Double AHC: Concerning Ireland and Britain

And why not, though I suppose staying as a Dominion might not be what the OP wanted either. As mentioned earlier by the point of the 21/22 and after that I'm not sure how you'd get Ireland to stay within the UK.

I think you have to look for some external stimulus to drive this. No matter how you rearrange the UK's set up you can't get around the fact that England grossly unbalances any attempt at a federal structure. Even then you run into the problem that by 1900 Irish people didn't, if they'd ever, see the Irish national identity see as subordinate to being British.

Even then it's quite difficult for this reason. There are plenty of plausible scenarios where Britain intervenes in Ireland. It's hard to construct these so that they would try to reintegrate Ireland rather than just installing and propping up a friendly regime.
 
I don't think it is plausible to see Ireland actually rejoining the UK short of either a military dictatorship in Britain reconquering Ireland or a natural disaster on an apocolyptic scale.

Having a shared monarchy on the other hand (like Australia, Canda, etc,) is much more possible though it becomes progressively more difficult after 1914. If you don't want to go the obvious route of a Home Rule settlement I think your best bet is keeping Collins dead (as OTL), killing off Dev relatively early, and keeping both Arthur Griffith and Kevin O'Higgins alive longer than in OTL. Griffith of course was the big supporter of a Dual Monarchy while also having sufficent nationalist credentials and commanding a level of respect that it would be hard to tar him as a traitor. Kevin O'Higgins meanwhile was more genuinely republican in sentiment but he was also both conservative and pragmatic and fully willing to work within the British system.

With Collins and (in TTL) Dev dead an O'Higgins dominated 1930s is quite possible and if Fianna Fail turns to the likewise pragmatic, non-ideological Seán Lemass (admittedly on the young side but very capable) then you could see an Irish Free State with a considerably friendlier relationship with Britain and, perhaps, Belfast. When the Second World War starts, assuming it happens somewhat similar to way it did historically you might see such an Ireland joining the Allies.

Reunification is by far the most difficult and least likely part of this, but if it can happen during or immediately after the war you could see a united Irish Free State with the monarch as head of state but functionally otherwise independent.
 
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