Very cool. I don't see her going off the deep end like that into islam, but it really works a lot better than having her choke on a snail at dinner or something
...back to the OP, I think the vitriolic backlash against using a death/political removal of a single figure for AH has to do with 'the establishment's rejection of the great man theory of history, not some lack of creativity. The great man theory of history is very out of vogue at the moment.
Having grown up in southern Africa (Botswana) during the 70s and 80s where the actions of a few, very few, determined individuals changed history, I have had little choice but to become a personal believer in the great man of history for all the damage it's done to my academic career. Butterfly away/kill off just one of those individuals and you butterfly away ... me.
This is more of a general discussion, but I just wanted to put this out there. A lot of timelines are based on a public figure (such as the President of the United States) dropping dead, often of a heart attack, at a convenient (for the writer, not the president) chronological point. Now it's not that a lot of public figures don't have heart attacks, fatal or otherwise, but I just want to suggest that I think there are better ways to achieve this. Ditto for assassination--there are lots of assassination attempts, but few that are competently executed enough to succeed.
The POD of the France Fights On TL is Paul Reynaud's mistress dying in a car accident on June 6, 1940. Of course, it looks less creative when you realize that in OTL she actually died in a car accident three weeks later.Interesting thought about the wife dying.
An alternate method, one I used as the POD for my TL, is to kill off a person who facilitates the rise of said public figure, thus dooming them to obscurity.
Sorry to seem fixated on Wilson, but would he haave been nominted in 1912 without Colonel House?
And of course there's Leon Czolgosz.
There is a very entertaining thread right now about Edward IV and another one about Henry V surviving till his son's majority.
If Henry V lives longer, he might have had more sons. Both are really fun threads.
Don't know about the Col. House example, but Leon is an excellent example.
The story I remember is he chickened out of his part, and was hiding in a sandwich shop when the driver of the ducal car got lost right there in front of him.
So if the driver of Francis Ferdinand were competent, the car would have turned the other direction, Leon would have finished his sandwich and gone home and we kick loose all kinds of butterflies. And a few moths as well. Maybe a beetle or two?
It's also interesting which public figures tend to be the subject of such PODs. There are many more PODs with a conveniently-timed death of Hitler, fewer with those of Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, or other dictators. Even fewer still are PODs based on figures who IOTL died untimely deaths living on for a longer period of time, with the major exception IIRC being Abraham Lincoln. Imagine a POD where say, Lenin lives longer, or Walter Rathenau, or some of the medieval monarchs who died young and their deaths produced chaos?
So far I'm the only person who uses the death of the Earl of Dartmouth as a POD![]()
Which is awesome in its own right.![]()
Interesting thought about the wife dying.
WI the first Mrs Woodrow Wilson (Ellen) dies in 1912, shortly before the Democratic Convention (OTL she died Oct 1914).Wilson is prostrated and loses the will to fight. It's probably too late for him to just withdraw, but when Champ Clark gains a majority of the delegates (about the 9th ballot iirc) he insists on following precedent and releasing his delegates. A Champ Clark Administration duly follows.