Artemisia
Heir Presumptive, Royal Blogger
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2012
- Messages
- 5,436
- City
- Yerevan
- Country
- Armenia
Mary had a number of potential suitors. As the eldest daughter of Henry VIII, she was always a very desirable bride, even after Edward was born.
When Mary was only two, she was indeed (informally) betrothed the the French Dauphin (the future Francis III, Duke of Brittany). The marriage contract was annulled after three years. At the age of six, she was betrothed to marry her cousin, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (she would later marry his son, Philip II of Spain), but nothing came of that either: this time, the contract was broken by Charles with Henry's permission. The possibility of a French alliance then resurfaced, only this time Mary's "groom" was the father of her former one - Francis I. Another candidate was Francis I's second surviving son, Henry, Duke of Orleans (future Henry II of France), but again, the plans never materialised. Among other possible candidates for marriage were the Duke of Bavaria and the Duke of Cleves (the latter, was for political reasons but instead of marrying of Mary to the Duke, Henry married the Duke's sister, Anne of Cleves).
At one time, Reginald Pole's name was mentioned; Pole was the son of the Countess of Salisbury (Mary's confidant later beheaded by Henry VIII). He had more than a drop of royal blood in his veins as well: his maternal grandfather was George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence - brother to Edward IV and Richard III, while his maternal grandmother was the daughter of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick (who, incidentally, had exactly the same claims to the Throne as Henry VIII's father, Henry VII: Warwick was a great-grandson of John of Gaunt (third surviving son of Edward III) though the illegitimate Beaufort line.
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