Highly underused PODs with great potential

[BigfootedAJ]

Successful Peasants Revolt?

Australian Aborigines more modern at the time of British colonization?

Islamic victory at Poltieres or whatever that place is called?

Britain and France don't assist the Ottomans during the Crimean War?

Successful Jewish Revolt in AD 70?

[MrP]

Originally Posted by Adûnakhôr

Chaos TL??????

Why, it's in Max's very sig, old boy. Come on, now. Keep up!

[Kinny Riddle]

Three Kingdoms period:

Pang Tong survives, leading to him being assigned to manage the strategic province of Jingzhou instead of the hot-headed Guan Yu. Pang Tong's diplomatic skills prevents ally Sun Quan - who still desires Jingzhou for himself - from being too antagonized and being goaded by Cao Cao to ambush Guan Yu in return for capturing Jingzhou as in OTL.

Eventually, Liu Bei's forces hold onto Jingzhou by the time Cao Pi's usurpation takes place, tipping the scales evenly once again pre-Red Cliff.

(In OTL, once Jingzhou was lost to Sun Quan, Zhuge Liang's master plan fell into tatters. The best Zhuge could do was muster all the available but limited forces in Shu Province in the hope of breaking through Cao Wei's defenses during his Northern Expeditions, but his arch-nemesis Sima Yi would not rise to his bait. And so Zhuge Liang and his successor Jiang Wei were merely delaying the inevitable.

Sun Quan and his successors were content with staying south of the Yangtze and thus the potential of using Jingzhou as a springboard for a Northern Expedition to unite "All Under Heaven" was wasted under Eastern Wu's hands. )

I dunno if I'm overhyping Pang Tong. I'm aware all this RotK Crouching Dragon/Young Phoenix stuff is simply fictional BS to make them sound awesome, so please go easy on me.

[Cuāuhtemōc]

The Alans beating the Visigoths under Wallia is a nice POD. It keeps Hispania under Alanic, Vandalic, Suevic, and Roman rule for a while longer.

[Snake Featherston]

TLs where the USSR wins the Axis-Soviet war faster. In particular the consequences of this for the war in the Pacific would be interesting.

TLs where OTL Revolutions are led by someone else, like Yang Quyun for Sun Yat-Sen, D'Annunzio for Mussolini, Rohm destroys Hitler in 1934....

A polity other than Muscovy uniting *Russia.

China remaining a collection of states, not a singular empire.

India not being under direct rule.

The USA wins the Civil War in a different way.

Anything to do with South American wars.

[Wendell]

Different dynasties ruling the BYzantine Empire.

[Amedras]

If the two Fredericks reconciliate in Altenburg in 1445, the Saxon Fratricidal War doesn't happen, with enormous consequences down the line. (No Ernestine-Albertine division, no House of Saxe-Coburg-Gothas...)

Almost all Reformation TLs I've seen or heard of focus on Germany; nobody ever remembers that Zwingli existed.

Philip of Hesse's another underused nexus of PODs, enough that I'm thinking of writing a Hesse-wank revolving around them at some point in the unspecified future. (Once I'm done with Ixbiliada.)

[Darth_Kiryan]

George II Killed at Dettingen. Ascension of Frederick, Prince of Wales to Throne of Great Britain.

[Snake Featherston]

Civil War PODs underutilized with great potential:

1) Confederate defeat at First Bull Run
2) Charles F. Smith assumes command of the Army of the Tennessee
3) George H. Thomas assumes command of the Army of the Cumberland in December of 1862.
4) Stonewall Jackson brings the Sheridan-Sherman kind of war to 1862 Pennsylvania
5) McClellan wins in the fall of 1862 *without* Order 191.
6) Confederates win either the 1862 Kentucky battle or the Battle of Stone's River
7) Confederate defeat in the Chancellorsville Campaign
8) Lincoln lives, has second term, confronts Ku Klux Klan

[Sift Green]

Empress Myeongseong is not assassinated. Korea's modernization efforts continue and Korea maintains its independence from Japan.

[Condottiere]

What about a successful Taiping Rebellion?

[Sift Green]

Originally Posted by Firelizard

What about a successful Taiping Rebellion?

That is incredibly difficult. It might be possible if the Taiping were trying to become independent of China, but they were fighting for control of the entire country. And they really didn't get that far:

[Snake Featherston]

Another one is Fascist Italy as an Allied, as opposed to an Axis, power.

[SavoyTruffle]

Originally Posted by Amedras

Almost all Reformation TLs I've seen or heard of focus on Germany; nobody ever remembers that Zwingli existed.

Hey. I remember him. Which is why the alt-Lutheranism in my TL is called Zwingliism.

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by Firelizard

What about a successful Taiping Rebellion?

As difficult to do as a Confederate victory in the US Civil War and a White victory in the Russian Civil War. The Taiping Tanguo has far more against it than it does for it. And the result would be a 19th Century Christian equivalent to Maoism.

[rule_them_all]

The plan of rescuing Napoleon in St. Helena in 1817, by the Pernambucano revolutionaries in Brazil, and take him there, where, they hoped, he would lead them in battle and establish a freedom-loving latin-american empire. They also went to the US and tried to recruit american mercenaries and get the sympathy from the American government.
Epicness ensues.

[APreston]

Tibet not conquered by the PRC

Chamberlain sees the writing on the wall with Hitler and takes a harder stance.

Canadian colonies join the ARW or start their own concurrent rebellion

Timur crushes the Ottomans

Islamic expansion goes east rather than west

A surviving Shogunate in Japan

Japan independently develops cannon and western-style warships prior to 1853.

[Elfwine]

Islam went east as well as westward, so I'm not sure I understand how "east instead of west" is a POD.

Measuring east and west relative to the Arabian peninsula, for want of a better objective spot.

[Condottiere]

Originally Posted by rule_them_all

The plan of rescuing Napoleon in St. Helena in 1817, by the Pernambucano revolutionaries in Brazil, and take him there, where, they hoped, he would lead them in battle and establish a freedom-loving latin-american empire. They also went to the US and tried to recruit american mercenaries and get the sympathy from the American government.
Epicness ensues.

That actually sounds like a really awesome TL. Napoleon, the Destroyer of Empires and Father of Latin Democracy.

Originally Posted by Sift Green

That is incredibly difficult. It might be possible if the Taiping were trying to become independent of China, but they were fighting for control of the entire country. And they really didn't get that far:

Highly underused ASB POD?

[APreston]

Originally Posted by Elfwine

Islam went east as well as westward, so I'm not sure I understand how "east instead of west" is a POD.

Measuring east and west relative to the Arabian peninsula, for want of a better objective spot.

I meant primarily going eastward, i.e. expansion more focused in India and later China as opposed to the Middle East and Europe. A Chinese caliphate might be ASB but it'd be cool to think about.