WI: Successful Eighth Crusade Leads to Tunis Being Held by Europeans?

As the tin says, what if the Eighth Crusade were successful and the Europeans not only managed to take Tunis, but to hold on to it? I imagine it would be joined to thr Kingdom of Sicily.
 
Ahhh yes, Naples and Sicily had a French King back then. Maybe he gets it, though there could be problems as in 1282 the Sicilians through out the King. Maybe having a bunch of Crusaders in Tunis changes things up.
 
Ahhh yes, Naples and Sicily had a French King back then. Maybe he gets it, though there could be problems as in 1282 the Sicilians through out the King. Maybe having a bunch of Crusaders in Tunis changes things up.

Do you think holding Tunis would lead to other Crusades against North African cities that aren't in Egypt?
 
Do you think holding Tunis would lead to other Crusades against North African cities that aren't in Egypt?
Or tights against them from Muslim states. I imagine this would at least allow the Europeans to get a state going for remaining Christian North Africans, as well as allowing them to try keeping Ships from modern Libya and modern Algeria from meeting up. I imagine the Barbary pirates will still come around, and the Europeans eventually try to just destroy or take off their ports.
 
Or tights against them from Muslim states. I imagine this would at least allow the Europeans to get a state going for remaining Christian North Africans, as well as allowing them to try keeping Ships from modern Libya and modern Algeria from meeting up. I imagine the Barbary pirates will still come around, and the Europeans eventually try to just destroy or take off their ports.

But the Barbary Pirates were 400-500 years later.
 
A Christian Berber-Hispanic state would probably be quite interesting - especially as it makes the routes not only to itself, but to Outremer more secure.

In fact, I'm not sure WHEN the Portuguese started to have an overpopulation problem (one of their motivations to expand overseas), but I could see loads of Portuguese settlers go to Tunis, simply because if it all goes wrong it is so much easier to get home.

Catholic Berber, Hispanic and Portuguese state in Tunisia could be a game changer - it cuts of the Maghreb from the east - but might end up being on the sour end of Venice. Trade west of Italy was typically the domain of Genoa - which would likely mean that Genoa gets a boost in its fortunes.

Man, the actors in that little state could be fun. Berbers, Portuguese, Genovese, Spanish, and of course, Cardinals and Franks. It also creates a source for light cavalry forces that Europe really didn't use at the time, that if supported and growing through conquest and conversion of the Maghreb could later go to support Jerusalem or Antioch, giving an actual counter to Arab light cavalry.

What was there to trade from the Maghreb at this point (and did Genoa partake?) because if funding mercenaries to assist the state leads to profits, Genoa might end up paying to send forces abroad, infesting the state economically.
 
Would it lead to more earlier & long term Frankish and Spanish colonization of North Africa?

If Tunis can be held long term, at the very least it prevents and/or hampers Turkish assistance to states in western North Africa. So we could potentially see Iberian and Frankish states holding coastal areas of North Africa more easily.
 
Well, it was a vassal of Charles d'Anjou. I could see further expansion in North Africa by him, as well as perhaps war and the seizure of territory from the Moors in Spain. He was otherwise focused eastward, but a stronger presence in Tunis might lead to wars coming his way and forcing his attention westward. One POD I had discussed before was that Saint Louis recovers from his illness, the Eight Crusade is a smashing success, and then Louis later helps secure his brother's claim to Jerusalem. We would have to butterfly the Sicilian Vespers somehow, but a stronger Angevin empire in the Mediterranean seems like an interesting timeline, I think.
 
I suppose a Ninth Crusade that recovers Egypt would actually make a lot of sense. Then Jerusalem to Tunis would be contiguous and we might see an effort to get Cyprus, Armenia, Tripoli, Morea, and various Greek Isles for the Angevin throne. Whether or not any of these conquests could successfully be leveraged into a bid for the Latin Empire of Constantinople remains to be seen, however. It sounds incredibly difficult.

ETA:

Despite the difficulty, an enduring Angevin/Roman Empire composed of French feudal Crusader states sounds like an incredible timeline, especially if it endure and becomes involved in both the spice trade and the colonization of the Americas. Is there some other sort of POD that could make this happen? I may have mentioned before that a living Saint Louis might potentially butterfly away the death of St. Thomas Aquinas. If he were able to successfully reunite East and West at the Second Council of Lyon and follow up De Regno with a book about the excellence of the rule of law and of the mixed regime, then we would be cooking with gas.

There would be no Angevin bid for the throne of Constantinople (at least right away). There would perhaps instead be the transformation of the feudal monarchies of the Levant and Italy into a sort of monarchical republic, ending the new trend toward regalism and instead maintaining the move toward mixed constitutions that birthed the Parlement de Paris, urban charters, and the increasing classicism of the Italian states.
 
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