Many of us know the "
Divorced,
beheaded,
died, divorced, beheaded, survived" rhyme about Henry VIII and his six wives, but what if the timeline had gone like this:
- Catherine of Aragon
- Anne Boleyn
- Jane Seymour
The POD (point of divergence) is Anne of Cleves. Unlike in OTL, Henry VIII did not like Anne of Cleves because she was uneducated and had little cultural sophistication (source:
Wikipedia article).
Instead, Henry VIII meets a Dutch woman named Marianne (how she would fit into the Royal Family at that time I don't know, not being an expert on European royal families) who is educated, culturally sophisticated, and spoke Dutch, German, Italian and some English, and was of noble descent.
This woman doesn't exist in OTL, but does ITTL.
Henry VIII marries Marianne in January 1540, as in OTL, and later on down the line, they have a child, but instead of being the son Henry wanted, they have a daughter (royal names would probably be Marianne, Mary, Jane or Katherine, at a guess).
How would history have changed if Henry VIII had married this woman, and how would the politics of Henry's day have changed?