WI: A successful Crusade of Varna?

So OTL, the Crusade of Varna is one of the tipping points of Ottoman history, where they pretty definitively established the as a major player in Europe, and sent shockwaves throughout Eastern Europe with the death of Władysław III, king of both Poland and Hungary, setting the stage for both the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Habsburg rule of Hungary.

But say that the battle of Varna never happens, or Władysław III doesn't die, and the crusade succeeds. What happens then?
 
This is a rich POD which I've never seen explored. The Hungarians had reached into Bulgaria, getting pretty close to Adrianople! It also defeated the Ottomans in the field. If the Ottomans collapse, who prevails in Europe? The Hungarians and Serbs, I assume...
 

Marc

Donor
So OTL, the Crusade of Varna is one of the tipping points of Ottoman history, where they pretty definitively established the as a major player in Europe, and sent shockwaves throughout Eastern Europe with the death of Władysław III, king of both Poland and Hungary, setting the stage for both the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Habsburg rule of Hungary.

But say that the battle of Varna never happens, or Władysław III doesn't die, and the crusade succeeds. What happens then?

Could you more expansively define success?

If you accept the thesis that history in general follows an organic flow - not determinism, but a natural progression based on a multiplicity of factors: political, economic, social, and broadly cultural - then it seems to me that a successful "Varna" Crusade only delays the Ottoman development for at best a generation.
If you go by the singularity idea - great men, decisive battles are what really matters, "history on the flip of a coin", as a scholarly friend of mine liked to say - Then from what little we truly know, I'd still put my ducats on Murad holding the Ottomans and most of their power in the south Balkans together. However, a more than reasonable chance that the rest of Ottoman history in regards to Hungry et al is butterflied away.
 
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I can't see the Crusade of Varna being successful, even avoiding the battle, even avoiding litterally every failure the late Crusades met at this point.
Crusades, as an élan, a gathering of resources, supplies, men and (even if really relatively so) moral and politically will, was no longer : the rise of bureaucratic states in Europe more or less dried them out especially in a context were England, France, Germany and Italy (the traditional recruitment pools of crusaders) were already metting large scale wars (not that the XIth century was deprived of conflict of course, but it was what we would call low-intensity conflicts, which the HYW was not).

An idealistic crusading spirit still lived on in the Western world, true : Henry V Lancaster openly claimed he wanted to go to Holy Land and take back Jerusalem for instance. But it was just that : a political/moral fantasy without any real beggining of realization as much in the XVth than it was still in the XVIIth. At the very best, what existed were either campaigns with an admittedly important religious background but ultimately tied with nasceant national interests, either some foolhardy expeditions build on the declining social-cultural class that was the warring aristocracy to help some far states in Eastern Europe whom rulers never were able to contain or even lead at their benefit.

Does that means we couldn't see some late Crusade success? I wouldn't be so definitive : but it would ask IMO for an earlier PoD that would make either Hungary, Poland, or any athleta Christi strong enough to enforce their interest and viewpoint to a social class that was bent on its political and strategical independence (as Varna, and Agincourt both point very well).
 
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