Dynatic battles are common in European history. The old king dies, two relatives (soms, brothers, nephews, whatever) raise armies and battle for the throne. The two most famous in English history are probably the Battle of Hastings and Bosworth Field. In each of those, one claimant died and the other became king.
Has there ever been such a battle where both claimants died?
I’m almost sure it must have happened at some level ( maybe not king vs. king, but at some other level of contested title ). But I’m blanking on any instances for the moment.
I can think of battles were both commanders died ( i.e. Lazar and Murad I at Kosovo in 1389 ), but that wasn’t in the context of a dynastic dispute. And I can think of ones where the rival dynast won a key battle, only to die immediately afterwards of his wounds and render his victory moot ( i.e. anti-king Rudolf of Rheinfelden vs. HRE Henry IV in 1080 ). But obviously neither of those scenarios meet your criteria.
Dying of wounds sustained in the battle would count, but Henry survived that battle, so it’s not what I’m looking for.
I’m mostly wondering what would happen if both claimants die before the dispute is resolved. I wonder what they do in that situation. I suppose new claimants would come out of the woodwork to fill the power vacuum.
You’d expect each of the claimants to have an heir/successor, so in theory the quarrel could be further prosecuted by their respective successors.
In practice, of course, it will depend on the outcome of the battle. If the battle resulted not only in the deaths of the claimants but also in a decisive victory for one side over the other, the successor on the vanquished side may decide that it would be prudent not to pursue the claim. So instead he will submit, and marry the other successor’s sister or daughter or something.
It wasn’t strictly speaking a dynastic squabble, but the Battle of Clontarf was fought in 1014 between forces under Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, on the one hand and a alliance between the Norse Dubliners under Sitric Silkbeard and Irish forces under Máel Mórda mac Murchada, king of Leinster, on the other. At stake was the question of whether Dublin and Leinster would be subject to Brian, or not. The outcome was a decisive victory for Brian’s forces, but both Brian and Máel Mórda died. Sitric survived, and remained King of Dublin, but having lost the battle he was very much a secondary power from then on, and Dublin never achieved the independence for which Sitric had fought.
As I say, not a dynastic squabble, but I think the principle holds good. Individuals are dispensible; what matters in a battle is not which leaders died and which survived, but which side won and which side lost.
The Wars of the Roses are an extended example of this.
Which kind of makes the point that dynastic wars are not really wars between different individuals, but wars between different families/tribes/interest groups. Thus the death of a leader on one side or other doesn’t automatically end the war.
And nature abhors a [power] vacuum.
Think Mafia “families”…
Some pre-modern cultures believed in exile/shunning instead of retribution.
Exile is a form of retribution and one which is still extant.
After William Stanley betrayed Richard at Bosworth, Henry married Elizabeth of York (daughter of Edward IV) and in doing so he united the houses of Lancaster and York. (sort of…)
There really wasn’t any House of Lancaster left at that point, was there?
Well, there was Henry.
King John II of Portugal, who was actually the legitimate Lancaster claimant (though John didn’t seem to have any interest in it).
Not the same battle, but Harald Godwinson and Harald Hardrada were killed days apart at the Battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings. Of course, that left a third claimant alive - William the Conqueror.
Not dynastic, but the fleeing viking that killed Brian was supposedly of some note.
Fun reading on the subject.
Fun, but not necessarily accurate.
Icelandic sources say that Brian was killed by Brodir of Man who, yes, was a figure of some note. But other sources say that it was Brian who killed Brodir. All that can be said with confidence is that both of them died at the Battle of Clontarf.