The noble wolf

The wolf had been a deeply feared animal in Christian Western Europe for centuries. It was loathed and brought nearly to extinction. Unlike lions, bears,eagles, deers etc. The wolf had/has a very bad reputation, in European folklore and Christian mythology.
On the other side, eastern steppe people and other cultures held the wolf in high regards, the Turanic mythology portrays the wolf as their spiritual ancestor ,for example.

How could the wolf become a respected emblem and coat of arms symbol like other wild carnivores ? Maybe in sense of a noble, free spirited animal ? Rome´s founding myth of Romulus and Remus shows, that the later foundation layer of Western Europe once proudly marched under the wolf banner. Even lions had been, despite often been symbol of knightly courage, bedeviled . So the Knights Templer had been allowed to only hunt lions for sport, as the church thought, that Satan himself takes the form as a ranging lion.
 
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Maybe just make that literal, Rome uses a wolf standard instead of an eagle. Then the following civilizations build on that.

That could work. It's a simple change and would probably be enough to raise the image of the Wolf in the public eye. I'm not saying I could see a TL running off of this idea, but that should be enough to change the views of the Wolf in Western Europe.
 
Ah. Well....

I should start by pointing out that the wolf, whole or in parts, is a pretty common charge in British Isles heraldry, and in Spain; and not dishonorably so or as anything to be disapproved. (Come to think of it, had Alexander, the Wolf of Badenoch, ended up as King of Scots instead of Robert 3d....)

But.

My more serious suggestion (although not very much more serious) is that Francis has, somehow, an even greater impact on the early C13 (though I cannot imagine how) ... and the Wolf of Gubbio becomes the emblem of the secular arm, dangerous to enemies but tamed by the Church, and harking back to, yes, Rome, in a time when that ghastly little shit Caius Iulius was regarded as one of the Nine Worthies rather than a man who eminently deserved tyrannicide.

The wholly unserious idea that struck me and leaves me sniggering is that Alfonso's grandson Henry, rather than Conrad IV, succeeds Fred the Two as Holy Roman Emperor. Alf of Aragon having inherited Gévaudan, his grandson, eager to swagger imperially by reasserting his claim to Occitan lands over the French king, makes a big deal of that county. Well, when you mention Gévaudan ... Mme la Bête comes to mind.
 
The idea that wolves were driven to extinction by religion ("Christian Western Europe") is nonsensical.
Almost every sedentary population will have a negative depiction of wild animals, especially opportunistic predators : it's just not wolves, but boars, lynxes, bears, etc.
As Markham pointed tough, wolves depiction tended to be less negative outside strict agrarian societies : wolves were used as symbols or coats of arms by nobility (and often reversed by popular tales to represent nobility : Ysengrin in Romanz de Renard, or the wearwolves in Baltic countries).

The nagative depiction of the wolf certainly get strengthened by the great wars of the XVII/XVIII/XIXth centuries that saw several animals following armies in order to feed on the corpses. It not only made the wolf associated with scavangers, but also less fearful of humans as they're normally are, and more prone to attack.

Eventually, wolves were largely disappearing because of the agrarian and societal changes in the XVIIIth/XIXth centuries, where agro-pastoral production let the place to expensive and intensive production.

This certainly didn't fare well with savage predators and the democratisation of firearms in the same period allowed landowners and their men to get rid of it.
Eventually hunt democratisation, and prey rivality with wolves (but as well other animals did the rest).

Basically, we don't need to search for a "Religion destroys nature" fantasy, but have to look on actual contextual changes : means of destruction, disappearence of an ecological environment, anthropisation of the land.
 
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I should add...

... that if you want an early POD, but post-Roman or non-Roman, a Western Europe in which the lead actors are either, or are in series and in sum, the Wulfings, the East Anglian Wuffingas, and Mercian dynasts with 'wulf' in their names (as opposed to the Wessex tendency to 'elf' names), would be an interesting start, as Lucius Sergius rightly notes.

(Hojotoho. It's over when the fat lady sings.)
 

Driftless

Donor
One of the lines of thought that has worked agains the wolf over time, is the nature of wolfpacks. For shepherds/herdsmen, it's like fighting against the Hydra - you can kill one wolf, but there's more to replace that one. With solitary hunting cats, you kill the one threatening your herd/flock and you may have eliminated the threat for a time.

Conversely, if the OP's goal is to promote the noble Wolf, then there's a need to anthropomorphically define the wolfpack's nature as a virtue. It's a cohesive society where all members pull together for a common good. If one member goes down, then another steps up to take the place of the lost wolf - that kind of thing.
 
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