Mega screw challenge

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Your challenge is to screw all the following powers in the same TL: the UK, the US, France, Spain, Prussia ( Brandenburg and Germany are fine too), Austria, Russia and the Ottoman Empire, all in the same TL. And no PoDs before 1300 are allowed.
 
PLC gets its 'act together' in the early 15th century, conquers western Ukraine and makes it part of the Commonwealth (maybe the PLUC) and it then holds on to Belarussia, and conquers the Teutonic Knights. These developements shift the political balance away from the szlachta towards the crown and the grandees of the three constituent patrs (the military Hetmen). These make the throne hereditery and they get a family member on the throne of Hungary. This then has the Habsburgs pretty much cornered, and after a few wars the PLUC takes Silesia and sets Bohemia up as a client state.

Muscovy is pretty much a non-starter and it's made a client state of the PLUC. The Ottoman Empire invades Serbia etc. and tries to take on Hungary, but the PLUC backs their allies and invades through Moldavia and Transylvania. They drive the Ottmoans back into the southern Balkans and perhaps they launch another crusade against Constantinople in around 1540 or so.

Without Prussia, Brandenburg remains just another tiny HRE principality struggling to get by, so we've gotten rid of them. The UK would be hard to 'shaft' in the traditional sense, but given as how most of eastern Europe is united or allied to one great power (I'm assuming that Serbia and the other Balkan kingdoms remain independent yet are loosely aligned with the PLUC) so their industrial and commercial hegemony is far less asured-more cnosolidation of capital and land in the hands of the aristocracy in eastern Europe MAY kick off an industrial revolution in the early 18th century or so but I can't back that up and I don't think it can be extracte3d from this very simple hypothessi I'm posting. As the POD's so early the USA probably doesn't ever exist, although once the New World is discovered I doubt the PLUC would want many colonise-maybe a few for its large, poor, agricultural population, although colonialism would still probably be driven by the western European powers.
 
Cuba goes hot in 62. :(:( True a lot of other places get screwed as well but probably not as badly.

Steve
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Cuba goes hot in 62. :(:( True a lot of other places get screwed as well but probably not as badly.

Steve
Well, this is pre 1900 forum, so PoDs past year 1900 are disqualified.

The Poland thingy: It screwed the East European powers, sure, and with an early PoD the US could be butterflied away. But France, Britain and Spain are not screwed. This means it does not follow the requirements.
 
The Poland thingy: It screwed the East European powers, sure, and with an early PoD the US could be butterflied away. But France, Britain and Spain are not screwed. This means it does not follow the requirements.

How about this : During the English Civil War, the Dutch (they still tevolt against the Spanish, perhaps along with parts of Italy) take advantace of it and grab most of the English Colonies in America and brankrupt the British East-India Company. In Spain the Potugees are more succesfull, taking large parts of eastern Spain as part of the kingdom of Potrugal. Spain also loses most of Belgium to the Dutch revolution. In France a young Louis XIV dies of an infection leaving France in civil war with the southern part declaring independence.
 
Well, this is pre 1900 forum, so PoDs past year 1900 are disqualified.

The Poland thingy: It screwed the East European powers, sure, and with an early PoD the US could be butterflied away. But France, Britain and Spain are not screwed. This means it does not follow the requirements.

France and Spain could be 'dealt with' through dynastic problems-have a predatory HRE/English nobility prey upon them after it becomes apparent that Eastern Europe itsn't going to be their plaything. England takes Brittany, Normandy (or retains them whichever way you see it) and Gascony, while Burgundy and Toulouse become independent monarchies (Burgundy taking Provence and the Seine valley to the English border while Toulouse takes the Langedoc).

Spain could remain divided into Castille, Aragon, Navarre, Al Anadlus etc. although having a strong Catholic power in Eastern Europe would stop them from becoming the European hegemons they were in the 16th century (with the Habsburg Empire covering Austria, Spain, Naples etc. etc.) so Spain could be a national non-starter, perhaps fracturing into smaller polities, especially if some sort of status quo is established with the Muslims (not necessarily a peace, but a kind of recognition that southern Spain isn't going to be reconquered-maybe after a few military defeats).

England wouldn't necessarily be screwed in this scenario, given as how it's retained northern France and is going pretty well for itself, yet a more continentally focused foreign policy would mean that it would have less incentive to colonise and so although they'd be ok, they'd be nowhere near as powerful as they were IOTL (what would you rather have, a bit of France or 1/3 of the earth?)

My scenario would see Europe debvelope into larger, more stable power blocs earlier (probs the PLUC, England, Burgundy, Austria, Hungary, Novgorod/Muscovy etc. etc.) which would develope a rough status quo. This could well slow down colonisation as larger empires don't tend to colonise (please note I'm not saying that the PLUC would establish colonies) and so maybe American civilisations could develope further e.g. the Mississippi cultures would have time to recover from their plagues and floods and turn into centralised states again, or the Central American peoples develope more (maybe technologically, but I'm thinking more politically) and the same with the Inkan and Amazonian polities.

Of course, there is one other thing that could happen. Sweden, realising that its paths of expansion in Russia and Poland will come to nothing decides to conquer Scandinavia, and so takes Norway and Denmark by the 17th century. They then send ships to colonise Iceland and then Greenland before-uh oh!- land ahoy! And then we can have a Swedish colonial empire in Canada fuelled by large scale Russian and Polish migrants. Awesome.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
PLC are a good place to start, so let start with killing it off from the start, Jadwiga of Poland dies in childhood, and Hungary and Poland stay in union with Emperor Sigismund as king of both (it deman some handwaving but it aren't impossible). The house of Luxembourg manage to keep it somewhat together over the next generation and doesn't die out, and it time the family succed in making the crowns inheritable, and make both part of the HRE. Lithuania at some point in the 15th century convert to Catholism and make peace with the Teutonic Knigths, the Livonian branch accept his overlordship against receiving vast new estate in easten Lithuania (de facto on Russian territorium), and serve as buffer toward Moscow, while Lithuania expand into Ukraine and Don watersheed.

The Ottomans do better at first against Timur Lenk, which make him adopt a more agressive stance and most of central Anatolia are mostly depopulated as punishment, the Ottomans survive barely, but much of Anatolia are repopulated by Slavic, Vlach and proto-Albanian Christian settlers. The Muslim powerbase turn a lot smaller and after a collapse of Ottoman power in the Balkan, the Ottoman Empire destroyed by rebellion in Anatolia, the last Ottoman Sultan are killed in battle and their Empire collapse into warring splinter states, only slowly to consolidate again. under several succesor states, a weird mix of Christian, Muslim, Slavic and Greek.

The hundred year war end in a draw, with France reduced to rump version of itself, and with the Normans controlling most of north easten, But the south split between other states, we also see a Toulouse-Aragon union. The centre of Normannic possesion move in the following year to Normandy, but it become harder and harder for the Norman to control their possesion, and the local nobility take more and more power, slowly it develop into a late HRE structure, a chaos of independent fief, and Scotland end up controling most of the North.

Spain are easy, we see a Castile-Portugeese union instead of Castile-Aragonese, while they at first try to call themself Spain, Aragonese threat of war, make them adopt the name of Iberia instead.
 
Here's a quick map illustrating my concept:


pluc.GIF

pluc.GIF
 
The most obvious way to screw the UK is (not having one) force England to have to keep a land army to stop an conjoined invasion from Scotland (easier if Scotland gets Ireland too, and Wales, but that's harder after 1300) with France.

No James, or perhaps:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes

succeeds, killing James.

A Kalmar Union and Poland-Lithuanian great powers as mentioned.

A strong Italy would be good too.

Strong China.

Portugal makes a united Iberia.
 
Well, this is pre 1900 forum, so PoDs past year 1900 are disqualified.

The Poland thingy: It screwed the East European powers, sure, and with an early PoD the US could be butterflied away. But France, Britain and Spain are not screwed. This means it does not follow the requirements.

yourworstnightmare

Duh! Spending too much time on the site and forgetting the details. :eek: Good point. Also unless you get a drastically advanced technology you can't get a widespread nuclear exchange before 1900.

Steve
 
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