alternatehistory.com

A few months ago I started a very ambitious project surrounding the Roman Empire plotting a divergence in which the second to last Emperor of Rome was given support by Emperor Zeno to take over North Africa. The Western Roman Empire was reduced to a rump state and client state to Eastern Rome. That rump state was known as Carthage as it occupied that region. Recently I've been at a loss at precisely the right direction to take it in. I have a dozen different options in front of me that all ultimately lead to a similar outcome apart from a few obvious details. Apart from that I've also had other commitments. But I've always been playing around with the Gongsun Family of Liaoxi. The family that conquered Korea and remained independent inside of China in a time of chaos for far longer than most families. So, I am going to be working with the Gongsun Family inside this Timeline. I hope that by making and following through with this timeline I will be able to find the "right path" with my first one. Be warned, this is only my second timeline so I apologize for glaring errors, inconsistencies, and so much more that I am bound to stumble on and mess up. I do not have an official first update, but I do have the map of China that I'll be working with:



The Point of Divergence is that Jia Xu was never with Li Jue but was in Chang An at the time of the coup. On top of that, Wang Yun died shortly after the Coup leaving Lu Bu in charge of the remnant and forlorn Han in Chang An. This has huge consequences for the Later Han Period, for instance Cao Cao does not get brought to the brink of destruction at the hands of Lu Bu. Yuan Shu never get's bold enough to declare himself Emperor. Liu Bei remains Governor of a sleepy province. Yuan Shao conquered Kong Rong, but hasn't gone against Gongsun Zan yet. All fuedal lords give nominal acknowledgment to Lu Bu's government in Chang An, but like the Spring and Autumn Annals of the Late Zhou, everyone is effectively independent. The first entry will take place in the year 200 A.D. detailing all the events that happened, and all the events that happen in that year.

This should definitely be interesting for anyone who is familiar with the Three Kingdoms era of China. I will, however, not be using the novel as my base. That means Wikipedia is off limits, for the most part, because many of the biographies and personnel pages are either SGYY or half SGYY and half historical record (SGYY is Romance of the Three Kingdoms written during the Ming). To be honest a good comparison to this would be akin to using Shakespeare's Macbeth as an accurate historical record of English History. No, I'm using the ZZTJ, the SGZ, the HHS, and numerous other goodies that are historical documents from the era itself rather than a work of fiction written a good thousand-four hundred years later. So, odds are, this may not be quite the era that many of you know. For the SGZ biographies many are here:

http://kongming.net/novel/bios/type.php#sgz

Stay clear from Comprehensive and Sanguo Yanyi biographies, they are normally not accurate to any real degree.

Bits and pieces of the HHS are here, and the a few volumes of the ZZTJ are translated here as well:
http://dspace.anu.edu.au/html/1885/42048/index.html

Please read up what actually went on during the time period, it was one of the most fascinating and most bloody eras in history. It will change drastically due to the divergence being so close to the beginning, but it is always good to know how history actually went before entertaining the "alternate" part of history.
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