- Location
- Over the rainbow
This is part historical question, part-scenario.
Basic scenario is what if Elizabeth I had an illegitimate son, let's call him Edward, who would have been around 40 at the time of her death. This isn't the claimant Arthur Dudley, of whom the consensus seems to be that he was a fraud, but another illegitimate son of parentage which Elizabeth never officially revealed. Edward accomplished very little in his life up until that point, largely because Elizabeth kept him in the Tower a lot of the time and on a short leash the rest of the time to avoid him being used as a weapon against her.
Assume that the other events of her reign broadly play out as OTL (I know, butterflies), but that Robert Deveraux, 2nd Earl of Essex never ends up leading a coup against Elizabeth, and so is alive and still of some stature at her death.
I'm curious what the claims would be to the succession at this point, and who (if any) of the notables at the English court would favour him for the succession. It would presumably take an Act of Parliament to declare him a valid heir. In OTL, of course, Robert Cecil backed James VI of Scotland. Would Cecil still favour James VI in these circumstances? I presume that given their rivalry, whichever candidate Cecil backs, Deveraux will back the other, though there may be an angle I'm missing.
Disclosure: this is a scenario I'm working on for a short story/novelette for submission to a non-SLP anthology, if I can get things to gel right. Just not sure of all of the players, and trying to untangle the politics of late Elizabethan England is taking me longer to work out that it should.
Basic scenario is what if Elizabeth I had an illegitimate son, let's call him Edward, who would have been around 40 at the time of her death. This isn't the claimant Arthur Dudley, of whom the consensus seems to be that he was a fraud, but another illegitimate son of parentage which Elizabeth never officially revealed. Edward accomplished very little in his life up until that point, largely because Elizabeth kept him in the Tower a lot of the time and on a short leash the rest of the time to avoid him being used as a weapon against her.
Assume that the other events of her reign broadly play out as OTL (I know, butterflies), but that Robert Deveraux, 2nd Earl of Essex never ends up leading a coup against Elizabeth, and so is alive and still of some stature at her death.
I'm curious what the claims would be to the succession at this point, and who (if any) of the notables at the English court would favour him for the succession. It would presumably take an Act of Parliament to declare him a valid heir. In OTL, of course, Robert Cecil backed James VI of Scotland. Would Cecil still favour James VI in these circumstances? I presume that given their rivalry, whichever candidate Cecil backs, Deveraux will back the other, though there may be an angle I'm missing.
Disclosure: this is a scenario I'm working on for a short story/novelette for submission to a non-SLP anthology, if I can get things to gel right. Just not sure of all of the players, and trying to untangle the politics of late Elizabethan England is taking me longer to work out that it should.