Weekly Flag Challenge #235 POLL

[Jing_Jing]

FLAG CHALLENGE #235:
Gunpowder Treason and Plot

In 1605, a group of Catholic radicals planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament, which had in them almost all Bishops of the Church of England, and King James IV & I. They planned to kill these people and then uprise in the Midlands of England and install James’ daughter Elizabeth as a Catholic queen. In real history this plan failed.

Create a flag for a country from a timeline in which the Gunpowder Plot succeeded without a hitch. The conspirators kill Parliament, the King, and the Anglican Church hierarchy in one fell swoop and install the King’s daughter, whom they intend to bring up as a Catholic. From there, run wild!

A few rules:
I. The flag does not need to be England’s, however, to give you some direction, the flag should be of a nation directly impacted directly by this alt-England (e.g. a colony, a region of the empire, an ally, a direct enemy, etc.)
II. There may not be any other Point of Divergence for the timeline.

Submissions Open: Now
Submissions Close: November 2nd, 2020 @ 23:30 (GMT-5)

Queen Elizabeth II would not reign for long. She and her Catholic government were overthrown in Protestant dominated England and Scotland. While dissent against her had existed throughout her reign it would become a full uprising and a civil war in 1633. From there both England (including Wales) and Scotland managed to gain their independence. She and some figures in her government would manage to escape to Ireland, where she and her descendants would continue to rule over a Catholic monarchy. In Scotland the nobility would elect among themselves Archibald Campbell, the 8th Earl of Argyll as their king. In England, after long debate, it was decided to create a republic similar to the Dutch. The English flag of the Cross of St. George became the flag. However both as remembrance of a time before the Stuarts, and as a concrete symbol of their rejection of the House of Stuart the flag frequently had a Tudor Rose added to it. The rose was eventually officially made a part of the flag of the Commonwealth. Some interpretations also state that the Tudor Rose represented Wales while the Cross represented England.

Royal Isle of Mann
After the initial success of the Gunpowder Conspiracy, the men at the top soon realised that they did not have all the support they had been hoping for. Although they had managed to kill off all almost all the leading lords, this didn't result in there being no meaningful opposition. There were a number of small-scale uprisings almost immediately, some of which began to coalesce into somewhat larger-scale ones. In mid-February 1606, there was an uprising in London itself, seeming to be aimed at capturing the young queen, whom they had had crowned as Mary II, not wishing to re-use the regnal name of the protestant Queen Elizabeth whom they regarded as having been illegitimate.
Although this uprising was quickly put down, the conspirators' spies informed them that other similar plots were suspected. Realising that their grip on power was still shaky and that their claim to legitimacy rested on their control of the queen, they decided to send her out of the capital to a place of safety (believed to have been somewhere in Northumberland, the county of Earl Percy). To their consternation, this was exactly what the opposition had been hoping for and the queen was captured as she entered Northamptonshire.
From there, she was quickly moved through north-west England to Scotland, where she was crowned as Queen of Scots, but this time using the protestant (presbyterian) rite and with the regnal name Elizabeth (hence becoming Elizabeth I of Scots and, later, II of England). The coronation took place on 24th March, exactly three years after her father, James VI, had acceded to the English throne, thus becoming James VI and I. Whether or not this was a deliberate choice by those involved is a matter of debate amongst historians to this day. A few days after her coronation, to keep her safe, she was sent cross-country and then a-ship to the Isle of Mann.
Despite a number of failed attempts by the increasingly desperate conspirators to invade the island and re-capture the queen, the Isle of Mann proved to be very secure and this was where she stayed for the majority of the next nine years. It was during this period that the island was transferred back to the Scottish crown, reversing the transfer of just under 300 years earlier, though William Stanley, Earl of Derby, retained the title of Lord of Mann.
In 1616, when Elizabeth left the island for the last time, she granted it the title of 'Royal' which it bears to this day. She also ordered the creation of a new flag, to consist of the flags of Scotland and England with the symbol of Mann superimposed. As with the Great Union Flag, which was created at the same time, there were a number of variants proposed.
The flag of the Isle of Mann is the Triskelion on a red field, superimposed on the Great Union Flag, with the addition of the Royal Crown to signify the island's royal status. It remains the only flag in the British Commonwealth to have a crown (other than personal flags).

The Royal Union of the British Isles and the French Marches

“Since the Black Day of 1605, England has been dead. On that day, the Midlander rebels claimed that a divine act had smited good King Saint James. They quickly kidnapped the Princess and coronated her before the ruins of Parliament, the ashes not yet cold. Her Majesty Elizabeth II, a name no doubt only kept to appease Protestants and keep confusion high as they seized control.

The valiant protestant forces made a key mistake in those first few days. First, they waited, hoping for more information on what had occurred before striking. Second, they could not agree on who to support. Some wanted Henry as the logical heir, others spoke of controlling young Charles. Some even focused on ‘rescuing’ Elizabeth from the clutches of the new government, but keeping her as queen to ensure a more stable government. A government that had, of course, promised a new Parliament. A Parliament that took years to arrive due to war, and one that arrived no more powerful than the Estates of France...

...As the war stretched into years, we saw many heroes rise. Henry swearing to avenge Charles, Cromwell valiantly at his side, the tragic charge of the Presbyterian armies at Hadrian’s Wall. All, alas, for not.”

- Theodore Perkins, Lecture at the Royal Dutch University of New Anglia​

“The wedding truly was the deathblow. The end of nearly ten years of conflict. That Elizabeth, the Summer Queen, was wedding a Frenchman did not escape notice. Some were upset, but most saw the real meaning. César de Bourbon may have been a legitimized bastard, but he was still the French King’s brother, and so he would bring with him into the marriage the promise of French troops. General Cromwell and Henry the Pretender had already fled. The Henricist cause would endure for years, mostly in Scotland, but the aid of the French finally brought the peace.

From the Irish relief in Wales, crushing the bulk of the Puritan King’s Own Regiments, to the Scottish implosion in 1611, the war had been bloody and contentious. For years the Protestants endured, but the end result was obvious. The Catholics had come to rule England again, and the efforts of the Papacy were effective, convincing many Anglicans to see the similarities in doctrine that helped to convert many Englishmen who had lost the will to fight fate.

The wedding was peaceful. It was public. And it was jubilant. A sign of the future. Few understood just how impactful it would be.”

- Michelle Latherby, The History of the English Realm, Viewbox Documentary series​

“The Wars of French Succession at last had a victor, and it was England. The Kingdom of France had practically collapsed, all due to the disastrous war with the Dutch and Prussians that England had dragged them into. By 1730, the first march had been established, a military zone of control formalized to try and find a balance between the English military, their Cesaristes allies, and local lords interested in maintaining their provincial privileges.

But with the Marches establishing a new and more harmonious government in 1735, the House of Stuart-Bourbon was ascendant. King Caesar I of the Isles was able to leave his daughter Marian an entirely new nation to rule. The Royal Union was established by reaffirming the ties between Britain and France. Marian married Louis-Philipe of Orleans, her second cousin, and with the blessings of both the Queen’s Parliaments and the Kings’ Estates-General, the kingdoms joined as one legal entity.

Of course this union would take years to become one nation. It would take two wars, immigration, linguistic changes, and the rise of a common rival in the Dutch-Danish alliance, to truly give birth to the nation we know today as the Royal Union of the British Isles and the French Marches...

...This azure banner has the crosses of England and Scotland, symbolizing the isle of Great Britain at the center of the Union. But the arms of the monarchy show all their possessions, and the extension of the English cross shows how the English Realm has stretched far and wide.”

- For Want of Will; The History of Western Europe by James T. Dupont​

 

[The Professor]

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