WI:French Agincourt

In England, the succession is clear cut:Clarence, Bedford , Gloucester! I just fear what'll happen if they die without issue but they're Kings so at least one will get a suitable bride.

In France, the Almanac have an advantage with surviving nobles and all.
 
Agincourt

If the French had won at Agincourt, I see an immediate threat to both English Calais and Bordeaux. Provided the French had followed up their victory over the English then.
 
In England, the succession is clear cut:Clarence, Bedford , Gloucester! I just fear what'll happen if they die without issue but they're Kings so at least one will get a suitable bride.

In France, the Almanac have an advantage with surviving nobles and all.

England's under no threat at all if all four sons die. I mean sure, everyone seeks to preserve their own bloodline so there was a panic for a while after Henry V died OTL, but it wasn't a panic that England had no successor, it was a panic that Henry IV's heritage was going to be wiped out by a lack of heirs. Beyond Henry IV's bloodline, the inheritance is secure and clear. Next up is the bloodline of Henry IV's eldest brother, currently led by the 14-year Henry, Earl of Somerset, and he has three younger brothers (and two younger sisters). After them comes Cardinal Beaufort, another son of John of Gaunt (Henry IV's father) and then Henry IV's youngest brother, Thomas, Duke of Exeter, who was Captain of Honfleur during the battle. Neither he nor the Cardinal had children, but...they still could at this point. None of these men/boys were present at the battle.

That's a lot of heirs, and that's before you get onto the women. Now, the women are interesting, not because they themselves were interesting but because of Henry IV's accession to the throne. In order to remove Richard II's elected heir, the Earl of March, from the running, Henry IV in 1399 declared that all the way back to Henry III, no King of England was legitimately allowed to nominate or alter the succession to the throne. This technically instituted the 13th century semi-Salic inheritance, which prevented either women claiming the throne or men inheriting claims through the female line. This would make the future inheritance entirely open to debate, since that was a massive wrangle and somewhat hushed up in order for it not to create too much controversy (since about 4 or 5 Kings since Henry III, including H3 himself, had nominated a successor). It could well come down to interpretation of the law, or whether Henry IV was to be accepted as a legitimate King, if it got that far.

BUT none of this really matters as there's 4 male children of the Somerset line who would all have to die first for the female inheritance to even be contemplated here, and that's not likely to happen.

If the French had won at Agincourt, I see an immediate threat to both English Calais and Bordeaux. Provided the French had followed up their victory over the English then.

I don't see why that's so. The English hadn't taken Bordeaux yet, so it's definitely not under threat.
 
French Agincourt

England's under no threat at all if all four sons die. I mean sure, everyone seeks to preserve their own bloodline so there was a panic for a while after Henry V died OTL, but it wasn't a panic that England had no successor, it was a panic that Henry IV's heritage was going to be wiped out by a lack of heirs. Beyond Henry IV's bloodline, the inheritance is secure and clear. Next up is the bloodline of Henry IV's eldest brother, currently led by the 14-year Henry, Earl of Somerset, and he has three younger brothers (and two younger sisters). After them comes Cardinal Beaufort, another son of John of Gaunt (Henry IV's father) and then Henry IV's youngest brother, Thomas, Duke of Exeter, who was Captain of Honfleur during the battle. Neither he nor the Cardinal had children, but...they still could at this point. None of these men/boys were present at the battle.

That's a lot of heirs, and that's before you get onto the women. Now, the women are interesting, not because they themselves were interesting but because of Henry IV's accession to the throne. In order to remove Richard II's elected heir, the Earl of March, from the running, Henry IV in 1399 declared that all the way back to Henry III, no King of England was legitimately allowed to nominate or alter the succession to the throne. This technically instituted the 13th century semi-Salic inheritance, which prevented either women claiming the throne or men inheriting claims through the female line. This would make the future inheritance entirely open to debate, since that was a massive wrangle and somewhat hushed up in order for it not to create too much controversy (since about 4 or 5 Kings since Henry III, including H3 himself, had nominated a successor). It could well come down to interpretation of the law, or whether Henry IV was to be accepted as a legitimate King, if it got that far.

BUT none of this really matters as there's 4 male children of the Somerset line who would all have to die first for the female inheritance to even be contemplated here, and that's not likely to happen.



I don't see why that's so. The English hadn't taken Bordeaux yet, so it's definitely not under threat.
Bordeaux was still under English rule at that time. It only fell to the French during the reign of Henry VI in 1453. I think that the French could have re-taken Calais from the English had they really pressed on, but the siege would have been a long one, I'm sure. With Henry V dead, I doubt much help would have come from England at that point.
 
Bordeaux was still under English rule at that time. It only fell to the French during the reign of Henry VI in 1453. I think that the French could have re-taken Calais from the English had they really pressed on, but the siege would have been a long one, I'm sure. With Henry V dead, I doubt much help would have come from England at that point.

My bad. I was sure that Bordeaux and Gascony as a whole had fallen to the French at the end of the 14th century, but it would seem that I'm wrong.
 
Next up is the bloodline of Henry IV's eldest brother, currently led by the 14-year Henry, Earl of Somerset, and he has three younger brothers (and two younger sisters). After them comes Cardinal Beaufort, another son of John of Gaunt (Henry IV's father) and then Henry IV's youngest brother, Thomas, Duke of Exeter, who was Captain of Honfleur during the battle. Neither he nor the Cardinal had children, but...they still could at this point. None of these men/boys were present at the battle.

BUT none of this really matters as there's 4 male children of the Somerset line who would all have to die first for the female inheritance to even be contemplated here, and that's not likely to happen.

The Beauforts being in line of succession is iffy, because of their first generation's members having been born illegitimate: When they were legally legitimised during the reign of Henry IV he himself stated that that did not give them any [potential] right to inherit the throne.
 
Hmm. How is it that I've never heard that before? Huh, guess you learn something new every day.

Well, that does make things more interesting then. Either way there's definitely no shortage of potential heirs, but now you have two options. In the classic (English) line of inheritence, being the male-preference primogeniture, then Philippa, Queen of Portugal is the current heir. If you instead stick to Henry IV's legalistic interpretation of his claim to the throne, the heir instead does in fact default all the way back to the 4-year old Richard, Duke of York.

Of course, there are two things to consider here. One is that, as I said before but I want to stress again, Henry IV was clutching at straws massively when he came up with his semi-Salic interpretation of the line of succession. He only did it to find a way to remove the Earl of March as a potential heir to the throne and to prevent himself from having to claim the throne by right of conquest (he also had Richard II adjudged to be unfit for office and made him abdicate), it took several days of deep debates with his King's Justice to come up with the method as a validation, and while he did publicise it - if he didn't then what would've been the point in coming up with it - I don't think he wanted to make too big a thing of it. So now, 16 years later, people might well have lulled back into assuming that females could inherit. Certainly by the time of Henry VIII, the Tudors clearly didn't think that women had no right to the throne under any circumstances. So I'm not really sure.

Second consideration here is that I still believe that all four of Henry IV's sons dying in the Battle of Agincourt to be very unlikely, so this whole debate I still consider to be entirely hypothetical.
 
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