10th-13th century PoDs

Hey,

Not really new here but new to posting (sort of). Been a casual lurker for a few years and I posted awhile back under two different accounts but decided to just go with my name.

The short version is I like writing and was thinking about writing in an AH-inspired world. I'll probably end up writing on a few. The ones that have interested me most have been PoDs in the Warring States Period of China (perhaps exploring a "balkanized" China) and one where Spanish/Portuguese colonization in the New World doesn't so so smoothly. There's more than enough TLs and posts on PoDs from around the 1400's-onward to consider for the latter and I've seen a few threads about the former.

I have found however a bit of a lacking in a sort of, centralized aggregate of PoDs from around the 10th to 13th centuries . Why? Well, I thought I'd give the Norse in North America a try. Some PoD between the 9th-11th century would be satisfactory I think for that, but there would I imagine be butterflies and so I thought I may as well give some looks at history elsewhere around the world at the time and see what could change. If anyone on here wants to throw out a couple from really any time in here, or scenarios or w/e it'd be fun to read- so yeah, any help is appreciated. I'm interested in the whole world (if that's possible), not just like Europe or the Middle East so I'm open to any input.

Because of what's going on in my TL I have been reading up on the Crusades again and I was toying with a few Crusader PoDs.

PoD #1: In 1180, Raymond III of Tripoli (holding Galilee too) and Bohemund III of Antioch launched a short military coup against Baldwin IV because everyone knew he was going to die and his sister's husband--whoever that was--would be the new king. Raymond and Bohemund were not happy with the foreigners looked at as Sybil's husband. They probably wanted Baldwin of Ibelin (Balian's older brother, who was in Constantinople at the time). Baldwin IV's response was a quickie marriage of Sybil to Guy of Lusignan, that spectacular failure.

What if Baldwin IV's illness flares up and he is incapacitated so the coup succeeds and Baldwin of Ibelin became King Baldwin V of Jerusalem?

Note: Third Crusade in any form is not going to be happening is the immediate consequence I can think of.

PoD #2: Richard the Lionheart swore to remain in the Holy Land for some time. But after the Battle of Jaffa his health was even worse and John and Phillip were screwing over his kingdom so he was anxious to leave. Of course we know he got captured etc. but one of the things he had to do to get the truce so he could leave was agree to demolish the fortifications at Ascalon. Anyhow, he left Oct 9, 1192. Saladin died in March of 1193. If Richard had kept his vow, he'd still be in Palestine when Saladin died. It's probable that the winter would have been fairly sleepy. Richard could not beat Saladin back enough to seize Jerusalem, but Saladin couldn't keep Richard from controlling the coasts and after Jaffa everyone knew it. So it's probable that the war itself continues as a stalemate until Saladin dies.

What happens if Richard is in the Holy Land when Saladin dies and the war remains a stalemate until then?

PoD #3: Can't forget my favorite PoD that is probably ASB: Eleanor of Aquitaine and Melisande of Jerusalem take over direction of the Second Crusade.

ED: PoD #4: The Crusaders take Ascalon in 1099. Only Godfrey and Raymond's infighting prevented the capture of the place in OTL. What if one is wounded or dies or they can work together enough to capture Ascalon more than 50 years early?

Could it lead to an actual Crusader-Byzantine attack on Egypt?

Oh the possibilities. I'd like to see some of these ones, I must say...

1. Mercia somehow becoming dominant in England, and overtaking Wessex.

2. The Roman Emperor John I managing to sack Baghdad and capture Jerusalem in the 970s.

3. A more sensible Second Crusade

4. NO FOURTH CRUSADE!

5. Mongol ruled Europe.

6. Mongols never reaching Europe.

7. Mongols converting to Nestorian Christianity and waging holy war against Catholic and Orthodox heretics.


I was going to go on, but number 7 might be the coolest AH idea I've ever come up with.

One interesting one has to do with Poland. OTL, the Polish King, Boleslaw III, partitioned his kingdom among his heirs in 1138 in his will to avoid fighting over the crown. He ended up ushering in 200 years of feudal fragmentation in Poland. If he does not split up Poland, then we could see a strong Polish state right at the time that Germany, its greatest rival, is breaking up into many tiny lordships. Also, a strong Polish state will have no need to call in the Teutonic Knights to conquer the heathen Prussians. Polandwank, here we come...

Also, lots of interesting stuff was going on in the Middle East, especially stuff involving the Byzantines and the Crusades. There's a lot that could easily go the other way.

Also, what would be the effect of Henry IV winning the Investiture Controversy? That deserves to be done as a full TL.

Also, during this period, India is estimated to have had the largest economy in the world. Is there some way of getting a single, stable Hindu kingdom to control most of N. India by maybe 1000 or so? Maybe the Guptas get a revival? Of course, they collapsed in the 600s or so, so not in the range of this discussion, but till, very interesting.

If you want a challenge, try unifying west africa under one empire.

Yeah I definitely sort of picked a really broad, tough era to deal with in terms of the ambiguity of history but nothing I write is going to be 'plausible' anyway I'm just trying to write to entertain myself and sound marginally 'realistic'.

These are all interesting things to consider. I'm not entirely familiar with this point in history since I always sort of avoided these centures- I don't know why we just never talked about it in school and I haven't read too much up on it. Have there been any TLs done on the Middle East / Africa with a PoD in and around this time?

I was hoping to find an alternate reconquista one but just through a few searches nothing large came up.

Midas said:

I was hoping to find an alternate reconquista one but just through a few searches nothing large came up.

Click to expand...

Well my recently award-winning timeline has one kind of, but that TL started in the 8th Century (though currently we are in a turbulent 11th).

imperialaquila said:

One interesting one has to do with Poland. OTL, the Polish King, Boleslaw III, partitioned his kingdom among his heirs in 1138 in his will to avoid fighting over the crown. He ended up ushering in 200 years of feudal fragmentation in Poland. If he does not split up Poland, then we could see a strong Polish state right at the time that Germany, its greatest rival, is breaking up into many tiny lordships. Also, a strong Polish state will have no need to call in the Teutonic Knights to conquer the heathen Prussians. Polandwank, here we come...

Click to expand...

Yeah, such Poland would keep lands up to Oder river, most importantly - Silesia. Under right circumstances Piasts could also reconquer and keep Pomerania up to Stettin. Thus we`ll get Poland with OTL 21st century borders during high/late middle ages.

You can look at the Timeline Classification Project

I find the fourth crusade quite funny, you know, hey peeps we need to destroy Egypt, but those Orthodox are so... rich and... tempting and... okay we don't need to go to Egypt, DIE BYZANTINES DIE!

You can always stop the Great Schism from happening that way There's no need to sack Constantinople
Schism is a funny word too Oh Schism!

Another thing happens in Asia 919 is the first time gunpowder is used in battle, maybe a world without gunpowder? It would be cool

Or instead just make the Crusades never happen, ah peace, who wouldn't love that?

This is all quite interesting.

Since I'm doing my first sort of "TL" as you call it (I'll refrain from it from now on since I think I'll end up turning into "AH-inspired fiction" at best anyway) I decided to stick with something less ambitious than a complete alteration of medieval history (though it's still in the ballpark).

My PoD at the moment is where as in the Greenlandic saga, "Erik the Red" doesn't break his foot when setting up to go exploring the lands Bjarni Herjolfsson found (bit of narrative beyond, I apologize if it bores). Erik leads the expedition alongside his son Leif. Unlike OTL Leif and more like Bjarni, thick northern fog, unfavorable weather conditions and very strong northernly winds wipe out his bearings and blow him far off course southward (irl they pursued a fairly straight forward course according to the saga). Erik nearly dies during the trip but they eventually stray right into what is the Grand Banks. They catch a bunch of fish (not very hard as it was at the time mostly untouched) and fluke a westward sailing, landing on the northeasternly tip of the Avalon Peninsula in OTL Newfoundland (near OTL Saint John's). Leif calls the land "Njörðrsland" (after Njord, the Norse pagan fishing / sea god). They scout up and down the middle part of Newfoundland and winter on the Avalon Peninsula. They then sail northward and scout along the coast. They land on the northern tip where L'Anse is and find grapes (like the south) but not knowing that the land is a contiguous island they call it "Vinland" just like OTL. They sail up from there and find Labrador (calling it Markland likely) and Baffin Island (Helluland) before sailing eastward back to Greenland.

Not so creative at the moment but the general idea is that Leif would not return to Iceland or become a Christian priest (as the Saga says in OTL). Like his father (and supported by his father, who went with him on the voyage) he'd take a few colonists* and settle in some hall in Njörðrsland, perhaps beginning a small colonial wave of Norse settlers into North America. I'll flesh it out more later that's just a sort of, rough idea I had (there's no mention of Skraelings in here, why they'd sail up the coast, why'd they stop- find grapes, etc. I'll do it later). I'm not really sure where it would go: whether they die out and it's more in the mind of Europeans, whether they inter-mix with the natives or whether during the later famines and conflict in Greenland, they'd remember the coloinies out west were available. Lots of possibilities.

Anyway, point of all those walls of text is to give some perspective on why I asked for 10th-13th century PoDs. I'm thinking for my first sort of stab at AH I might just be a bit lenient on the early butterflies (especially since this is based on the Saga, not necessarily what happened) and save some for a few hundred years later. But I'm not sure yet, you guys brought up some really cool stuff o__o. I suppose, as a bit of a side-note, a reference to a thread on Butterflies (I'll go search now) would be helpful. Perhaps I'll do two: one with early / immediate ones, one without (for practice ).

How about the Marinids reestablishing a foothold in Spain during their invasion (with a possible conflict involving Castile as POD)?

I like the Crusades because its a real east versus west situation, the king of England fighting a Kurd who had united the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria.

As for PoDs, I think the crossing of Anatolia by the armies of the 1101, 2nd and 3rd crusades would be fruitful. Success in Anatolia would benefit the Byzantines and intact armies could do some effective campaigning in Outremer itself.

Cool. I checked that website to the links of some of those compiled PoDs: does anyone on here have any recommendations for sites with historical information and such? I was going to just google and maybe go look at the library (haven't done that in awhile) but just incase anyone has some of this history off-hand.

Midas said:

Cool. I checked that website to the links of some of those compiled PoDs: does anyone on here have any recommendations for sites with historical information and such? I was going to just google and maybe go look at the library (haven't done that in awhile) but just incase anyone has some of this history off-hand.

Click to expand...

I generally use this site for maps and wikipedia for general information.

thrashing_mad said:

Yeah, such Poland would keep lands up to Oder river, most importantly - Silesia. Under right circumstances Piasts could also reconquer and keep Pomerania up to Stettin. Thus we`ll get Poland with OTL 21st century borders during high/late middle ages.

Click to expand...

That's the least they could do. If they drive east, they could easily have 21st century borders in the west and early 17th century borders in the east by the high middle ages. And with a stable, centralized government, something OTL Poland never came close to.

I would prefer Poland to expand south instead, through unions with Bohemia and perhaps, Hungary.

There are a lot of great things to consider here.

I've decided to take a three-pronged approach to my TL. I'll explore three different interpretations of the butterfly effect and see how it turns out

Soft PoD: August of 1002 (Erik the Red and his son Leif Eriksson sail to the New World later than in OTL, blown off course, find the Grand Banks which snowballs into a bit more colonization of OTL Newfoundland...)

- α-TL <The PoD was so early, so isolated in comparison to Europe and the Greenlandic Saga likely partially inaccurate that there is no major change in world history for several hundred years (Hard PoD of around the mid 1200s).>
- β-TL <The PoD was early enough and relevant enough that things are going to change throughout the world with regards to history: though the initial changes are so moderate we will not see major differences from some time (Hard PoD around the late 1000s/early 1100s)>
- γ-TL <The PoD initiates butterflies that soar across the world, changing history significantly . (Hard PoD by 1003)>.

I'll definitely consider some of these things and have been doing a lot of readings of others. There's lots to consider and lots of creative possibilities.

imperialaquila said:

One interesting one has to do with Poland. OTL, the Polish King, Boleslaw III, partitioned his kingdom among his heirs in 1138 in his will to avoid fighting over the crown. He ended up ushering in 200 years of feudal fragmentation in Poland. If he does not split up Poland, then we could see a strong Polish state right at the time that Germany, its greatest rival, is breaking up into many tiny lordships. Also, a strong Polish state will have no need to call in the Teutonic Knights to conquer the heathen Prussians. Polandwank, here we come...

Click to expand...

Bright day
That is no a PoD. Necessary PoD would would be change of old tribal laws and that would cause crisis at the time. When the laws were changed in 1180's the Poland was already splintered.

EDIT: And not to just be a pain, 1041- several years prior, Bretislaus Premyslid, by some known as Bohemian Achilles, has managed to foster greater understanding in btween members of his druzhina and so when Henry III Roman Emperor invades Bohemia for second time- not only to cow the upstart brarbarian prince, but to avenge his prior defeat at the hand of the bohemian prince- Bretislaus nobles hold fast with their lord and the siege goes on. Still the siege can go only one way and both rulers know it- but Henry does not want to waste time in these wild lands and when Bretislaus break knees and begs for forgivness he relents and compromise is reached, which allows Bretislaus to retain his territories, while promising a significant help against Hungary, which would lead to eventual full incorporation of Hungary into the Empire.

imperialaquila said:

If they drive east, they could easily have 21st century borders in the west and early 17th century borders in the east by the high middle ages.

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Actually...that depends on the Mongols. People underestimate mediaeval Rus a lot - in most cases they were more powerful than Poland, until the Mongols.

It really depends on whether the Mongols come or maybe if the Rus splinter in all sorts of hilarious ways while the Polish state never does.