Your challenge is relatively uncomplicated: keep the Knights Templar around and have them survive to the present day.
AHC: Save the Knights Templar
- Thread starter Mort the Reaper
- Start date
-No Europe-wide tour for Jacques de Molay after acquiring rights to Cyprus in 1299
-France shows hostility but Molay launches one of the first recorded 'Charm Offensives' in history. This hostility is shown to result from the massive debt owed to the Templars, soon nullifying much of the hostility towards them
-Aiding one of the larger revolts, Crete becomes an autonomous part of the Templar Council around 1320 - soon changed to the Templar Dominion - and becomes known for its unique bowl-shaped coins
-Cyprus becomes a repository for ancient tomes from the Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim worlds alike. A Templar law allows unarmed scholars one year's access for each of up to five copies of a text their Central Library does not already possess at least in triplicate.
-With the retaking of Constantinople with Templar help, the Byzantines grant Morea to the Templars as a tax-paying fiefdom in perpetuity. Soon much of the Peloponnesus is theirs and a new Library becomes the cornerstone for the future University of Sparta
-As Ottoman forces push harder across Anatolia it is a Templar general that organizes the final resistance against the Turkish horde, finally losing the city to legendary Sultan Sulieman the Magnificent. His respect for the order is near legendary, verified prisoners of the order are literally treated as nobility even if they are stablekeepers. Much of the Eastern Mediterranean is endangered but kept from Muslim hands by the Crusader order now in control of much of northern Africa and even the old Garamintes territories.
-Ptolemic maps from the Templar library lead to evidence that the Romans knew of the Caribbean and parts of South America, i interestingly the Templars take Hispanola as their own in exchange for a debt from the Castilian crown. Large numbers of landed serfs and Templar scholars move there, building seven major cities and theee dozen minor ones in two generations
-By 1950 the Templars own Cyprus, Crete, Malta, Menorca, Corfu, Rhodes, Hispanola, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Azores, and many other islands. In addition, they rule much of Northern Africa from Maurituana to Cryenica aling with OTL Lebanon and Israel having retaken their piece of the Holy Land from the Ottoman Turks in the 1870s. Greece and many of the Balkan nations are very friendly to the order, still militaristic and fielding a Spartan-inspired army whose rank-and-file members are each roughly equal to American Rangers. They are the smallest nation to deploy their own aircraft carrier (TDS Piety) and have launched their own satellites though a manned mission is still pending. Citizenship requirements are among the strictest in the world and few who enter leave willingly as living conditions are easily among the best in the world. Their six Grand Libraries are world-famous for their archives though all pale to the Nicosia Repository, home to the oldest known manuscripts in the world and even containing works previously thought lost theough the centuries.
The easiest way is to get Philip IV out of the picture - it was his greed, after all, that motivated the downfall of the Templars.
A less dramatic change would be the Chinon Parchment going public far earlier than OTL, thus the shaky allegations against the Templars would largely fade.
A less dramatic change would be the Chinon Parchment going public far earlier than OTL, thus the shaky allegations against the Templars would largely fade.
kholieken
Banned
They would need territories, some Muslims or Pagan frontier where they can go to war, Teutonic and Hospitaller survives because they have purpose that Christendom can support. Perhaps buying Minorca from Spain, buying Corsica from Genoa, or conquering Tunisia ? if they become protector of Western Medditerranea, it would be more difficult to go against them.
Marc
Donor
The Templars were involved in the conquest of the Balearic islands under James I of Aragon. That was from 1229 to 1235. The Templars did receive some property on the islands as their material reward, but got no safety from the destruction of their order in 1307 forward.
However, the Balearic islands were too desirable a piece of real estate for Aragon to ever consider selling it.