What if King Edward VI had lived and married Catherine Jagiellon in 1556?
- Thread starter phx1138
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He wouldn’t marry her. Not only was she nearly a decade older than him, he was engaged to Elisabeth of Valois (OTL Queen of Spain) who is a far more prestigious match.
Catherine also had an older unmarried sister, Anna, who would be offered in marriage before her. There was a custom in Poland at the time for older sisters to marry first and Catherine's OTL marriage to John of Sweden was humiliating for Anna at the time. I guess the age gap is similar to Catherine's OTL marriage, but I doubt Edward VI would be happy marry someone over a decade older than him who was an entrenched Catholic. I don't think Edward would believe he could convince Catherine to convert to Protestantism like he could the much younger Elisabeth of Valois.
considering that all three of his potential wives- Mary, QoS, Juana of Spain and Élisabeth de Valois- were Catholic, this is the hill you choose to die on?
Remind me again how many he either married or was contracted to marry.
They were (failed) negotiations by Henry on Edward's behalf, not marriage contracts. They wouldn't have happened, and of course they didn't happen.
Now if we're talking about Edward surviving and being able to influence his own marriage, he'd have married a Protestant. It's blindingly obvious from what we know about Edward VI that he had - as per Henry's instructions - been raised as a devout Protestant, and actually a rather zealous one. If he'd survived I would imagine a sort of reverse-Mary situation in which he starts burning Catholics and makes sure everyone around him is similarly puritanical.
I don't know why anyone thinks he would have married a French or Polish Catholic, let alone the woman who went on to marry his absolute antithesis: Philip II of Spain.
Catherine Vasa, perhaps? Oldest daughter of Gustav I of Sweden. Sweden had broken from Rome properly in 1536 after the synod of Uppsala, and Catherine (born in 1539) is only two years younger than Edward VI.
Yes, Sweden is a good shout - I was actually mid-way through typing a reply as yours popped up:
Realistically, for a foreign bride, I think you're looking at a Huguenot or Scandinavian princess - or possibly a Stuart, on the (possible) assumption that there's a Protestant available. Mary of Scots is only a few years younger but obviously raised by (and allied with) Catholics IRL, but in a butterfly effect scenario, who knows? If you've got an earlier conversion in Scotland or Mary doesn't go for a French marriage and is willing to convert in order to marry Edward then I suppose it's feasible. It really depends on how many variables you're allowing here, and to what extent people's personalities could change. That said, I'm probably inclined to think that Mary and Edward is an unlikely pairing - if only because they were raised as religious polar opposites, but you could probably argue that in Mary's case the French/Guise influence is a deciding factor there, and if she'd been raised by her father's family in a Scotland that had already (officially) abandoned Rome and been free of the Guise (and Valois) influence of the French court then... well, it's possible, but I accept there's probably too much heavy lifting to do there.
so that's why he was so convinced he could convert Élisabeth de Valois that he consented to the marriage?
"Consented" is certainly a key word here, given that Edward didn't choose her and really had no say in the matter.
if that's the qualification you're gonna use, that rules out almost most royal marriages until the 1950s
I think @mandead means to say that Edward would break the engagement if he’d survived.
But Edward did agree to marry her and was in fact convinced that he could get her to convert. Hopefully he would go through with the match because otherwise I fear for England’s continental possessions.
Are you being obtuse or do you genuinely not understand the difference between adults arranging marriages for one another and children having adults arrange marriages for them?
My feeling is he had the wisdom of a teenager who had been told the world revolved around his every command. He might go through with it, but when he gets a 'no' much drama commences.
I personally like the idea of the rough wooing being successful.
Not at all, and nothing personal meant. There's an awful lot I don't know about an awful lot of things, but I have read biographies of Edward VI and it is fairly clear from contemporary accounts that he was very Protestant and, had he lived, would have carried out a thorough conversion of England. Indeed, he'd already made a sizeable imprint in this regard as a child. An interesting mini 'what if?' with Edward is really what happens to Mary, because she was much older than him and already a devout Catholic, and there was really no love lost between the three siblings due to age and religious differences, outlook, and the fate of their respective mothers. What does Mary do in a Protestant England under Edward? Does she stay loyal and bite her lip, or try to foment rebellion with people like Norfolk? Does she still try to marry a foreign Catholic? In this scenario Elizabeth is less relevant of course, but until Edward marries and has children, Mary is presumably still heir to the throne - at least according to 'legitimists' and Catholics (groups which overlap but are not necessarily the same) who view her as Henry's only legitimate offspring and won't back the Greys as Edward's initial heirs.In my case, it's blinding ignorance.
not presumably. She is heir to the throne. No legitimist question over Edward's cradle like Elizabeth, since both KoA and Anne Boleyn were deader than doornails by the time Eddie was born.
why? Edward basically left her alone on her estates in Anglia OTL because it was safer to keep her away from court. When she did come to court, they disagreed vehemently about religion. But as long as Edward is alive- regardless of how repugnant Mary finds his Protestantism- she remains loyal. It was easier for Edward to just pretend to ignore his Catholic half-sister (except when he needed her Spanish connections) than to actually take any action against her. That being said, it's not like Karl V or Felipe II would back Mary against her unquestionably legitimate (if Protestant) brother.