Recent content by KaiserWilhelm

  1. Cleveland wins in 1888, impact on partisan development?

    If Cleveland wins reelection in 1888, how does that influence the parties’ development? IOTL, Harrison won, but lost reelection due to tariffs and temperance, and Cleveland’s second term saw the GOP become more conservative while the Bourbon wing of the Democrats was shattered. The economic...
  2. WI: Charles II and Catherine give birth to a son in 1666 and Charles converts to Catholicism 10 years later

    Maybe not likely, but at least theoretically possible and not ASB. If you think it needs to be ASB for the conversion to occur, I'll repost over there, but otherwise, this is a thread about what would happen if he did hypothetically convert.
  3. WI: Charles II and Catherine give birth to a son in 1666 and Charles converts to Catholicism 10 years later

    Catherine had several still births, but assume that the one in 1666 resulted in giving birth to a son. 10 years later, with Charles's son well on his way to becoming a fine young man, Charles decides to finally fulfill his treaty with Louis and announces his public conversion to Catholicism, and...
  4. WI: Louis XVII lives... what does Napoleon do with him?

    Keep him in house arrest but treat him well and keep him as a defender of the revolution.
  5. AHQ: Has there even been a religion or culture that started off monotheistic and became polytheistic?

    Very difficult to imagine, beyond specific heretical sects as in Mormonism. Now, if you’re a biblical literalist (I am not, I’m an atheist), you have to think all polytheists ever fit in this category. The closest example besides heretical offshoots of major religions that didn’t remotely...
  6. WI: Mary I dies before Edward VI

    To eliminate her from the discussion while minimizing butterfly effects, we’ll say that Mary gets sick and dies suddenly, just a few moments before Edward VI dies—the will remains in place. Around whom would the Catholics and others in, er, Mary’s coalition coalesce? Elizabeth is fairly young...
  7. AHQ: Why did monotheism generally replace polytheism?

    AFAICT, even though monotheism is less fundamental, it has outperformed polytheism in the past millennia or so, so the vast majority of religious people in the world (at least outside India) can be considered monotheistic. Even the “official” Hindu belief is that all the gods are emanations of...
  8. If the 1986 Tax Reform Act takes real estate down a notch as a speculative investment, no 2008 financial institution near-collapse? ?

    Housing is overstated as a cause of the Great Recession. If anything, we haven’t built enough real estate since the 70s, and need to be encouraging the development of more.
  9. If the USSR does not fall, would it currently be more powerful militarily than the United States?

    I’m actually skeptical of the oft-claimed Soviet military superiority throughout the Cold War. We know that the civilian economy suffered substantially from a lack of quality control, and most estimates that assumed Soviet military superiority assumed quality control that there is little...
  10. WI: Catherine of Aragon dies in 1531

    I posted a related topic on the ASB forum, but for non-ASB purposes, what would happen if Catherine simply died before she was dismissed and Henry declared leader of the CoE? I mean, in that age, it’s not uncommon for someone to just drop dead, so that seems the easiest thing to have happen...
  11. AHQ: How did mining work in the ancient world?

    Lol, that’s not much of an answer
  12. AHQ: How did mining work in the ancient world?

    So, I was reading a thread on here, and in passing the subject of Roman mining was brought up, but I was wondering, how did the Romans and other ancient civilizations actually go about mining? How advanced was geology? At what point did mining begin to resemble what it does today?
  13. WI: Richard III kills Henry VII but still gets killed

    Jasper could crown himself king by right of conquest, but I’m not sure how sustainable that would be.
  14. AHC/WI: France never unifies

    How feasible is that?
  15. AHC/WI: France never unifies

    With a POD after the Treaty of Verdun, prevent the formation of a state known as France. West Francia can exist, but not in a significant enlarged state from the OTL boundaries under Verdun, and it’s preferable to maintain the situation such as it was when Hugh Capet came to power and the French...
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