Best and or most underused pods pre 1900?

Alexios Komnenos dying at the Battle of Durazzo in 1081, opening up even more space for the Normans, Pechenegs, and Seljuq Turks to carve up the collapsing post-Manzikert Byzantine Empire.
Pritviraj Chauhan, Raja of Ajmer, actively pursuing and killing Muhammad of Ghor after the First Battle of Tarain in 1191. Muslim expansion into northern India could be delayed for a long time, and Chauhan could form a Rajput confederation (later empire?) of sorts, expanding into Kashmir, eastern Afghanistan, and Balochistan.
 
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The medieval Catholic Church decides than the natives of Vinland deserve salvation and funds missionary activity to *North America, initiating sustained transatlantic contact centuries earlier than OTL, and at a time when Europeans don't have the technology or logistical capacity to exploit the virgin soil epidemics. By the 1500s you could have numerous advanced indigenous polities with iron working, crop rotation, animal husbandry, stone structures, and written language dominate the northeast of the continent.
 
To begin:
Vladimir the Saint decides to convert to Catholicism or Islam instead Ortodox Christianity.
The Turks don't ally with Egypt and so never convert to Islam
Teimujin dies during a skirmish as a young mongol raider and doesn't create the Mongol Empire
Various possibilities then China Emperors, especially after Kublay Khan, convert to Islam or Christianity
Northern Empire of Canute the Great is not divided at his death
 
The Turks converting to Christianity instead of Islam would be a great POD as well. They might have married into the ERE instead of conquering it.

Which Turks, at what time? Because I find the nomadic Turks in Central Asia converting to Christianity very unlikely, while much later on a clan of Anatolian Turks converting to Christianity from Islam and somehow coming out on top seems more plausible.
 
- Surviving Indus Valley civilization (not just through migration into Ganges region).

- Semi-Sinicized (or non-Sinicized) independent southern Chinese states (south of the Huai river).

- Longer-lasting (and evolving) Jomon society.

- A stable (and noticeable) New Guinea civilization.
 
A independent state in the Rheinland instead of it being German or French

France not invading Spain and a more successful

Belgium being more successful in its colonial ventures to places like Haiti Hawaii and the Philippines
 
What if Spain is able to crush most of its colonial revolts? What if the Ottoman Empire faced their own (Turkish) version of the French revolution?
 
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