What are some alternate personal unions and how they could've happened?
- Thread starter Jabe Thomas
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From Wikipedia:
Playing around with some butterfly nets, perhaps It's a no World War I timeline, and a Maronite Gessaphe ends up as Mutasarrif and happens to be ruling the area when/if the Ottomans meet their end, and the Saxon marriage or one like it happens in OTL.
Louis-Napoleon takes as wife Maria of RomaniaFrancia and Rhomania
The War of the Spanish Succession ended up with Spain ruled separately from other European states, but there were several personal unions that could have emerged from the crisis:
The acknowledged heir to Carlos II, Josef Ferdinand, was also heir to Bavaria, but died young without assuming either throne.
The Habsburg claimant, Archduke Karl, assumed the throne of Austria, which would have roughly restored the sixteenth-century empire had he won the war and not implemented a new partition.
And the eventual winner, Philippe of Anjou, was installed with the concession that he could not also inherit France, but a stronger Bourbon performance could have avoided that.
The acknowledged heir to Carlos II, Josef Ferdinand, was also heir to Bavaria, but died young without assuming either throne.
The Habsburg claimant, Archduke Karl, assumed the throne of Austria, which would have roughly restored the sixteenth-century empire had he won the war and not implemented a new partition.
And the eventual winner, Philippe of Anjou, was installed with the concession that he could not also inherit France, but a stronger Bourbon performance could have avoided that.
Probably either or both of Holstein-Gottorp and Oldenburg, given the OTL dynastic connection between their Danish rulers and the heirs of Peter the Great, although part or all of 'Reuss' -- whose name comes from the fact that its ruling house's founder had visited Galicia (which was then still one of the 'Rus' principalities) and married a member of its ruling dynasty -- would be more ironic.
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How about Poland-Lithuania and Modena (the latter of these already in personal union with Massa-Carrara), through Charles Edward Stuart-- rather than a Hapsburg -- marrying the daughter of Modena's last d'Este duke and then (partly because of his mother having been a grand-daughter of John Sobieski, partly because he wasn't beholden to any of the powerful neighbouring nations) managing to get elected as King of Poland-Lithuania?
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Mecklenburg-Schwerin's a contender as well, had Anna Leopoldovna been born male.
As to the Polish-Modena match, no need for Stuart involvement since there was talk of both Karolina Sobieska and Anna Lesczynska (sister-in-law to Louis XV) as a potential match for Francesco III
What about the reverse? Getting the English throne with French aid? I don't think the French would be much more inclined to accept a Protestant monarch than the English would be to accept a Catholic one.
No way to happen. If anything Elizabeth’s reign would be cut short and Catholicism restored in England by a French invasion…
A good alternative to that would be Henry II NOT dying in the joust, so Mary, after the death of Francis, would remarry to his younger brother Charles IX.
England and Netherlands:
Mary Tudor has a child by Philip who would inherit both England (from his mother) and the Burgundian inheritance (from his father). I can not see this child inheriting also Spain as a girl would be surpassed by a younger half-brother and a boy would likely prompt the French to keep the planned marriage between Elisabeth and Don Carlos instead of switching the match to Philip II
But why would France help the boy get the English throne?
An AU where Mary I married Francis I's oldest son = personal union between England and France. Their son (referred to as FM) becomes MQOS' husband = England, France, Ireland and Scotland union. The son of MQOS and FM marries Isabella Clara Eugenia = England, Scotland, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands personal union.
...but that never goes well. Henry V is proof of why you don't do that
Henry V was NOT the most direct heir of all this kingdoms and most important was an English king who was trying to conquer France, here the situation would be the opposite one