Wow- great beginning!
So what would you call a blend of vodka, tomato juice, and hot pepper sauce in TTL?
So what would you call a blend of vodka, tomato juice, and hot pepper sauce in TTL?
A Kynge of the True Faithe
- Thread starter Basileus Giorgios
- Start date
Oh right, sorry, I understand you now. I thought you meant that I was personally trying to imply her bastardy within the timeline. Well there is that brief spat between Northumberland and Elizabeth, but by 1556, there is no-one who seriously dares to doubt Elizabeth's legitimacy at Edward's court, particuarly as the King, aged nineteen, is taken increasing power from Northumberland, and is very close to his older sister.
Giorgios (may I call you that?) we have a problem. This timeline is excellent and I'm enjoying it, but every word of it is a word that isn't in Isaac's Empire
Call me George if you want, I just tend to use the Greek version of my name on forums, to spread an exciting sense of confusion suggesting I am, in fact, a Greek.
. When of course I'm English and proud. Fine, I shall get back to Isaac's Empire tomorrow night, but I want plenty of feedback on it! Which Northumberland are we talking about, because i thought most of the Percy Family remained Catholic, in fact the 7th Earl of Northumberland has been Beatified be Catholic Church and his father Sir Thomas Percy died as a marytr and 6th Earl is already dead, that leaves the 8th Earl Henry, who is the only Protestant Earl but he wouldnt become important until after his Brother the 7th Earl leads a revolt against Elizabeth, which wont happen now
Just a few points to make about this which I do think is really interesting.
1) There would be no attempt to bastardize Mary or Elizabeth - under English Law they were already illegitimate - however their rights to the throne rested only on the third act of succession (Henry VIII) which simply names them as heirs in default of Edward VI and his issue.
2) Mary's proclamation as Queen by anyone would have gone down badly and would have alienated her moderate protestant and moderate catholic support in England. Its vital to remember that Edward VI had no questions over his legitimacy or rights to the throne - both his father's previous wives were dead before his birth. Had Edward died and she'd failed to establish herself as Queen and then fled I have no doubt she'd have received the acknowledgement and support you've suggested but that is less likely with a surviving Edward - her religion aside - she was a woman of a certain age and childless and her legal heir in catholic eyes was Mary Queen of Scots
3) I'm with a few others who have commented that Russia was highly unlikely a match for Elizabeth Tudor. Ivan IV was still married and devoted to his first wife Anastasia Romanova she died in 1560 so you have a narrow window for a marriage.
1) There would be no attempt to bastardize Mary or Elizabeth - under English Law they were already illegitimate - however their rights to the throne rested only on the third act of succession (Henry VIII) which simply names them as heirs in default of Edward VI and his issue.
2) Mary's proclamation as Queen by anyone would have gone down badly and would have alienated her moderate protestant and moderate catholic support in England. Its vital to remember that Edward VI had no questions over his legitimacy or rights to the throne - both his father's previous wives were dead before his birth. Had Edward died and she'd failed to establish herself as Queen and then fled I have no doubt she'd have received the acknowledgement and support you've suggested but that is less likely with a surviving Edward - her religion aside - she was a woman of a certain age and childless and her legal heir in catholic eyes was Mary Queen of Scots
3) I'm with a few others who have commented that Russia was highly unlikely a match for Elizabeth Tudor. Ivan IV was still married and devoted to his first wife Anastasia Romanova she died in 1560 so you have a narrow window for a marriage.
1) I agree with you
2) Even if she was a bastard, she was a recognized bastard so thats why Ivan, a medium power is a perfect match
3) In 1553, Ivan and a large number of nobles became sick and almost died and i think that in this TL, were having Ivan's wife get sick in 1553 rather than Ivan himself
Beyond the zero benefit that England gets out of the Ivan-Elizabeth match, there is the zero benefit that Russia gets out of the match to consider. Ivan was dealing with a series of threats, both internal and external, to his control of the realm. Marrying a bastard foreigner whose kingdom is quite far away and of no particular consequence in your theater of operations seems quite unintelligent.
While getting Elizabeth into Russia is clearly intended to create the butterflies necessary for very non-OTL results in Russia I think plausibility needs to be considered. I think Elizabeth could be married somewhere foreign and useful, but Russia is exotic and useless. Heck, depending on his level of security, maybe Edward VI even marries her domestically, as part of a deal to shore up support in the move against Northumberland. As a domestic match she is very valuable, because of the closeness to her brother, and her questionable legal status isn't an issue. Though foreigners might question her legitimacy, how can men who broke with Rome for the King that she might be born do the same?
While i agree, that the marriage of Elizabeth and Ivan is a little far fetched it isn't impossible because Ivan put his name forward as a possible husband of Elizabeth, when she was queen, and she discussed the possibility of the marriage even tho i doubt she really considered it because who would want to go to Russia oooo and George please update
oooo and George please update
That's the important qualifier for you.
In any case, I'd be amazed if Ivan was serious on that occassion - sounds like an attempt at diplomatic flattery more than anything realistic. Wasn't there some sort of trade deal going on at that point between the two?
He was quite serious in all probability. He needed foreign recognition of his status (as Tsar, i.e., Emperor), and marriage with European queen would be such recognition. Moreover, he considered himself foreigner in Russia (because of his real Swedish and imagined Roman descent), and in Ivan's mind his foreignness made him above his Russian subjects. Of course, the English tsarina would strengthen that aura of foreignness.
It was. Muscovy Company, chartered in 1555, that is, before Elisabeth's accession to the throne. BTW, isn't it interesting - Catholic Queen Mary, chartering the company for the trading with Orthodox Russia?
That's what I'm going to go with to defend the Elizabeth-Ivan marriage, I'm afraid. Also, with a Protestant Tsarina, Ivan can make peace with the Protestant states of Scandinavia, and gains a set of strong allies with which to attack Catholic Poland. ITTL, Ivan sees the opportunity to create a grand anti-Papal alliance, and siezes it with both hands, in order to gain some kind of "revenge" for the injustices of 1204- don't forget he considered himself at least partly a Roman/Byzantine due to his Palaiologid descent.
After concluding peace with Persia the previous year, the great sultan was eager to get back into the saddle, and strike at the battered kingdoms of the west. Accordingly, in 1555, he decided to personally decided to lead a massive invasion of what had always been a coveted target for the Ottoman Empire; Italy. Due to the ponderous nature of 16th century bureaucracy and communications, not to mention the vast size and sophistication of the Sublime State, it was 1556 before Suleiman was ready to set out from Constantinople at the head of his army.
News had reached Rome of the build up far earlier than this, thanks to the ceaseless observations of the Venetians, and, despite his manifest other faults, Pope Paul IV was no coward. Immediately, he sent orders to the Emperor in Vienna, demanding reinforcements of men and money with which to do battle with the infidel. Charles V, irritated by the Pope’s scuppering of his planned retirement, sent some thirty thousand soldiers, added to the ten thousand raised by the Pope himself in Italy. Small contingents slipped in from other parts of the Catholic world; the French and Polish each sent a few thousand men. The force Pope Paul IV commanded in the spring of 1556 cannot have numbered less than 50,000 soldiers.
But it was dwarfed in size and ferociousness by the forces of the Grand Turk. Suleiman had, as always, mobilised the full resources of the Ottoman Empire to terrify his enemies with the scale of his plans. Muslims, Jews and Orthodox Christians all made up the Ottoman army, and none were eager to reach any kind of agreement with Rome. Despite the fact that Suleiman’s army was largely made up of untrained levies, it must have outnumbered the Christians by at least three to one. In the circumstances, what happened next is surprising.
Suleiman and his force arrived on the Adriatic coast in early May, bullying the Venetians into allowing them access to their fortified harbours. There, in a brilliantly realised expedition, they were shipped across within a week, and had landed on the tip of the heel of Italy; in the ancient city of Otranto.
This was not Otranto’s first encounter with the Turks. Back in 1481, Suleiman’s great grandfather Mehmet the Conqueror’s forces had laid siege to the town, and violently sacked it. The citizens of Otranto, with no Papal help appearing forthcoming, simply opened the gates to the invaders. They had no wish to see their cathedrals despoiled and their children enslaved; and indeed the Turks behaved as well as could be expected in the circumstances. A couple of small churches were demanded for conversion to mosques, and several of the town’s more attractive girls were selected for Suleiman’s harem, but compared with the brutality meted out by the Ottomans to some enemy cities, Otranto got off extremely lightly.
But for Suleiman, Otranto could not be the end of the war. Accordingly, he spent the next few months consolidating his hold upon Apulia. Where resistance was met, as at Taranto, which held out for two weeks, it was crushed. Where the locals (who still retained a sizeable Greek speaking, Orthodox minority, a relic of five centuries of continued East Roman rule) surrendered voluntarily, the Turks made a great point of respecting their churches and communities.
While all this had been going on, Pope Paul IV had hardly been idle. Instead, he had been engaged in frantic diplomacy with the Venetians, hoping to tempt them to defy the Ottoman predator that held a stranglehold over their trade. Until the beginning of August, the Venetians continued to hedge, but finally, on the third, the Senate voted in favour of war. There was now no going back. The Venetians sent a hundred galleys and five thousand well trained men to join the Pope’s forces. The Catholic army then began to rumble southwards, towards Suleiman’s base at Potenza.
The Battle of Potenza was later hailed by Papal propagandists as proof of God’s protection of the Holy See. Sadly, this was not the case. After a few days of skirmishing, Suleiman received word that the Venetians had heavily defeated his fleet on the east coast, and he was desperately needed in Otranto to maintain public order. He began a slow retreat back into Apulia, harried all the way by the triumphant Pope, who stopped and proudly “liberated” towns abandoned by the Ottoman occupiers. This, it is generally agreed, cost Paul a great deal of his advantage, meaning that by the beginning of October, the Turks were comfortably entrenched in southern Apulia, and already raising troops and demanding provisions from there for a second year of campaigning. The Sultan himself had privately slipped back to Constantinople, travelling light, in order to publicise news of the new bridgehead in a foreign land. For the Pope and the Hapsburgs, it was far from a case of a decisive victory.
In England, 1556 had marked a tearful farewell. Elizabeth Tudor left the country of her birth, never to return. The eighteen year old King had reportedly been deeply touched by his sister’s passionate and defiant farewell, and they are said to have spent days together prior to the departure. But departure was inevitable. Elizabeth left England on April 5th, 1556, sailing north east. She reached the westernmost outmost of Muscovy, the aptly named Ivangorod, on July 12th of the same year, after three months travelling.
Her new husband was there to greet her, and it was the start of an immediate and passionate love affair. Matthew Parker, who would remain Elizabeth’s closest confidant in Russia for the next six years, reported confidently to Edward that his sister’s wedding had been a magnificent success, attended by representatives from all of the Protestant states of the north; states which up until now had been decidedly suspicious of Ivan’s grand Imperial ambitions. The marriage did not just symbolise the opening of relations between the Third Rome and London; it also began a new era in the history of the Baltic. Henceforth, Russia would no longer be seen as a heretical outsider, but a dynamic Christian power, which the Scandinavians and Prussians could rely on as a staunch ally against the Papacy. Within three months of the wedding, Elizabeth was pregnant. In 1557, she gave birth to a daughter, Anna.
For the young Tsar, Elizabeth was truly a delivery from God. With the death of his beloved first wife, Anastasia, in 1553, he had spent three years in misery, during which many of his boyars had begun to fear for his mental state. After 1556 however, the old Ivan returned with a vengeance. The next year, he set out for war against the Khanate of Astrakhan, a war in which he was magnificently successful. The largest slave market of the Volga was destroyed, and the slaves were freed to become peasant workers back in Russia. Meanwhile, Elizabeth was proving to be a more than capable Tsarina. Within two days of the birth of her daughter, and with her husband absent, she entertained the Swedish ambassador, who had already begun to sniff around baby Anna for a marital alliance. Elizabeth’s letters back to England and her brother show her enjoying a time of blissful marital paradise; in a faraway land where no-one dared question her legitimacy.
Back in England, Edward was finally ready to conduct a marriage of his own. Ever since the Treaty of Boulogne in 1550, he had been betrothed to the daughter of King Henry II of France, Elisabeth of Valois. This had resulted in a long sought peace between England and France, and had moreover provided a steady flow of French gold to support the Edwardian regime. Now, with Elisabeth having reached her 12th birthday, Edward was finally ready to make good on the deal he had signed seven years previously. On June 1st, 1557, the nineteen year old King of England sailed across to Calais, England’s bridgehead on the Continent. There, he met with Henry II, and continued the process of enduring Anglo-French alliance.
Firstly, there were religious matters to consider. Henry was a noted persecutor of Protestant Huguenots, something that Edward felt unable to reconcile with the alliance. Instead, he began a vigorous assault upon his nominal ally’s religious beliefs. Northumberland, attempting to intervene, was rebuffed by the King, who had continued to sideline him over the past year. Astonishingly, Edward got at least part of what he desired. Though his initial attempts to make Protestantism a favoured religion in France failed utterly, he did at least manage to persuade Henry to grant a grudging tolerance towards the Huguenots, for the good of the alliance. Though France would always remain officially a Catholic country, it now began the first steps towards the religious tolerance for which it would later be favourably noted.
Secondly there was the issue of foreign diplomacy. Since 1551, Henry had been involved in an on-off war with the Hapsburgs for control of Italy. With the Turkish invasion of Italy three years earlier though, he had both gained and lost. The Hapsburgs now had the infidel menace right on their doorstep; the Turks were in easy striking distance of Naples and Palermo, and were fully distracted by this problem. On the other hand, Henry’s alliance with the Turks had made him a pariah figure amongst the other Catholic states; he was renowned in Spain and Italy as being an ally of infidels and heretics. Though the French peasants themselves were little concerned by this, being devotedly attached to the Valois monarchy, in Italy it made mass resistance to Henry a real probability.
Edward’s response to this was to fully throw his weight behind his ally. The system built up by Henry was now beginning to bring together a new, powerful alliance block; one that could potentially shake Hapsburg dominance of Europe to its foundations. With both of his children now married, he could claim to be the dominant partner in a family that ruled France, England, and Scotland. Edward now had both of his flanks secure. Heretic he might have been, but there were clearly plenty of Catholic ready to support him.
So, when the marriage took place on the 20th of August, 1557, it was a happy occasion. Elisabeth was utterly entranced by the handsome young King of England, and many of the older members of the French court compared Edward to his father in his younger years, possibly the greatest compliment they could pay for him. As Edward returned to England that autumn, accompanied by his new bride, he could reflect back on two years of unbridled successes. Unfortunately for him, the next few years would not be so kind.
News had reached Rome of the build up far earlier than this, thanks to the ceaseless observations of the Venetians, and, despite his manifest other faults, Pope Paul IV was no coward. Immediately, he sent orders to the Emperor in Vienna, demanding reinforcements of men and money with which to do battle with the infidel. Charles V, irritated by the Pope’s scuppering of his planned retirement, sent some thirty thousand soldiers, added to the ten thousand raised by the Pope himself in Italy. Small contingents slipped in from other parts of the Catholic world; the French and Polish each sent a few thousand men. The force Pope Paul IV commanded in the spring of 1556 cannot have numbered less than 50,000 soldiers.
But it was dwarfed in size and ferociousness by the forces of the Grand Turk. Suleiman had, as always, mobilised the full resources of the Ottoman Empire to terrify his enemies with the scale of his plans. Muslims, Jews and Orthodox Christians all made up the Ottoman army, and none were eager to reach any kind of agreement with Rome. Despite the fact that Suleiman’s army was largely made up of untrained levies, it must have outnumbered the Christians by at least three to one. In the circumstances, what happened next is surprising.
Suleiman and his force arrived on the Adriatic coast in early May, bullying the Venetians into allowing them access to their fortified harbours. There, in a brilliantly realised expedition, they were shipped across within a week, and had landed on the tip of the heel of Italy; in the ancient city of Otranto.
This was not Otranto’s first encounter with the Turks. Back in 1481, Suleiman’s great grandfather Mehmet the Conqueror’s forces had laid siege to the town, and violently sacked it. The citizens of Otranto, with no Papal help appearing forthcoming, simply opened the gates to the invaders. They had no wish to see their cathedrals despoiled and their children enslaved; and indeed the Turks behaved as well as could be expected in the circumstances. A couple of small churches were demanded for conversion to mosques, and several of the town’s more attractive girls were selected for Suleiman’s harem, but compared with the brutality meted out by the Ottomans to some enemy cities, Otranto got off extremely lightly.
But for Suleiman, Otranto could not be the end of the war. Accordingly, he spent the next few months consolidating his hold upon Apulia. Where resistance was met, as at Taranto, which held out for two weeks, it was crushed. Where the locals (who still retained a sizeable Greek speaking, Orthodox minority, a relic of five centuries of continued East Roman rule) surrendered voluntarily, the Turks made a great point of respecting their churches and communities.
While all this had been going on, Pope Paul IV had hardly been idle. Instead, he had been engaged in frantic diplomacy with the Venetians, hoping to tempt them to defy the Ottoman predator that held a stranglehold over their trade. Until the beginning of August, the Venetians continued to hedge, but finally, on the third, the Senate voted in favour of war. There was now no going back. The Venetians sent a hundred galleys and five thousand well trained men to join the Pope’s forces. The Catholic army then began to rumble southwards, towards Suleiman’s base at Potenza.
The Battle of Potenza was later hailed by Papal propagandists as proof of God’s protection of the Holy See. Sadly, this was not the case. After a few days of skirmishing, Suleiman received word that the Venetians had heavily defeated his fleet on the east coast, and he was desperately needed in Otranto to maintain public order. He began a slow retreat back into Apulia, harried all the way by the triumphant Pope, who stopped and proudly “liberated” towns abandoned by the Ottoman occupiers. This, it is generally agreed, cost Paul a great deal of his advantage, meaning that by the beginning of October, the Turks were comfortably entrenched in southern Apulia, and already raising troops and demanding provisions from there for a second year of campaigning. The Sultan himself had privately slipped back to Constantinople, travelling light, in order to publicise news of the new bridgehead in a foreign land. For the Pope and the Hapsburgs, it was far from a case of a decisive victory.
In England, 1556 had marked a tearful farewell. Elizabeth Tudor left the country of her birth, never to return. The eighteen year old King had reportedly been deeply touched by his sister’s passionate and defiant farewell, and they are said to have spent days together prior to the departure. But departure was inevitable. Elizabeth left England on April 5th, 1556, sailing north east. She reached the westernmost outmost of Muscovy, the aptly named Ivangorod, on July 12th of the same year, after three months travelling.
Her new husband was there to greet her, and it was the start of an immediate and passionate love affair. Matthew Parker, who would remain Elizabeth’s closest confidant in Russia for the next six years, reported confidently to Edward that his sister’s wedding had been a magnificent success, attended by representatives from all of the Protestant states of the north; states which up until now had been decidedly suspicious of Ivan’s grand Imperial ambitions. The marriage did not just symbolise the opening of relations between the Third Rome and London; it also began a new era in the history of the Baltic. Henceforth, Russia would no longer be seen as a heretical outsider, but a dynamic Christian power, which the Scandinavians and Prussians could rely on as a staunch ally against the Papacy. Within three months of the wedding, Elizabeth was pregnant. In 1557, she gave birth to a daughter, Anna.
For the young Tsar, Elizabeth was truly a delivery from God. With the death of his beloved first wife, Anastasia, in 1553, he had spent three years in misery, during which many of his boyars had begun to fear for his mental state. After 1556 however, the old Ivan returned with a vengeance. The next year, he set out for war against the Khanate of Astrakhan, a war in which he was magnificently successful. The largest slave market of the Volga was destroyed, and the slaves were freed to become peasant workers back in Russia. Meanwhile, Elizabeth was proving to be a more than capable Tsarina. Within two days of the birth of her daughter, and with her husband absent, she entertained the Swedish ambassador, who had already begun to sniff around baby Anna for a marital alliance. Elizabeth’s letters back to England and her brother show her enjoying a time of blissful marital paradise; in a faraway land where no-one dared question her legitimacy.
Back in England, Edward was finally ready to conduct a marriage of his own. Ever since the Treaty of Boulogne in 1550, he had been betrothed to the daughter of King Henry II of France, Elisabeth of Valois. This had resulted in a long sought peace between England and France, and had moreover provided a steady flow of French gold to support the Edwardian regime. Now, with Elisabeth having reached her 12th birthday, Edward was finally ready to make good on the deal he had signed seven years previously. On June 1st, 1557, the nineteen year old King of England sailed across to Calais, England’s bridgehead on the Continent. There, he met with Henry II, and continued the process of enduring Anglo-French alliance.
Firstly, there were religious matters to consider. Henry was a noted persecutor of Protestant Huguenots, something that Edward felt unable to reconcile with the alliance. Instead, he began a vigorous assault upon his nominal ally’s religious beliefs. Northumberland, attempting to intervene, was rebuffed by the King, who had continued to sideline him over the past year. Astonishingly, Edward got at least part of what he desired. Though his initial attempts to make Protestantism a favoured religion in France failed utterly, he did at least manage to persuade Henry to grant a grudging tolerance towards the Huguenots, for the good of the alliance. Though France would always remain officially a Catholic country, it now began the first steps towards the religious tolerance for which it would later be favourably noted.
Secondly there was the issue of foreign diplomacy. Since 1551, Henry had been involved in an on-off war with the Hapsburgs for control of Italy. With the Turkish invasion of Italy three years earlier though, he had both gained and lost. The Hapsburgs now had the infidel menace right on their doorstep; the Turks were in easy striking distance of Naples and Palermo, and were fully distracted by this problem. On the other hand, Henry’s alliance with the Turks had made him a pariah figure amongst the other Catholic states; he was renowned in Spain and Italy as being an ally of infidels and heretics. Though the French peasants themselves were little concerned by this, being devotedly attached to the Valois monarchy, in Italy it made mass resistance to Henry a real probability.
Edward’s response to this was to fully throw his weight behind his ally. The system built up by Henry was now beginning to bring together a new, powerful alliance block; one that could potentially shake Hapsburg dominance of Europe to its foundations. With both of his children now married, he could claim to be the dominant partner in a family that ruled France, England, and Scotland. Edward now had both of his flanks secure. Heretic he might have been, but there were clearly plenty of Catholic ready to support him.
So, when the marriage took place on the 20th of August, 1557, it was a happy occasion. Elisabeth was utterly entranced by the handsome young King of England, and many of the older members of the French court compared Edward to his father in his younger years, possibly the greatest compliment they could pay for him. As Edward returned to England that autumn, accompanied by his new bride, he could reflect back on two years of unbridled successes. Unfortunately for him, the next few years would not be so kind.
Why didn't you like it?
I don't second this atall
It should be kept going, to good to stop.Sorry for the short response but i got to go shortly but this just keeps getting better
Any ideas who could marry Philip II of Spain in this timeline? I thought a Polish bride for shits and giggles, but I don't want to annoy Matthias any more with unlikely marriages. So I'm up for suggestions
How about a Medici? They were a Regional Power in Italy one of Spain's weakest areas, They were Rich and Catholic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_de'_Medici_(1540-1557)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_de'_Medici_(1540-1557)