Convenient deaths of public figures as the PODs for timelines...

Sort of like making General Jackson's wound at Chancellorsville merely debilitating so he is out for all of 1863, but is back for 1864. He could take over for Longstreet after Longstreet is shot during the battle of the Wilderness.
 
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

Di was fairly messed up, she did throw her down the stairs while pregnant with Prince Harry, she had eating disorders, self cutting, than the airing of the marriage in public, after the divorce her two lovers where both Muslim so that to me shows interest in Islam and given her issues I feel like she'd go over board with it
 
...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.
 
...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.

I don't wear the "Great Man" Theory as a cross, but I do believe that history tends to come down to the actions of one man.
 
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.

I agree with all this, but I'd go a little further. Personally, I'm a little leery of using any PoD of this type. There are lots of ways to remove somebody from the scene- promotion, a different job, a scandal that existed IOTL breaking earlier being averted, etc. You don't always have to drop a piano on somebody's head.

I guess I just see it as being a little inelegant. Normally, with a bit of research you find something more subtle to use instead; and this way you have the flexibility of still having the person around ITTL if you want to deploy them for another purpose.

Of course, it's a little different for wartime situations and so on, and sometimes you're left with no choice if you want things to go the way you planned, but as a general rule I think that killing somebdy off should be done sparingly and as little as possible.
 
In my rabid Lib Dem fueled search for a less decisive win in the 1997 General election I hypothesised (possibly fantasised) Tony Blair being killed in a car accident as he was driven from his home constituency of Sedgefield to Westminster.

This would most likely see either Gordon Brown, John Prescott or even Harriet Harman as PM going into the election. The voters are still behind Labour but without Blair's public speaking skills their impact is lessened. They gain a majority but possibly secure Lib dem support on key issues.

The TL would then follow this new PM (most likely Brown) over the first timeline of Labour as he faces off against the Tory leader (again, most likely William Hague) and the first four years are much less one sided.

And the butterflies go from there.

Answer: 2010. Green-UKIP Coallition :p (good god, that was a joke, an unfunny one!)
 

Hendryk

Banned
In Superpower Empire, I have Yuan Shikai die of kidney failure, and there's a lot of playing around with plane crashes.

Interesting thought about the wife dying.
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.
 
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 have been nominated in 1912 without Colonel House?

And of course there's Leon Czolgosz.
 
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My TL uses the death of a celebrity as a POD (in a helicopter which is shot down while she is going to Iraq to entertain the troops at Christmas. Apparently in OTL it did actually come under fire, but wasn't damaged).
 
Sorry to seem fixated on Wilson, but would he haave been nominted in 1912 without Colonel House?

And of course there's Leon Czolgosz.

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?
 
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.
 

The Vulture

Banned
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?

What POD magically turns Leon Czolgosz into Gavrilo Princip?
 
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 :D
 
Actually I guess the actual POD is a slightly rainier year in Northern and Western Europe, in particular the British Isles, which causes it rain thereby causing the Earl to slip and burst an aneurism and a minor crop failure in Ireland.
 
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.

I still have an idea for a timeline that involves Helen Taft dying from the stroke that she suffered as First Lady. Doesn't avoid Thande's complaint, but I think there's underused potential in the relatives of famous figures to alter their careers.
 
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