The problem, for the Bourbons, is that no matter how much they try to indoctrinate l'Aiglon into royalism, what is the most they can offer him? To be a minister? Advisor to the King? The Bonapartistes will offer him his father's throne. The Bourbons can't compete with that ... and...
How would they have not fought France? France would not tolerate being surrounded by Habsburg territory.
The only way I can see the two kingdoms not becoming enemies would be for the inheritance of Charles V to be different, with everything north of the Pyrenees given to the Austrian...
IOTL the French economy managed to recover relatively quickly, despite that France had to pay the 700 million franc indemnity and the cost of the foreign occupation. ITTL those do not happen, and the country has substantially greater coal and iron resources. Napoléon moreover was aware that...
In peacetime, the French empire will rapidly industrialize, assuming we are talking about the "natural borders" that include Belgium and the west Rhineland.
I think a couple of caveats apply. First, many people consider basketball their 2nd or 3rd favorite sport, but in few countries (if any) it the most popular sport, whereas the various codes of rugby/gridiron are the most popular in several countries (particularly in the anglosphere). Second...
This seems like good news for the Greek language, which can remain the lingua franca of the region, and may eventually become the vernacular language. Greek had the great prestige of being associated with both the emperors in Constantinople and with the New Testament, of which it was the...
Disagree, I think it's on topic. Any French king in this century will fight some wars, that is inevitable due to the country's geo-strategic position. But the wars do not need to be as long and costly for the kingdom. Better diplomacy can lead to Louis focusing on his kingdom's primary...
You could still have the war but have it be a strictly Bourbon-Habsburg conflict. England and the Netherlands were initially willing to accept Philippe d'Anjou as the Spanish heir as they did not want another war, but Louis took positions that antagonized them. Recognizing James Stuart as the...
American football is, by a huge margin, the most popular spectator sport in the USA. If you combine it with the audiences that the rugby codes get, their combined audience should surpass that of basketball, which is watched in a lot of countries, but is almost never the top sport. I think...
I'm not sure about this. In this era, the Lesser Antilles mostly had Catholic French settlers, regardless of their ownership. (Even today, over two centuries later, many on these islands speak Antillean creole.) Some accommodation might be needed for the relatively small Protestant population...
That would be a very tough decision for them. I think the former would be worse still because it could pose an existential threat, but the loss of Jamaica would hurt the royal treasury much more.
Jamaica was extremely valuable to the British, as much as Saint-Domingue to the French. It produced more income than the 13 colonies did. I think they would make concessions elsewhere in the peace, which might be quite painful, in order to regain it.