Cortez arrive a year or two early/late

hey, all. something just occurred to me while reading a page on TV Tropes where this was mentioned. we all know that at least some of the Aztecs mistook Cortez for Quetzalcoatl. this is mainly because they believed that Quetzalcoatl in human(-like) form was pale-skinned and would return from across the eastern sea to reclaim his kingdom. what's more, by sheer coincidence, Cortez just happened to arrive in a year that Quetzalcoatl had been predicted to arrive

so, basically, for whatever reason, Cortez (or an equivalent) arrives earlier or later than he did IOTL. which one and how many years (as long as its five or less) is up to you. anyone think this would affect how the Spanish Conquest goes?
 

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Maybe not for the Aztecs, but any fluctuation would have some pretty severe consequences for the Inca conquests. The Aztecs had the potential to fall apart under a number of circumstances, but that conquest had allowed Pizarro the opportunity to move against at just about the worst time imaginable.

Western Diseases had filtered into the empire just a few years before and had just devastated it beyond its ability to cope, perhaps robbed the empire of one of its greatest leaders, and was in the middle of a civil war.

Depending on how Cortez's movement goes, Pizarro might not be able to launch an expedition at the same time and either meet a stronger, united Inca Empire that hasn't been nearly as devastated, or a weaker state that just survived the plagues and a civil war. Both will have less openings and probably succeed in pushing him back, at least for a few decades.
 
hey, all. something just occurred to me while reading a page on TV Tropes where this was mentioned. we all know that at least some of the Aztecs mistook Cortez for Quetzalcoatl. this is mainly because they believed that Quetzalcoatl in human(-like) form was pale-skinned and would return from across the eastern sea to reclaim his kingdom. what's more, by sheer coincidence, Cortez just happened to arrive in a year that Quetzalcoatl had been predicted to arrive

so, basically, for whatever reason, Cortez (or an equivalent) arrives earlier or later than he did IOTL. which one and how many years (as long as its five or less) is up to you. anyone think this would affect how the Spanish Conquest goes?
I think if they could mistake Cortez for Quetzalcoatl, wouldn't their resistance to the Spanish become lower? Of course, when they find out the truth about this, they resist more. But, Pizarro's conquest of Inca Empire might be butterflied away. Of course, not much difference or worse for the Aztecs would be the fate for them.
 
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My understanding is that historians are somewhat divided as to what role, if any, a perceived identification of Cortez and Quetzalcoatl played in the Spanish Conquest, or even if it really happened at all.

Regardless, the actual work of defeating the Aztecs came down to a brilliant Hispano-Tlaxcalteca campaign of diplomacy and intimidation that isolated the Aztecs from their allies and built a force that laid siege to and eventually overwhelmed Tenochtitlan. The initial period of the landing through to the arrival at Tenochtitlan ended in La Noche Triste, so I'm not sure an initially more cautious Aztec approach is going to change anything.
 
hey, all. something just occurred to me while reading a page on TV Tropes where this was mentioned. we all know that at least some of the Aztecs mistook Cortez for Quetzalcoatl. this is mainly because they believed that Quetzalcoatl in human(-like) form was pale-skinned and would return from across the eastern sea to reclaim his kingdom.
No they didn't. And no, there was no myth about Quetzalcoatl being a white man.
 
gotta love how an entire question is ignored because of a misconception that isn't even the focus of the thread. honestly, the question is just "WI Cortez was up to five years earlier/later than IOTL?" with what i posted before being just to give some context for why i posted this in the first place
 
How secure was Montezuma's position - as in, the security of him personally remaining in charge? I recall it being discussed that he wasn't exactly regarded as a great ruler even before this, but I might be mistaken.
 
Would have had scant impact if any. Even if the Spanish are destroyed on La Noche Triste, there would be someone else coming over and the Aztec empire would have still alienated enough tribes to allow for alliances.
 
gotta love how an entire question is ignored because of a misconception that isn't even the focus of the thread. honestly, the question is just "WI Cortez was up to five years earlier/later than IOTL?" with what i posted before being just to give some context for why i posted this in the first place

But you did dedicate an opening paragraph to it. So you can't blame someone for pointing out the falsehood of a persistent myth of the Conquista.

How secure was Montezuma's position - as in, the security of him personally remaining in charge? I recall it being discussed that he wasn't exactly regarded as a great ruler even before this, but I might be mistaken.

I think his position was pretty secure. From what I read he made firm his predecessors conquests, particularly over the Zapotecs, continued the centralization efforts of the Triple Alliance overall, and dismantled many of the avenues that common born Aztecs could take to enter the nobility. Though the Calpulli - a sort of clan-guild structure, composed of both nobles and commoner family lines - were still the main source of social friction as they each controlled lands and held monopoly over trades, rather than the more traditional class conflict of other parts of the world. Given another generation or two, this hardening of class lines might have led to this development, but the 5 years proposed in the OP is probably not enough time to effect this potential direction much.

Outside competitors included the Tarascans who often allied with the Chichimeca groups to the north to counter Aztec influence; and down south, the empire was creeping its influence into the Guatemalan highlands. From what I read it's unlikely that this would have turned into military expansion anytime soon in either direction.

I read somewhere the Aztecs and Incas didn't know of each others existence. Is that true?

There were some traders from Incan lands known for going on long term voyages (the AH member Cuauhtemoc would know more, having told me about them). And their were reports from Spaniards of visiting Native merchants who wore very different clothing and spoke a different language that sailed along the Pacific coast of Oaxaca. If so, they probably knew very little about each other, and weren't very concerned being so far apart.

Would have had scant impact if any. Even if the Spanish are destroyed on La Noche Triste, there would be someone else coming over and the Aztec empire would have still alienated enough tribes to allow for alliances.

Cortes's expedition was one of several Spanish incursions into the mainland. All the others were complete disasters, and Cortes was a rogue agent. If he had failed, and then survived, he most likely would have been executed by the colonial authorities in the Caribbean. So there could have been a chance for the Triple Alliance to have adapted and put up a longer resistance, or other Mesoamerican polities to do so. It cost a lot of treasure and blood to launch these expeditions, and even the royal court wasn't too interested in them at first, wanting trade and conversion. The conquests just happen to pay off in the end. Also remember that the Spanish Empire was the result of more or less mercenary bands going about with their own funds to plunder and conquer. They frequently warred with each other, and could have been played off against each other by indigenous leaders if they had the time to realize how divided they were. OTL's turn of events are hardly guaranteed.
 
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1) Cortes himself was probably unlikely to arrive a year or two earlier or later. The Cuban governor preferred Narvaez, who happened to be out of the country at the time the expedition needed to be organized. If the timing had been much different leading up to the expedition, you would have probably seen Narvaez as leader. That would have had some interesting implications because Narvaez was by no means as politically canny as Cortes, and might not have been able to dismantle the Aztec empire politically the way Cortes did. While the Aztecs were hated by a lot of their subjects, Narvaez might well have convinced a lot of those subjects that the Aztecs were the lesser of two evils.

2) Disease: The first smallpox epidemic came to Mexico while the Spanish were at their low ebb, giving Cortes and company time to recover. Once smallpox reached Haiti and Cuba, it would have spread to the mainland with or without the Cortes expedition, because of the Spanish colony in Panama. It would have spread up the coast from Panama, in all likelihood. If Spanish landing in Mexico was delayed much, they might have found Mexico already devastated by the smallpox. Not sure how that would have played out.

3) The single most important variable in the conquest was the existence of a competent shipbuilder among the Spanish. They had just one such person. He was able to supervise building of Spanish gunboats that dominated the lakes that surrounded the Aztec capital. Without those gunboats, the Aztec fleet of large canoes would have continued to dominate the lakes, and I suspect that Spanish conquest would have been close to impossible, at least in the short-term. Want to abort Spanish conquest for a few years? Have the shipbuilder killed at any point up to the point where the gunboats were complete enough to be finished without his supervision, or make him unavailable for the expedition.
 
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