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No sure if this idea has been widely discussed here, nothing popped up on a forum search. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Habsburg#History
What if the Habsburg family died out early on, sometime in the early 11th century?
Obviously this would cause massive butterflies, but would there be another family that would be able to amass a comparable level of power as the Habsburgs? What effect would a less unified Europe have as the centuries passed?