WI: Christian (old) Prussians?

Nicole

Prussia was named after the Prussians, a pagan people who were conquered, forcibly Christianized and later Germanized by the Teutonic Order.
What if, around the year 1000, one of the tribal Prussian leaders becomes a Christian, and unites the Prussian people, forming his own Kingdom of Prussia a few hundred years earlier? Does this POD make sense?
 

David S Poepoe

Banned
Wait a Minute. You've got it all turned around. The Prussians received their name from region known as Prussia, which in turn got its name from the fact that the area was thick with Spruce trees.
 

MerryPrankster

The original Prussians were a Baltic ethnicity like (I think) the Latvians and Lithuanians. They made things difficult for the Kingdom of Poland, which called in the Teutonic Knights to solve the problem. The Knights conquered the region and forcibly converted the inhabitants to Christianity. They got acculturated and virtually became German, though the Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) article on the Prussians told about some more recent stuff.

Their language survives in some prayer books from that time, though.
 

Otis Tarda

Imajin said:
Prussia was named after the Prussians, a pagan people who were conquered, forcibly Christianized and later Germanized by the Teutonic Order.
What if, around the year 1000, one of the tribal Prussian leaders becomes a Christian, and unites the Prussian people, forming his own Kingdom of Prussia a few hundred years earlier? Does this POD make sense?
Click to expand...

Definitely, it makes. But I think that sequence should be turned: first, The Prussian Leader should unite Prussian people, and then become Christian.
And that would change a lot. Instead of wild tribes, there would be state, legitimized by whole Europe. So, no Teutonic Order in this part of Europe. Instead, Prussia (or whatever would be the name of this country) could become an important player in this part of Europe. Its relations with Poland would be "usual": border conflict, with raids, taking prisoners, times of "everlasting peace" lasting for few years at most.
More interesting would be Prussian-Lithuanian relations. Possibilities vary from some kind of commonwealth (as both those nations would be ethnicaly similiar), toward expanding Prussia east, or Lithuania west.
And without shadow of Teutonic Order, Lithuania could became in XIII/XIV century became an important player to take advantage of fall of Mongolian empire in Russia.
 

JHPier

Or the newly Christian Prussians might get the crusading bug and conquer and christianize the Lithuanians, Latvians, even perhaps Estonians, creating a sizable kingdom along the east coast of the Baltic
 

Constantinople

Banned
Actully the prussians were not ethicially realted very closely to the poles, the poles are slav and the prussians were balts.
 

abas

MerryPrankster said:
The original Prussians were a Baltic ethnicity like (I think) the Latvians and Lithuanians. They made things difficult for the Kingdom of Poland, which called in the Teutonic Knights to solve the problem. The Knights conquered the region and forcibly converted the inhabitants to Christianity. They got acculturated and virtually became German, though the Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) article on the Prussians told about some more recent stuff.

Their language survives in some prayer books from that time, though.
Click to expand...
Prussians were west Baltic alongside with Curonians and Sudowians, while the Latvians and Lithuanians are east Baltic. The last Prussians (who speak ancient language) got extinct in 17 century.
 
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