Names For OTL In ATLs

From: Queen Elizabeth I had children
Initial WI: WI Queen Elizabeth hadn't had children with Robert Dudley
POD: William Cecil had spread more believable rumor's on Dudley's wife's death.
TL Name: The Virgin Queen, the Disunited Island

This is basically saying that what if Elizabeth and Dudley hadn't had a child that survived infancy to become King Edward VII (named after her brother who had died years before she took the crown). This TL then proceeds to make the assumption Elizabeth wouldn't ever marry and then of course have no issue. Would King James of Scotland become our King? Would the Tudor line stop there? Would the Stuarts become the house of the British monachy? And then would the two countries become united later to form a United Kingdom of Britain?
 
From: Liberal German Superpower TL
Initial WI: What if Germany never united in 1848?
POD: Russian Emperor doesn't fall ill
TL Name: Germany Divided

Basically, instead of Italy and Germany uniting in 1848 like they did, the Russians, with their emperor in good health, starts interfering in Europe's affairs. They quell the uprising in Austria and help the reactionary Prussian authorities to regain power. Since Austria's no longer falling apart, the Hungarian Diet don't withdraw their regiments from Italy, letting the Austrians crush the uprisings in the Italian portions of the Hapsburg empire. Later on, the European powers (inc. France, strangely enough) don't interfere nearly as much in the American Civil War, which means Prussia has no opportunity to help the United States, so relations with the Americans don't warm up as much - this leads to America eventually allying with France and England against Germany in World War I.

Eventually, in World War II, all the countries of Europe (save Italy) wage war against Germany once this crazed nut calling himself "Adolf Hitler" gets into power, and the country is partitioned between the Franco-Anglo-Americans in the west and this Russian confederation calling itself the "USSR" in the east. By today, Germany is reunited and has one of the world's biggest economies, but overall is a shadow of what it is in our world.
 
From: Alexander the Great Survives
Initial WI: Alexander the Great died before finishing his empire?
POD: He dies of a sickness he had before the Arabian campagne
TL Name: Europe Wank
Instead of the Macedonian Empire making the middle east the continuing center if civilization, they have Rome build an empire in Europe, making them the center of civilization for hundreds of years. Does have an odd convergency of the classical empire survicing near macedonia for nearly a millenium longer than elsewhere.
 
From: Napoleon is victorious timeline
Initial WI: What if Napoleon was defeated by his opponents?
POD: Napoleon does not give Great-Britain a favourable peace in Amiens in 1802.
TL Name: The End of France

The POD of this timeline is that Napoleon Bonaparte was harsher on Great Britain in the Treaty of Amiens than in OTL. Britain gets involved in the war again, and, to provoke the British, Napoleon crowns himself Emperor of the French in 1804, four years early. With loads of butterflies and a revanchist Great Britain Napoleon is eventually defeated in the mid-1810s. We then see this timeline progress through the 19th Century, including a France and Great Britain that eventually get closer together. It is a fun read but it's very unrealistic as Prussia defeats France in 1870 and proclaims a German Empire! Come on... anyway, they do get beaten again in an alternate and very late WWI in the mid-1910s, but France has a much harder time with it than it should have, especially with Russia and Britain as it's surprising allies! Also, France is actually beaten in the second war by some madman named Adolph Snitler or Witler or whatever. I forgot. Anyway, this Austrian rules Germany and controls almost all of Europe, and is eventually defeated by the Allies, causing a joint Ameriwank/Russowank to exist in which America and a communist Russian republic are the rulers of the world and the almighty France is not even one of the major great powers! This TL is by me considered as the most insulting TL to the French Empire ever, and the user that has written this should be banned. There is no way that the great Napoleon Bonaparte could have lost. It's simply ridiculous.
 
From: Ricardian Plantagenet TL
Initial WI: What if Henry ap Meredith defeated Richard 3d and took the Crown?
POD: Henry ap Meredith, alias Tidder, successfully invades the realm, wins a battle against King Richard somewhere in Leics, takes the throne, marries Elizabeth of York, and founds a dynasty (you see how multifarious this weak POD is)
TL Name: The Doubled Tudor Rose

Amusing in its way, with some plausible touches at the first, but swiftly descends into arrant nonsense (what IC comments on the TL call 'wank' and 'ASB': the advocates of this TL are an odd lot with their own odd cant). Henry (here 'Henry 7th') founds a successful dynasty, which survives even a repugnant heir and a reigning queen as his (spinster) granddaughter, who leaves the throne to the Scots when she dies, d.s.p. Heresy flourishes, replacing the intra-ecclesial reformations of the English Church, which in this TL actually goes into schism from the Holy See; subsequent events see rebellions, republics, restorations, the supremacy of parliaments, a union of crowns throughout the Isles (rather than OTL's personal union), the uniting of the Germanies, republics everywhere, an independent France, colonies lost and rising to superpower status whilst the Britannic Empire first flourishes in odd places and then declines.... Very odd; it embodies Lord Chesterton's maxim that the modernist - and here, the allohistorian - is a confidence man, who will, he promises, straighten out the world, if once he is allowed to give this one twist to the mind.

The TL has numerous readers, and I suppose it answers some want for phantasy in them, but I cannot saythat it is at all to my taste.
 
From: Holding out for a Hero: Gustav Stresemann Survives
Initial WI: What if the Thoiry Summit had failed?
POD: The franc doesn't stagger, leading to the French refusing to leave the Rhineland before 1930. The stress helps push Stresemann into his grave, leading to a nightmarish conflict engulfing Eurasia.
TL Name: Lest Darkness Fall

Despite the dark tone of the timeline (The Nazis manage to overrun most of Europe before America(?!) and Russia (Well, that's less surprising), divide the continent. But the author likes to portray a sense of utopic convergence, as the remains of Europe still press forward with European unification, the civil rights movement in America is even less bloody than OTL, and Mao Zedong, despite getting control of all of China and killing millions, paves the way for his successors to create an economic boomtown.

1989 was considered to be the culminating point of the TL, witnessing the fall of the Warsaw Pact and then the Soviet Union; but after complaints that the 1990s were downright utopic, he had the United States go batshit insane after a terrorist attack.
 
From: Holding out for a Hero: Gustav Stresemann Survives
Initial WI: What if the Thoiry Summit had failed?
POD: The franc doesn't stagger, leading to the French refusing to leave the Rhineland before 1930. The stress helps push Stresemann into his grave, leading to a nightmarish conflict engulfing Eurasia.
TL Name: Lest Darkness Fall

Despite the dark tone of the timeline (The Nazis manage to overrun most of Europe before America(?!) and Russia (Well, that's less surprising), divide the continent. But the author likes to portray a sense of utopic convergence, as the remains of Europe still press forward with European unification, the civil rights movement in America is even less bloody than OTL, and Mao Zedong, despite getting control of all of China and killing millions, paves the way for his successors to create an economic boomtown.

1989 was considered to be the culminating point of the TL, witnessing the fall of the Warsaw Pact and then the Soviet Union; but after complaints that the 1990s were downright utopic, he had the United States go batshit insane after a terrorist attack.

It was hardly utopic in the Balkans and Russia did suffer an economic collapse.
 
From Chaos TL:
Initial WI: WI Ogodai's father Temujin survived into the 1220s?
POD: Temujin becomes Khagan in 1206 and manages to expand the Mongol Empire up to the Caspian Sea.
TL Name: Father Knows Best - Fuck The Rest

Also dubbed the "Deliberately Low-Tech TL", the author "Genghiz Cohen" explores the ramifications of even stronger Mongol razor-blades in world history. The Islamic World, China and especially Russia suffer a major setback in their development. The lack of a Novorossiya means the delay of modern inventions up to half a century. Similar to the known world, a Cold War preceded by two world wars has been overcome, but in this case it's been the governments that came to senses, NOT a bunch of numeric mutinists and therefore the notion of a world government is still considered utopic. Though to be fair, this timeline is lagging ours to about forty to fifty years. AI and nanotechnology are in less than their infancy, mobile phones and numeric interconnection only gained mainstream prominence in the 1990s.

The timeline has been accused to be an exaggeration of the one-great-man phenomenon with figures like Temujin, a Corsican-French named Napoleon, Hitler as a German uber-Gridenkov partially annihilating the Jews and last but not least Gorbachev, heralded to have ended the Cold War. The relative technological primitiveness led to comments that exaggerations hampered progress.

Fun facts: Atlantis is called America and contains the English-speaking superpower USA (beside a familiar Canada) covering all of German North Atlantis and all of its immediate southern neighbors including the Wild South, "Australia" here means Antipodia. Britain is an exporting role model of responsible governance (thanks to developments in 1650-1700). Socialism (often even called Communism) took root in (long time unified) Russia at the end of WWI, WWII was waged from (Europe-only) Germany and (non-Christian) Nippon, the former also debuting the industrial mass annihilation of peoples, both defeated in 1945. The Rhine remains the epicenter of European economic development as any monetarist-socialist "curtain" ran some hundreds of kilometers further east and the monetarist side of it was to its west (therefore there's an EAST-Block). "Hollywood" at Los Angeles fills the role of our Paradies as the global center of cinematic industries. And Brussels once again heads a club of several European countries, the decidedly free-market European Union, and is also the capital of Belgium, a chaotic rich country, what a pleonasm... and what we would call "Chaos" is therein called "Third World" as a synonym for, well, countries that wanted to be left alone from the Cold War.
 
Let's see what the "Was wäre wenn"-Forum has to say about this...


igor: And I had thought Russia got the short end of the stick IOTL...

Henrich: I beg to differ about the "great men" phenomenon. Don't we have some of them either? Think about Prince Alasdair. Or Alfred Kleiber. Emperor Alessandro did everything this Bonaparte did, and more, and died as an emperor and was buried in a pyramid, instead being exiled. Not to start about emperor Ludovico.

Ayanami Shinji: And what about Walter Meier? Admit it: If he hadn't helped uniting European Germany, they'd never become a superpower.

OT-DDR78: those wws are pretty dumb, esp. the second one. If Britain and France and Russia all still hate Germany... every idiot would've seen they have no chance ever (I mean Germany). Wouldn't they have stopped Hittler before?

meisterhans: Is this "America" a continent or a state now?

Gladius: This one German nobles' family, Habsburg, takes the cake IMO. Inheriting Burgundy, the richest part of western Europe, AND Tyrol with its silver mines, AND half of Italy, AND Bohemia, AND Hungary, AND Spain, AND Roman Atlantis?! The Quadruple Monarchy was nothing compared to that. Seriously, shouldn't someone have started an anti-Habsburg War WAY earlier?

Henrich: At least they aren't made up, as I had thought for a moment. If anybody wants to check: They sat in Upper Switzerland - before they were defeated.

(Th)rist: How could Socialism take root in a primitive country like TTL Russia, with measly 2% of factory workers?! Especially since everybody else was smart enough to avoid it until then...

Gladius: Communism.

(Th)rist: Whatever.

igor: @meisterhans: Either a state or a continent. You Germans also say "Atlantis" and mean your part in the north.

Max: 50 years? More like 100 years, for the telegraph.

Elias bar Ariel: The mass murder of SIX MILLION Jews during the 20th century was extremely bad taste. I don't believe Genghiz Cohen really is Jewish.

Stevan aus Budapest: I didn't like those new ideas they developed. These incomprehensible modern artists like Sepp Beuys or how he's called, these literal anti-Germans, these Nipponese Wan Tus about any kind of sick stuff...

AFB: But the bit about stronger democracy in modern times is interesting.

OT-DDR78: If u ask me, I'd call TTL "Chaos squared".

Stevan aus Budapest: @AFB: Ah, looks pretty corrupt and incompetent to me.

Henrich: You all have to agree however: This Temujin khan was a major exaggeration.

white-devil: Alessandro my ass (heh heh). he just became general because he f***ed the old king. every idiot knows that.

Administrator Jan: That was clearly a hit below the belt. white-devil, you're banned. Forever.

Stevan aus Budapest: Besides, I think this TL is a combined Spain/France/Britain/"America"-wank.

Administrator Jan: Oh, and: Thread locked.
 
An Homage

From: Leslie LeCroix TL
Initial WI: WI no private space development?
POD: Roadtowns are never developed.
TL Name: Niel Armstrong TL

This TL begins with investors in the first roadtown never taking the plunge, leading to a greater dependence on automobiles for long-distance transportation. Instead of roadtowns, huge "superhighways" carry hordes of individual autos between cities. This leads to a greatly increased demand for petroleum and a intense interest in the Middle East oil reservoirs. National rivalries remain elevated, resulting in an extended Cold War until the late 1980s, with superpowers vying for influence and fighting brushfire wars around the world.

A major butterfly is that, due to different economic developments, D. D.. Harriman never makes his fortune. Without his drive and vision behind it, private space development never gets off the ground (pun intended). Instead, space exploration becomes a sideshow in the Cold War rivalry. Pork barrel politics, bureaucracy, and defence contractor cost overruns make rocketry monstrously bloated and expensive. The first moon landing is delayed by two decades, and the program is designed as a space spectacular, with no follow-up development. After a very few visits, the moon is abandoned, never to be really explored and colonized. By an almost ASB reversal, reusable surface-to-orbit craft are not developed until over a decade later. Bloated costs and poor design decisions doom the "space shuttle" to becoming an economic extravagance, rather than the first step to real space development. At the end of the TL, space travel has stagnated for almost half a century, with little expectation of change.

On a brighter note, the lack of a manned presence in space has driven development of electronics for unmanned probes. Miniaturization has accelerated, and vast amounts of circuitry can be fitted onto tiny "computer chips". By the 1980s, every office and almost every home can afford a "personal computer".

This TL has been criticised on the grounds that such an extended and highly charged Cold War would have inevitably led to a hot war, with a devastating exchange of atomic weapons.

[OOC: I know this wasn't written originally as alternate history, but RAH included it as a timeline in his World as Myth series]
 
From: Gore Wins TL
Initial WI: Bush eeked out the most ridiculous win possible
POD: Gore sighs in the first debate, doesn't mention pro-gun stance, etc.
TL Name: Fuckital

A real ASB portrayal of the last decade -- everything from the Supreme Court deciding an election, to a "war on terror", to a for-the-lulz invasion of Iraq; then throw in Governor Arnold Schartzaneggar, the destruction of an American city, and the first black President -- who you likely have never heard of :eek:

Only recommended if you like dadaist level weirdness in AH speculation...
 
bump...

From: No Subprime Meltdown
Initial WI: What if the moderate politicians loose control?
PoD: Banks start taking on ridiculous mortgages with Federal connivance.
TL Name: The Center Cannot Hold

"Monticello," the maker of this TL, has been careful to avoid mentioning his personal political preferences, displaying apparently equal sympathies for both the liberal Democrats and the libertarian wing of the Republican Party. Some people consider him an anarchist; others think he's bored with current politics and just wants exciting TL's.

It was pretty clear from the beginning that Monticello's goal was to destroy the loose coalition of moderates that's been successfully governing this country since Bush the Elder. As people commented from the beginning, if this's the best way he could think of to destroy it, the coalition must be very strong. Really - what bank would take high-interest subprime mortgages from people who couldn't get regular mortgages? And take so many that they'd go underwater if the borrowers defaulted? Borrowers selected as bad credit risks? True, Monticello pointed out a small flurry of interest in them back in the '90's and again in '02 - but it was roundly and rightly squashed by virtually every risk assessor on the market.

Well, the boom in the 2000's is a little bigger, even though 9-10 happens (butterflied to a day later; cue "911" jokes from a couple commenters with poor taste). Nothing big changes, though, until the bottom drops out of all the subprime mortgages at once in early 2008 - just in time for the elections. The Republicans nominate President McCain just like in reality, but the Democrats are swayed by a message of "change" from - can you believe this - junior Senator Obama of Illinois! (Yes, I had to look him up too.) Hoping to gain an "change" plank of his own, McCain picks Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running-mate. For some reason, though, Monticello has him run the exact same campaign as he really did, even though - well, I mean, he could hardly criticize Clinton for being inexperienced or radical, but Obama?? Get real!

So Obama goes about nationalizing healthcare and putting in lots of socialist projects - though Monticello is vague about exactly what - which sparks a vaguely libertarian grassroots backlash called the "Tea Party." (Palin becomes a minor celebrity among them, which I can believe; look at her husband's ties to secessionists.) The centrist Republicans try to co-op it into their party, but the "Tea Party" rejects them as Washington insiders tarred with the same brush, even going so far as to run their own candidates in the 2010 primaries! Republicans win control of the House in 2010, with a lot of Tea Party support, and the new Speaker announces a public reading of the Constitution (one of the "Tea Party" planks) and an early vote on repealing the national healthcare bill...

A nice, fun TL if you want your politics interesting. A few hard-core fans are urging Monticello to tear down the Democratic and Republican parties in favor of Libertarians and Socialists - but, hey, he's only three years after the major PoD; give him time!
 
From: A Pale Horse: The Plague of 1512
Inital WI: The Horse Plague of 1512 is butterflied out of existance
PoD: Unclear
TL Name: Selim's World

This TL took what was probably the most horrific event of the 16th Century - the Horse Plague - and removed it from history. The effects, needless to say, are huge. The Refromists, called ITTL "Protestants", completely break with the Catholic Church, rather than set up their own rival Papacy. The Italian cities are able to maintain independence for another two centuries before the Austrians gain control, while Spain remains unified under the Trastamataras. Curiosly,the author avoids the usual cliche of having a monolithic Spanish empire stretch across the Americas, instead having an English-derived Republic in North America dominate global politics.
 
From : No Hundred Years' War Timeline, in the seventeenth year of the reign of John VI, King of France and Navarra.
Initial WI : What if John I of France had died as a baby?
POD : Death of John I five days after his birth
Timeline Name : The Accursed Kings : A Hundread Years War

In this timeline, king John I the Pious, posthumous son of Louis X the Quareller, dies fived days after his birth in 1316. With his death rises the questions of who is to get the crown between his four year old half-sister Joan of Navarra and her uncle Philippe of Poitiers (who was OTL regent of France for the first five years of John I's reign).
Using the claim of Salic Law and the possible illegitimacy of Joan of Navarra, Philip of Poitiers is able to be crowned as Philip V of France. However, the death of Philip's only son in 1321 and his own death in 1322 leaves the crown in the hands of the last of Philip IV's three sons, Charles of La Marche. Alas, King Charles IV himself is unable to father a son before his own death in 1328.

This leads to a new succession crisis where are debated who should succeed Charles IV between Joan of Navarra, now 16 years old and married to her cousin Philip of Evreux, Edward III, King of England and nephew of Charles IV, and Philip of Valois, 1st cousin of Charles IV. In the end, the French apply Salic Law and excludes women of the succession, leading Philip of Valois to become Philip VI of France and to become the first King of the House of Valois.

However, the calamiteous succession and rising tensions between Edward III and Philip VI leads the former to claim the crown of France, starting a war that will last more than a Hundred Years and see many developments.
 
Some shameless plugging...

From: Two Lucky Princes TL
Initial WI: WI Miguel I of Iberia and Arthur I of England die young?
POD: Miguel da Paz's death in childhood
Timeline Name: AEIOU: The Habsburg Empire

In this TL, Miguel I of Iberia, whose accession to the thrones of Portugal, Castile, and Aragon unites the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, dies as a young child. Thus, the succession passes to his aunt Juana instead, whose marriage to the Archduke Philip (who does not become Emperor TTL, predeceasing his father Maximilian) results in her sons Charles and Ferdinand ruling a large swath of Europe. Bohemia and Hungary are added to the Habsburg possessions after Louis II also dies a rather early death without issue, leaving it to his brother-in-law Ferdinand. Ironically, Portugal was not to pass to the Habsburg crown until Charles' son Philip claims its throne after the extinction of the House of Aviz. The Habsburgs hold the Portuguese throne until 1640, when the House of Braganza evicts them from it.

The Reformation progresses much differently; the reformer priest Martin Luther ironically leading a movement to break from the Catholic Church. Huldrych Zwingli is still an important reformer TTL, yet does not give his name to the movement. Without Arthur as king, his brother Henry, the Duke of York, who in our timeline became an important cardinal and champion of Counter-Zwingliists, becomes king, and due to his frustrations with having a male heir and desire for power breaks from Rome. In this timeline, France does not break from the Catholic Church completely, even if the Valois become extinct and the throne passes to the Protestant (TTL name for Zwingliist) Henry of Navarre. Said Henry converts to Catholicism to secure further legitimacy for his crown.

A European war breaks out later TTL; instead of other states intervening in the French succession crisis, dynastic and confessional problems within the Holy Roman Empire lead to the Thirty Years War, devastating said Empire and catapulting France to the role of European hegemon. However, in this timeline the Imperial title is kept, but the House of Habsburg continues to focus on their domains.

The rather consanguineous marriage policy of both Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs lead to both houses dying out in the late 17th and early 18th centuries in the male line, leading to both countries fighting wars of succession, where the former ends with a Bourbon on the Spanish throne (though renouncing his claims to the French throne) and the latter ends with the successful reclamation of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine of the Imperial title.

This timeline also sees Sweden only briefly becoming a power, failing to retain its power after a devastating war against Russia, and a surprising rise of the Hohenzollern Electors of Brandenburg to become the leading state in Germany by the 19th century. This timeline sees a more decentralized Poland-Lithuania, preventing it from attaining the status of Central European power.
 
From: Ancient Egypt Survives to the Present Day
Initial WI: Timeline Competition 4: No Rediscovery of Ophir
POD: Necho II does not send forth the fleet which re-discovers Ophir
Timeline Name: Khem Destroyed! / Heir to Austria's Throne is Slain with his Wife by a Bosnian Youth to Avenge Seizure of His Country (aka HATSWBYASHC (aka The Hats Timeline)) / After the War

[This timeline was actually written in three parts. The first, by Khufu XXI, was the winner of Timeline Competition 4, and stops in 1912 (the time of the competition). The second part was written by norserocket in real time (with flashbacks), covering the Great War and events leading up to it. The third part was written in 1919, mainly by Khufu XXI, with assistance from norserocket and others.]

The Saïte kings of Egypt fail to reestablish contact with the land of Ophir, depriving the state of its needed gold reserves. As a result, it is conquered by the Achaemenids and eventually forms a part of Alexander's empire (and then the Ptolemaic empire, after Alexander's death). Rome wins the Second Punic War, since it doesn't have to fight Egypt, and in 146 BC destroys the rival city. As part of the Roman wars in the late First Republic, the entire Mediterranean, including Egypt, is incorporated into the Roman Empire.

However, this is a less stable Roman state, and one with less European territory (border on the Rhine, more or less). The empire is divided into an Eastern Empire and a Western Empire; the Hunnic and Germanic invasions lead to the destruction of the latter in AD 476, though the former persists for almost another millenium. This is the Dark Ages.

Ironically, the world-leading region in the period after 1500 is, in fact, Europe. The Age of Exploration sees the establishment of trade routes around the tip of Africa (no Suez Canal at this point) and the conquest of both the Aztecs and the Incas. Meanwhile, schisms in Christianity lead to religious persecution and warfare, driving people to British colonies on the east coast of North Vinlandia.

The seventeenth century sees the establishment of the Manchu Qing Dynasty in China and the high-water mark of the Ottomans, as well as the end of the large-scale intra-Christian conflicts. The scientific setbacks in the Dark Ages, however, mean that an understanding of electricity is still a couple centuries off and even steam power is still untapped.

In 1776, the British colonies in Vinlandia (with much aid from other European powers) declare independence as the republican "United States of America". Spanish colonies, covering most of the rest of the New World, follow over the next fifty years, though they are not united.

The Industrial Revolution kicks in in the nineteenth century, but for the most part in Europe and the USA, which by 1850 rules a robust zone stretching all the way across Vinlandia. Britain takes over all of India from bases (such as the Bengal region) established previously. Even Africa, with no native states on par with Ghana, is divided up by the European powers. By 1912, European mastery over the globe is assured.

However, the Europeans are themselves bitterly divided. They have split into two blocs: on one side are Britain, Russia, and France (Gaul), and on the other side are Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary, ruled by Germans and Magyars, though suffering from uniquely mixed ethnography. Nationalist aspirations among the Balkan populations are the spark that sets Europe ablaze.

The Great War (later called World War I) breaks out in 1914 and is the most brutal yet seen, comparable to the Great Eastern War in tactics on the main fronts, though in a much smaller and more populated space. The Germans and their allies lose, although Russia suffers a revolution that replaces the tsarist government with the radical "union of Soviet Socialist Republics".

In 1933, amidst TTL's Great Depression, a fascist regime appears in Germany, remilitarizing and embarking on a campaign of expansion. In 1939, Britain and France intervene. In 1941, Germany invades the thus-far nonbelligerent USSR, while the USA joins the war after a sneak attack by Germany's ally Japan. In 1945, the Germans surrender. Also in 1945, the USA drops two nuclear bombs on Japan (which also surrenders). The "Cold War" begins, with the USA on one side and the USSR on the other; before long, both superpowers are nuclear ones, and within twenty years Britain, France, and China have joined them.

The Cold War ends as the USSR's economic system proves inefficient, with the state itself fragmenting. This leaves the USA as the world's only superpower, but the threat of terrorism still remains. In 2001, an event called "9/11", precipitated by Muslim terrorists, occurs, but it was not adequately explained before the writing group broke up.

Despite the timeline's jump into the future, its technology level still lags behind OTL's--by the twenty-first century, fossil fuels are still the world's primary source of energy, for instance.
 
From: No Bronze Age collapse
Initial WI: What if no Hatti-Egypt dynastic union?
POD: Prince Zannanza is assassinated on his way to Egypt.
TL Name: With Fire and Sword

Following the death of Tutankhamun, last Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, a new native dynasty takes the throne. Instead of a firm strategic partner, the Hittite Empire faces a growing rivalry with Egypt over spheres of influence in Syria. The Hittites collapse somehow--it’s kind of hand-waved away, blamed on so-called “Sea Peoples,” who seem to spring up out of nowhere and spread chaos across the Eastern Mediterranean. Egypt survives, and Assyria becomes a major power for a while. A bunch of desert nomads found a couple of weird little monotheistic kingdoms in Canaan.
Later on, some sort of “Persian” Empire from Iran takes over the Near East, and is opposed by a plucky band of post-Achaean city-states. (Despite the Chaos, the Achaeans, don’t seem to have migrated to Italy in any great numbers.) There’s also some stuff going on with the Phoenicians colonizing North Africa.

However, all this gets basically gets wiped off the map, by the “Roman” Empire, which the author seems to have made up out of whole cloth, since practically nothing is known about the pre-Achaean “Latin” inhabitants of Italy. Somehow these people manage to conquer most of the Celtic tribes as well as Egypt, Achaea, North Africa and much of the Near East.

At this point, the author seems to have realized that he’s just writing fantasy, and just goes with it. The weird monotheistic Canaanites somehow manage to export their religion across much of Europe, while the Roman Empire gets overrun by another wave of barbarian invasions. After that, Europe is just a mess of little hybrid German-Latin kingdoms with a few odd Semitic names thrown in for good measure. Eventually they end up colonizing the New World and have a scientific and industrial revolution--but the POD is so far back that the world is pretty much unrecognizable.
 
From: The Black and the Gray
Initial WI: WI the Confederacy lost the War of Secession?
POD: President Davis successfully supresses the Cleburne Memorial.
TL Name: Union and Liberty?

This timeline postulates that President Jefferson Davis successfully suppressed the Cleburne Memorial in January 1864. As a result, the final passage of legislation which allowed the mass recruitment of slaves as soldiers for the Confederacy is delayed until one year later, on March 13, 1865. As a result, the Confederacy loses the War of Secession.

So far, so good. The Confederacy in real history was in pretty dire straights by 1864, and its prospects, without the large infusion of manpower which came as a result of the black recruitment laws of March 1864, were pretty bleak. However, the actual sequence of events which takes place in the timeline is fairly fantastic.

First, after General Joe Johnston fights a brilliant defensive campaign from the borders of Tennessee to the outskirts of Atlanta, preserving his army while inflicting large losses on the enemy in every engagement in which he fought them, suddenly President Davis just removes him from command. And who does he put in his place? Beauregard? No. Bragg? No. Kirby Smith? No again.

He promotes John Bell Hood, whose performance during the campaign up to that time (in the ATL) had been far from spectacular, to the rank of Full General, and places him in command! And Hood, who in real history performed creditably in the 1864 campaign in north Georgia and later in Tennessee, acts like he has no brains at all and basically throws away his army in bloody attacks on Union positions outside Atlanta. Then he allows Sherman to encircle the city, and cut all the railroad lines into it, so it falls in August 1864.

Then, General Sherman burns Atlanta and heads off, with his army, toward Savannah, burning, looting, and raping his way through Georgia. Does Hood try to stop him?

No.

Instead, Hood marches off in the opposite direction and heads into Tennessee! Along the way, he nearly manages to capture a Union Army of 20,000 men at Spring Hill, Tennessee. But his army, for some inexplicable reason, goes into camp for the night leaving the road clear, and the Yankees just march past during the night and get clean away to Franklin, Tennessee, without even being challenged by the Confederates who are camped just a few hundred yards from the road! At that point I almost threw up my hands and quit reading...it was just too fantastic to believe! But I persevered.

Then Hood throws away another 6,000 to 7,000 men attacking the entrenched Yankees at Franklin, then follows them to Nashville, where Union General George Thomas is building an army to oppose him. He then proceeds to entrench himself on top of a ridge outside Nashville...and do nothing. He just waits while Thomas gathers up an overwhelming force and comes out in mid-December and swats his army like a fly.

The pitiful remnants of the once proud Army of Tennessee march to Tupelo, Mississippi, then march all the way, on foot, from there to North Carolina, where they surrender to Sherman on April 26, 1865.

Meanwhile, Sherman captures Savannah, and then proceeds, with virtually no resistance, to burn, loot, and rape his way through South Carolina, where he burns the State Capitol, Columbia, for no apparent reason, until he finally catches up to the Army of Tennessee in North Carolina to accept its surrender.

The course of events in the Eastern Theater is more believable. General Lee is gradually forced back toward Richmond in a series of battles in which he inflicts as many casualties on Union General Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Potomac as Lee had in his entire army at the start of the campaign. The city is placed under siege, and falls, ten months later, in April 1865.

But even here, a fantastic event takes place. In late May 1864, General Lee lures General Grant into a trap at the North Anna River, taking a position which forces the Yankees to divide their army into three parts, each separated from the other by a river. Lee has the opportunity to attack the center of the Union position, which was weakly held by the incompetent Ambrose Burnside, and then turn to savage either the left or right flank of the Union Army before the other flank could intervene. Lee has placed himself in the perfect position to destroy the Army of the Potomac, and possibly end the war.

But then, General Lee gets a stomach virus, is confined to his tent, and his army sits and does NOTHING for a whole day, giving General Grant time to figure out that his army is in a trap and to get out of it. For the lack of a bottle of Pepto Bismol, a nation lost its independence!

I almost gave up on this timeline at that point. But being the glutton for punishment I am, I kept reading.

I found the section on the "Reconstruction" of the South following the failed War of Secession to be rather chilling (by the way, in the ATL, they refer to the conflict as the "Civil War," for some reason, which is stupid, because a civil war is a war fought by two factions for control of the government of a nation, not at all an accurate description of the War of Secession...but I digress). The Yankees free the slaves, and then the Republican Party uses them to establish control over all the Southern State Governments. Their regimes do some good...efforts are made to educate the former slaves in some areas, and to protect their rights...but mostly these governments seem to be interested in raising taxes and looting the State Treasuries as quickly as possible. Most of the white population of the South is disenfranchised, for as much as 12 years in some cases, and in reaction, white Southerners form a vicious terrorist organization called the Ku Klux Klan (which, by the way, is a REALLY stupid name...seems like the author of this TL could have come up with something better), which engages in a campaign of violence and intimidation which kills thousands of blacks and white carpetbaggers and poisons race relations nearly irreparably.

Finally, Reconstruction ends, but only after a corrupt political deal allows the Republican candidate to steal the Presidency following a disputed 1876 election. Then white supremacist Democrats take power all over the South, and proceed to impose a brutal system of enforced segregation on the black population called "Jim Crow" (Yet ANOTHER stupid name...why did he name this after some second rate minstrel song? Geez!). Segregation is a Northern invention, and did not exist in the South prior to the War of Secession. It never existed in the Confederacy in our own history. One has to wonder why the embittered, defeated Southerners of this ATL would suddenly want to imitate their Yankee oppressors by adopting such a system? But they do. And not only do they adopt it, but the system persists for almost a century...accompanied by a wave of horrific lynchings of mostly innocent black people which kills thousands, mostly during the early 1900s...right up into the 1960s, if you can believe it!

You'd think that a United States which had forcibly reabsorbed the South at gunpoint, treated it like a conquered territory for over a decade afterward, freed millions of slaves and done nothing to see that they could be peacefully integrated into society, and then allowed the horrid "Jim Crow" regime (I still hate that name) to exist in the South for almost a century after the war, would end up as a Third World country, torn apart by racial and sectional strife. But you'd be wrong.

In the ATL, the United States goes on to be the world's only superpower by the end of the twentieth century. The British Empire, the French Empire, and all the others, gone. And even some of the events which lead to this outcome are far-fetched in themselves.

--Germany and Britain fight on opposite sides of the Great War...which takes place a decade later than in our history. And Britain is allied to France...AND RUSSIA! Its two traditional enemies! Against its traditional ally! Just unbelievable.

--Adolf Hitler, who in real history was an Austrian landscape painter living in Vienna, ends up as dictator of Germany??? And he kills 6 million Jews???? And he almost conquers the world???? One has to wonder, what was the author of this piece of garbage smoking when he wrote this?

--The COMMUNISTS end up in control of Russia. In real history, they were a minor movement which never got off the ground and certainly never came close to gaining power in any nation. And then, under their leadership, Russia ends up as one of two superpowers which struggled for dominance for most of the second half of the twentieth century??? PUH-LEASE!!!!

By the time you get to the end of this, you just want to bang your head against the wall. Or stick your head out the window and yell, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" It seems like, by then, the author is just making random stuff up as he goes along. It's just bad.

Give this one a miss.
 
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From: A World with a Unified China
Initial WI: What if the Nationalists escaped?
POD: The Marshall Mission succeeds.
TL Name: The Dragon Divided

In this TL, the Nationalists manage to escape from the Communists and establish a government on Taiwan. So far, so good. After that, it gets a bit strange. The rest of the world refuses to recognize the group in charge of mainland China as the legitimate government. This stretches disbelief, but it makes sense: the Western world was opposing Communism. And then in the 1970's, they switch. At this point, everyone reading expects the Nationalists, still led by Chiang Kai-Shek (!), to return, but the author evades it. They still claim control of China, but they have little support. On the economic side, Taiwan's economy booms, despite having (a) no resources (b) an authoritarian government and MARTIAL law, and (c) the loss of international recognition- sort of. Most nations unofficially have relations with Taiwan, but very few actually have embassies. At this point, the author seems to have run out of ideas, so he goes batty. In 10 years, the government goes from run by Chiang Kai-Shek's son to democratic with universal suffrage. Seriously. After that, the author stopped posted, partly because he had nowhere to go, and partly because no one could believe that the situation hadn't really changed for 50 years.
 
From: Emperor Julian Survives, Paganism & Christianity coexist
Initial WI: WI Athanasian Christianity took hold in Europe?
POD: Julian dies during the Persian campaign.
TL Name: The Pope in Rome
A somewhat implausible timeline, but well-written nonetheless. Criticized for somewhat summarily dispensing with the Arians early on, and implausibly having the strongly Christian Middle East fall to a strange prophecy-oriented religion from Arabia in just few decades. Initially concentrated on the history of a Roman (instead of Alexandrian) Papacy, with lots of delicious details of strange goings on in the Vatican (the seat of the Christian, instead of Mithraic, priesthood ITTL), including a hilarious bit about a "Pornocracy." Eventually became an Espania-wank after the Espanians conquered Peru easily (this is particularly implausible since they had been fighting Arabs[?!] all through out this time). Also notable for being having the Saxons be the dominant power in Britain, and for bizarrely having Romania be in Dacia, and having OTL Romania be instead replaced with nations formed some obscure Volga tribes. There is also an interesting exploration of all the various sorts of Christian heresies that would have cropped up in the heavily pagan areas of Northern Europe.
 
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