The year is 1600 OTL (the various dates imposed by the kingdoms and empires are in such a bewildering number that it would be pointless to try and list them). Though this may veer into implausible territory the idea was cool and I liked making the map
POD in early 200 BC when an alternate Phillip II and his son Phillip III begin wars of conquest continued on by their own sons. While Phillip III does defeat the Persians similarly to Alexander of OTL he instead turns his armies around to subjugate the Mediterranean. His dynasty continues this legacy of conquest with varying degrees of success, but they eventually subjugate the Carthaginian Empire in 68 BC. They turn their attention to the conquest of the Nile under Alexander II in 40 BC. However a series of civil wars in the early 1-25 AD results in the Persian Empire arising resurgent to conquer much of the Middle East, and a subsequent war in Italy distracts the Greek Empire.
History in the region then revolves around the various wars between the Greeks and Persians with the Greeks being variously distracted by wars in Italy against the Latin peoples and in France against the Celts, whom they never conquer. [1]
The map here depicts the year 1600 AD. The Greek Empire is undergoing what will be its final bout of civil war with the empire really having been an empire in name only with the emperor in Philipia Pella (Greek capital) being variously ignored by the regional diadochi in the other capitals of Phillipa Neilos (around Egypt which has been an independent kingdom in all but name for over two centuries, merely keeping up the fiction of fealty lest they face Persia or the Numidians alone) Philipia Skelia (based around Sicily and Italy and is basically independent, but fighting tooth and nail for the independence now, being more Latin than Greek) Phillipia Iberia (basically Spain and Portugal, its current ruler wants to rule the whole empire based on the whims of his wife, but his son will end up settling for Iberia) and Phillipia Afrike (basically Carthage, more African then Greek, and is fighting to avoid absorption by the Spanish Greeks). The Empire will collapse into its constituent parts sometime in the 1630s.
While the resurgent Persian Empire would love to jump on this they are embroiled in a religious war with the newly (well if 200 years old is newly) united Arab tribesmen who have started a sort of Greco-pagan-Jewish-Islamic-Zoroastianistc religion[2] under a charismatic tribal chief who believes he had visions wandering the desert. His sons have inherited the mantle of Prophet and are insistent on spreading their religious vision in glorious religious struggle. The Zoroastrianist Persians with their capital at Ctesiphon understandably take issue with this, almost as much issue as they take with the “Divine Emperor” at Phillipia Pella[3]. Meanwhile they struggle with the encroachment of a new Hindu Empire on their borders.
In Europe the lack of a Roman Empire makes a big difference. The Celts remained the dominant power in what is now France and much of the Low Countries, resisting invasions by the Germanic tribes and driving the Franks across the Rhine, but eventual successor invasions and intermingling of cultures lead to a very diverse Celtic Kingdom which was formed with the help of German tribesman by a great Celtic King who unites the land under one dynasty in 900 AD. He becomes a sort of Charlemagne figure, instituting reforms and building a modern nation while driving back a ‘Danish’[4] invasion of Normandy. Though his successors are not as successful, the Kingdom suffers a great Danish invasion which claims Normandy and Brittany, while also being pushed across the Rhine again. This is later rectified by a new King who takes up the mantle of the Charlemagne figure and forges a new dynasty in 1338 which lasts into the early 1500s before going extinct due to lacking a male heir and it being formally taken over by a cadet branch.
The Germanic peoples fail to unify, even though some mini empires are carved out from time to time. The lack of proper succession laws as we know them until the 1200s prevents the empires from staying together, and eventually the petty kingdoms just organize around their own lesser kings in the mountains and river valleys.
In the North Sea and Scandinavia a Canute the Great like figure does merge the realms of what would be Scandinavia, Denmark, and Britain together, and his successors eventually absorb the settler colonies in Ireland and Wales. Scotland is brought into the fold via dynastic marriage in 1466. The Greeks generally managed to absorb the Viking explorers who came into the Mediterranean or buy them off so they didn’t get to have as much of an impact in that theatre. Their main impact has been on absorbing/displacing (and in some cases exterminating) Celtic culture. The people of Britain generally pray and sacrifice to Odin now, with some Celtic rituals retained. In Ireland it’s much more Celtic in flavor with the same being said of Scotland, but a Gaelic tongue persists there while a bastardized Danish language is the lingua franca of the empire.
In Eastern Europe the migrations of steppe peoples have greatly influenced the kingdoms. The nice big dark red blob is analogous to OTL’s Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but is more of a Kingdom held together by force and skill by a powerful dynasty which united the different Baltic and Polish peoples together. To the south of them you have ‘Slavic-Dacian’ kingdoms influenced by a mishmash of steppe migrations, Celtic traditions, and proximity to the civilized Greeks. They have some fairly unique kingdoms (the Kingdom of Dacia being the closes to the Black Sea) with ‘Bulgarian’ peoples neighboring a semi-Latin Slavic kingdom on the Adriatic.
A Latin kingdom has developed in Northern Italy where it has various influences from the Celts and Greeks.
Meanwhile the Russians have been influenced by the Vikings and steppe migrations, so picture the Novgorad style kingdom (an elected monarchy) on the map as a cross between the riders of Rohan and the Vikings. Good horsemen who are river traders. The petty Slavic kingdoms that neighbor them generally also follow this trope, but not the bit with elected kings, they have ‘hetman’[5] usually.
The Middle East has been the plaything of two great empires for centuries. That is partially what prompted the Arabs to seek their own destiny through religious crusade rather than continue to be the playthings of emperors far away. Though a very powerful pagan kingdom still holds sway on the Red Sea, the new nation has managed to bring most of the peninsula to heel, save for troublesome mountain clans in what is now Yemen, and a Greek trading colony, which is again basically an independent kingdom in all but name. They bought the crusading Arabs off, and the Arabs took that as a sign they could use this as a cash cow. They’ve been milking it for a while now, but with the empire collapsing who knows how long that will last…
Israel is a kingdom which serves as a buffer between the great empires. Its rulers have been more competent than the Hasmonean Dynasty was OTL, and the current dynasty has alternated between true independence and being a vassal state for over 500 years (Israel having been conquered and regained independence twice since 140 BC TTL) and have become quite adept at playing off the various neighboring nations against one another. They are now pretty firmly in Persia’s court as they are terrified of the new Arab neighbors.
In Asia there have been some changes. China has been unified again for only two centuries now, having reconquered itself from south to north in the wake of the overthrow of a dynasty of steppe nomads who invaded in the early 900s, but fragmented into civil war in the 1200s. Korea is still independent, but slowly coming under the vassalage of China. Japan is not isolationist, and under the rule of an unbroken dynasty of emperors [6] has begun expanding north and south in order to keep the military classes from killing each other or starting a civil war. This of course will lead them into conflict with China, but that is a few decades down the road.
In the Pacific, petty kingdoms influenced by the idea of kings as gods from the Greeks flourish in the islands and Southern India where the empire there has the ruler as an avatar of the gods.
East Africa has the most advanced kingdoms, with Abyssinia influenced very much by a curious sort of Judaism which believes a conquering messiah will come to bring peace to the Red Sea[7] and the region. They resist any influence of ‘sun worship’ very stubbornly, leading to bad blood between the Greeks and the Arabs. The Neo-Numidians control the Lower Nile, and are greedily eyeing Egypt which they plan to seize from the Greeks. They are a sort of hybrid Greek-Egyptian-African people who are quite skilled at war, but luckless when it comes to dynasties.
Now in South America we only have one empire of note. The Incan Empire continues to expand and thrive, starting to settle into a comfortable bronze age, moving towards an iron age, which they ought to achieve by roughly 2000 AD without outside help. They have however, a very well organized empire, excellent trade routes, and an efficient bureaucracy. Though there have been occasional spats, the empires longevity seems assured.
In Central America the Mayan[8] Empire expands, and has come into contact with the new Tlaxclallan Empire which overthrew the Aztecs in a bloody struggle which raged for over a century, but now they are in control and with a carefully managed system of alliances are expanding. The nature of their meeting has been mostly peaceful thus far, with trade in metals and goods allowing each to enter a bronze age while the Mayans have passed on their system of writing to this new Empire.
In North America things are…interesting. The Danish peoples first set foot here by accident, and the decent climate of the Maritimes has convinced them to stay While over the past 600 years their advance inland has been slow due to a low population and sometimes unwilling settlers[9] before an interest in furs really sparked the markets of Europe leading to an influx of willing settlers. Better ship building technology developed in the 1400s didn’t hurt either.
This has had a curious effect on the natives though as they fought and traded with the Vikings. They developed an immunity to Old World diseases[10] and gained pack animals like horses and swine. They learned ironworking, road building, shipbuilding and so on. In their frequent land conflicts they learned new fighting styles and overall began adopting more ‘civilized’ customs in the last 200 years, reaching a roughly early medieval level of development[11]. This has led to the otherwise alien concept of ‘nations’ or nations in the sense that a loose coalition of tribes band together in a confederacy under a council of leaders.
Three distinct nations have emerged: the first is the New England Confederacy (honestly I couldn’t predict the name if I tried so we’ll stick with this) which is the most advanced, having been in conflict the longest with the
Danes so have the best resistance to disease and the most advanced technologies. They trade and war extensively with their neighbors on both sides, and are in essence an amalgamation of the tribes hit by disease in the early days of the Danish landings, with a shared heritage of conflict and affliction. They are beginning to bend to Danish ideas of having one strong leader, and although there is a council of chiefs, they in practice advise a War Chief who is appointed for life.
The second nation is the Great Lakes Confederacy, a confederacy of tribes and peoples[12] who call that region their home. It is a fairly democratic society which centers around trade on the lakes and rivers, while settling its people down to produce agriculture and livestock. They are very democratic and prefer to incorporate tribes into their nation rather than war with them.
The third, and potentially most significant is the Mississippi Empire, a great nation which straddles the Mississippi River and reaches nearly to the Gulf of Mexico. Its power lays at the headwaters of the Mississippi where its greatest cities lay, but it happily expands its trading influence and hegemony on the Mississippi southwards. They make use of better boat building technology to better traverse these waters, and horses to till the fields of the prosperous farms along the shores.
In the rest of North America various hunter gatherer tribes still wander, and village life is the norm. Wild horses have only been filtering west for 400 years, so are just showing up on the Pacific slops, and the tribes there are not yet utilizing them well. It is only the tribes on the Pacific Coast who approach the level of sophistication of the Mid West or East Coast.
In terms of religion, well the world is very different. Certainly the major religions in the world are not Christianity or Islam. In Northern Europe, worship of the Norse gods (in very different fashions from antiquity) is much the norm, with people in the Germanic states playing fast and loose with them, while France has stubbornly resisted any attempt at general importation of said gods instead following older Celtic practices which have slowly turned into the worship of warrior gods. In Eastern Europe its various local deities, with the Norse gods having some following in the Slavic states, but haven’t supplanted local religions.
In the Greek zone its various Emperor worshiping cults that are steadily growing more regional, and in some cases even calling back the old gods (Zeus and all). Monotheism (of a sorts) is only really known in the Middle East, and even then the most strictly monotheistic religion (Judaism) isn’t really making much of an effort to export it.
In Asia you have Buddhism and the Hindu faith as the most predominate. North America of course has the various tribal religions, with only the Maya having anything like a centralized religious structure.
Technology wise, this world is a mixed bag. While gunpowder has been discovered three times (once in China, but lost in a civil war, and again in Eastern Europe in the 1300s, and once by the Maya in 1500) it is only recently becoming widespread, with much of the world at a Late Medieval level of technology while Eastern Europe sits in a High Middle Age level with much of the Slavic states in a Low one. So rather than crude cannon or firearms most armies are similar to the tercios of Spanish fame, and sieges are still conducted with heavy rock throwing devices. The most advanced peoples are in the Greek and Persian Empires, the Danes being second. High quality Steel is common there, as are clockwork contraptions from clocks to representations of the solar system. Paper printing has been invented to great effect in the literary world, and architecture is very advanced. China is at the same level as the Danes, with Korea being beside them in sophistication. Japan though arguably has the best shipbuilders in the region.
Shipbuilding is arguably the most advanced in Northern Europe, with the Greeks seeing little need to improve upon designs for the Mediterranean and the Red or Indian Seas. As such they have not sailed beyond the waters off North Africa, and have had only second hand contact with the peoples of West Africa. However, with the Northern Europeans fearing the fall of the Empire and rising piracy in the Mediterranean sea, some are seeking an alternate route to Asia…
Notes on the Map:
1) This is just the Germanic kingdoms which I had no desire to map in detail.
2) Ditto for the Slavic Kingdoms
3) Here there be steppe peoples and native tribes, yet to be disturbed by the Russians. In general the steppe nomads haven’t been quite as successful TTL with the lack of a Genghis Khan analogue.
4) The fall of the Aztec Empire did spread scattered remnants north, where culturally they are founding post Aztec city states, importing the ideas of writing and bronze, and general carrying these innovations north with them.
5) On the plains a horse culture is developing as the people there have been in contact with horses for more than 300 years now. Though they aren’t yet at Comanche levels of ferociousness, if a suitable leader came along, he could smash the Mississippi civilization…
6) For the Inuit peoples, not much has changed
7) The Finnish peoples and the Lapps are so far mostly undisturbed save for fortified trading posts on their shores, but sooner or later one of these powers will want that land, and somebody will have to pay the iron price…
8) Here you have Bedouin and other tribes far less organized and motivated without the conversion to Islam, and as such not quite a great threat by themselves. They are much less organized than they were OTL by this time.
9) A group I have uninventively named the ‘Boat People’ who are basically a Haida civilization in the region with advanced village structure, trade, and good canoe building. They have a long way to go before they reach the New Englanders sophistication, but they also haven’t been devastated by disease yet.
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[1] The empire has its ebbs and flows like the Roman Empire, and eventually loses much of Asia Minor, until a Komnenid type dynasty comes along in the late 1400s and shores it up for a while. They remain the dominant power in Spain, North Africa, and Italy simply because it isn’t until the late 800s when most of their neighbors begin to catch up on them technology and culturally speaking by uniting into loose dynastic kingdoms or forming professional standing armies versus tribal warbands. Then the Empire (as stated earlier) falls into an ‘in name only’ stance where they are just a loose coalition of warlords who theoretically listen to the emperor.
[2] Really the best analogy would be the worship of R’Hillor from ASOIAF with all other gods standing in for the Great Other, being manifestations of the Lord of Darkness and his host who lead men astray in a masquerade.
[3] Basically the alternate Phillip’s were seen as god and so established a holy mantle over the empire, and in later theology waged a war on Olympus overthrowing the tyranny of Zeus and installing a God Emperor on the throne who ruled over men by divine right of conquest. Thus every civil war is legitimized by having the new emperor symbolically desecrate the grave of his predecessor so he is ‘dethroned’ on Olympus and the new emperor takes his place.
[4] I suppose here is a good spot to note that I use our modern identifying terms for the peoples as charting the eventual names of the inhabitants would be very difficult so these are really just place holders to help you figure out roughly who is who.
[5] Or something roughly analogous to this title. King is not yet totally in style but it is getting there thanks to the success of the Northern peoples and their very large neighbors, some hetman are getting ideas all their own on who should be ruling all the Russian lands…
[6] Well so they say, I have it on good authority that the dynasty actually died out completely only for the son of a lesser concubine to rebuild it anew. A great deal of poison might have been involved, or that emperor may have been cursed by the gods. It really depends on which story you prefer.
[7] An attempt by one enterprising king to proclaim himself such ended rather badly when he was tied to a rock and rolled into the sea by order of the priests. Needless to say no one has tried again since.
[8] Well culturally Mayan and their descendants anyways.
[9] The Danish empire is totally fine sending its unwanted people off that way.
[10] After getting a good dosage of them in the 1300s which almost wiped out civilization on the plains where they had the least immunity to it. But overall TTL the less abrupt contact has allowed the Natives to build up a better immunity to our diseases.
[11] To the extent that they construct excellent wooden and earth style palisades, reasonable facsimiles of motte and bailey castles for their chiefs, walled towns, and longship style boats.
[12] Think the Iroquois on steroids.
