France and Brittany were inherited by separate people and Claude’s wedding contract to Francis had no separation clause. And Francis was only heir presumptive of France at the time of his marriage meaning who he was not guaranteed to inherit the French Crown
Dragon King: the Many Wives, Mistresses and Children of King Henry VIII (1491-1577)
- Thread starter Brita
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Joan, Countess of Auvergne (1521-1546)
Joan, Countess of Auvergne (1521-1546)
Marie Allan played both Joan, Henry’s eldest daughter by Madeleine de La Tour d’Auvergne, and her daughter Jeanne.
Joan was the first-born child of Henry VIII and his fourth wife Madeleine de La Tour d’Auvergne. She had a younger brother, John who was created Duke of York and succeeded their mother as Count of Auvergne. In early 1533, John fell ill and died. His death was attributed to natural causes at the time but a few years later, his stepmother Anne Boleyn was later suspected of having poisoned him, although this theory has now been discredited by historians.
When her brother died, Joan became Countess of Auvergne in her own right. As such, it was quite naturally that Henry and the French king decided that she would marry the Dauphin. In 1538, the princess travelled to France and met her betrothed.
Joan, however, had not inherited her father’s health. Although she became pregnant soon after her wedding, the birth of her son François was very difficult and left her so weak, that many feared she would not be able to live through another pregnancy. Three years later, Joan and her husband decided to try and have another child and in 1543, she gave birth to a daughter, named Madeleine after her grandmother. The Dauphine was a little disappointed, as she had hoped to give her husband a spare. This time again, she was exhausted by the birthing and another two years passed before she became pregnant again. When her third child, another girl, was born, Joan did not survive. The Dauphin named their last child Jeanne in memory of his beloved wife and coincidentally, the little girl grew up to be her mother’s spitting image.
Children
1 François, Duke of Anjou (1539-154)2 Madeleine de Valois (1543-1597)
3 Jeanne de Valois (1546-1604)
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I like the way this whole thread could be viewed as a means to post pictures of very pretty actresses. In SFW poses/costumes of course.
Thanks! I'm polishing the next chapter.
Not just actresses tbh: now that we're done with Henry's wives and mistresses, we have a few male characters to portray.
And since the series aired in 2015 ITTL, I'm trying to find OTL actors/actresses who are more or less the right age for them. Having grown up with Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia, some of the choices were obvious of course.
I also tried to find as many redheads as I could, as I like to imagine red hair becoming more common due to the number of Tudor descendants, although for Joan, I wanted someone with pale blonde hair, just like her mother.
Alice Boleyn (1532-1589) and Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland (1528-1587); Amy Boleyn (1535-1597) and Louis I de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (1530-1571)
Alice (1532-1589) and Amy Boleyn (1535-1597)
Canadian actresses Melanie Pullman and Geraldine Levasseur played Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn’s daughters Alice and Amy.
Theo FitzFoulk and Pierre Marchand were cast as Thomas Percy and Louis I de Bourbon-Condé, the Boleyn sisters’ husbands.
Alice and Amy Boleyn were the two surviving children of the ill-fated Queen Anne Boleyn. Bastardised following the annulment of their parents’ wedding and their mother’s execution, they were sent to Romsey Abbey to be brought up by the nuns. Alice was four years old at the time, and Amy a mere one-year-old infant.
Their first years in the convent were, to say the least, the worst of their life. Alice would later record in her memoirs that the nuns showed them no compassion, often calling them the spawn of the Devil and a witch, and subjected them to the harshest treatment, making them fast or wear hairshirt cilice “in the hope that it would redeem [their] wretched souls”.
Although they were taught to read the Bible, the sisters received no education, teaching themselves to write English. Amy, who was able to read by the age of four, even started to translate her Bible into English, incurring the nuns’ wrath.
A change came with the arrival of Deianira Cominata Arianiti in the nunnery in late 1541. The King’s pregnant mistress was the first person to show them kindness and the girls clung to her, eventually coming to see her as a mother. The nuns treated Deianira with less animosity, knowing that she had not fallen from the King’s grace and was there on Queen Christina’s request only, and they reluctantly let the young woman care for the girls.
When Deianira was allowed to leave the nunnery, she promised Alice and Amy to take them away as soon as she could. The girls waiting anxiously for her return and after six long months, they were released from Romsey and welcomed to Deianira’s newly-built house, Paleologa Manor.
There, they were brought up by the woman they called their mother along with their half-siblings Deianira and Constantine. They also met their first cousin once removed Katheryn Howard, who would later marry the King.
The nunnery had left scars that would never fade however but, just like both sisters were very different in their looks – one a “fair-haired angel”, the other a “dark-haired imp” – their trauma expressed itself in different ways: Alice was a quiet, reclusive girl and spent most of her time reading and studying, even learning several foreign languages, as well as Latin and Ancient Greek. She trusted few people but formed lasting bonds with them.
Amy, although a gifted student, would rather roam in the gardens and ride the pony her father had offered her when she first came to Paleologa Manor than learn her lessons. She had very little patience and her fits of temper often echoed between the walls of the house, so much that she was often called the “wild child” of the family.
Among the visitors admitted to Paleologa Manor were the Seymour siblings, Anne Boleyn and Katheryn Howard’s distant cousins. Jane and Elizabeth Seymour had married two of Henry VIII’s elder illegitimate sons and regularly visited their cousin Katheryn. They were usually accompanied by their brother Thomas.
Although the young man seems to have shown a discreet interest in Katheryn, he did not try to woo her, especially as she was in a relationship with one of Henry’s favourite illegitimate sons, Edmund, who would later be Duke of Cambria.
He however approached Alice and, to judge from a passage in her memoirs, tried to rape her. Deianira had been dead for a few months at the time and it was her mother Francesca Paleologa di Monferrato’s intervention that saved Alice from Seymour’s clutches. Although Jane and Elizabeth Seymour’s visits to Paleologa Manor continued after that, Thomas was forbidden to come back.
A few weeks later, Alice and Amy were officially relegitimised, although they kept being referred to as the “Boleyn sisters” by both contemporary and later writers. If Amy enjoyed living at her father’s court, taking parts to balls, revelries and hunting parties with great joy, Alice would often keep to herself, regularly making long stays at Paleologa and Di Monferrato Manors.
As time passed, many thought the eldest of the Boleyn sisters would remain single and indeed, she remained so until the age of thirty-four, when she eventually married Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland. They had met as early as 1545, when she had first been introduced to court and Thomas had proposed to her in 1550, but she had rejected him at the time. He, however, did not seem to be interested in anyone else, as he is not known to have fathered illegitimate children, and although he did not pursue her, he eventually proposed again in 1566 and this time, Alice agreed.
Thomas and Alice left court soon after their wedding, retiring on his estates to live the quiet life in the countryside Alice had always loved and paying regular visits to the Paleologa and Di Monferrato families. They only returned to London to attend the ceremonies of Henry VIII’s subsequent weddings and his funeral, as well as the coronation of her half-brother Francis I.
Amy, on the contrary, lived up to her reputation as a wild child. In 1551, she travelled to Brittany at her half-sister Elizabeth’s request and was her nephew Henri de Chalon’s godmother. She spent several months on the continent, travelling to the French court to meet her nieces Madeleine and Jeanne de Valois.
It was during her stay in Paris that she met the dashing Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, who had recently returned from Piedmont. The two fell in love at first sight and eloped, marrying in Rouen Cathedral, where her ancestor Rollo had been buried. Although Amy and Louis’s marriage caused great scandal in France and England, they did not seem to care.
As years passed, Amy showed marked interest in Calvinism. Her traumatic childhood years at Romsey Abbey had left her with conflicted feelings as far as religion was concerned: she had loathed the nuns at Ramsey but Deianira’s devotion had made a lasting impression on her mind. She secretly converted in 1555 and encouraged her husband to follow suit. Louis himself had been a sympathiser of the Reformation and he converted soon after. However, he was killed in 1571 in one of the French Religion Wars. His eldest son would also die a few years later, leaving an underage son whom Amy raised.
Alice’s children
1 Lady Anne Percy (1567-1615)2 Henry Percy, 8th Earl of Northumberland (1568-1620)
3 Thomas Percy (1570-1575)
Amy’s children
1 Aimée de Bourbon (1552-1603)2 Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (1555-1579)
3 Louis de Bouron, Prince of Conti (1557-1610)
4 Alice de Bourbon (1558-1561)
5 Déjanire de Bourbon (1559-1602)
6 Charles de Bourbon, Count of Soissons (1563-1601)
7 Françoise de Bourbon (1565-1567)
8 Louise de Bourbon (1570-1621)
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What's going on in France? Without Claude as Francis' wife, surely it looks very different
Don't worry, I've written a few chapters about the French succession. I'll post them after those about Henry's children (there's only a few left, because I'm not making chapters for all of them!)
May I request to see the children of Renata, Katherine Howard, and Mary Boleyn?
Well, that's probably going to have some pretty major effects on Ireland.
France: And we would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for Henry and perfidious England. They out-perfidied our perfidy!
Renè should have inherited and if Anna was alive that is exactly what would have happened.
Mary Boleyn's son Edmund will have a chapter.
I considered writing one about Christina of Denmark's son Maximilian, who became Archbishop of Canterbury, but found that I didn't have much to say about him, except that he never forgave his father for suspecting him of being a bastard and sending him to the Church, and that he strongly disliked Renata's and Charlotte's children but got on very well with his Di Monferrato half-siblings. And he had children of his own, despite being a clergyman - he's Henry's son after all, even if he doesn't look a lot like him. Well, maybe I'll write something about him after all.
Speaking of the Di Monferrato kids, one of them will have a chapter too.
I have nothing planned for Renata's and Katheryn Howard's children. Since most of the post cover events that happened in Henry's lifetime, I didn't write one about Francis I. And I imagine Katheryn's daughters married into English families. Although their mother's execution tarnished their reputation a little, they looked too much like their father to be suspected of being illegitimate children.
Actually, I may have an idea for one of Katheryn's daughters.
I would be very interested in seeing peeks at events that occurred in this timeline after the 16th century.
I don't have much planned for the next centuries. All I can give you is a bit of info regarding modern-day countries and how different borders will be compared to OTL.
Maximilian “the Roman” Tudor, Archbishop of Canterbury (1545-1610)
Maximilian “the Roman” Tudor, Archbishop of Canterbury (1545-1610)
Although he was considered for the role of King Francis I Tudor, Manx actor Ewan Maddrell eventually played the Archibishop of Canterbury Maximilian Tudor, who happens to be his ancestor.
Maximilian Tudor was Christina of Denmark’s second son but the only one to outlive his father. René I de Chalon’s presence in England at the time of his conception and Christina’s alleged infidelity led Henry to believe that he was not his son. The older the boy grew, the less he looked like his father, to Henry’s bitter disappointment.
When Maximilian was thirteen, his father decided to send him to the Church. Although Maximilian’s legitimacy had never been put in doubt publicly, the boy was aware of the suspicions that surrounded his birth, and he saw Henry’s decision as sheer betrayal. He had hoped that the King, at least, would take his side against scandalmongers, only to find that his father believed them.
From this day on, and although he always remained respectful to Henry in public, Maximilian considered himself an orphan, as he would write in a letter years later.
When Maximilian’s elder brother Christian died on his way to meet his betrothed, Archduchess Barbara of Austria, their younger half-brother Henry, Duke of York, became heir apparent and was created Prince of Wales. Henry died two years later, however, and was succeeded by his twin brother Francis, the future King Francis I Tudor.
Maximilian had a very strained relationship with his younger half-siblings, especially Renata’s and Charlotte’s sons, as he felt he should have taken precedence over them in the line of succession. He mostly ignored Lady Margaret Seymour’s sons, whom he seldom saw, but he probably felt the same toward them.
After Henry VIII converted to Calvinism, Maximilian became the man disgruntled Catholics gathered around and he took this new role very seriously, advocating the Catholic cause and earning the moniker “the Roman” because of his impassioned speeches.
If Maximilian had a strained relationship with his legitimate half-brothers, he held the Di Monferrato siblings in high esteem, especially Bonifacio. It was through him that Maximilian met Lady Elizabeth Hastings, a daughter of Francis Hastings, 2nd Earl of Huntingdon, as Elizabeth’s youngest sister Lady Mary had married Bonifacio.
Maximilian and Elizabeth became lovers and had five children. After King Francis’s death in 1609, Maximilian supported the rebels who tried to replace his successor by another claimant – in vain. He was deprived of his Archbishopric and briefly imprisoned as a result but owned his release to the new Queen’s intercession.
Children
1 Boniface Tudor (1572-1609)2 Maximilian Tudor (1575-1632)
3 Elizabeth Tudor (1579-1643)
4 Helen Tudor (1580-1638)
5 Christian Tudor (1583-1648)
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