What would Henry V do if there was no French princess available?

[Jan Olbracht]

Spin off from that thread:

Wanted: Second Wife for Philippe the Good of Burgundy

What if Philippe the Good, Duke of Burgundy had needed to find a new wife for insert reasons here, shortly after his dad was murdered in 1419? He doesn't have a son yet, so I could see him marrying relatively quickly. While I could see him marrying Bonne of Artois, Dowager Countess of Nevers...

www.alternatehistory.com

Isabella de Valois was remarried to her first cousin, Charles d'Orléans, in 1406 and died in childbirth in 1409.

The timeline of Henry's possible marriages is, thankfully, pretty well-documented. Among his possible wives:

• Marie of Brittany, negotiations underway 1398-1399: Sometimes listed as a possible wife for Bolingbroke, Michael Jones writes in "Ducal Brittany, 1364-1399" that reports of a possible Bolingbroke-Brittany match are based on a misreading of the records from the era, and that Bolingbroke actually opened negotiations for the marriage of Marie and Monmouth. Charles VI scotched this marriage and threatened to find John IV of Brittany in violation of the Franco-Breton truce for negotiating marriage with an Englishman without permission from the French crown.
  
  
• Isabella de Valois, repeatedly attempted 1399-1406: Bolingbroke was rather desperate to arrange this marriage after usurping the throne. Isabella was under strict orders from the French ambassador to reject any offers, though it should be pointed out that Isabella actually had no ability to accept a marriage without her father's permission given that she was still a minor. Eventually she was returned to France as a goodwill gesture (that ultimately brought England no good will) and English ambassadors repeatedly proposed this marriage all the way up to her eventual remarriage in 1406. During his lucid periods, Charles VI refused to consider wedding his daughter to the son of the man who murdered Isabella's first husband. Philip the Bold, who controlled the court during Charles's madness until Philip's own death, was similarly hostile to the new Lancastrian regime. Louis d'Orléans, who controlled the court after Philip's death, used Isabella's remarriage to line his own pockets -- paying himself a massive 300,000 écus from the state treasury when he arranged Isabella's marriage to his son/her cousin, Charles d'Orléans. (The dowry in and of itself was not extraordinary for a French princess, but was considered obscene for such a disadvantageous marriage -- Isabella was being downgraded from a queen dowager to a would-be duchess.)
  
  
• Catherine of Pomerania, negotiations underway 1400ish-1402: Henry IV appears to have considered a double marriage with the Kalmar Union of Denmark, Norway and Sweden almost immediately after seizing the throne, as English ambassadors were sent to Denmark as early as August 1400. Vivian Etting writes in her biography of Queen Margarete I that these early diplomatic missions may have been purely fact-finding, as the Scandinavian kingdoms had been largely isolated from wider European affairs in the second half of the 14th century. Negotiations were at least underway by spring 1401, when Henry issued letters of safe conduct for three embassies (one from each of the three kingdoms in the union) to come to England. These ambassadors returned home that fall and, by spring 1402, the English and Scandinavians were deep into talks for a broad alliance that would potentially bring all three kingdoms to support England in war with France. The English made some pretty intense demands -- including changing the inheritance laws in the Kalmar kingdoms as to allow for a personal union with England should Philippa fail to produce an heir for Erik. This proved to be too much for the Scandinavians, and Margarete walked away from marriage in late 1402.
  
  
• Anne of Burgundy, negotiations underway 1411-1412: This very nearly happened. Like, this was all done -- they just needed a proxy wedding. Henry IV had given Monmouth license to negotiate his own marriage as part of an alliance with Burgundy against the Armagnacs, but the king at the very last minute dissolved Monmouth's de facto regency and then allied with the Armagnacs instead, leading to Clarence's 1412 campaign in France. This all tends to get brushed aside as just some pre-Agincourt stuff at the tail end of Henry IV's reign, but the Anglo-Armagnac-Burgundian negotiations of these years were critical to Monmouth's understanding of the French situation -- it put him on the path to war and seemed to convince him that he needed to take one of Charles VI's daughters as a wife to secure any land in France.
  
  
• Catherine de Valois, negotiations ongoing 1413-1420: All Henry V's early negotiations in France were done under the pretext of getting Catherine as a bride. The events of 1411-1412 proved to him that France was deeply vulnerable, and that he could get much more than "just" Aquitaine if he played his cards right. Though of course the French didn't know it, basically everything here pre-1415 was to set the table for the real negotiations to come after he conquered Normandy.
  
  
• Catherine of Burgundy, negotiations underway 1414-1415: Burgundy tried to reopen negotiations for an English alliance in the run-up after coming so close in 1412. This time it was Catherine, not Anne, who was the subject of negotiations. Catherine had been contracted to wed Louis II of Anjou's son and heir, future Louis III, but Louis II broke the arrangement and returned Catherine to Burgundy after Burgundy instigated the bloody 1413 revolt in Paris. The girl was humiliated and Burgundy was enraged that Anjou kept the girl's dowry while insulting her so publicly, and so Burgundy tried to make her a queen. Henry played along with this for a while, but the English were not seriously interested in this match. Instead, the English loudly advertised that these negotiations were underway as to scared the Armagnacs, who were by this time in control of Charles VI and the country, and thus try to secure better terms in the negotiations for Catherine de Valois's hand.
  
  
• Isabella of Portugal and Maria of Aragon, 1413-1415: Much like Catherine of Burgundy, Henry held negotiations for weddings with both these women -- and advertised loudly that he was doing so, as to spook the Armagnacs into giving him better terms in negotiations to wed Catherine de Valois. It's not clear that Portugal actually invested much time in this -- they may have recognized that this was just part of a diplomatic game with France -- but Ferdinand I of Aragon was very serious, according to Waughn and Wylie's history of Henry V's reign. Ferdinand was apparently determined to press Aragon's claim to Naples and was prepared to make an Anglo-Aragonese alliance against France as to crush Louis II of Anjou, who was also pressing a claim to Naples.

So, assuming that Catherine and Marie (just to prevent option, that Marie would be forced to leave monastery in such case) of France die between 1410 (by the time all other daughters of Charles VI are already married) and 1415, how would it affect Henry's plans? Wouldn't Burgundian princess as French proxy (considering the fact, that one of them was married to Dauphin) be most obvious choice for Henry?

 

[RedKing]

A Burgundian Princess makes the most logic. It secures the Anglo-Burgundian alliance for a decent amount of time, and would be the next best thing after a French Princess.

 

[Jan Olbracht]

A Burgundian Princess makes the most logic. It secures the Anglo-Burgundian alliance for a decent amount of time, and would be the next best thing after a French Princess.

And do you think Henry would marry earlier than IOTL if there is no Catherine? Before Azincourt perhaps?

 

[RedKing]

And do you think Henry would marry earlier than IOTL if there is no Catherine? Before Azincourt perhaps?

Possibly, IIRC he was trying to get a Valois Princess for ages, if there is none available, he’ll probably decide to marry earlier and try and marry a son of his to one.

 

[Jan Olbracht]

Possibly, IIRC he was trying to get a Valois Princess for ages, if there is none available, he’ll probably decide to marry earlier and try and marry a son of his to one.

Now question is-what would Burgundian side think about this, if such match is going to happen before murder of John the Fearless and before Azincourt?

 

[RedKing]

Now question is-what would Burgundian side think about this, if such match is going to happen before murder of John the Fearless and before Azincourt?

Depends on the circumstances. If it’s similar to the Treaty of Troyes as in OTL I don’t see why they’d oppose it. If it happened in more of a peace like state then it might offend them.

 

[material_boy]

I think to answer this we need to first answer a different question: What exactly did Henry V want?

This question has dogged historians for centuries, but Juliet Barker lays out a persuasive case for what she believes was Henry's true aim in the run-up to Agincourt. She points out that while Henry's demands are constantly shifting 1413-1415, a few key points remain consistent: the return of Aquitaine in full suzerainty as defined by Brétigny, control of Normandy, an expansion of the Pale of Calais to include a large swathe of western Flanders, a new legal status for Brittany, and a French wife who comes with a giant F-ing dowry. She guesses that Henry's goal was to restore the gains Edward III won during the Edwardian War -- the issue that had been, at this point, at the heart of Anglo-French of relations for roughly a half-century -- and also to gain control of France from Calais through western Flanders (Artois, Picardy, etc.) and Normandy, while also securing Brittany as an ally truly independent from the French crown, thus creating a cross-Channel empire with complete control of the Straights of Dover. This would secure southern England from the threat of French invasion forever, give the English control over all trade in the Channel, and secure his new land holdings by allying his own house with the French crown through marriage.

If there is no Catherine de Valois then there isn't really any bride who secures his lands in this way -- i.e., a bride who could tie Lancaster and Valois together regardless of whether Armagnac or Burgundy controlled the mad king. I think he may try to play the same diplomatic game with the two sides as he did in OTL, concurrently negotiating marriages for Margaret d'Orléans with the Armagnacs and Anne or Catherine of Burgundy with the Burgundians while letting the civil war play out to his own advantage before finally wedding one of these girls only when it became clear which side could/would deliver the most to him.

 

[VVD0D95]

I think to answer this we need to first answer a different question: What exactly did Henry V want?

This question has dogged historians for centuries, but Juliet Barker lays out a persuasive case for what she believes was Henry's true aim in the run-up to Agincourt. She points out that while Henry's demands are constantly shifting 1413-1415, a few key points remain consistent: the return of Aquitaine in full suzerainty as defined by Brétigny, control of Normandy, an expansion of the Pale of Calais to include a large swathe of western Flanders, a new legal status for Brittany, and a French wife who comes with a giant F-ing dowry. She guesses that Henry's goal was to restore the gains Edward III won during the Edwardian War -- the issue that had been, at this point, at the heart of Anglo-French of relations for roughly a half-century -- and also to gain control of France from Calais through western Flanders (Artois, Picardy, etc.) and Normandy, while also securing Brittany as an ally truly independent from the French crown, thus creating a cross-Channel empire with complete control of the Straights of Dover. This would secure southern England from the threat of French invasion forever, give the English control over all trade in the Channel, and secure his new land holdings by allying his own house with the French crown through marriage.

If there is no Catherine de Valois then there isn't really any bride who secures his lands in this way -- i.e., a bride who could tie Lancaster and Valois together regardless of whether Armagnac or Burgundy controlled the mad king. I think he may try to play the same diplomatic game with the two sides as he did in OTL, concurrently negotiating marriages for Margaret d'Orléans with the Armagnacs and Anne or Catherine of Burgundy with the Burgundians while letting the civil war play out to his own advantage before finally wedding one of these girls only when it became clear which side could/would deliver the most to him.

Would this avoid his invasion?