WI: Henry VI of House Lancaster Not Insane

[Elfwine]

Interesting observations. I've often heard that with more stable times and better economic conditions, Henry VI could have reigned reasonably well..

Well, in times requiring less from the monarch, even if he was a hopeless loser it wouldn't be as harmful.

Speaking as someone who thinks Henry VI was a hopeless loser, no offense to anyone in this thread.

 

[Domenic]

As a monarch, he pretty much was. It is worth remembering though that he founded both Eton College and King's College, Cambridge with its world-famous chapel, so left a significant and creditable legacy in that way.

 

[Elfwine]

As a monarch, he pretty much was. It is worth remembering though that he founded both Eton College and King's College, Cambridge with its world-famous chapel, so left a significant and creditable legacy in that way.

This is true. That has to count for something.

 

[el t]

Henry VI

Are we assuming that a sane Henry VI would have made an effective ruler? Possibly not. With regards to France, I think that Normandy is pretty much impossible to hold at this point. The Normans had been very well integrated into the French kingdom and any popular discontent there would have been strongly supported by France.

 

[Elfwine]

Gascony should be possible, however. The Gascons, by contrast, do feel "English" in the sense subjects of the Kingdom of England.

 

[el t]

Henry VI

Gascony should be possible, however. The Gascons, by contrast, do feel "English" in the sense subjects of the Kingdom of England.

By that time there were pro French and pro English factions in Gascony. My feeling is that English rule there was pretty much doomed, due to economic and geographic factors.

 

[Falastur]

By that time there were pro French and pro English factions in Gascony. My feeling is that English rule there was pretty much doomed, due to economic and geographic factors.

Geographic factors yes. Economic, no. The English faction in Gascony was largely based around the middle class and those who depended on them. When Gascony was associated with England, it made far more money than when it was associated with France - the French taxed Gascon products into the ground, and the Gascons generally did better off sea-trade than land-trade anyway. People forget that, in 1450 when the Gascons sent a letter to Henry begging him to return with an army to chase away the French and reassert his rule there (which is genuinely how the final English campaign in Gascony started; it wasn't an English idea) that that letter was written by several powerful Gascon merchants. The Gascon middle class frankly were Englishmen abroad, they made so much money from England that they hated French rule.

 

[el t]

Henry VI

Geographic factors yes. Economic, no. The English faction in Gascony was largely based around the middle class and those who depended on them. When Gascony was associated with England, it made far more money than when it was associated with France - the French taxed Gascon products into the ground, and the Gascons generally did better off sea-trade than land-trade anyway. People forget that, in 1450 when the Gascons sent a letter to Henry begging him to return with an army to chase away the French and reassert his rule there (which is genuinely how the final English campaign in Gascony started; it wasn't an English idea) that that letter was written by several powerful Gascon merchants. The Gascon middle class frankly were Englishmen abroad, they made so much money from England that they hated French rule.

I was thinking more in terms of what happened when Edward the Black Prince and his wife Joan of Kent actually set up residence in Gascony, and attempted to rule more or less independently. The result was high taxes, disastrous foreign policy, and eventually Edward returned to England a sick and broken man.

 

[Ladymadchan]

I have been nursing a speculation that Henry VI's insanity was not in fact hereditary. It is hard to think that that of his grandfather Charles VI was not, as Charles's mother Joanna of Bourbon, her father Peter I of same and his father Louis I ditto are all reported as being mentally unstable. Four consecutive generations of insanity seems unlikely to be coincidence. However, of the children of Louis I (who as far as I can see was the first sufferer, I can't find that any of his immediate ancestors were afflicted) who were sane, so were their children. Ditto the children of Peter I. And of Joanna. And of Charles VI himself.

With the one exception of his daughter Catherine, mother of course of Henry VI. The fact that the insanity appears never to have skipped a generation before suggests to me that it couldn't; that it was a gene you either inherited or didn't, in the inscrutable process of recombination. And if you didn't inherit it and so were sane yourself, naturally you could not pass it on.

Catherine of Valois died at a relatively young 35. Not much is known about her life and it is speculated that mental illness contributed to her death. Either way, I consider the Tudor boys, Edmund and Jasper lucky to have avoided the illness.

 

[kasumigenx]

Catherine of Valois died at a relatively young 35. Not much is known about her life and it is speculated that mental illness contributed to her death. Either way, I consider the Tudor boys, Edmund and Jasper lucky to have avoided the illness.

But it manifested on Henry VIII..

 

[Ladymadchan]

But it manifested on Henry VIII..

Sorry I don't buy Henry VIII having the Valois madness (which didn't appear to skip generations)... If Henry VIII went mad it was after a very severe head injury (which he probably shouldn't have survived).

 

[Geordie]

No War of the Roses and the greatest loss to our time is no Shakesperian "Richard III", but a Henry VI parts 1 and 2 as sequels to Henry V.

t's very likely that welose the War of the Roses, and 'Richard III'. However, OTL's Shakespeare did write Henry VI, Paarts 1, 2 and 3!

There's unlikely to be three of the things if there's no Richard of York, Edward IV and the malevolent hunchback that is Shakespeare's Richard of Gloucester to spice up the plot. That is assuming we get Shakespeare at all.