AH Challenge: United Kingdom of England, Ireland, Wales and Southern Scotland

Just where is this place "southern Scotland"? Do we mean the lowlands? Even that word has different definitions: geographically the lowlands are south of the fault-line, but traditionally hieland and lalland were synonyms for Gaelic- and Scots-speaking, and with the decline of Gaelic the status of, say, Caithness is rather uncertain - and then the northern isles belong properly to neither. Or the Borders? "Southern Scotland" is a term we hardly ever use culturally or geographically. In only comes up as the baldest of descriptive terms: the only thing I can think of called "Southern Scottish" off the top of my head would be military districts.

Galloway could probably end up English or affiliated with England with a medieval PoD.
 
Sorry should have made that clearer I was thinking a Ireland style division.

Lets say the independent Northern Scotland is the northern highlands, the Gramnpians, the Glasgow area and the islands. While part of the UK southern scotland gets Edinburgh and the southern uplands.
 

Thande

Donor
You can't have Wales in the title of the UK because it was never a kingdom and is constitutionally considered a subordinate part of England.
 
You can't have Wales in the title of the UK because it was never a kingdom and is constitutionally considered a subordinate part of England.

What to call what in the GB/UK has always confused me :confused::confused::confused:

Principality, Kingdom, Country, Crown Dependancy, Overseas Territories its enough to make you want to tear your hair out! Just wanted to make it know what the four countries that make up this GB/UK would be.
 
Without the example of Ireland I can't see how the chances of a Celtic or Gaelic identity re-emerging in the West of Scotland are increased?

A more interesting question might be the independance of the Northern Isles and oil.......
 
I can't honestly see Scotland being divided into two nations by choice, but neither can I see any plausible set of circumstances that would forcibly divide it in such a manner. While there was a divide between Catholics and Protestants in Scotland in the early 20th century it didn't/doesn't run along Highland/Lowland lines - the demographic geography of the country really doesn't lend itself to any neat split along religious lines, and there aren't any other dividing factors.

A PoD between 1900 and 1916 could certainly deliver you a Home Rule Parliament in Edinburgh, which is a TL worth pursuing.
 
What LD says: the big dichotomies of Scottish history don't really lend themselves to a split.

If you could somehow prevent the Clearances, I suppose Gaelic lingual nationalism has as much going for it as Slovak - but that means going back far enough to completely change land tenure, probably to the Reformation, and is in no way Ireland-like.
 
What LD says: the big dichotomies of Scottish history don't really lend themselves to a split.

If you could somehow prevent the Clearances, I suppose Gaelic lingual nationalism has as much going for it as Slovak - but that means going back far enough to completely change land tenure, probably to the Reformation, and is in no way Ireland-like.

You'd need to have a way, way, way earlier PoD, that's for sure.
 
basic problem is, about 60% of the population of Scotland lies in the area of Glasgow-Edinburgh and South, while about 3/4 of those left live in around Dundee or Aberdeen, which are still culturally and linguistically the same area.

There just dosen't seem to be the population to sustain such a division in the north.
 
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