In his first campaign in Saxony, Charlemagne forced the Engrians in 773 to submit and cut down an Irminsul pillar near Paderborn, a pagan sanctuary possibly representing Yggdrasil, the world tree.
Charlemagne's brother died two years earlier, and there were no other direct male decendants of Pepin to take the throne had Charlemagne died. So what if Charlemagne is struck by lightning shortly after ransacking the sanctuary?
Of course getting hit by a lightning is a very unlikely thing, but what I was thinking was how would the pagans react if the "evil" invading king is esentially killed by Thor's thunderbolt?
Also this is the eve of the viking age, which some scolars have looked at as a consequence of the saxon wars, at least in part. How hard would it be to convert and assimilate the vikings (possibly including Saxony ITTL) into latin christian culture if christ is looked upon as the god of defeat and victims even more so than OTL, and no forced mass conversions in Germany take place?
Why would the danish kings convert without the thread of assimilation into the Holy Roman Empire?
Would Valdimir I of Kiev (or his ATL representative) still consider converting to an Abrahamic religion if his scandinavian kinsmen had a firmer belief in their ancestral gods? would the scandinavian princes in the east continue to look upon the slavic peoples they controlled more as slaves than subjects?
Also what effects might the collapse of the frankish empire have in the 770s have elsewhere?
does it lead to a stronger muslim Spain? is it good or bad for the Byzantine empire?
Would there be a permanent religious fault line along the Rhine in Europe?
what are your thoughts on this?