By now you've probably seen the History Channel's four-part DVD documentary series about the American Revolution. One segment that I found particularly interesting was the chapter on Disc 2 that recounts how King George III became so apoplectic while reading the Declaration of Independence that he suffered a fatal stroke and was dead within 36 hours; some historians say that event might have cost Britain the war right then and there. Certainly it triggered a major disruption to the British war effort as Parliament tried to resolve the succession crisis George III's death brought about. It also played a major role in the chain of events that led to Ontario becoming the 14th U.S. state after the war ended and the founding of the Republic of Quebec.
Now, just for grins and giggles, let's imagine George III doesn't have that fatal stroke in 1776. How much longer would the Revolutionary War(which in our timeline ended with the surrender of British troops at Savannah, Georgia in 1778) have gone on if George III had survived the reading? Would Ontario still be a U.S. state? Would the Republic of Quebec still exist? Could the British Army have found a way to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in the American Revolutionary War, or would they have lost the war anyhow? And what would have been the fate of Benedict Arnold, the brilliant if somewhat controversial Continental Army commander who presided over the costly 1777 assault on the British garrison in New York City and was subsequently court-martialed for disregarding General Washington's orders not to begin the attack until American artillery had knocked out the British garrison's first two lines of defense?