Questions about Germany and Scandinavia
OK, I'm up to date with this spin-off thread at least. Some nice stuff about proto-Sweden, Germany, Hungary, Poland and parts further east.
A couple of questions though:
(1) Ares96 mentions a Cistercian monastery in his Professorial lecture (ha! Well done for resurrecting Artur Espensen btw): did the great monastic houses such as the Cistercians and Benedictines have an essentially unchanged history ITTL compared with reality? Did their relationship to Papal power simply transfer to Paris from Rome without any changes to the nature and rule of these monastic institutions? We need a ruling from BG on this one I think. The monasteries at least need to be considered in the evolving medieval society under the Parisian aegis...
(2) Does Wilhelm I, defeated on a Hungarian battlefield, still launch the German invasion of Scandinavia in IE 2.0? Sorry if this has been described already in 2.0 - but I'm not fully up-to-date.
(3) The 1300s is when we see a proper Norse kingdom in Vinland up and running - and relationships developed between the New World and the NW part of the Old - will you be updating this Ares96? Or has it already been described on the main thread?
(4) Are the Teutonic Knights still going to evolve, firstly, into a potent military force at the disposal of the Holy Roman Emperor in return for a free hand in the East then, secondly, in the longer term, into the German intelligence organisation (developments of IE 1.0)? I was quite fond of that unique bit of political economy, which I thought lent a certain elegance to the explanation of why the German state centralised so early and was so strong in IE 1.0 compared with OTL.