WI England Wins Hundred Years War

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yourworstnightmare

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We would probably be talking in english now.
Actually language would be very interesting, since English would probably pick up even more influences from French than OTL.

And of course culture is very important. If London remain capital I can see many French influences coming over the Channel overall, and perhaps London would have a more French than English feel to it.
 
On the whole, France was wealthier, but it was decentralized politically for centuries. The Capetians in the early Medieval history only directly controlled little more than Paris itself, with various dynasties of dukes and counts ruling their fiefdoms like independent principalities. England by comparison was much more administratively centralized and was easier to tax.

But wouldn't the winning side invest their supporters with the different estates of France? That's what the Normans did for the most part in England four hundred years earlier. And with English nobles who owe their alliegence to the English king and government invested in place of French families who just fought against the English, the English system of centralization might well continue.
 
But wouldn't the winning side invest their supporters with the different estates of France? That's what the Normans did for the most part in England four hundred years earlier. And with English nobles who owe their alliegence to the English king and government invested in place of French families who just fought against the English, the English system of centralization might well continue.

Thing is that history shows that that plan works just fine for about a generation, before the next round of nobles with no battleground brotherhood with their king realise that their shiny new French duchy has for centuries carried the right of exemption from taxation and the right to mint its own laws and pass its own laws and actually they'd quite like that independence rather than show simple loyalty to their king for precious little gain, thank you very much. England, France and Ireland all demonstrated constantly and effectively the principle that when you become a landlord in a foreign country and move your powerbase there, you (or your descendents) inevitably become a product of that country's cultural landscape.
 
At this point the Empire is a decentralized morass and France isn't so different.

I don't think the Sicilians would benefit in this allegiance but they will be most likely allied with England if the Plantagenet claimant to Sicily succeeded, I am trying for a way to have Constance of Sicily married to Edmund the Crouchback.
 
It would be hard to keep this empire together. Sooner or later, some member of the royal family is going to try to create a breakaway kingdom. Who it is depends on when the Hundred Years War ends.

One candidate: Richard of York, an able man popular in England. Henry VI, however, was a grandson of a French king and had a French wife, so he might have had a decent chance of holding on to the continental territory. [I think that Richard had a better claim under Salic Law, though].

Eventually, an English royal might be only King of France, like Philip of Anjou a bit and whatnot.
 

katchen

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I think that if England got title to France, it would have a much better chance holding onto a core of France and the West of Francehan it would the entirety of all of what we now consider France. And I think that the hardest part of France for England to hold on to would be Langedoc and Provence, partly because of geographic distance, partly because the countryside of France's Massif Central is as broken as Western Appalachia in the US and partly because France had only subdued Langd'Oc 150 years previously after 50 hard years of blood and siege and crusade against the Cathars. I think that there would be an excellent chance of Langd'Oc nobility supporting, say, Ferdinand of Aragon, recreating the realm of Septimania that had existed 1000 years peviously.
Burgundy, also, might separate from France, tying in more with the Low Countries and creating a buffer between "Frengland" and the Holy Roman Empire. Maybe no Italian Wars between "Frengland" and Spain. The rest of France, from Artois to Gascony could well remain tied to England.
And if Ferdinand married Isabela ITTL there would likely be a very interesting Empire surrounding the Western Mediterranean from Iberia into much of Italy to Sicily. If not, an independent Catalonia-Occitaniia evemtualy perhaps.
 

CalBear

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Back to the grave zombie! With Salt and Blood I bind thee to the earth to rise no more!
 
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