In my AH.com travels, I haven't yet seen a thread devoted to this question. Now, granted, politically, it probably didn't make sense for Charles V to have done so, but it's not ASB to have someone have a sudden, personal spiritual insight.
Although the Reformation succeeded in a sense, by surviving and destroying the unity of Western Christendom, in a sense, it could be said to have failed. Huge areas of Europe were successively recoverted to Catholicism, and only a relatively small minority of Europe's total population (a quarter at best) ended up as Protestants of widely divergent sorts. Would imperial patronage have changed that, or simply created worse disorder and perhaps an even stronger Counterreformation in the end?
So, what if the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain suddenly converted to Protestantism? Or, alternatively, his brother, Ferdinand, who succeeded him as Holy Roman Emperor?
Extraneous Note- Long time since I've posted. Life got weird.