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Thank you so much! Hopefully we can preserve that epic feel while at the same time going into greater detail, and making a stronger case for the plausibility of these events.

The execution of Johann Sylvan, from the Thesaurus Pictuarum Olivia Rosen, Transformer: A Life of the Elector Alexander. As 1569 opened, Alexander seemed, like his namesake, to go from victory to victory. The pest Flacius had been sent packing, and the pliable and discreet Andreae set in his...

Austria is one of the narratives I'm least happy with in the old timeline, and it is one of the ones most likely to dramatically change. In the end, I don't even want to say too much about it until we get past the First General War. I have ideas. But one thing I feel confident saying is this...

Think of it this way. The historical narrative of the first empire shapes the constitution of the second, both in our timeline and in the alternate. In our timeline, that narrative is that the division of the empire among the princes, the decentralization of power, and the weak position of the...

Yeah, here it's all about the distinctions between rules and practice. I haven't figured out how many electors the alt-present German Empire has, but I believe they start out the New Realm with 15. Of these, 6 are for principalities in Saxon hands (EDIT: this might be too many, in which case in...

The German Monarchy Today British Actor Harry Lloyd, here used as a fascimile for F9 Today, the German Empire is an elective monarchy. Like Poland, Germany maintains the tradition of having its nobles elect the monarch rather than having a hereditary succession. In the case of Germany, the...

Ca' Vendramin Calergi, completed 1509, a vacation home for the Duke Julius of Braunschweig-Wolfenbuettel (Really.) Makers of the New Realm: Short Biographies of Pivotal Germans, 1517-1640 Martin Xu The pivotal years of the Sechzehntes Jahrhundert, during which the seeds of the New Realm were...

All I'm going to do here is to chime in with a reminder that English and British history are chock full with fascinating accidents having to do with how many and which children of which monarchs and their close family survive, and which do not. Of course the all-time best example of this remains...

Well, as to the Georg angle that part pretty much writes itself. We know, because he says so ("death to whores!"--what a card to send someone for their wedding) that in 1525 Georg wants to kill Luther. So if he succeeds that year as the Elector of Saxony, he kills Luther. There's your...

Well, if things happen on schedule, Karl V is just not going to get involved, because by that point Christian and Isabella are enthusiasts for the Reformation. The sweet spot for Christian would be if he could make a grab for the Saxon succession following his father's death in 1513 but before...

You're right re descent in the female line with respect to the electoral dignity. Here's the language from the Golden Bull:

Well that gets really juicy, doesn't it? Now, let's say Johann predeceases Friedrich, and the third brother Wolfgang also predeceases Friedrich (and he is without heirs as the Bishop of Magdeburg). At that point, even though inheritance through the female line is disfavored, you have situations...

Well, I had thought morganatic marriages, though originating from a germanic custom, had a later development in their use in circumventing certain problems of succession. I've read that it developed for our purposes in the debates around Philip of Hesse, some years after Friedrich and Anna. In...

Henry VII by Pietro Torrigiano Greta Saperstein, "The Wars Within" In February 1567, Johann, only son and heir of the Elector Alexander and his wife Maria Eleonora, died in Altenburg. Almost immediately a broadsheet circulated among the public declaring the infant's death to be fortuitous...

Arcavius and Gabingston have both knocked it out of the park with their comments. One thing I would add: because of the climactic factors they note, the planters regarded it as waste to have any food production on the island whatsoever. Literally the ideal they pursued was every square inch in...

Frederik II by Hans Kniepr Sigismunda Killinger, Lecture Record, February 3, 1999 Charpentier-Synthtranslate Edition. In the concluding days of 1566, Philip Melanchthon, one of the last survivors of the first generation of Reformation theologians, died. For several reasons, and in several...

A New/Nieu City: The Three Nations and the Birth of the Modern Metropolis by Lisbeth Terschelling Alfred Blossom's plan for a Memorial Bridge across the Hudson, as the Geweldige Westerse Brug, built 1935. We cannot consider the peculiar governing structure of today's New Amsterdam without...

Thank you! And Happy New Year to you too! :)

Fifty Man-Made Marvels of the Twentieth Century by Erika Kleindeinst 7. Wundertunnel The Elbunterfuehrung is renowned as perhaps the greatest engineering feat in German history. Developed in response to the explosive growth of the Elbeballungsraum in the twentieth century, it provided a...

I'm going to try to do the Dutch history justice this time out, which is one reason I'm being very parsimonious with some details at present. But one thing that will carry over from the earlier timeline will be that if anything here gets "wanked", to use the term, it's not even really the...