AHC Three Way Wank- British Isles

SunDeep

Banned
Similar to the 3-way wank challenges in N. America and E. Europe. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to come up with an ATL where the UK, Ireland AND Scotland all get wanked relative to OTL (and yes, they do all have to be independent nations as well) by the present day. Would this be possible? And if so, what would be the latest (non-ASB) POD which could set such a TL in motion?
 
England: Won Hundred Years War, King of England becomes King of France
Scotland: Norway and Iceland incorporated into Scotland
Ireland: Extensive Irish colonization of Canada and the Eastern US
 

SunDeep

Banned
England: Won Hundred Years War, King of England becomes King of France
Scotland: Norway and Iceland incorporated into Scotland
Ireland: Extensive Irish colonization of Canada and the Eastern US

OK, decent start, but it's still going a long way back for our POD, and it doesn't really touch upon the issue of how Scotland and Ireland would go about maintaining their independence and expanding their territories in the presence of such a ramped-up United Kingdom (of England and France ITTL?). Care to flesh things out a bit?
 
I thought Sundeep wanted to wank England, not France.

Quite.

The point, in case it's not perfectly clear, is that for England to conquer France at this point in history would be like for Normandy to conquer England (oh, wait…): the nominal conquerors would be so outnumbered in wealth and population by the nominal conquered that they would soon find themselves a concern-on-the-side in a state dominated by the nominal conquered. The analogy that the Dukes of Normandy conquered England, which very soon became far more important to them than Normandy was and even when they lost Normandy it didn't matter hugely because they retained England, is an apt one.
 

SunDeep

Banned
I thought Sundeep wanted to wank England, not France.

Yeah, but the Kingdom of France wasn't that large at this stage, so it may still be borderline plausible for TTL's United Kingdom to be dominated by England by the time we reach the present day, just about. And the territories and wealth of France at the time of the Hundred Years' War should still be enough to surpass the losses of Ireland and Scotland. Perhaps with a POD where the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France is never signed, and Scotland benefits from staying on the sidelines during the Hundred Years' War, with the attention of the English too firmly focused on keeping control of their newly acquired French territories, and on assimilating the French peoples, to turn their attentions towards further expansion northwards and westwards for the next hundred years or so... Might you have another suggestion of your own though, one which doesn't involve screwing the French?
 
Yeah, but the Kingdom of France wasn't that large at this stage, so it may still be borderline plausible for TTL's United Kingdom to be dominated by England by the time we reach the present day, just about. And the territories and wealth of France at the time of the Hundred Years' War should still be enough to surpass the losses of Ireland and Scotland. Perhaps with a POD where the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France is never signed, and Scotland benefits from staying on the sidelines during the Hundred Years' War, with the attention of the English too firmly focused on keeping control of their newly acquired French territories, and on assimilating the French peoples, to turn their attentions towards further expansion northwards and westwards for the next hundred years or so... Might you have another suggestion of your own though, one which doesn't involve screwing the French?

Personaly I would go a bit earlier and go for the Angevin empire. It is smaller than France and is thus less likely to dominate England, although even there the French parts did dominate in many ways (just ask Richard Lionheart).
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Who gets Wales?

Seems like the obvious fulcum in a three-way split of the British Isles is where does a recognizable "Welsh" state go - otherwise the amount of arable land is just overwhelmingly in the "English" favor.

So how about this:

Ireland and Wales are united after the collapse of Roman Britain into a recognizable "Romano-Gael" syncretic state because of the threat of the Germanic invaders; that alone gives Ireland & Wales a better "starting point" in the Medieval era and since, andincorporating the Isle of Man gives the resulting "modern" state more resources than the sum of its respective RL parts today;

At a later date, the Norse/Norwegians unite with a recognizable "Celtic" Scottish state in the Medieval era; that state grows to incorporate Northrumbia, the Faeroes, and Iceland; same result as above;

In roughly the same period, an "England" dominated (more or less along historical lines) by Germanic peoples is fused with a Norman kingdom that retain substantial holdings on the European mainland (presumably Armorica/Normandy, perhaps Aquitaine/Gascony) that both improves the position of England alone, but also gives the English a continental focus that leaves room in the British Isles for Scottish-Scandian and Cambr-Hibernian states to survive and grow.

With a three-way split in the British Isles, the obvious directions for expansion of any of the three states are to the northwest for Scotscandia; to the south (the Atlantic Islands/Macaronesia) for the Cambernians; and to the east for Anglo-Normans.

The Anglo-Normans have some tough competitors on the continent; the maritime aspect of the situation for the Scotscandians and the Cambernians means they are likely to dominate the North Atlantic, with all that means.

It's a stretch, but not impossible.

Best,
 
Any three way split needs to split England as well or it just isn't sustainable in the long term through simple demographics.

Thus perhaps the best way of doing it is a rather convoluted split as follows:

-Ireland: Fully unified and including the ancient Kingdom of Dal Riada by an inheritance through dynastic links with Ulster. Could also include Man and the Isles.

-Wales: A much larger Kingdom of the Britons (which could be referred to as a United Kingdom) stretching from Cornwall, through the West country, including all of England west of the Severn and the old lands of the Kingdom of Rheged up into Cumbria and possibly even Galloway.

-Scotland: Despite having lost most of the west, you can get a more powerful nation through a complex union of the lands of the Picts, the Gaels and Northumbria giving a kingdom stretching along the east coast from the Humber to Caithness.

This leaves a rump England- or more probably 'Saexland' as it's more Saxon dominated, comprising of the South East of the country. Still quite powerful but potentially manageable.

All of this is very difficult to pull off however due to various issues such as Welsh inheritance laws, the Irish power structure and so on.
 
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