Philip Augustus dies in The Eagle of the Bosphorus, but so does King John, which butterflies away the Magna Carta and Parliamentarism as we know it.
@Shevek23 Quite frankly, calling someone a reactionary is like calling someone a racist, particularly as many OTL reactionaries were racists.
Yay, someone mentioned my timeline in a discussion!
Some thoughts:
France dies in my timeline because as best as I can tell, Philip is why France as the secure state the people defending it are pointing to. (This is drawn from the translation of a French author's work on the Capet dynasty).
Certainly the Capets before that were nothing to take lightly, but they weren't exactly masters of France.
Yet.
The Eagle of the Bosporus is exploring how the world would look if some states that failed OTL (Byzantium primarily, but also the HRE, Poland - yes, I did just say both Poland and Das Deutchblobben*...) did well, and other areas...not so much.
France OTL was one of the winners. There's not a whole lot to explore about "So what if things went differently?" in regards to things making it or not on the success end.
But there is a lot to explore about how a France that never forms like OTL's France would look.
This being said, I'd personally rather read a story of France successful than France being absorbed by Germany or England and forgotten.
At worst, France will be like Poland, in the sense of breaking apart, being under the thumb of a stronger power, but returning.
Oops, was that a spoiler?
Barring a POD too early to have "France" as we know it at all.
And...that's all I can think to say at the moment. Except this:
The world would be a poorer place without France.
* Pardon my crummy German.