The Land of Wine and Beer - Story-Only Thread
"My threads are undead, in that, they're never completely dead. I occasionally come back and think «Hey, I should make a new update!»"OP, for the obligatory quote.
Hey everybody, I was thinking it would be nice to have the past chapters of Land of Wine and Beer all in one thread, so as to gain time. The chapters here will have a slightly different layout, there may be some minor modifications in names/titles and to the army compositions, but overall, the timeline will remain sensibly the same.
Context
But first, let me recapitulate the basis of this timeline. In the end of the XVth century, several royal houses went extinct in Western Europe : the Yorks, the Trastamaras, the Valois cadet houses of Bourgogne and Anjou. This left three major houses in Western Europe : the Habsburgs, suddenly a juggernaut, the Tudors, well-entrenched in England, and the Valois(-Orléans and -Angoulème). No less than three major West European powers (not including Hungary and Bohemia in the XVIth century) ended up inherited by a fourth one. This is monstrous, and has remained unequaled in the times that followed.
It is possible to date back the beginning of that post-medieval Game of Thrones to the Treaties of Péronne and Picquigny, which ended the French civil war and the French Succession war (ATL name for the Hundred Years War), in 1470 and 1475, or, more precisely, to the breaking of the treaty of Péronne by the King of France Louis XI "the Spider", one of the major protagonists of the first part of this TL. The breaking provisions of the Treaty of Péronne basically made the Duchy of Burgundy and the various other French lands owned by Charles the Bold independent from France.
POD(s)
The POD chosen is that Louis XI, instead of having his lawyers invalidate the Treaty of Péronne for having been signed under constraint, decides to stick to the treaty so as to keep Burgundy at hand, and perhaps get lucky in a later war. This makes Charles the Bold and Louis XI keep better relations that they had OTL, and allows (2nd POD) Louis XI to offer a partition of the domains of the Valois-Anjou. This is obviously interesting to both parties, since it allows Burgundy to have peace and France to use its money for better purposes than buying out enemies to fight Burgundy. Furthermore, it allows Burgundy to invade Lorraine without French interference.
The 3rd POD is described in the prelude : Charles of Burgundy goes fully anti-Habsburg and disinherits his daughter if she was to get married with one.
Timeline aims
Overall, the aim of this TL is stopping the formation of the monstrous Habsburg Empire, and instead use those conditions to allow a very powerful France to come into existence. Therefore, the decks are stacked for France during the whole end of the XVth century.
Of course, humor and a Rule of Cool are implemented randomly, including a French discovery of Atlantis (America), a sand throne in Catalonia, hidalgos charging windmills in Castille, and amusing quotes at every chapter/update.
The posts here will be closely linked to those in the original thread (see my sig) but will cover each one or two years instead of a variable time-span in a delimited area. Any comments should be posted there :
THE MAIN THREAD
Next update :
the Cast as of 1473 (This will be completely redone. There are quite a few missing characters there)