Second try! Inspired by a map I saw on Deviant art by one Darkaiz
Edit: The PoD is that something changed King Charles' personality slightly (a butterfly in China perhaps?) making him much wiser as well as prideful (though his wisdom is greater than his pride) and intelligent.
1700:
February 12 – The
Great Northern War begins with a joint invasion of
Swedish territory in
Germany and
Latvia by
Denmark and
Poland/
Saxony. Sweden has control of the
Baltic Sea and holds territory that includes
Finland,
Estonia, Latvia and parts of northern Germany. To challenge Sweden's power, an alliance is formed between Tsar
Peter I of Russia, King
Frederick IV of Denmark and
Augustus II the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony. Sweden's ruler is the militaristic
Karl XII, known as the "Swedish Meteor".
In Prussia Duke Fredrick is planing to secede from Poland and proclaim himself King in Prussia, seeing the up and coming war he ponders who best to choose for an alliance...
Summer –
Karl XII counter-attacks his enemies by invading Denmark, assisted by an Anglo-Dutch naval squadron under Sir
George Rooke. The Danes are forced to surrender completely.
Late summer – A Russian army invades Estonia and besieges the town of
Narva.
November 20 –
Battle of Narva in Estonia. Having led his army of 8,000 on a forced march from Denmark to Estonia, Karl XII routs the huge Russian army at Narva. King Charles remarks on the weather and ponders if perhaps that could have contributed to his victory...*
Things are looking surprisingly good for Sweden, lets see if it holds up.
*As far as I know no-one thought of this fact until much later, so this minor PoD is basically that Charles went over the battle in his head or something and starts thinking...