TL-191: Filling the Gaps

Here's a question - if West Point were to challenge the Confederate States to a college (gridiron) football match, would the Citadel and the Virginia Military Institute draw straws for the honour of facing their northern counterparts or would there have to be a play-off? (Who knows, perhaps the sheer ferocity of the competition for that privilege would persuade the Authorities to stick with an Annapolis Vs Mobile match - there being only two official naval academies in the Twin Republics - assuming this were intended to be a friendly).

...

Now I have the rather sad mental image of this match being played very shortly before these two sets of young men are tasked to kill each other, because Timeline 191 can't let us have Nice Things. So help me, I'm tempted to start writing Fan Fiction for Sir Winston Churchill's IF LEE HAD NOT WON THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG simply so that I can have a timeline where everyone in the English Speaking World doesn't try to murder everyone else every twenty years or so!
I'm interested.
 
Here's a question - if West Point were to challenge the Confederate States to a college (gridiron) football match, would the Citadel and the Virginia Military Institute draw straws for the honour of facing their northern counterparts or would there have to be a play-off? (Who knows, perhaps the sheer ferocity of the competition for that privilege would persuade the Authorities to stick with an Annapolis Vs Mobile match - there being only two official naval academies in the Twin Republics - assuming this were intended to be a friendly).

...

Now I have the rather sad mental image of this match being played very shortly before these two sets of young men are tasked to kill each other, because Timeline 191 can't let us have Nice Things. So help me, I'm tempted to start writing Fan Fiction for Sir Winston Churchill's IF LEE HAD NOT WON THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG simply so that I can have a timeline where everyone in the English Speaking World doesn't try to murder everyone else every twenty years or so!
I'm interested.
The same, i think such prestigious event might merit a playoff game between Citadel AND VMI
 
So since today is the 110th anniversary of the Titanic disaster, did the RMS Titanic meet the same fate ATL?
It is strange from trying to find it on the Turtledove wiki is that the sinking still happened in all of his works. Or that maybe the Titanic was never made. I see this as a big miss opportunity for Turtledove to make something out from the Titanic.
 
It is strange from trying to find it on the Turtledove wiki is that the sinking still happened in all of his works. Or that maybe the Titanic was never made. I see this as a big miss opportunity for Turtledove to make something out from the Titanic.

As DOCTOR WHO makes painfully clear, meddling with Fixed Points in history is a really bad idea - especially for a Time Lord!


The same, i think such prestigious event might merit a playoff game between Citadel AND VMI

Well if anyone has ideas for how this game/series of games might play out, please feel free to share them - I'm not very well acquainted with gridiron football and would be reluctant to try cooking something up, though I do like the idea that the game was fiercely-contested but, on the whole, a solid example of Good Sportsmanship, to contrast with an article in one of the other T-191 (I think it was THROUGH THE ENDLESS GREY?) where the Northern & Confederate football colleagues collided in the lead-up to the Second Great War and (with an honourable exception) failed to distinguish themselves by good, clean sportsmanship ...
 
It is strange from trying to find it on the Turtledove wiki is that the sinking still happened in all of his works. Or that maybe the Titanic was never made. I see this as a big miss opportunity for Turtledove to make something out from the Titanic.
If I had to guess, not enough PODs have happened yet to butterfly the building of the Titanic or its fateful trip. Even though Anglo-American relations are bad ATL, they were lukewarm at best in OTL in 1912, not to mention New York is still a very important city. Though if for some reason they send the Titanic to Charleston instead of New York, perhaps it becomes the HMHS Titanic when the war begins?
 
If the Titanic did sink like otl, you’d very likely have some historians waxing lyrical about how the tragedy could have had the potential to bring the Anglosphere together in mourning only to lose it all just 2 years later. Not to mention the endless conspiracy theories about the accident actually being the result of American/German sabotage
 
I gonna throw a bone that Turtledove had saw the James Cameron movie (which he also mentioned in that time-viewer story) and concluded that it was over-dramatic and overdone, so he decided not to touch on the ship in any of his stories ever.
 
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If the Titanic did sink like otl, you’d very likely have some historians waxing lyrical about how the tragedy could have had the potential to bring the Anglosphere together in mourning only to lose it all just 2 years later. Not to mention the endless conspiracy theories about the accident actually being the result of American/German sabotage
Yeah. I gave this one some thought and the Titanic sinking even in this timeline might still be likely. Its original destination was for New York and it did carry some wealthy Americans aboard as well. My guess is that, at best, the destination would change and some of the passengers would change. Perhaps going to one of the cities on the St. Lawrence River in Canada or one of the Confederacy's coastal cities, like Charleston, Norfolk, Miami, Mobile, or Havana. This time it would be carrying wealthy Confederates aboard instead of US citizens.

Hard to say for me really. Really a 50/50 chance the Titanic gets sunk on its maiden voyage for me.

However, if it doesn't get sunk on its maiden voyage in this timeline, I believe it would definitely get sunk during the Great War, suffering the same fate as its sister ship the Britannic.
 
Some things for a wikibox series I'm working on;
1921 Hampton V Featherston V Layne.png

1940 Smith V Taft V Willkie.png
 
Some things for a wikibox series I'm working on;

- SIGHS -

Poor old "Walkover" Layne and pity the poor Radical Liberals - the Whig Party "screws the pooch" until the poor brute starts having kittens and they still manage to squeak out a win. If Jake Featherston had never been born, Wade Hampton V would have had to invent him (Hah! No wonder JEB Stuart Junior was kept in office, he practically did invent The Snake!).

Also, Republicans on the final scoreboard in an Earth-191 Election? It's more possible than you think!
 
Wasn't it said in the books that Featherson only won Texas, Florida, and Tennessee in 1921. Is this from an alternate election scenario?
That is what Koenig says immediately after the fact, correct. However it is contradicted by later statements that the election was extremely close, and decided by Whig-voting Tennessee. Ultimately, I've chosen to treat Koenig as a slightly unreliable narrator, given that he's likely had very little sleep over the past day, and instead write a scenario that fits better with what the third-person narrator days on later occasions.
 

bguy

Donor
That is what Koenig says immediately after the fact, correct. However it is contradicted by later statements that the election was extremely close, and decided by Whig-voting Tennessee. Ultimately, I've chosen to treat Koenig as a slightly unreliable narrator, given that he's likely had very little sleep over the past day, and instead write a scenario that fits better with what the third-person narrator days on later occasions.

Though getting the outcome of four states wrong isn't just being a slightly unreliable narrator. Being that far off on the election results would indicate staggering incompetence on Koenig's part.

(And honestly the idea that the election could have been decided by a nail biter result in one state never made sense because if the election was that close there's simply no way Featherston would have ever conceded the election. He would have claimed fraud in Tennessee and probably led the Confederate States into a full blown civil war. The original result described in Blood and Iron made much more sense as in that scenario it was much more plausible that Featherston would accept the result of the election.)
 
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Though getting the outcome of four states wrong isn't just being a slightly unreliable narrator. Being that far off on the election results would indicate staggering incompetence on Koenig's part.
Koenig doesn’t get the outcome of four states wrong, he lists three states (of many) that Featherston won, and accidentally includes a state he’s been focused on all night on that list. That’s a brain fart, not incompetence.
(And honestly the idea that the election could have been decided by a nail biter result in one state never made sense because if the election was that close there's simply no way Featherston would have ever conceded the election. He would have claimed fraud in Tennessee and probably led the Confederate States into a full blown civil war. The original result described in Blood and Iron made much more sense as in that scenario it was much more plausible that Featherston would accept the result of the election.)
Possibly, but Featherston is generally a lot more cautious in 1921 than he is in 1933; he declines to include explicit rearmament in the 1921 Party platform, and violent overthrow doesn’t come up at all as an option during the campaign (there’s a scene in ‘33 where he explicitly talks about it with Knight and Koenig). Given Featherston’s generally more civil attitude in ‘21, I don’t think it’s a given that he’d try to overturn the results by force, especially since in the scene immediately after the election it isn’t once mentioned as a possibility.

Regardless, the numerous statements that it was a close race (far closer than ‘27), most by the omniscient narrator, in my view outweigh what Koenig says on one occasion.
 
Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom

David Lloyd George (Liberal-Conservative Coalition) (1915-1917)
Herbert Asquith (Liberal Minority) (1917)
Andrew Bonar Law (Conservative Minority) (1917-1918)
Ramsay MacDonald (Labour Minority) (1918-1919)
Andrew Bonar Law (Conservative) (1919-1923)
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (Conservative) (1923)
Ramsay MacDonald (Labour Minority) (1923-1927)
Austen Chamberlain (Conservative) (1927-1931)
Philip Snowden (Labour) (1931-1934)
Winston Churchill (Conservative-Silver Shirt Coalition) (1934-1944)
Horace Wilson (Conservative Minority) (1944-1945)
Herbert Morrison (Labour) (1945-)

Immediately after the armistice, Lloyd George tenders his resignation to the king, who sends for Asquith to form a caretaker government. The elections of October 1917 prove indecisive, but the Conservatives are able to form government with the support of the Liberals, who hope that responsibility for the coming treaties with the Quadruple Alliance will cost the Conservatives public support, and lead to a swift Liberal recovery.

Instead, the treaties of Potsdam and Philadelphia prove survivable for the Conservatives, as the government's main negotiation goals of keeping the Suez Canal, avoiding a tonnage restriction on the Royal Navy, and preventing any territorial concessions to Germany are accomplished. When Liberal confidence expires after the signing of the treaty in June 1918, the July elections that follow see Labour win second place, while the Conservatives hold most of their ground.

Asquith, hoping again to outlast the other parties, now commits to supporting a Labour government on the basis of free trade. Initial expectations of a botched time in government quickly subside, as the first MacDonald ministry survives for nine months before the Liberals pull the plug. This proves to be an almost fatal error, as the Liberals themselves suffer the most from the election they caused, with a Conservative landslide and Labour entrenching itself as the main party of the left.

Law's Second stint in government sees Britain through the end of the decade, with the worst domestic impacts of the war largely subsiding, ensuring a broadly peaceful early-1920s compared to the French and Confederate experiences. Law's on-schedule cancer and resignation throw a wrench into things however, as public disapproval of his successor Curzon's membership of the House of Lords, rather than the Commons, leads to a brief constitutional crisis that sees Labour return to power, now as the largest party in parliament.

The question of supporting the Labour government splits the Liberal Party, with right-wing dissidents forming the National Liberal Party as the left-of-centre rump ensures a working majority for Labour in the Commons. MacDonald's second premiership maintains the decade's course, cautiously re-arming and reaffirming ties to the old Entente, while implementing popular but moderate domestic reforms. Public pressure to implement protective tariffs ultimately prove the government's undoing, as the Liberals withdraw support and the Conservatives return to power.

The Chamberlain Ministry enters office just in time to face two interconnected crises; the global Business Collapse, and the rise of Actionism in Oswald Mosley's Silver Shirts. The government's response to both is ultimately perceived as weak, and though neither hit the country as hard as in France or the Confederacy, Chamberlain still bears the brunt of the blame. Opposition Leader MacDonald's assassination by a non-Silver Shirt far-right assailant proves the final straw, as the government with its slim majority ultimately falls due to a revolt among the Conservative ranks by those hoping for a National Government under MacDonald's moderate successor as leader of the Labour Party.

Philip Snowden however would face his own intra-party challenges, as he finds himself at the head of a parliamentary caucus well to his own left. The debacle surrounding Snowden's refusal to adopt protectionism mark an inauspicious start to his premiership, and internal conflict becomes rife, with several MPs defecting to both the New Party (the Silver Shirts' parliamentary wing) and the Independent Labour Party. Ultimately, the government breaks in early 1934, as a full-blown revolt sees Snowden out of office, both as Prime Minister and Labour leader.

The election that follows is inconclusive, with no party receiving a majority, and seemingly the only viable paths to government going through the Tories. declining to form a coalition with a leftward-drifting Labour, the Conservatives instead offer Mosley the Chancellorship in exchange for a coalition. Mosley accepts, on the condition that Winston Churchill be made Prime Minister. The marriage seemingly made in hell proves remarkably stable, as the government pursues an aggressive rearmament policy and makes it to the next election, where the Conservatives receive an outright majority on their own. Churchill, perhaps shrewdly, instead of dismantling the coalition, an act which might see his own party boot him from Downing Street, simply reassigns Mosley to the Ministry of War, in preparation for the global conflict on the horizon.

Five years later, and Britain is in ruins. London, Norwich, and Brighton experience atomic hellfire, and both the parties of government are soundly discredited. Horace Wilson's emergency Conservative Caretaker government lasts only long enough to restore civil authority across most of Britain before being turned out of office by the largest landslide in modern British history. The Tories are reduced to a double-digit parliamentary rump, as Herbert Morrison takes the reins of a broken country.
 
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