cahn

Unfortunately, there was then at Berlin a King who pursued one policy only, who deceived his enemies, but not his servants, and who lied without scruple, but never without necessity.

(from The King's Secret - by Duke de Broglie, grand-nephew of the subject of the book, Comte de Broglie, and grandfather of the physicist) )

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From:

selenak

Before I get to that: one thing James was never good at and which was a fatefully legacy bequeathed to Charles was getting along with his (English) parliament. (He'd gotten along reasonably well with the Scottish variation, but then in Scotland the Kirk was the far more argumentative and powerful institution and James argued with them a lot of the time, not least because he wanted to bring back the bishops, who had cancelled in the hardcore Presbytarian time of his youth. It's always worth remembering that while the English Reformation had been driven from above because Henry wanted a divorce, and monasteries aside had kept the administration and institution of the Church pretty much intact, especially the bishops, the Scottish Reformation had been driven from below AGAINST their monarchs - first regent Marie de Guise, then Mary Queen of Scots and thus had been far more anti authoritarian from the start.) 99% of the times James called for a parliament, he ended up disbanding it in frustration because he and the Commons and Lords could not see eye to eye on most things, especially money, which was the reason why he called it to begin with - i.e. he had to, they were the ones granting him a budget. Early on, part of the problem was that by enobling Robert Cecil and making him Earl of Salisbury (Robert C. had been William Cecil's younger son and thus did not inherit the Lord Burghley title), James had removed Elizabeth's top parliament whisperer and handler from the Commons, and there was never a good replacement. Another problem was the increasing religious paranoia, and a third one that the reputation of James' and James' court steadfastly went downwards the more years passed - scandals like that of Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset and Frances and the murdered Overbury made it easy for the Commons to argue that what James wanted the money for was evidently not a worthy patriotic cause like war with Spain, but to throw it at his amoral corrupt and murderous favourites, and hell no!

Evidently James wasn't the first monarch to have favourites, and favourites who were given offices. Elizabeth had given her favourites some nice and lucrative positions, too, as had every monarch before here. And royal Favourites being hated by nobility and commoners alike is also the rule rather than the exception. (The exception was the Earl of Essex, Elizabeth's last favourite, who was very much popular with the masses, which went to his head and contributed to him losing it.) But here the combination of build up expectations, James' peace policy and and James' style of governing made for an unhappy m ix. Instead of being the manly man succeeding the old woman who brought back a manly style of governing, James was a peace loving gay nerd, and that he loved to hunt (which he did, majorly so) and drink a lot didn't help because that's what he liked to do in a small select company. Renember, access to the monarch is THE most valuable thing to have in this society. All the Tudor monarchs had taken their Privy Councils with them when they went on progress and whereever they were residing, they attended the Council's meetings regularly, especially Elizabeth who was a workhorse. With the male Tudors, becoming a Gentleman of the Bedchamber also as a way for a noble to gain access to the monarch, and these were sought after positions for that reason; the Henries plus young Edward in the short time he had balanced the Privy Council and the Bed Chamber Gentlemen and kept them competing with each other. Evidently Mary and Elizabeth could not appoint Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, so the Privy Council gained dominance, especially in Elilzabeth's long reign. James could and did have Gentlemen of the Bedchamber. (All gay insinuations aside, this really was an important job because of the access thing), and now the situation completely reversed itself, because James rarely made a showing at the Privy Council, he delegated that to his Three Knaves, meaning Robert Cecil most of all for as long as he lived, while spending most of his time with his Gentlemen of the Bedchamber, whom he took along on those hunts etc. And while, as mentioned, James had practically only Englishmen in the Privy Council, the majority of his Gentlemen of the Bedchamber were Scots. This faded out somewhat the longer James ruled in England, but what became appearant was the way for an English newbie to catch the King's eye and be appointed a Gentleman of the Bedchamber was.... by being good-looking and sexy. And remember, there was no war in which the young nobles could distinguish themselves anymore (unless they went as volunteers to the Netherlands or some other continental army).

As oopposed to son Charles, James was pragmatic enough to maintain the ever useful "evil councillor" fiction (i.e. the King's not to blame, it's that evil councillor!!!!) by ditching the occasional too unpopular figure in his adminstration. Not his two most important boyfriends, though. Robert Carr, as we've seen, contributed to his own downfall by withdrawing from James, and George Villiers aka Buckingham managed the all time outstanding magic trick for royal Favourites, endearing himself to the next monarch and having both Kings stick to him through thick and thin.

As also mentioned earlier, young future Buckingham was originally promoted as an alternative to Robert Carr by the Archbishop of Canterbury and some other nobles and even Queen Anne. This included a great public spectacle on St. George's day (= national English holiday), with Anne pointing out to her husband that he could promote that nice young man because hey, his name is George! And they were all sorry very soon, because unlike Robert Carr, who didn't really have ambitions beyond making a lot of cash and used his influence on James for whoever could provide it until the marriage with Frances allied him to the Howards, who then called the shots until his downfall, young George Villiers was no one's toy and strictly in business for himself. He was relatively low provincial nobility and knew he needed a network, so he arranged for his numerous relations (siblings, cousins, etc.) to marry into the high Enligh nobility, and said nobility grudgingly did accept those matches because of the access to the King factor. (This also meant that the high noble families knew that if they ever brought him down, they would suffer as well, being now his in-laws.) He also didn't invent but quadrubled the selling of titles and offices which made him THE most important patron in England. As for politics, originally Buckingham was fine with promoting whatever James wanted to do, he didn't have political goals of his own in the first few years. But when he got closer to 30, it wasn't lost on him that that he would in all likelihood outlive James and spend the majority of his life in King Charles' rule, not King James'. (They were closer age wise, too; when Charles was 23 Buckingham was 30.) He therefore put some efforts into befriending Charles, and while young teen Charles supposedly hadn't liked Buckingham at first, later teen Charles came to adore him. (In a platonic manner. No one has ever suggested Charles I. to be bi, interestingly enough, not even his worst enemies, of which he had a lot, and they all wrote pamphlets.) But befriending Charles coincided with developing a political agenda independent from what James wanted.

For this, we have to back up and check out the continent again. Now Nancy Goldstone has a lot of sharp things to day about James first marrying his daughter Elizabeth to Frederick of the Palatine, i.e. which was taken as a signal of him going to support Frederick in any future struggle with the Habsburgs and then throwing both Frederick and Elizabeth to the dogs when all hell broke loose, and also about him being naive and letting the Spaniards play him by wanting to marry first Henry, then Charles to a Spanish Princess. Meanwhile, the podcasters: by intending to marry one of his kids to the most important Protestant Prince Elector and the other to a daughter of the most important Catholic monarchy in Europe, James intended to establish and entrench his role as mediator and ensurer of European peace. And then that IDIOT Frederick fucked it all up by accepting the Crown of Bohemia from the Bohemian anti Habsburg rebels. It must have at least occured to Elizabeth that Dad might be angry, for she wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, asking him whether he thought her Dad would swallow his anger and support her and Frederick anyway if push came to shove, and the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote back to say, absolutely, hail the Protestant cause, go got the Empire from the Catholic Habsburgs fuck yeah! (Sidenote: yes, that was the same guy who' d originally promoted Buckingham, which had been a religious thing, too, because remember, the Howards were seen as Crypto Catholics, who either were real Catholics or had very strong Catholic sympathies and would undoubtedly lead the country into Spanish subjugation, so Robert Carr had to go.) As it happened, James was furious, and he remained so, but that wasn't the reason why he didn't back Frederick, it was not wanting a bloody religious war engulfing the European continent and then swapping over to Britain and Ireland! Also, he didn't throw Elizabeth and Frederick to the dogs immediately. He did say he would support Frederick's claim to his own realm, the Palatinate, but not Bohemia, and after Frederick had been driven out of Bohemia, James did manage to secure a tentative angreement from Emperor Ferdinand to leave it at t hat if Frederick officially renounced any claim to Bohemia, but THAT IDIOT FREDERICK, despite already being kicked out of Bohemia, refused to do so. He had his subsequent exile in the Netherlands coming. As for not letting him and Elizabeth touch English soil: remember, after the death of Henry, Charles was James' only living son and heir. Charles himself had not yet married and produced offspring, which meant directly after Charles - who had been such a sickly child that no one had really expected him to live into adulthood - came Elizabeth. And Frederick the idiot as the next King of James' realms was his ultimate nightmare. Elizabeth, given that she had supported her husband, wasn't seen as much better.

Charles getting married and reproducing was therefore of increasing importance. Now, as mentioned, James' dream would have been his son (no matter which one)/A Spanish Princess. (Whichever was available. T'he first Spanish princess James had his eye on was actually teen Anne of Austria who got married to teen Louis XIII instead and ended up as the Queen of the Three Musketeers.) But the two main obstacles here were a) the Spanish demand for religious freedom for Catholics in England, including the Infanta if she went there, and b) the religion of any children from that marriage. Contrary to English rumour, the Spanish at no point demanded that the Prince of Wales himself should convert. Round and round the negotiations went, and once Spain stopped dragging its feet about whether or not they'd intervene on the side of their Austrian Habsburg cousins in the Bohemia business and decided to do so, practically all of England hated the very idea of a Spanish match. On the Spanish side, people weren't keen, either, but they also didn't want to ditch the treaty with James and go to war against England again, not least because that would mean England officially backing the Netherlands again (which after a lengthy truce Spain was now at wars with again, still in the hopes of getting them back). The de facto Spanish PM, Olivares, thought the ideal solution would be to talk James into accepting a different Habsburg princess for his son instead - not a Spanish but an Austrian one, not least because the Austrian Habsburgs were a bit more flexible with marrying their daughters to Protestants IF they also had sons to succeed them, and also this would make James an in-law to Emperor Ferdinand as well, cancelling out the Elizabeth connection to Frederick, and started to prepare the groundworks when.... Charles and Buckingham had a brilliant idea for a continental trip!

Edited Date: 2023-10-03 08:38 am (UTC)

From:

cahn

(The exception was the Earl of Essex, Elizabeth's last favourite, who was very much popular with the masses, which went to his head and contributed to him losing it.)

Gosh but you have a way with words :P :) <3

James was a peace loving gay nerd

Aw! (Gosh, I can see why Alan Cummings had a field day with him.)

but what became appearant was the way for an English newbie to catch the King's eye and be appointed a Gentleman of the Bedchamber was.... by being good-looking and sexy.

...whoops.
(Now I'm imagining the AU in which Heinrich is king and Prussia has Gentlemen of the Bedchamber...)

As it happened, James was furious, and he remained so, but that wasn't the reason why he didn't back Frederick, it was not wanting a bloody religious war engulfing the European continent and then swapping over to Britain and Ireland!

Oh wait... can I have a couple more sentences unpacking this? :)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

You can have three paragraphs copied from

selenak's review of Nancy Goldstone's Daughters of the Winter Queen:

First, meet Elizabeth, sole daughter of James the VI and I (of Scotland and England respectively, son of Mary Queen of Scots; played by Alan Cummings on Doctor Who, which I just have to mention). She spends her childhood and teenage years being a princess praised for beauty and cleverness, a golden girl like her brother Henry is a golden boy, and little brother Charles the sickly afterthought. However, James rather surprisingly sells her under marriage market value by accepting a marriage proposal not from European royalty (and definitely not from a British noble - James was justifiably paranoid, and the Gunpowder Plotters apparently had a scheme of making little Elizabeth Queen after offing her male relations), but from one Friedrich, Prince Elector of the Palatine. This made him one of the more powerful princes within the HRE, but still, in no way was he Elizabeth's social equal. Otoh he was her age (they were born just ten days apart), handsome, and had, drumroll, a rather intriguing prospect on the horizon if a whole chain of events would happen, relating to the Crown of Bohemia. Whether James when marrying his daughter to Friedrich was actively encouraging German Protestants to consider his new son-in-law as a candidate for the Bohemian Crown (what the Bohemians thoughts, what many a German Protestant thought, and definitely what Elizabeth thought) or whether he had no such thing in mind (what James said he thought and how he acted subsequently) became a matter of hot debate. Not least because just before the marriage could happen, James' older son Henry died, which make Charles (whose health had been poor all through his youth) the sole surviving male heir, which in turn meant Elizabeth suddenly was next in line for the English and Scottish heritage as well.

Elizabeth marries Friedrich, has a few early good years with him at Heidelberg producing babies, and then the Defenestration of Prague happens, Bohemians vote the Catholic Habsburg Emperor out and Friedrich in re: the Bohemian Crown (with the expectation that hey, father-in-law James, who also accepted the title of head of the German Protestant Defense League surely would have never done that and made the guy his son -in-law if he wasn't willing to spend some money and troops there) - and Thirty Years of the bloodiest, most devastating conflict on European soil until the 20th century have just started. BTW, Goldstone is unabashedly partisan and harsh on James, who at time wanted to marry Charles to a Spanish Infanta (as in, a Habsburg, Catholic one), not only didn't do anything to help Elizabeth and her husband but explicitly forbade her and any of her children to return to England once the war turned against them (which it quickly did), but you can of course make the case that this way, he kept Britain out of the hell that was this particular war. (Otoh whether or not this war would have happened when it did and the way it did if he'd made it clear earlier that he would act this way is also up to debate.)

The reason why Elizabeth and her husband are called "The Winter Queen and the Winter King" is that they didn't last much longer before a crushing defeat happened that ousted them from Prague. Worse was to come, because Friedrich's own principality, the Palatinate, was next. Which meant Elizabeth was on the run with no money, no backup, one toddler (Rupert, btw), her highly pregnant again, and her three older children with her mother-in-law. At which point she becomes interesting as she shows she's one of the Stuarts who are best in adversity. Courtesy of the Prince Elector of Brandenburg having married Friedrich's sister, they end up at first in, drumroll, Küstrin, which is mostly famous because that's where Elizabeth's great-grandson would lock up his son, her great great grandson, future Frederick the Great, and force him to watch his friend's and probable lover's execution, so naturally I paid attention at the naming of this particular location. However, their brother-in-law of Brandenburg doesn't want any trouble with the Emperor, so this was only temporary, and they ended up in the Netherlands, sponsored by the Prince of Orange. Elizabeth's ever increasing number of children reads like a list of the people she hoped would help her in her stubborn lobbying campain for allies and to get at least the Palatinate back. (Notably, there's not a single "James" among them, but a Gustavus Adolphus, after the most famous Protestant ruler of the 30 Years War.)

The 30 Years' War engulfed most of the countries of Europe (although mostly fought on German territory), and James, by refusing to get involved despite all the pressure, at least kept his kingdoms out of it.

From:

selenak

(Now I'm imagining the AU in which Heinrich is king and Prussia has Gentlemen of the Bedchamber...)

I don't renember anymore at which point in his life Lehndorff did his history of the Stuarts reading (complete with commenting in his diary that they were a weird family ~~so unlike our own dear Hohenzollern~~), but if it was later rather than earlier, I bet he mentally cast Kaphengst as Buckingham.

Also, given that apparantly being good looking didn't hurt your prospects for serving as Fritz' chamber hussar, either, there's no AU necessary, just a Glasow story. (Because the others didn't get important jobs other than guarding Fritz, but Glasow at least temporarily did.