A Most Unfortunate Event (Tale of Flanders V2.0)
A Most Unfortunate Time
By Nekromans
Part I: The Joys of Schadenfreude
Excerpted from "The Golden Days of Anglo-Hispania - A Brief History of a Briefer Union"
By Gregory Beckett-Williams
[Annotated for use in OTL]
To think that, just a decade or so before the Union of Anglo-Hispania, it would have been deemed impossible... it beggars belief. And yet it came so close to having never occurred, a possibility which seems even more impossible to us today. To understand the instability of the Anglo-Spanish entity, we must first realise how fragile the chain of causality that led to it was.
Ferdinand and Isabella were the founders of another unlikely union, that of Aragon-Castile. Under their guidance, most of Iberia was united, with Portugal effectively cut off from the rest of Europe. They begot enough children to make a small army, including a healthy young son, Juan. Their bloodline seemed secure.
Then tragedy struck. In just over a year, over half of their children suddenly died. The first was the most important - Juan, who fell dead of consumption on the way to a wedding in October of 1497, leaving his widow to give birth to a stillborn. The second was Isabella Queen Consort of Portugal, who fell victim to a hunting accident in August of 1498, leaving behind sickly Miguel as her only son. The third died in perhaps the most tragic of circumstances: Juana, who died in childbirth while in the Netherlands. Her child was a stillbirth. [1]
Only two of the offspring survived the events of 1497-98, Maria and young Catherine. With the infant Miguel's death in 1500, Maria became the heir presumptive to the throne of Castile, while Catherine married her way into the English succession, wedding Arthur, Prince of Wales and elder brother of a young man named Henry. Sadly, Arthur too fell victim to what is now known as the Regal Culling, where fate seemingly intervened to begin the Union. With Arthur's death, the widow Catherine was granted a Papal dispensation to wed young Henry, now the heir to the throne of England. They married in September of 1503.
1504 signified yet another year of deaths, as Isabella, Catherine and Maria's mother, passed away in November of 1504. Perhaps the strain of her family's endless deaths snapped something inside Maria, as the day after she learned of her mother's death and her accession to the throne of Castile, she was found hanging from the rafters in her room in Lisbon, making her one of the shortest-reigning monarchs in existence, and one of the only royal suicides in Europe. Catherine was crowned Queen of Castile on the 15th of March, 1505, with Henry serving as the King Consort of Castile.
[1] The death of Juana seems to be the POD for this timeline, as her children would include Charles V, IOTL the formal uniter of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor.
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Comments?
By Nekromans
Part I: The Joys of Schadenfreude
Excerpted from "The Golden Days of Anglo-Hispania - A Brief History of a Briefer Union"
By Gregory Beckett-Williams
[Annotated for use in OTL]
To think that, just a decade or so before the Union of Anglo-Hispania, it would have been deemed impossible... it beggars belief. And yet it came so close to having never occurred, a possibility which seems even more impossible to us today. To understand the instability of the Anglo-Spanish entity, we must first realise how fragile the chain of causality that led to it was.
Ferdinand and Isabella were the founders of another unlikely union, that of Aragon-Castile. Under their guidance, most of Iberia was united, with Portugal effectively cut off from the rest of Europe. They begot enough children to make a small army, including a healthy young son, Juan. Their bloodline seemed secure.
Then tragedy struck. In just over a year, over half of their children suddenly died. The first was the most important - Juan, who fell dead of consumption on the way to a wedding in October of 1497, leaving his widow to give birth to a stillborn. The second was Isabella Queen Consort of Portugal, who fell victim to a hunting accident in August of 1498, leaving behind sickly Miguel as her only son. The third died in perhaps the most tragic of circumstances: Juana, who died in childbirth while in the Netherlands. Her child was a stillbirth. [1]
Only two of the offspring survived the events of 1497-98, Maria and young Catherine. With the infant Miguel's death in 1500, Maria became the heir presumptive to the throne of Castile, while Catherine married her way into the English succession, wedding Arthur, Prince of Wales and elder brother of a young man named Henry. Sadly, Arthur too fell victim to what is now known as the Regal Culling, where fate seemingly intervened to begin the Union. With Arthur's death, the widow Catherine was granted a Papal dispensation to wed young Henry, now the heir to the throne of England. They married in September of 1503.
1504 signified yet another year of deaths, as Isabella, Catherine and Maria's mother, passed away in November of 1504. Perhaps the strain of her family's endless deaths snapped something inside Maria, as the day after she learned of her mother's death and her accession to the throne of Castile, she was found hanging from the rafters in her room in Lisbon, making her one of the shortest-reigning monarchs in existence, and one of the only royal suicides in Europe. Catherine was crowned Queen of Castile on the 15th of March, 1505, with Henry serving as the King Consort of Castile.
[1] The death of Juana seems to be the POD for this timeline, as her children would include Charles V, IOTL the formal uniter of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Comments?
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