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While there have been threads on how England would be different if William had failed in 1066, I'm curious about the wider effects in Western Europe. Not just how relations between England, Normandy, and France would change, but how this would in turn impact the wider geopolitics of neighboring kingdoms, duchies, and what have you.

For example -- how would the Church be affected by having the Pope's "pick" lose? Would this mean a stronger France -- and if so, what would this mean for the rest of Europe, like the Holy Roman Empire? Would England fall under the "sphere" of the Vikings, or would they be able to assert themselves as an independent power -- and how would this, in turn, affect the Norther powers, particularly Denmark, and the final stages of the Viking Age? To say nothing of England's neighbors, Wales and Scotland? And of course, there's always mention of Vinland getting mentioned in these kind of TLs, or the potential of an earlier English American colonization; so what about that? And what other political butterflies are possible?

CONSOLIDATION: Something else to remember -- the Norman victory at Hastings happened in the contest of a wider issue of Norman militarism at the time (particulary in the example of Robert Guiscard).
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