AHC: Completely different European nation states

Otto Kretschmer

Banned
With a PoD in 5th century AD shortly before or after the collapse of the Roman Empire, create alternate nation states so that by Late Middle Ages all the recognizable states in Europe (France, England, Spain, Portuggal) don't exist but other larger/smaller ones do.
 

Galba Otho Vitelius

There are lots of opportunities for what is now southwestern France (Aquitaine/ Gascony/ Toulouse) to not be part of France, starting with the Visigoths prevailing of the Franks and that area remains the center of the Visigothic kingdom.
 
Count of Crisco

Count of Crisco

A fun one is to have the Britons quickly establish a strong central government, with a local ruler perhaps claiming the title of imperator. After gaining strength he launches an invasion of France in an attempt to recapture lands claimed by the Barbarians, the entire British isles are later conquered as well and you have a likely brief lived state on the edge of Europe claiming descent from the Roman empire.
 

jycee

You can get pretty creative with a POD in the early stages of the Migration Period.
You can keep some Germanic kingdoms that faded away in OTL afloat (Suebian Galicia, Ostrogoth Italy, Visigothic Spain, Avar Pannonia), have tribes/people settle and integrate elsewhere, (have the Vulgars go north, or the Magyars go further south).
If the POD is pre-Islam as well you can also go crazy with the Arab conquests/expansion, make their push through the Caucasus successful, and push the Khazars into Europe, while halting their advance into Iberia in the West. You could go cray on the religious end with surviving heresies movements that faded in OTL, or new splinter movements within Christianity and Islam (extra points if Constantinople falls early). And you can create whole new religious movements; it is not too late to keep some paganism alive in parts of Northern and Eastern Europe, which can have their own ethnoreligious implications.
There are some places, however, which will be very hard to change into completely different “nation-states”. Ireland is already “Ireland” by this point, even if they get their own national Church/Faith and evolve differently it is likely seen as a version of "Ireland" unless it's part of a larger nation and wholly assimilated. Similarly, Scandinavia, in general, would still be considered “Northmen/Danes” and no matter the level of migration that you have, it will likely remain Germanic-speaking. However you can keep Scandinavia pagan or split into different states than OTL.
Any early enough POD can give some interesting results.
 
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Arkenfolm

If Islam never exists or is stopped in North Africa/Levant, then Iberia is going to look far different. I could see geography and resulting in very distinct regional identities vaguely similar (at times) to our own yet totally different, especially in southern Spain. You could thus partition the Iberian peninsula far differently, like perhaps a south/north split along the mountains of the region. Maybe the "Portugal" equivalent is called Baetica, consisting of roughly the Algarve, Andalusia, Murcia, and perhaps a portion of Alentejo and Extremadura.
 

Tarabas

I would say a surviving Ostrogothic Italy may have a lot of butterflies in this regard, especially if it stays as powerful as it was under Theoderic. Southern France becomes likely a joint Ostro-Visigothic condominium, the Lombards stay in Pannonia and may maybe survive in part of modern-day Hungary. Illyria/Dalmatia could remain prevalently Latin speaking, with Slovenia and Croatia never arising or arising in Central Europe, the rest I should think a little bit.
 
Denliner

Denliner

A Great Moravia that emerges either in the east of Bohemia/Czechia or in the Pannonian Basin was always a bit interesting to me, as is a Britain that remains either majority Britonnic or Anglo-Saxon. A Britonnic Great Britain could likely be one of the best claimants of a surviving Western Roman Empire, although I don't know how likely they could claim that with the Franks/HRE breathing down on their necks.

Another interesting TL idea of mine is if there was an early Amazigh kingdom that united most of Mauretania and proceeded to conquer Hispania as a Berberized realm, albeit Roman Catholic instead of Muslim. Islam would have to be butterflied away or be severely hampered in the Middle East but it could happen, creating a Christian Al-Andalus kind of scenario.

Any possibility of a united Italy, most likely under the Ostrogoths (although a stronger Middle Francia centered in Italy could also work), would have drastic effects on the politics of Europe as a whole, since Italy wasn't politically united until much later.
 

jycee

Nivek said:
More successful muslim in europe would change it forever, andalus, faransa/gaulia, Rome and the balkans
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Denliner said:
ine is if there was an early Amazigh kingdom that united most of Mauretania and proceeded to conquer Hispania as a Berberized realm, albeit Roman Catholic instead of Mus
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Nivek said:
They were not that powerful without muslim help anyway
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An alternate would be to have a non-Islamic Arab expansion... that is if we can have one without the other. Personally, I think Islam added fuel to the fire, but Arab expansion/migration out of Arabia would still happen on a smaller scale. In this case without Islam, the Arab tribes might migrate and settle along the Mediterranean coast without a unified conquest/goal in much the same way the Germanic and Slavic tribes did in central Europe and later on, the Vikings/Rus did in Northern and Eastern Europe. This alone would create some very interesting fusion of cultures that in OTL all got agglomerated into a broader Islamic-Arab culture. Arab tribes that make it deeper into the Mediterranean, and possibly Europe, would likely Christianize but might retain their language and customs the way the Magyars did... others might bring other forms of Christianity and Judaism, or even Manichaeism, into Europe.
 

Silver01

Denliner said:
Another interesting TL idea of mine is if there was an early Amazigh kingdom that united most of Mauretania and proceeded to conquer Hispania as a Berberized realm, albeit Roman Catholic instead of Muslim. Islam would have to be butterflied away or be severely hampered in the Middle East but it could happen, creating a Christian Al-Andalus kind of scenario.
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its my shamless plug time for my timeline , inan alt it could have been the mauro roman kingdom or its sucessor states
 
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