Will Kürlich Kerl
Banned
What happens if Emperor Charles V's brother Ferdinand gets Spain and his son Philip gets the Holy Roman Empire?
What happens if Emperor Charles V's brother Ferdinand gets Spain and his son Philip gets the Holy Roman Empire?
How could this be? Castille was the pivotal piece of Charles' empire (biggest economic and military contribuitor), in exchange he was forced to speak Spanish and to give the highest administrative positions to Castillians.What happens if Emperor Charles V's brother Ferdinand gets Spain and his son Philip gets the Holy Roman Empire?
How could this be? Castille was the pivotal piece of Charles' empire (biggest economic and military contribuitor), in exchange he was forced to speak Spanish and to give the highest administrative positions to Castillians.
As a consequence, his son was raised in Spain, and his native language was Spanish. Being seen as non-German by the German states of the HRE closed the doors to his claim to the imperial throne.
If you want to switch it around, and maybe have Phillip being raised more personally by his father, following him on his travels, and maybe put his brother Ferdinand as viceroy of Castille, this would be a direct violation of the conditions Charles had accepted to be sworn as king of Castille: if you think that the Netherlands were a headache for the Hapsburgs, just imagine a Castille-sized Netherlands.
Better idea: have Ferdinand II make Ferdinand heir to Aragon and somehow King of Castile. After all he would have had free reign in the peninsula until his death. With this Spain and Italy gos to Fernando and Austria the Netherlands and the Empire gos to Charles.
This might set a future precedent.
Also it would a diplomatic conflict between Ferdinand & the Habsburgs even more than IOTL. What might help, for the Habsburgs, would be no Louis II of Bohemia & Hungary, but only Anna as heiress. With a marriage treaty which stipulates that Anna and a Habsburg archduke should marry, then that in this case would be Charles.
Even then Ferdinand of Habsburg would get much more than he could have expected and Charles might feel for a while that his younger brother stole his inheritance.
IMHO it might have been easier if Charles still inherits Castille-Aragon and Ferdinand inherits Austria-Burgundy and is the Habsburg candidate for the Empire. Here the 'only' obstacle is Charles emotional connecting with Burgundian Netherlands were he grew up; but here he would still gain more than he loses, so this might be somewhat acceptable (as in for him it would be second best). Still I can see Ferdinand and Maximilian agreeing to such a deal, which at the time were the heads of their dynasties. It might have been a slight concession for Maximilian, but that would be massively outweighed by the fact that the house of Habsburgs will gain Castille-Aragon.
I can't see Charles giving up the Netherlands. He never attempted to do so OTL so why would he here? Plus the Netherlands was one of the wealthiest parts of the Habsburg Empire. Its infrastructure, economy and production abilities were vastly superior compared to Spain. And I doubt that Charles would really want to give up his homeland. So realistically the best thing to do would be to have Fernando inherit Spain, the colonies and the Italian territories, with Charles getting Austria (he inherited Burgundy at age 6 after his father's death) and the Empire, later possibly adding Bohemia and Hungary to his lands.