IDK if anyone has asked this before but here goes. From 1507 to 1514 Princess Mary Tudor (daughter of Henry VII and sister of Henry VIII) was betrothed to the future Emperor Charles V. In fact the marriage was scheduled to happen in May 1514 before Henry VIII, angry at what he considered duplicity on the part of Charles's grandfathers Ferdinand of Aragon and Emperor Maximilian, broke the betrothal and instead married his sister off to the widowed King Louis XII of France. Mary would go on to marry Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. So what if the marriage went ahead and Mary became the consort to the most powerful man in Christendom? How would this effect the King's "Great Matter"? How would the English succession turn out with the Habsburgs having a claim to the throne? Would the future Queen Mary's aunt being the Empress help or hurt her plans to escape England? Please discuss!
WI: Emperor Charles V had married Mary Tudor, Queen of France?
- Thread starter Emperor Constantine
- Start date
I saw and read that thread but I don't want to go down that route. So lets say Anne de Bretagne outlives Louis XII and a French match never becomes possible.
Fair enough. Mary marrying Karl V might actually make things more difficult for Henry, not less. For instance, no English alliance with France is really going to be taken seriously by the French (IMHO). Or if England does ally with France, it could lead to a rupture between Henry and Mary - as his relationship with Ms Boleyn did OTL. As to the King's Great Matter, Mary was against it from the get-go (and ironically enough, Henry would've been against a divorce under usual circumstances, since if we look at how he reacted to his sister, Margaret, begging an annulment of her marriage to Douglas), and added to that, she disliked Anne Boleyn, who she knew from her time in France. Now, here, she has minimal contact with Anne, but she's likely to still being opposed to it (the matter) on various grounds. Karl V, OTOH, might actually agree with Henry that CoA is past her prime, because, unlike OTL, he has another in at the English court - namely Mary (OTL CoA was his only source on the ground). From what Hester Chapman writes of Mary and Henry their relationship was much closer that Henry and Margaret's. Whether this was simply due to proximity (either in locale or in age) or other factors, IDK.
Also, Karl is likely to start having kids earlier here (strike that, he will have kids earlier). So, it would be likely (in my mind) that if Princess Mary escapes England to say (the Netherlands), Karl marries her off post-haste to his eldest son. In fact, Karl might even encourage CoA to send Mary to him (if he doesn't approve of the divorce proceedings) in a way he didn't OTL. Or if the pope agitates enough, we might see Karl's son and Mary acknowledged as the "rightful king and queen of England", although this would be the same as the king of France proclaiming Mary, Queen of Scots' as "queen of England" when Mary Tudor died OTL.
*Most of this is probably a stretch, but I sorta just wrote what popped into my head.
Henry VIII can still break the betrothal. What you have to do is sabotage Wolsey's plans for "Perpetual Peace" with France and perhaps save Margaret's husband by not having him killed at Flodden......just wounded. That was part of the Perpetual Peace dig - we're friends with the stronger partner of the auld alliance at a time when Scotland is down morale-wise. Or, come at it from the French side - they don't want to be united with the upstarts? But the "Perpetual Peace" is what caused Henry to break it off with Spain (that, and his impression that Spain was reluctant - maybe have Spain ask for Mary to come over as soon as she's marriageable - 12 - to learn Spanish properly, and then, even if Henry changes his mind, his sister is still in Spain when Charles comes of age and weds her anyway.....)