WI: Maria Josepha married Ferdinand of Naples and Sicily?

Vitruvius

Donor
If Maria Josepha survives and marries Ferdinand of Naples and Sicily Maria Carolina may end up married to his cousin Ferdinand of Parma. IIRC the Bourbons were not to keen on marring their heirs to Maria Amalia, she was considered at one point or another for both, because she was older than both Ferdinands. Which incidentally is a similar problem between the Dauphin Louis August and Maria Carolina, though not by as much of a gap.

So it might not be as big a change with Marie Antoinette still Queen of France but Maria Carolina becomes Duchess of Parma and Piacenza rather than Queen of Naples and Sicily, though removing her domineering presence from Sicily would could have interesting results. Also if Maria Amalia is then allowed marry Charles August of Palatine Zweibrucken as she wanted to and she gives him a male heir then her children would inherit Bavaria and the Palatinate from Charles Theodore (OTL he died childless and the heir was his brother Maximilian I). I'd imagine Joseph II might be less inclined to pursue his designs on Bavaria if it meant disinheriting his brother in law or nephew. So Bavaria may be more closely allied to Austria in the early 1800s than it was OTL.
 
Kaunitz laughed in Karl August's face when the marriage offer was made. While not exactly love in a cottage, it was certainly a rather low marriage for an archduchess. A likely candidate for Amalia's husband would be the duke of Chablais. He'd been promised an Austrian archduchess for a wife by his uncle, Franz I. It was supposed to be Elisabeth (Liesl) or Christine (Mimi). But then after he died, Christine twisted her mom's arm to marry Albrecht of Saxony (which even his family thought a low match: the dauphine wrote to her brother, the Regent Xavier, scolding him for allowing Albrecht such a marriage). Maria Theresia declined a younger Savoyard son and offered Liesl first to the newly-widowed Carlos III, and after it became clear he wouldn't remarry, she tried to marry her to Louis XV. Of course, the talks were more sincere on the Austrian side than the French. After the smallpox struck, Maria Theresia was heard to have said that if only she hadn't been so vain to try for a Bourbon marriage, her daughter could be married and settled by now.
 

Vitruvius

Donor
You're probably right about Charles August and Benedetto is also interesting, especially if he's made Duke of Lunigiana. Though that always struck me as somewhat of a Liechtenstein-like move. I can't imagine him actually taking up residence there but merely using it to become a sovereign prince while residing in Turin.
 
Something I've just found (sorry if I'm derailing the thread), is that Karl of Zweibrucken (Amalie's erstwhile beloved) was so eager to get a marriage to the Austrian Imperial family, he tried in the 1770s to marry the smallpox-scarred Maria Elisabeth.

Plus, Maria Elisabeth's hopes of getting married to Chablais were dashed after Mimi married Albrecht of Saxony, and Josef II had no intention of supporting another useless brother-in-law. Plus, the proposal from Stanislas Poniatowski (which Stanislas was quite keen on), was done at Catherine the Great's displeasure, since she refused to countenance the match (not sure why her input would've mattered? The Pacta Conventa stated Stanislas was to marry a Polish woman AFAIK).
 
Great thread! I've often wondered what would have happened in this particular scenario.

In her biography of Marie Antoinette, Antonia Fraser suggested that Maria Carolina was probably her mother's preferred choice for the French marriage. She was only two years older than Louis XVI, and was also a more assertive and intelligent personality than Marie Antoinette. Apparently, Maria Theresa is supposed to have said that of all her daughters, Caroline was the one who was most like her. Caroline would be likely to involve herself in government and ensure that France followed a pro Austrian policy (much as she did in Naples), and she probably wouldn't have found Louis much harder to control than she did Ferdinand of Naples.

If that did happen, then Maria Theresa might have tried to marry Marie Antoinette to one of Louis's younger brothers, thus doubling the chances of having a half Austrian future King of France, as well as giving each sister a support system in the other. In that situation, Maria Amalia would still have been available for the Parma marriage.

If that didn't happen - and France might well have been wary of too much Austrian influence at Versailles, then Antoinette would probably have been married to the Duke of Parma. I'm not sure what would have happened to Amalia. No one seems to have been keen on the Zweibrucken marriage, but if Maria Theresa had daughters in France, Naples and Parma then she might have decided to take a more relaxed view of the situation.

Interesting!
 
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