And my question to you, given that there were HREGN states that were Ecclesiastic policies and to do this would require defeating the Church, which Early Modern sovereigns with real armies couldn't do, and no Medieval leader ever did, is how this fantastically improbable thing happens in mere centuries. You'd need a lot longer than that or a lot smaller HREGN. One blending Italy, Germany, and a shitload of ecclesiastic states ain't gonna do it.
You keep projecting Early Modern HRE on the Hohenstaufen one, which was different, and the political fragmentation had not gotten so far (and ITTL, never will, in the lack of things like the Great Interregnum). There were no "states", ecclesiastic or secular, back then, just clergy nobles, secular nobles, and city-states, all of which may be particularist.
Too, the HREGN rejected the legitimacy of the Byzantines, so why is it that they want them stronger ITTL, given this is a post-Schism POD, and we all know how tolerant Medievals were of schismatics.
The Papacy loses the power struggle with the Emperor, it is weakened, the secular monarchs of Western Europe gang up on it (they share a common interest to affirm their authority on their national churches, think of the troubles English and French kings had with Popes), the Curia is dewanked and most authority seized by national bishops under the watchful eye of the local monarch, Western Church turns much like the Eastern one, the real point of contention about the Schism is removed (there were little true theological points of dissent, the issue was the Pope's claims of power), East-West reconciliation is done by ecumenic council as it was almost done in the 15th century.
England, which when a SUPERPOWER did not like the concept of a European hegemon adopts a completely different kind of politics when vulnerable to invasion at that time and likely in the middle of a civil war assuming its politics in the aftermath of the fall of the Angevin Empire is remotely like OTL decides to welcome a power tempted to conquer it (after all, if they can rule something the size of OTL HREGN, why not add England if it goes all Civil War infighting?).
Please stop projecting 18th-19th century British obsession for the balance of power on their 14th-15th century ancestors. It is so anachronistic that it is painful (funny for one that blames of implausibility for accelerating the fulfillment of a national unification movement by a generation). Anyway, they are getting most of France from this bargain, which is what they really cared about, at the time. England had sufficient respite from its domestic troubles in the 14th-15th century to fight the Hundred Years' War. It can be safely assumed it can muster the energies to fight a shorter, easier version of the same conflict thanks to the Eng-HRE alliance.
All the same Iberia, which actually *was* united IOTL stays united because....the other power in Europe is united? By this logic the whole Sengoku period should never have happened.
There is no great AI in the sky, ensuring that every power has to have a mandatory minimum amount of misfortune, no matter the circumstances, in any TL.
And because of fear of something like a Decembrist revolt, which actually happened and soured his brother on liberalism for good.
Except liberal reforms butterfly away stuff like a Decembrist revolt, which happened because Russia did not go liberal.
And if the king is a mad one and his brother is the OTL Wilhelm I, that dog don't hunt.
Individual personalities are not difficult to change, with a PoD decades before. That Prussian scion is changed to have a romantic loyalty to the cause of German unity.
And with Cuba and parts of South America it's going to feel this way why?
Dixie gets Cuba, northeastern Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Guyana. The free section gets Canada, Gran Colombia, and Peru-Bolivia. Rest of Mexico is still at the territorial stage, like the West. Of course, in both cases the big stuff is split in several states, and butterflies make for a different number and shapes of OTL states.
Under the 3/5 clause it controlled Congress up to the 1850s.
And as soon as the Mid West started to swing with the Northeast in the '50s because of socio-economic issues, the Dixie political hegemony was dead. The 3/5 clausle didn't cut it anymore in the face of the demographic growth of the free section. Pretty much the same happens ITTL, with industrialization and the slavery issue making Mid West, Canada, and the Hispanic states close ranks with the Northeast. Dixie is with its back to the wall, free-soil settlers are winning the power struggle with slave-owning ones in the West and settled Mexico won't accept slavery, which means any new states are going to be free ones (there are several free territories that are petitioning for statehood), Dixie feels and reacts like a cornered animal.
Their problems weren't industrialization IOTL, they had some very brave and hard-fighting soldiers. Their problems came from bunglers like Cadorna and Mussolini.
Prussian-model Italian army, remember ?
Pragmatic in the sense that he leads a defiantly reactionary empire and flips the bird at the liberals in the "Blood and Iron" speech. Yeah.....no.
So reactionary that it invented the world's first welfare state. There seems to be a skewed sense of what "reactionary" truly means, around here. The Papal State was a reactionary autocracy. The Kaiserreich was a conservative-liberal constitutional monarchy.
The British Empire vastly economically outweighed the USA in 1860, and with a larger Confederacy able to throw up much more manpower.
Merrily ignoring the fact that the Union is still going to have an even better manpower ratio to the CSA than OTL, and the British Empire still has the little problem of fighting the Triple Alliance equivalent plus Russia at the same time. At one point, the British do try to pump out India for soldiers, and it makes the subcontinent explode on their face.
Uh.........so Thomas Jefferson disappeared ITTL? The Adamses learned how to attract flies with sugar instead of Vinegar?
Close to. Washington comes out of retirement to persuade the Congress and give up on the whole Alien and Sediction Acts idea. Because of this, and because they score a victory in the Quasi-War turned declared Franco-American War, the Federalists stay popular throughout the 1800s. Jefferson grabs one term in the decade because of a temporary Federalist split and controversy about the diplomatic recognition of Haiti, bungles his term because of the Embargo Act foolishness (the Louisiana Purchase was done before his ATL term), and retires as an unpopular president, his legacy intact as a revolutionary leader but tarnished as a statesman. The Federalists stay the most popular and influential party, many Jeffersonian ideas about limited government get discredited, while a good deal of the Hamiltonian program eventually becomes a bipartisan legacy.
It's not Doubting Thomas to ask how the Metternichian faction suddenly ups and disappears after reactionaries *defeat* Napoleon.
Part of the reason may be because Metternich turned out an enemy of Russia and Prussia ?
And I disagree with 67th Tigers' underestimation of the USA and its best generals and his Confederate-wanks but there is no way the USA in the middle of a civil war across a region the size of Russia can take on Superpower-Britain.
The heck with the bloody superpower. It's fighting all the other European great powers but France.
