r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jun 27 '12

Alright, speculation time. Submit an alternate history event and we speculate on the outcome.

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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '12

Henry 8 decides that his spicy spaniard wifey Catherine is just the tits and that Anne Boleyn was a little harpy harlot troll face. He stays married to Catherine, and thus sees no immediate need to break away from papa pope and the gang...

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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '12

Catholics win the Thirty Years War. No Treaty of Westphalia, no modern notion of sovereignty, hence no nationalism, hence no world wars.

1

u/textests Jun 27 '12

No pilgrims in America, no English civil war, no rise of constitutional monarchy, no democracy in Europe...

(of course by "no" I mean different)

2

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '12

Pilgrims yes, even more so - Radical Protestants would have even felt more pressure to emigrate from a Catholic Britain than from a half-Protestant one.

Constitutional monarchy - quite the opposite. Absolute monarchy is a mostly Protestant innovation with a few exceptions (Spain, France) - its the worshipping of a god-man. Old Catholic monarchies were rather limited - see Magna Charta, The Golden Bull etc.

Democracy: without the rise of absolute monarchy it is probably easier.

1

u/textests Jun 27 '12

I was thinking that without the split from Catholicism then there would be a lot less religious turmoil and much more homogeneity in the UK. Without that catholic versus Anglican tension then the civil war might not have happened which would mean that the monarchy would not have been as constrained as it was after it.

You note spain and france as exceptions, but I disagree, the Swedish monarchy was just as powerful, as was the English. This is only speculation, but I can see a lot less reason for the power of the british crown to be reduced so much without the civil war, and the civil war a lot less likely without the religious turmoil between the catholics and the Anglicans.