WI: More Than One Surviving Son for Felipe II

We all know Felipe II of Spain, Portugal, and a whole lot of other places, had miserable luck when it came to surviving kids. He married four times, but only had two kids that survived him - Isabel Clara Eugenia and Felipe III.

His only child from his first wife, D. Carlos, fared well (if one can use that term), but died before his father, and left no issue.

Since Mary I's pregnancies are said to be hysterical pregnancies/cancer/dropsy/insert reason here (and I personally don't like a Habsburg England), we'll scratch her two from the list.

That leaves Élisabeth de Valois who's miscarriage/stillbirth of their only son nearly cost her her life (1560/1562), and who seems to have only produced her three daughters - the aforementioned Isabel, the Duchess of Savoy, and a stillborn daughter, before dying (appropriately enough) in childbirth, with what some sources call a son and others call a child listed as 'Juana'.

Finally, the wife who did the best was Felipe's last (who just happened to be his niece, too. Yeah, Habsburgs, the modern Ptolemies, gotta love it). She had four sons, Fernando (1571-1578, who died of typhoid), Carlos Lorenzo (1573-1575; whose death caused her to go into premature labor with her third son), Diego (1575-1582) and finally Felipe III (b. 1578).

And Felipe's life was such a slender reed that I've seen it stated that this was (at least partly) the reason for Isabel's late marriage, in case she needed to become queen of Spain.

Now the question is, what if Felipe had more surviving sons? Say Carlos, perhaps one of Élisabeth's. And if Felipe still decides to marry Anna, take your pick of which one besides the youngest could survive (they mostly seem to have died from relatively easily butterfliable illnesses).

How might this affect Felipe's government? His foreign policy (obviously if events in France still transpire as OTL, he might push for Élisabeth's son to be king of that country) especially. How might it influence his relations with his Austrian relatives? Etc etc.
 
Archduchess Anna was originally intended as a bride for Carlos, so if he survives Filips II;) won't marry Anna, AFAIK he did so to ensure the succession.

Elisabeth's son as a king of France never was a real possibility and it would have overextended Castille-Aragon's foreign even more than IOTL.
 
Archduchess Anna was originally intended as a bride for Carlos, so if he survives Filips II;) won't marry Anna, AFAIK he did so to ensure the succession.

Elisabeth's son as a king of France never was a real possibility and it would have overextended Castille-Aragon's foreign even more than IOTL.

Would it? If it's a second/third son? Granted the support wasn't overwhelming, but weren't there those who preferred the Catholic Isabel Clara Eugenia to the Protestant Henri of Navarre?

But also, I was thinking more that Felipe tried to claim Brittany for his daughter (if he couldn't get France), and while the duchy had been part of France for nearly a century by that point, he still seemed to think it was feasible? Would he not attempt the same for a son by his favorite wife?
 
The question is, do the Valois still go extinct if your POD is the first half of the 1560s when Charles IX, Henri III and the duc d'Alençon are still alive. But assuming they do, the French might have been willing to grin and bear it with Isabella if she married the next Capetian in line for the throne, depending on whether you consider Henri of Navarre's Protestantism excluding him, that is an imprisoned Cardinal.

Getting a Spanish infante as king of France, I don't see happening. But, the presence of a second healthier son means that Felipe's relationship with his not-so-healthy eldest son is interesting, to say the least. But somehow I foresee a split of the Spanish and Burgundian Inheritance like OTL Treaty of Cession.
 
Isabella of Spain married so late because her husband-to-be do not wanted marry and continued to put off the wedding and Philip and Isabella continued to wait hoping who the Emperor decided to honor the bethrotal and marry her. In the end the Emperor said the do not wanted marry and Isabella was married to his younger brother (and her father gave to her the Spanish Netherlands as dowry for compensating the lower match)
 
Top