The most ASB moments to happen in history... that still happened (Pre-1900)

[Merrick]

Joan of Arc. The kingdom is in crisis, repeatedly defeated and partially occupied by a fearsome enemy, with weapons that have devastated noble armies. The greatest lord in the land has turned traitor and allied with the invaders. The rightful King cannot even be crowned because the sacred site is deep in the territory of his worst enemy.

Enter a teenage peasant girl, without rank, money or military training, who arrives at the crownless King's court to tell everyone that she has seen a vision calling her to save the Kingdom. She is so convincing - or they are so desperate - that they actually kit her out and send her to the battle front, where a key city is desperately holding out against the invaders.

No sooner has she arrived, than the demoralised defenders rally and start winning. Siege broken, she then sells everyone on a plan to recapture the sacred city - hundreds of miles deep in enemy territory - and duly leads the King to his coronation, routing the previously-invincible invaders along the way.

That's the sort of plot that would be considered unbelievable in a fantasy novel, never mind alternate history.

 

[Emperor of Pennsylvania]

Joan of Arc. The kingdom is in crisis, repeatedly defeated and partially occupied by a fearsome enemy, with weapons that have devastated noble armies. The greatest lord in the land has turned traitor and allied with the invaders. The rightful King cannot even be crowned because the sacred site is deep in the territory of his worst enemy.

Enter a teenage peasant girl, without rank, money or military training, who arrives at the crownless King's court to tell everyone that she has seen a vision calling her to save the Kingdom. She is so convincing - or they are so desperate - that they actually kit her out and send her to the battle front, where a key city is desperately holding out against the invaders.

No sooner has she arrived, than the demoralised defenders rally and start winning. Siege broken, she then sells everyone on a plan to recapture the sacred city - hundreds of miles deep in enemy territory - and duly leads the King to his coronation, routing the previously-invincible invaders along the way.

That's the sort of plot that would be considered unbelievable in a fantasy novel, never mind alternate history.

Joan of Arc is a real life YA novel protagonist.

 

[TRH]

Joan of Arc is a real life YA novel protagonist.

To be fair, YA novels are partially inspired by people like her.

 

[PobreCesar]

That's the sort of plot that would be considered unbelievable in a fantasy novel, never mind alternate history.

If Joan of Arc had never appeared in history, and that timeline's version of alternatehistory.com featured a timeline where the English conquest of France was derailed at the last minute by a peasant girl- neither a noble, nor a man, nor an adult- a peasant girl, who claimed to have heard the voice of God and commanded armies of men in late Medieval Europe, whole oceans would be rerouted through hydroelectric dams to provide the power to all the computers typing out reasons it was ASB.

The whole thing is enough to make me paranoid about being ISOTed.

Other than that, the incredible growth of science and technology in the past few hundred years may not technically have required ASB, but it definitely is rather incredible in both senses of the word.

 

[Grey Wolf]

Surely we can come up with more original entries than "Weak or ordinary person/community becomes really powerful." That's how literally any empire gets started initially.

From Cyrus onwards

 

[SunKing105]

Rome managing to survive Hannibal after losing a huge chunk of it's population.

 

[pompejus]

Joan of Arc.

Talking about the hundred years war but a couple of decades before Joan of Arc:
France manages to beat the English invaders, recaptures almost all lands they lost and France has almost won the war. The king of France dies, he is succeeded by his son, who becomes insane. His relatives struggle between each other who gets the power, the English manages to take advantage of this and France is back to square one.

It almost reads like a sequel to a movie. In which they wanted part II to be just like part I, so they had to undo everything that happened in the first movie.

 

[Resurgam]

Rome managing to survive Hannibal after losing a huge chunk of it's population.

It helped that Rome simply wouldn't admit it'd been defeated.

 

[Grey Wolf]

The unlucky series of events leading to the Fourth Crusade.

Well, a snowballing balls-up isn't ASB in itself, just the outcome from this seems to be in retrospect

 

[Crazymachines]

ottoman pirate captured iceland

taxes being the rallying cry of the American revolution when the colonies payed drastically lower taxes than British citizens

napoleon. full stop.

the fourth crusade (also know as "a series of unfortunate events")

 

[Grey Wolf]

It helped that Rome simply wouldn't admit it'd been defeated.

And that Hannibal never actually attacked Rome itself

 

[Grey Wolf]

ottoman pirate captured iceland

taxes being the rallying cry of the American revolution when the colonies payed drastically lower taxes than British citizens

napoleon. full stop.

the fourth crusade (also know as "a series of unfortunate events")

Ottoman pirates captured Iceland? Tell me more!!!

 

[alexmilman]

The two instances that are literally called miracles. The Miracles of the House of Brandenburg, to be precise.

Miracle of the House of Brandenburg - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

And, actually, none of them had been a miracle. It was just the Old Fritz’s tendency to overdramatize things. 😜

 

[Resurgam]

And that Hannibal never actually attacked Rome itself

Certainly. But Hannibal knew he could never take the city.

 

[alexmilman]

A swampy regularly flooded place on the far end of the empire is chosen as its capital.

 

[Grey Wolf]

Certainly. But Hannibal knew he could never take the city.

Probably. But that in itself is reason enough for the Romans to carry on fighting while he is ravaging and temporarily conquering everything else. Which to me, makes it rather less than miraculous that Rome won in the end.

 

[Resurgam]

Which to me, makes it rather less than miraculous that Rome won in the end.

Potato, potahtoh; miraculous, stubborn.

 

[Silver01]

The rise of the west and great acceleration in technology made by them (if we exclude specific things ) is the most "abs" thing that happend
People write entire books on why it happened and many people have the theories on it .

iam certain that if aliens existed it would still puzzle them on why and how it happened

I have said that on thing I wouldn't be able to predict in history frankly if I where to live in another timeline where it never happens and you told me that tiny peninsula would rule the world and make such advancement that farming would actually be the job of few and more i would not believe it .

 

[Denliner]

Genghis Khan is so ASB that any timeline without him basically releases an entire horde of butterflies that overwhelms entire worlds. Imagine a poor steppe nomad that manages to conquer both China and the kingdoms in Europe while also managing to decimate the Islamic world and ended their golden age, not to mention the massive population die-off that rivals both the Native American genocides from virgin-field epidemics as well as WWII that had modernized weaponry and ideologies geared towards wholesale ethnic cleansing and violence. He was so effective at killing people that the Earth's climate actually changed. The 13th and 14th centuries were not kind towards humanity in the slightest.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

Joan of Arc is a real life YA novel protagonist.

Nah, there's no love triangle involved.