A Question About Ye Olde Butterfly Effect, and others.

Aight, I appologize if this is the wrong are to put this thread in, but seeing as this will be discussing the 19th century mostly, I thought it was the best place.

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Anyway, I have a question. I plan to start a quasi-TL, based off a Victoria USA Grand Campaign, so it will be starting in 1836. The question I have, is how will the Butterfly Effect affect this TL, I am quite confused. Basically, the general plan is to create a new political party, sort of like the Lincoln Republicans, that come to power some time in the mid 1840's. All the main players in this party will be completely fictional, but will be joined later on by early Republicans. They are anti slavery (which is the issue I'm having, how to get an abolitionist party elected in the mid 1840's US), and pro-military, pushing the 54-40 or fight issue where eventually the US takes over Canada, but that is not the issue.

The main thing I am confused by is the Butterfly Effect. I get it...sorta, I know that after the PoD, depending on how big it is, people will not be born, and end up having other people take their place that where not born OTL. The part I do not get is, how much this will effect my TL. If slavery is abolished in the mid 1840's, and the Civil War takes off in the late 40's early 50's, and the Union wins, will this totally butterfly away people such as Patton, MacArthur, Rommel, Einstein, Grant, Sherman, etc, pretty much anyone does anything consequential during the 19th-20th centuries? Will I end up having to start making up characters to replace these people, and if so, when should I start? Around 1860, 1870? Should everyone who is born after the Civil War in...say 1848, be completely different than who they were OTL?

Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated, and I apologize for how confusing I may have written this. Thanks so much ahead of time!
 
You might get away with non-Americans.

But I'm pretty sure Grant and Sherman were born before '48, so they probably wouldn't change to drastically.

EDIT: Wait no, I'm sorry, the situations they are in probably would change. Nevermind.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
A PoD in the early 1800s would create a completely different 1900s than our own. For each generations the butterflies will be larger, the first ones will have similarities with OTL, but after 3-4 generations there will be HUGE differences.
 

Jasen777

Donor
The 40's are probably too soon for an anti-slavery party winning that much, without some major changes.

The first generation born after the POD ripples through will (or likely could) have the same parents. The may have the same name, but they won't be they will only be as similar to their OTL counterparts as you are to a brother or sister. The second generation born after the POD can't possibly have the same parents as OTL and are even unlikely to have both the same "sibling analogues" - the second generation born after the POD ripples through is essentially completely different than OTL. That's what I think is realistic.

However, you could completely ignore butterflies if you want - it's pretty standard for published works.
 
The 40's are probably too soon for an anti-slavery party winning that much, without some major changes.

The first generation born after the POD ripples through will (or likely could) have the same parents. The may have the same name, but they won't be they will only be as similar to their OTL counterparts as you are to a brother or sister. The second generation born after the POD can't possibly have the same parents as OTL and are even unlikely to have both the same "sibling analogues" - the second generation born after the POD ripples through is essentially completely different than OTL. That's what I think is realistic.

However, you could completely ignore butterflies if you want - it's pretty standard for published works.
Unfortunately, I may have to, as Victoria does not account for them in any way shape or form, and my modding abilities are non-existant.

Thank's for the replies! The other thing that concerns me is that, was there any perceivable way for an anti-slavery party to come into party that early? I was thinking have an offshoot of the Liberal Revolution hit America, and a third party is elected, say promising a harder line to the Mexicans and British. Then, after the (much more successful than OTL) Mexican-American War, said yet-to-named party is so popular (they beat the British in the Oregon War also), they are able to push through anti-slavery laws, which then make the South secede. Is that semi-plausible?
 

Hendryk

Banned
The butterflies won't reach the whole world simultaneously. Depending on how big your POD is, within a few years you may rule out the birth of anyone who was born in OTL beyond that date in the US itself. But in places not directly affected, it may be a couple of decades or more until the effects are felt.

Another thing: when you pick the founders of that party of yours, try insofar as possible to look for people who really existed, since they'll have to be adult and politically active from the date of the POD. Some minor figures might be made up as needed from the pool of anonymous people who lived there at the time, but it will help plausibility if you pick as key actors people who were around in OTL.
 
Jasen777 sums it up well. I would also add that abolitionists were always a minority even in the Republican party--most antislavery Americans were in favor of gradual, compensated emancipation and/or stopping its spread. The tensions that set off the civil war come in the 1850s because of the territories ceded from Mexico.

As mentioned butterflies will give first the same people, then siblings, then entirely fictional characters. They'll hit the U.S. first, and places like Japan and New Zealand last.
 
I think, that I will most likely have to have at least military wise, keep OTL characters, b/c of Victoria's limitations, but who says I can't change their personalities.

I'm still figuring out how I want to write it, as it will start in 1836 with a (very rich) nationalistic steel factory owner (or something) meeting the founding members of the OTL Republicans, and he and his friends (or something) decide that the current powers that be need to take a more general hardliner attitude towards Europeans and the Monroe Doctrine (or something). In the 1840 election, major Whig defections, and a promise of taking a harder line to the British and Mexicans, this new party gets elected. Bigger gains in both these resulting wars, result in overwhelming approval of the administration for the masses . Yet to be named President becomes abolitionist after seeing first hand cruelty in the South while on a "lets be friends tour" (play on Lincoln?), and is determined to stop the expansion of slavery into the new territories at all costs. When the 1844 election comes around, the Party still has massive voter approval, wins, and the South secedes.

Quite rough, but what do you think?
 

Thande

Donor
It depends on your personal view of things. Some people say the butterfly effect should be just that - it "resets random chance" all throughout the universe as soon as you change one thing, so for example "if Robert E Lee drops his cigar in 1861, then O. Henry, conceived an hour later, might be a girl instead."

This is probably the most realistic if you assume quantum physics has things right, but IMO it's awkward and produces not very fun timelines.

My own view is to avoid making things "different for the sake of being different" - names often run in families, marriages are often arranged by the older generation, and with a POD in the 1840s there might well still be a "General John Pershing" (OTL born in 1860) - he just might be a few years older or younger and have a different genetic makeup, but his personality might well be similar based on the fact that his parents are the same and raised him in the same way.

However, IMO it's really pushing it to have similar characters to OTL born so long after the POD as Rommel and Patton in your example. Too many random changes accumulate, too many parents don't meet each other and marry other people instead...
 
However, IMO it's really pushing it to have similar characters to OTL born so long after the POD as Rommel and Patton in your example. Too many random changes accumulate, too many parents don't meet each other and marry other people instead...
The problem with that is you have I'm doing in RoS, basically it's a fictional world with fictional people doing fictional things. It can work, you have to operate on a macro scale to keep things interesting (because countries can still be recognizable) and your major characters have to be decently characterized or it just becomes a mess.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys. I have done some research, and unfortunatly, as far as I can tell Victoria may force me to stay with the Generals/Admirals the game gives me through 1936. If I can mod this, I will. I think that up until say, the 1860's, or 1870's, people born before then will stay as in OTL, because the simple ramifications of a political party coming to power, and the US getting a bit bigger will probably not affect too many birth's after only 10 to 15 years. So, if I go on to Hearts of Iron, or just continue writing after that w/o game play, I will enact major Butterflyish changes. So, Pershing, Christie, Teddy Roosevelt, etc I think will stay. After that, I'll try to change things up.
 

Thande

Donor
Thanks for the feedback guys. I have done some research, and unfortunatly, as far as I can tell Victoria may force me to stay with the Generals/Admirals the game gives me through 1936. If I can mod this, I will. I think that up until say, the 1860's, or 1870's, people born before then will stay as in OTL, because the simple ramifications of a political party coming to power, and the US getting a bit bigger will probably not affect too many birth's after only 10 to 15 years. So, if I go on to Hearts of Iron, or just continue writing after that w/o game play, I will enact major Butterflyish changes. So, Pershing, Christie, Teddy Roosevelt, etc I think will stay. After that, I'll try to change things up.

My advice is also to look into what families have historically contributed many generations of political and military leaders (the USA in particular has a lot of them) because you can just use the same surname, maybe change the first name and have them born another time, but it will be a vaguely similar person to the OTL figure.
 
My advice is also to look into what families have historically contributed many generations of political and military leaders (the USA in particular has a lot of them) because you can just use the same surname, maybe change the first name and have them born another time, but it will be a vaguely similar person to the OTL figure.
Ahh, thanks!
 

Hendryk

Banned
My advice is also to look into what families have historically contributed many generations of political and military leaders (the USA in particular has a lot of them) because you can just use the same surname, maybe change the first name and have them born another time, but it will be a vaguely similar person to the OTL figure.
That's a good point. If you take the Bush family, for example, one of its ancestors, James Smith Bush (1825-1889) was a Yale graduate, attorney and Episcopalian clergyman. It wouldn't be difficult to tweak his biography and have him enter politics a decade or so after the POD.
 
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