I must admit mad monarchs are an interest of mine.
Charles II of Spain had really bad luck in that regard - yes, the three generations of uncle-niece progeny had a hand in it, but it wasn't as if the Trastamaras were not inbred.
Irritating clichés about Pre-1900 AH
- Thread starter LSCatilina
- Start date
I must admit mad monarchs are an interest of mine.
Charles II of Spain had really bad luck in that regard - yes, the three generations of uncle-niece progeny had a hand in it, but it wasn't as if the Trastamaras were not inbred.
Isn't that how Philip II got Portugal, for instance?
I don't know how close most royal families got, but its definitely a pack of cousins of some level even when its not practically one family.
Yep, he had a claim due to being descended from a Portuguese king.
And Maria Theresa and Victoria both had a lot of royal progeny.
MAlexMatt
Banned
The men who actually did the fighting didn't fight for slavery. They fought for their home states.
It was the planter class who ran the legislatures that declared independence because they were afraid for their 'property'
The men who actually did the fighting who have been shown repeatedly to support the cause of the Confederacy, or some other Confederates?
That the Confederacy was about slavery was something more obvious than an open secret, and not held as shameful.
MAlexMatt
Banned
'Repeatedly shown'....?
Has somebody posted letters from half a million Confederate soldiers here at some point?
Here, no. But studies of why Confederate soldiers fought have shown support for slavery and hostility to "emancipation" far more than most people would like to accept.
What This Cruel War is Over, for instance.
And the planter class was not all stay-behinds - Wade Hampton III (Lieutenant General PACS) for instance. Forrest almost but not quite counts.
No specific TL in mind, it's just that whenever I see a Turkish empire in a TL with a late-medieval PoD it's typically Ottoman...
MAlexMatt
Banned
I think there's a difference between the enforced emancipation Southern soldiers were afraid of, as shown in the book you mention, and the type of emancipation an independent CSA would engage in. Something not all that different from what happened after the end of Reconstruction is likely, with 'slavery' coming to an end, but de facto slavery continuing.
The less I think about Lee the Pro-Slavery Hypocrite, the better for my blood pressure.
His sons and nephews also count, while we're listing fighting planters - though Custis Lee was mostly away from the fighting and with Davis, its still something.
Love both the Karamanid/Seljuk ideas.
Exactly! The last Maya polity didn't fall until 1697(ish), and guerrilla resistance continued sporadically into the present.
I'll have to check it out. I haven't been on this board very long, see... Still discovering things.
Good ones here. A few that annoy me greatly:
Catholicism Wow! If there is a religious belief similar to OTL's Catholic dogma, it will inevitably become the dominant strain of Christianity. Even if it isn't Christianity, Europe shall have a pope.
Related to this: Religions are big, unitary things. Even if they are not monotheistic, religions inevitably have centralised power structures and unified dogma. It is always possible to define what an adherent of Julianic Paganism, Roman Buddhism, the Wendish pantheon or surviving Asatru believes. In detail.
Technology always has the same impact. This is especially annoying if it is done with naive assumptions (give the Romans a stirrup and they will have knights dominating Europe in, like, five years), but the base assumption seems to be that a given technology has a chemical nature that will cause identical reactions in any society.
However, I am happy to go with the idea that plaubsibility can, indeed must, sometimes take a back seat to readability. A perfectly plausible TL can quickly become - well, boring. Add some familiar narrative and a few Easter eggs and you have a much better read.
Catholicism Wow! If there is a religious belief similar to OTL's Catholic dogma, it will inevitably become the dominant strain of Christianity. Even if it isn't Christianity, Europe shall have a pope.
Related to this: Religions are big, unitary things. Even if they are not monotheistic, religions inevitably have centralised power structures and unified dogma. It is always possible to define what an adherent of Julianic Paganism, Roman Buddhism, the Wendish pantheon or surviving Asatru believes. In detail.
Technology always has the same impact. This is especially annoying if it is done with naive assumptions (give the Romans a stirrup and they will have knights dominating Europe in, like, five years), but the base assumption seems to be that a given technology has a chemical nature that will cause identical reactions in any society.
However, I am happy to go with the idea that plaubsibility can, indeed must, sometimes take a back seat to readability. A perfectly plausible TL can quickly become - well, boring. Add some familiar narrative and a few Easter eggs and you have a much better read.
Its funny. In my own OTL, I've have been trying to prevent it from being a Goth-wank, and I think, from what i have planned, that i will largely suceed in that goal. But I also want to create rulers with character, b e they good, bad, or neutral. This has gotten me thinking, because people are just that, people. and we've all got our quirks.
This particular example is actually quite intelligent. Not only do stirrups make riding far safer (in particular when you are fighting with lances) and thus cavalry far more offensive and useful, but the Romans were in fact moving into "proto-Medieval" warfare with more importance being given to cavalry and fortifications from the crisis of the third century onward (by coincidence, when feudalism also began to gestate).
I know it's not what you were actually talking about, but it's convenient to remind that the idea that the Roman army was made almost entirely of infantry legions to the very end of the Western Empire is a misconception in itself.
Alaska is either taken by british or americans- this is not necessarily annoying but I find this happens in a lot of timelines
Slovenia??? What's Slovenia???: I don't know about anyone else, but it irritates me that i have literally never seen a timeline or map etc on this website with a POD before 1991 with an independent Slovenia. Europe's Korea anyone?
I don't want to say that an independent Slovenian nation lasting long enough to be noticed is impossible earlier, but it seems highly unlikely. Its been in the hands of one power or another for most of the past two thousand years.
Unlike how Korea has been independent.
Doesn't mean any possible TL should see it stay as part of some other state - but it makes it harder to call it a cliche for those powers which have controlled the region OTL to not lose it just 'cause.
Unlike how Korea has been independent.
Doesn't mean any possible TL should see it stay as part of some other state - but it makes it harder to call it a cliche for those powers which have controlled the region OTL to not lose it just 'cause.
The Indian peninsula will never amount, and has never amounted to anything powerful or advanced.