly after birth, Charles put much more time and energy into grooming his healthier younger son, resulting in a strained relationship with his eldest. By 1488, the mutual animosity between Charles VII and John of Burgundy had reached a fever pitch, and in August John made his way to Paris to confront his father on the matter.
The Louvre Palace, Paris, August 6th, 1488
“You must choose now! The demands of the kingdom will not simply wait for your mind to be made up! You risk throwing our people into turmoil and bloodshed by not declaring a successor, or does your vanity demand that your death be accompanied by a sacrifice of innocents to see you off?” King Charles, with a look of tired annoyance upon his face, rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Slowly he arose from his throne, and once standing looked at his eldest son and replied, “Is there no limit to your audacity, boy? You come before your king, and make demands, question my will, and threaten war and death to my people, wearing those… things that that ridiculous Italian painter sold you” he said gesturing towards the prince’s spectacles, “and you expect me to take you seriously as my heir? For a boy who can’t even look me in the eye you do have some gall.”
Unflinching, John reached up and slowly slid his spectacles down his nose and off of his face. Now with an unobstructed view of his father, he said, “Perhaps you are right father, without the lenses you look far more like the stain upon the earth that you are. Now stop wasting my time and denying me my God given birth right!” “You impious little whelp,” began Charles, “that you should speak of God to me is nothing short of blasphemy!” “Ha,” John sneered, “You seem content to hear the sermons of that Spanish open sewer whom you believe holds the keys of heaven. Next you will allow him to ordain his whore mistress as well, so pious are you and your pet pope!”
“Enough!” bellowed Charles, “Guards, escort the Duke of Burgundy to a room and ensure that he stays there. You need no longer be concerned with the state of my heir, for I have but one son, and you are not he.” Two guards stepped forward, and John did not attempt to resist them, but mere replaced his spectacles upon his nose. The guards each grabbed one of his elbows before dragging him backwards out of the room. John simply stared up at his father, and as the doors to the hall swung open, he smirked and whispered under his breath, “Finally, the declaration has arrived.”
*****
The exchange at the Louvre is the final straw for King Charles, who has his eldest son imprisoned and sent as a political prisoner to Provence, along with his wife and son. Provence is chosen primarily because it offers little chance of insurrection, as the lord of Provence, King Edward I of Naples, has no ability to defend his far flung possessions should King Charles turn on him, and rarely spends time in Provence after his acquisition of Naples. The move also takes John far from his natural support base in Burgundy, and places him in a land that is almost entirely alien to. Although he is kept in comfortable living conditions, he and his family are afforded virtually no contact with the outside world. Meanwhile, Philip is named as the Dauphin of France later in August.
In Byzantium, Emperor Ioannes IX deals primarily with family matters. His mother, the empress dowager Anna Komnena, believes that Ioannes has begun to spoil his children, particularly the older children David (age 11) and George (age 9). To counter this, she suggests that the two be sent to live at the court of her brother Emperor Basil II of Trebizond. Emperor Ioannes frankly does not get along well with the Megas Komnenoi (3), and refuses to even consider the idea. Despite this, his mother is persistent, and Ioannes eventually does agree that his sons need time away from him. Rather than Trebizond, Ioannes chooses to send his two eldest sons to Epirus, to live with and learn from the Strategos Graitzas Palaiologos. The area, while not so dangerous as it once was thanks to the Serbian conquest of Albania, is still among the more lawless in the empire, and could provide ample opportunity for the boys to learn statesmanship and military command.
In September, after a long slow strangulation of trade, the Hafsid Caliphate of Ifriqiya surrenders to King Alfonso XII of Castile. Virtually all coastland west of Tunis itself is placed under Castilian control, while the remainder of the Caliphate is allowed to continue on as a Castilian vassal, provided that they open their lands to Christian missionaries. Although the war has technically been ongoing for roughly seven years, it has taken minimal effort from the Castilians, who have won by simply maintaining a long term blockade of Tunis and some of the other major ports of Ifriqiya, thus weakening the Hafsids and causing the country to descend into chaos. After this relatively easy success, King Alfonso once again begins looking for a target to enforce Christianity in.
Beyond that, Europe is abuzz with rumors in 1488. A favorite topic is the source of the sudden spice wealth of the Portuguese, a riddle that Venice in particular is keen to answer. In the Holy Roman Empire, news that the Emperor Frederic III’s health is failing draws quite a bit of concern. In Poland, a peace settlement is reached with Moscow and Moldavia, and the Polish-Lithuanians are forced to pay tribute and to ransom back Prince Vladislaus and their forces captured at the Battle of Cosmin Forest. Aside from this, a son is born to King Edward of Naples on October 27th, and the boy is named Rene, after Edward’s maternal grandfather, who was the last man in his family before him to hold the throne of Naples.
(1) OTL Edward IV only made it to forty before he died of natural causes, so whether or not he died naturally it is definitely within his OTL range.
(2) Admittedly acusing one's own mother of infidelity is a bit extreme, but Clarence did it IOTL, so I've used it TTL.
(3) Not to suggest that their alliance is deteriorating. Ioannes still shares political interests with the Trebizondians, and won't throw their alliance away while it still serves a purpose, but on a personal level he doesn't enjoy their company, and doesn't want them to montor his sons.
