One of history's more fascinating What Ifs

On this date in 1483, Edward IV died, just a few weeks shy of his 41st birthday. We sometimes play the What If game here. Well, Edward’s death offers a gigantic What if. Had he not died prematurely, had he lived another ten or fifteen years, the consequences of that would be mind-boggling. His son would have been grown at the time of his eventual death and most likely would have succeeded to the throne. It is impossible to say what would have happened then. We can only be sure of the obvious. No King Richard III. No Shakespeare play. No Sunne in Splendour. No Tudors! Would England have remained Catholic? Or would it have heeded Martin Luther’s siren song? Who knows? But it is fascinating to speculate about it.
April 9th 1137 was also the death date of Eleanor’s father, William, the 10th Duke of Aquitaine, He was only thirty-eight. And on this date in 1413, Henry V was crowned as King of England.
April 9th is often given as the death date for Richard III and Anne Neville’s son, Edward of Middleham. I’ve always been skeptical of this; it sounded like Tudor propaganda, for if Richard’s son had died on the same day as his brother, it would seem as if it was the punishment of God for his sin in claiming the throne and supposedly putting his nephews to death. The Croyland Chronicler was not a friend to Richard, but this is what he wrote:
“However, in a short time after, it was fully seen how vain are the thoughts of a man who desires to establish his interests without the aid of God. For, in the following month of April, on a day not very far distant from the anniversary of king Edward, this only son of his, in whom all the hopes of the royal succession, fortified with so many oaths, were centred, was seized with an illness of but short duration, and died at Middleham Castle, in the year of our Lord, 1484, being the first of the reign of the said king Richard. On hearing the news of this, at Nottingham, where they were then residing, you might have seen his father and mother in a state almost bordering on madness, by reason of their sudden grief.”
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Outlander fans probably already know that the new season begins tonight on Starz; sadly, still 15 days to wait for Game of Thrones. Oh, and it is snowing here, with snow flake the size of baseballs. Maybe I should have named my new laptop Mother Nature instead of Diablo, for she seems to share his perverse sense of humor.