This particular version of history, which I call CASE ORANGE (for no particular reason, it just sounded good to me), is identical to our own history until a chilly February evening in a damp Welsh castle in 1502. The change, or
Point of Departure (as some would call it), is that the two Royals staying in the castle that night manage to conceive a child.
So...what's so earth-shattering about that?
Well, nothing much...at least not in the beginning. However, since these particular Royals were the Prince and Princess of Wales,
changes were bound to happen in a big way and soon. More to the point, these particular Royals were Arthur Tudor, who was Henry VIII's older Brother, and his young wife, Catherine (recently of Aragon). The product of their fateful union that night was a boy; unfortunately, the Prince would not live to see the birth of his son at Carnarvon Castle (he was to die, just as in "our" history, on April 2, 1502). The son, named Edward, was to throw the line of succession to his grandfather's throne into turmoil; after all, was he not the son and sole heir to the title of Prince of Wales?
Yeah...so what if he was?
By being the Prince, he became next in line to become King of England when his grandfather, Henry VII, finally got around to dying, which he promptly did on April 21, 1509, when young Edward was but a lad of six. Edward's uncle Henry, who had set his sights on being King himself, was, to say the least, somewhat perturbed by this turn of events, since the boy had failed to die in some "accident" before Henry VII had kicked the bucket. What's more, the old king had taken a liking to his grandson, no doubt due to his eldest son's untimely demise some years before. The younger Henry, then, was forced to take the title of Duke of Richmond and hope that Fate would smile on him and not on Edward.
