WI: Edward III has one child?

What if King Edward III became impotent or otherwise unable to impregnate a woman by way of either injury during warfare or "other" after having Edward, Prince of Wales?
 
Assuming minimal butterflies up until the OTL death of Edward III, the next heir after Richard II would be very distant. If I'm reading the family trees correctly, the male-preference primogeniture heir after Richard would be John de Mowbray, Baron Mowbray and Baron Segrave (great-great grandson of Edward I), and I'm not sure there is an agnatic heir after Richard. So if some accident were to befall Richard during the regency (which would be very different ITTL because Richard's uncles who formed the core of it wouldn't have been born), the throne might well be declared vacant and a new house created from scratch (either through a coup legitimized after the fact by a papal bull, or through election by Parliament).
 
Assuming minimal butterflies up until the OTL death of Edward III, the next heir after Richard II would be very distant. If I'm reading the family trees correctly, the male-preference primogeniture heir after Richard would be John de Mowbray, Baron Mowbray and Baron Segrave (great-great grandson of Edward I), and I'm not sure there is an agnatic heir after Richard. So if some accident were to befall Richard during the regency (which would be very different ITTL because Richard's uncles who formed the core of it wouldn't have been born), the throne might well be declared vacant and a new house created from scratch (either through a coup legitimized after the fact by a papal bull, or through election by Parliament).

Interesting. So a war of succession would be essentially inevitable?
 
Interesting. So a war of succession would be essentially inevitable?

It really depends on the regency (and later reign, if we get that far) of Richard II. A very stable regency could happen, dominated by the late king's senior advisors with the support of the Church and the Lords. OTL, the Archbishop of Canturbury (Simon of Sudbury) was also Lord Chancellor, placing him in a prime position to dominate the regency in the absence of uncles. The problems leading to Wat Tyler's Rebellion (which killed Simon IOTL) were a combination of attempts by Parliament to guard against a coup by John of Gaunt and by unpopular taxes needed to pay Edward III's war debt -- the former would be mooted ITTL, but the latter would still be necessary, so the rebellion may or may not be mooted.

Without the rebellion, Richard is likely to defer at least somewhat to his advisers and Parliament, since the rebellion killed off some of the stronger leaders and also seems to have served as a bit of a turning point in Richard's views of his own role as King. He might even make it through his entire reign without being overthrown. The big question is whether he manages to produce an heir of his own, or if he eventually dies without producing an heir, producing a succession crisis, but at least leaving a strong government to manage the transition (probably either crowning whoever is the leader of government at the time, or hand-picking a suitable puppet king who has a few drops of Plantagenet blood).

On the other hand, if Wat Tyler's rebellion does still occur, Richard's absolutist inclinations are likely to be even nastier than IOTL, since there wouldn't be any clear rival claimant for opposition to coalesce around. If Richard does die without heir, or if he manages to provoke a successful rebellion despite a lack of semi-legitimate rival claimants, expect an unholy free-for-all, as Richard's overthrow would set a precedent for an "occupative" principle of succession (i.e. the throne passes to whoever is strong enough to seize it).
 
Note that if Richard dies without heir, the Plantagenet claim to the French throne (through Isabella of France) dies with him ITTL. The English will still have extensive holdings in France (although they might lose them during a war of succession), so it'd be interesting to see how that would play out.

Also note that without John of Gaunt meddling in Portugal/Spain, there may be different outcomes to the succession crises in those countries (assuming they aren't butterflied away).

Those are just a couple issues off the top of my head.
 
Assuming minimal butterflies up until the OTL death of Edward III, the next heir after Richard II would be very distant. If I'm reading the family trees correctly, the male-preference primogeniture heir after Richard would be John de Mowbray, Baron Mowbray and Baron Segrave (great-great grandson of Edward I), and I'm not sure there is an agnatic heir after Richard.

I might be wrong, but apparently if the line of Edward II is extinct, then the succession would go to the descendents of the second marriage of Edward I (with Margaret of France). The only one who had issue was Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent. His daugther Joan of Kent was exactly the wife of the Black Prince and mother of Richard II. But before marrying prince Edward she was married to Thomas Holland. She had two daughter and three sons. Two of the sons reached adulthood: Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent; and John Holland, 1st Duke of Exeter. So probably if Richard II doens't have children he would nominate one of his half brothers (or of their sons) as his heir.
 
I might be wrong, but apparently if the line of Edward II is extinct, then the succession would go to the descendents of the second marriage of Edward I (with Margaret of France). The only one who had issue was Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent. His daugther Joan of Kent was exactly the wife of the Black Prince and mother of Richard II. But before marrying prince Edward she was married to Thomas Holland. She had two daughter and three sons. Two of the sons reached adulthood: Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent; and John Holland, 1st Duke of Exeter. So probably if Richard II doens't have children he would nominate one of his half brothers (or of their sons) as his heir.

The line I'm looking at is:
Edward I
Thomas of Brotherton, Earl of Norfolk (son of E1 by Margaret of France)
Margaret Marshal, Duchess of Norfolk (daughter and heir of Thomas, after his son died childless)
John de Mowbray, Baron Mowbray and Segrave (later 1st Earl of Nottingham)

Edmund of Woodstock's line would come next, if Thomas's line went extinct. I hadn't traced that line and realized that it had married back into the main line, which is an interesting ripple -- it strikes me as pretty likely that they could leverage that to bypass Mowbray's strict genealogical seniority, and it'd also make the extinction scenarios I was considering a lot less likely.
 
Yolande of Aragon who married Louis II of Naples and the Grandmother of Margaret of Anjou is the the only direct descendant of the eldest daughter of Edward I at that time, this would mean that the Valois-Anjou or Aragon might also have a distant possible claim on the English throne not just on Aragon.
 
Who's to say Richard II will need a regency?

In this TL, it's rather unlikely that the Black Prince will be going on quite so many Chevauchee, what with him being Edward III's only son. It'll be very unlikely that he becomes ill in exactly the same way as he did in OTL. He may also be encouraged to do a bit more in the way of procreation to secure the succession...
 
If Edward III only has one child, say Edward the Black Prince I think your going to butterfly away Richard II entirely. Without any other siblings behind him the Black Prince doesn't make it to 30 a bachelor. He would be under a lot more pressure to have make a diplomatic marriage early. It all depends on how things go, but if he marries earlier his issue might be of age when their grandfather expired in the OTL. And if The Black Prince marries someone younger than Joan of Kent, he may leave behind more than one surviving son.
 
If Edward III only has one child, say Edward the Black Prince I think your going to butterfly away Richard II entirely. Without any other siblings behind him the Black Prince doesn't make it to 30 a bachelor. He would be under a lot more pressure to have make a diplomatic marriage early. It all depends on how things go, but if he marries earlier his issue might be of age when their grandfather expired in the OTL. And if The Black Prince marries someone younger than Joan of Kent, he may leave behind more than one surviving son.
I think it is possible for him to marry one of the daughters of John II of France or Blanche of Bourbon, the OTL wife of Peter the cruel
 
Edward the Black Prince marries a lot earlier; whatever the entail is, it's altered to assure the succession to Edward's sister Eleanor and her son, the Duke of Guelders.
 
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