Killing off cardinals left and right doesn't seem quite so realistic, although I did have an idea not long ago wherein the Pope died of the plague and several cardinals were infected by fleas from the corpse while paying their respect at the funeral. (I don't know what rituals surround a Papal funeral, so this may not be realistic.)
Well I didn't exactly mean to kill off Cardinals left and right - you'd only need, say 10-20 of a cardinals college of 50ish to die to cause problems, and then only about 5 or 6 cardinals and an elected Pope to scare more candidates into hiding. Bearing in mind most Cardinals were expected to travel quite extensively anyway, and were often fairly old (though not all the octogenarians they are today) their immune systems will be weaker than the 20-30 year olds with the best chance of survival anyway, and 10-20 out of 50 is lower than the average death rate in Europe so there's every reason to jack it up another notch. But anyway, entirely your decision.
Circa the fleas on the corpse idea - I don't believe dead bodies were left exposed in these times, though I don't really know either. Embalming techniques (not equivalent to mummification if you were going to ask) weren't great in those days and a body could start to decompose in a matter of days or even hours at the wrong time of year. However, a more fundamental flaw is that fleas will leave a dead body as soon as it dies - they can't draw any blood from a corpse, so it's of no use to them. They'd be gone by the time of the funeral, and all the virus cells in the Pope's body would have died, too.
If one Pope dying of the plague isn't catastrophic enough to the faithful, would two Popes dying of the plague within quick succession of one another serve to destabilize the Catholic Church in the way you describe? Would the kings of Europe seek to war with one another over whose Pope was the real one? "The Papal Wars" has a nice ring to it.
The rulers of Europe would largely go with whoever the Papal Conclave elected. Note also my previous comment saying you wouldn't exactly need to murder them all (figuratively) to throw this off balance, just a proportional number of deaths would create a problem which the Cardinals College would most likely seek to alleviate by asking for more Cardinals, and then the death of the second Pope would probably be ample enough excuse for the Papal Conclave to be postponed which the Cardinals College tried to find a resolution to the crisis, which gives you your opportunity. After all, the journey of a clergyman to Rome gives him a far higher chance of dying of exposure anyway, but back on topic.
As for the war, it goes for many situations which historically both caused and didn't cause wars. The existence of numerous Popes by itself is not enough to cause some set of clashes which you're calling "Papal Wars" (quite like the name myself actually). However, it does give you a fuse to set off the explosion. You just need a spark, and that means a somewhat religion-related event which brings two or more rulers to blows. There's any number of ways you could make this happen - have two Kings try argue over who's Pope should be seated in Rome where they fail to be diplomatic and feel like war is the only way to satisfy their honour. Have a situation where a monastic order in country A appeals to a foreign Pope in country B for assistance because Pope B is trying to take control of their assets or the order itself. Have a university or clerical institution (a monastery or school of somesort or whatnot) argue with a foreign Pope on theology and have the argument blow out of proportion to the point where the debate turns to who is an Anti-Pope. There's a load of ways you could play it really. The existence of numerous Popes won't cause the war by itself but it will give you an arsenal of ways to engineer a war and keep it going.
What impact would the collapse of Catholicism have on Orthodox Christianity? The Byzantine remnant wouldn't be worried about Popes. I'm not certain how prevalent Orthodox Christians were (and where) at the time of the Black Death.
Now that is a very interesting thought. I guess it depends somewhat on the fortunes of the Patriarch of Constantinople. If the Patriarch lives while the Popes die they could use it as "proof" that Orthodoxy is the true path which could galvanise an unity (or at least, a "we're in this together and we'll survive" feeling), whereas the death of the Patriarch would likely at least in the short term turn Orthodox Christianity into a decentralised system where local Bishops are their own religious mini-Kings - at least in an "until the Plague is gone" way. Either way, while it makes good filler, Orthodox Christianity is not strong enough to resist the Muslims when they come anyway. The Byzantines are virtually dead already and Muscovy is still struggling with Novgorod and several other minor Russian merchant republics for dominance - collectively they are all paying homage to the Golden Horde, who pre-plague was strong enough to walk over them all by itself. You shouldn't be concerned about Orthodox Christianity unwittingly shielding Europe from invasion because it won't.
I was picturing desperate refugees overrunning political borders and such, but I see now how this is unrealistic. The Black Winter may be unnecessary if the Papal Wars can do the job of weakening Europe. And you're right about the lack of people making crop death less significant; I could kick myself for not seeing that before.
You could always have a far milder Black Winter (it can still have the dramatic name, goodness knows contemporaries are going to think it's Hell On Earth) just to make sure things go smoothly vis a vis the fall of Europe, but it's your call. Ultimately your aim should probably be just making the sequence of events plausible as well as logical. If you think it works without the Black Winter, considering everything we've discussed, then by all means can the drought effects. Also bear in mind that while I was of course true about the plague making a crop shortage far less of a problem, crop shortages can far exceed 50% production (to meet our nominal 50% death rate), which still equals nourishment problems and can still cause starvation.
I'm shying away from the early post-plague Vinland idea for now, given the improbability of it succeeding even in good weather. If you like the idea of a Marinid Columbus, when do you think would be the earliest realistic point to have them contact the Americas? I understand ship technology in the mid-1300s wasn't good enough to produce a reliable trans-oceanic design. In OTL the carrack was invented in the 1400s -- perhaps a similar design could be developed by the Marinids and their Iberian vassals?
The Islamic countries were very good at nautical affairs, just as parts of Europe were. There'd be no reason to delay the development of shipping far past RL dates). That said, the carrack was more designed for sailing the Atlantic waters on the Mediterranean to Germany style trade routes, the Med being that much calmer, and it's unlikely the Muslims will have conquered western Europe and need such vessels before it's already been invented by Christians - after all, trade is still a vital function of society, there's no reason in this TL that Christendom would reject advancing naval tech. You could easily just have the Muslim nations (the Marinids, say) appropriate the carrack design from the Europeans they conquer. As for discovering America, it's your call again but I wouldn't advise any attempt at cross-Atlantic journeys until probably the early 16th century. I'm giving a bit of extra time for the recovery of Europe, and also because Columbus probably did make his journey within a decade or two of when the idea was even feasible. The fact that Spain expanded across the sea so fast was incredible. Of course, Portugal had sent sporadic traders around the coast of Africa before even Columbus, so trade with India should be on the cards, but crossing the Atlantic was a big thing, and even the idea of trying it was considered dubious - many didn't think it was possible or feasible, hence why Columbus had to try three times to get someone to sponsor his journey in the first place - including being rejected by the same Queen of Castile who eventually actually did sponsor him. Given that we're somewhat snuffing out the beacon of European enlightenment at the source (albeit replacing it with Islamic empirical scientific though) I would suggest you don't try to make this TL fit reality - that is, don't feel like there's a rush to make this world match RL advancement by the year 2009. If anything, it would likely take this world an extra 2-300 years to match our technological advancements, if allowing for the fact that Islamic science will produce some advanced things early and many things we probably haven't even thought of (it's a bit like imagining alien tech I guess, only without the futuristic lasers and stuff), so by all means I'd say allow the Marinids to take 50 years or whatnot longer than Columbus to reach the Americas, and then by all means delay an actual proper invasion/colonisation until, say, the year 1750. Slowing down American colonisation does, of course, have the desirable effect of allowing your Aztecs and Incas plentiful time to acquire weapons technology and advance themselves to match Europe, remember.
But what could stop them from attempting to forcibly colonize the Americas and becoming an alternate version of Spain and Portugal?
Oh, any number of reasons. Conservative resistance to focusing on non-European affairs - after all, as I mentioned, Columbus didn't exactly find support plentiful, and most rulers would have preferred to spend the cash on European issues. If an undesirable location or a disease presents itself on the initial exploration, there could also be resistance to repeated attempts to go back to America - in fact if the Marinids don't think they're coming back then that would give them the incentive to just liberally distribute their weapons to the natives as presents/trade items - though of course you have to watch out here that you don't shoot American colonisation through the heart and make it unlikely that anyone wants to go back at all. Or you could go for probably the best reason - that Spain's conquest of the Americas was ludicrous. If it hadn't happened, and I wrote on this forum a TL talking about a fictional "Pizarro" who actually conquered the entire Aztec Empire with 500 men then not a single person here would defend me - they would all call ASB and tell me that I used handwavium of the highest order to force through the result that I wanted. Say the Marinids send a force to try to subdue part of the area, but they are neither as ambitious nor as lucky as RL Pizarro. The group gets slaughtered, save for a few who make it to the coast to sail home on the ships and tell of a great empire with a population greater than that of the Marinids' own country, which can muster 100,000 soldiers to the Emperor's bidding (not far off what the Aztec Emperor would have claimed, I do believe, and possibly even not far off realistic). They aren't going to try to take down that Empire again, not for centuries. It would require an invasion force of at least a good 25,000 and probably better weapons (at least some development of early musket tactics, rather than the skirmishing in the jungle that the RL Spanish employed) and that's not feasible until there's a colonial empire to base yourself from - consider how long the native American nations survived in North America, too. Yes, they tended to take sides with European colonisers for their own survival, but they proved themselves worthy of their allegiance, and defeated a number of early excursions before they were given muskets of their own. A large, powerful Aztec state is going to have a good chance of lasting for several centuries, especially if it can play sides, and certainly if it can barter for musket tech at any point in its existence (the longer they wait and survive the more likely they eventually get them). At any rate, this reduces the Marinids to merely looking to plant colonies away from the big states, and if they then have some bad run-ins with locals, they make become very cautious in their colonisations. England colonised very slowly, after all, because even only faced with small tribes which could barely project power over 50 miles it kept having colonies burned to the ground or massacred. It took them 50 years to really establish themselves and 170 years to get a strong control of the coastline, and that was at a point when they were far more economically powerful than Spain and Portugal ever were. If anything, Spain and Portugal's successes were unbelievably good, and you shouldn't worry about having to prove that it wouldn't happen again.
Perfectly reasonable, I'll go for that. Vis a vis sub-Saharan Africa, don't worry too much - the Sahara itself is a perfectly good shield against southwards expansion. The only place that inland southwards expansion was ever successful until the age of penicillin was Egypt, and the reason for that was that the river Nile facilitated it. While there is some basic trade and a spread of Islam going on in that direction, invasions and so on are just a little too unlikely. Again, RL events showed us that a southwards expansion isn't necessarily something you have to prove won't happen, it's not a certainty.
I expect the Incas, without being conquered by the Spanish, would eventually expand their empire northward to reach the Caribbean, perhaps some time in the late 1500s or early 1600s.
Quite possibly, yes. Again, though, the only thing I'd warn against is that you don't end up with the Incas becoming too much of a rival for the Aztecs and provoking a war between the two which reduces one of the two (probably the Incas) to being insignificant, especially if the Aztecs get gunpowder weapons first. However, simply being careful with your TL should suffice here - don't rush to make the Incas expand and the Aztecs adopt European weaponry as soon as possible and you can make it work.
I'm aiming for a lengthy mingling of Marinid, Aztec, and Inca traders in the Caribbean which would allow some forward-thinking Americans to learn about this new technology, how it works, and how they can make it themselves. As for Aztec and Inca access to gunpowder, I'm hoping they would acquire enough over time (either through trade or local production, if possible) to supply their armies before any big Old World powers come colonizing in force. By the time the Marinids are conquered by the Turks and Mamluks, the Aztecs and Incas will already be on the way to advancing their militaries and tactics, carving themselves grand empires, and gearing up for potential conflict from overseas.
Sounds about right.
Sounds decent.
A couple more questions: What did you think of the proxy war idea? And how long do you think extensive American colonization attempts by the big Old World powers (Turks, Mamluks, Chinese) can reasonably be delayed?
I like the proxy war idea in principle but I wasn't sold on the idea for a good while. Now I feel like we've got a better basis for making the Incas equal to the Aztecs (my greatest fear was that logic dictated that the Aztecs would acquire guns and conquer the Incas long before the Incas would have a serious chance of establishing themselves) I'm feeling better about it, though. Normally I shy away from the idea of proxy wars because in OTL proxy wars generally are a modern thing and all wars pre-1950 which seemed to be proxy wars were actually something different, but this TL is so dramatically altering the TL (and I know you've got pre-established ideas of what you want it to achieve) that I'm willing to go with it. If you want proper proxy wars you probably want to save them for at least a fair while (a couple of centuries or so, maybe more) after full on Marinid/Eurasian contact because it took a long time for the concept of backing a proxy to fight a war that you would only gain from indirectly became an acceptable ideal - before that, if the country backing the proxy didn't gain directly from the war they weren't interested, and if they did gain directly they'd probably send their own troops rather than money/arms. However, you *can* just have the Aztecs and the Incas allying with rival Islamic colonising powers early on in the style of the native Americans siding with the French and English against each other, and have them battle it out for dominance over the course of time instead. It wouldn't really be a proxy war as the Islamics would likely want to involve their own troops and the fight would probably spill over a bit to their own colonies, but it does give you the potential for the two Central American Empires to be paid to constantly fight each other with musket weaponry. You can even make it more interesting by having the two Empires collapse at one point or another to be replaced by one or more successor Empires. After all, both of the two Empires, while they had elements of quite an advanced administration, also relied almost unbearably on a pitifully small group of individuals to administer land, with the Emperors controlling virtually all of the decision making and large portions of the Empire having nothing to enforce the Imperial sovereignty except for blind loyalty to a government hundreds of a miles away. The Central American empires before the Aztecs and Incas did spontaneously collapse, either to receive a new Emperor with a different style of rule, or to break up into several smaller empires. If that happens, you can even let several Islamic colonisers in on the game, and you also get a good way to stop one or the other of the Aztec-Inca rivals from growing unchallengably dominant, too.
I covered the second point earlier, but I'll summise here: quite a long time, though obviously not forever. You could plausibly hold off on serious colonisation until the 18th century if you play up on Europe/the Marinids taking a while to recover from both the Plague and the conquest of Europe shaking things up hugely, and if you also play up the initial hesitance to turn to the New World. After all, the Marinids are Muslim, and though far from the only way it will work out, the traditional Muslim approach to discovering a new civilisation or land wasn't so much to gobble it up instantly as to convert the influential rulers to Islam (given the Aztec God-Emperor worship and the lack of powerful tribes elsewhere, this may utterly fail) and then to plant token trading posts before expanding control later on. Given the huge distances the Chinese have to conquer, and the fact that Indonesia and a ton of tiny Pacific islands are far closer to them, you can also hold off their serious colonisation for as long as you want to - unlike the Marinids, once you start them you probably can also plausibly turn off the tap and stop the flood at any point, too, since for the Chinese, colonisation of the Americas was not the first step to trading in the Holy Grail of merchanting, and since the sheer cost and logistics of colonising America are somewhat exorbitant - and also given the Chinese propensity for suddenly declaring a policy of isolation. In fact, the more I think about it the more I find myself questioning how involved China would get, but I'd still say you could play the Zheng He card, and I wouldn't rule out Chinese colonisation altogether, so don't let it ruin your plans.
If in the ATL China domestic matters proceed roughly as in OTL, and well-armed Muslim colonists come in place of Europeans, won't China still get stomped on as it did in OTL 19th century? Is it plausible to have the Chinese be able to keep pace technologically and militarily with the Muslims of the western Old World?
That's a fair point, and well worth concern. I'd personally suggest that an "enlightened" Emperor who opens up trade and embraces foreign technology would make a more resilient China, which wouldn't automatically get "stomped on", but it's well worth considering. I personally wouldn't call it out of the realms of possibility to suggest that an open China could have contact perhaps as far away as Persia, could glean either information or even a working model of a gunpowder weapon, and from there could prompt a simultaneous Chinese development of musket tech. I think their tactics would be lacking as some elements of military doctrine go out of the window when you have a monolithic state with no natural rivals and an ability to simply through hundreds of thousands of soldiers at a problem, but I'd suggest that the hurdle you need to overcome is getting them the weaponry. Muskets in the first place is the biggest hurdle, and if they have those they shouldn't be a walk-over. It may still lose, but its losses will be recoverable. Any military encounters China has with Eurasians should then allow it to adapt its tactics and essentially learn the Islamic tactics, plus its manpower advantage should bode well. If China is open to foreign influence it should also benefit greatly from the enlightened thinking which often came out of Chinese philosophy, so you might even be able to see an interesting cross of western hemisphere military strength but conservative, rigid religious and political thought against eastern hemisphere military weakness coupled with an adapting administrative approach (it was after all the Chinese who invented the idea of a tiered Civil Service with entry exams) and liberal, evolving religious practice and government philosophy. While democracy itself might still take an unexpected event rather than being an "ultimate evolution" you might well see China having a society with quite free movement between the upper and lower classes plus perhaps even crude social welfare developing over time.
As a backup POD should the Pope's death by plague idea fall through, what if the Mongols were to sack Italy but spare Baghdad? The details are fuzzy for me, and the POD is pushed back about a century, but in theory it could result in the Middle East remaining far more scientifically advanced than Europe. What do you think?
Well it certainly can give you a more scientifically advanced Middle East, if that's what you're going for, sure. It will make European politics a mess, though, as the Horde inevitably breaks down into warring states, which will probably resolve into a Dark Ages style of affairs, with all-powerful Kings drinking themselves silly, surrounded only by lackey nobles, riding into battle for profit rather than honour/glory, etc. Religiously it will also be hard to say what happens, as the Mongols tended to "convert" to whatever religion they thought would make it easiest to control their subjects, and the Mongol controlling classes aren't going to last long before they are either replaced by European nobles or integrated into European society, though. You might be able to engineer Islam taking root but it isn't likely to be uniform across Europe, it's not likely to look like the Middle East form of Islam in religion or in government/society, and it will likely depend on slightly tenuous mini-PODs (i.e. conjuring up a Mongol noble who becomes an Islamic fanatic to advance the cause later on). It's possible, but I don't think it's as ideal as your first idea.
