WI There was a Christian Khanate encompassing Hungary and Poland

So WI in the mongol invasions of Hungary and Poland Bela gets captured, Hungary falls to the mongols and gets annexed and then a short while later Poland too falls to the mongols. First off all how realistic is this? Second this province of the mongols successfuly breaks away from the Golden horde. If the mongol ruler of said Khanate then converts to CHristianity will this Khanate survive. if so how will its interaction with the Pope and EUropeans in General be. Basically is it possible for the Khanate to last to present day and how radically will it alter world history. Also what are the cultural consequences of Mongols ruling a christian european state.
 

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Providing the Khagan lives longer and the Mongols ride their intial momentum, its not too horrendously implausible. It would either very quickly be lost or become complete autonomous within a couple decades, however.
 
Given that mongols was pretty much everywhere in terms of religion except prehaps Judism, and the Nestorian heresy (also at that point in time called Asian christianity) was one of the larger minorities, its certainly not unlikely that a Mongol Nestorian Khan makes a powergrab in the westernmost regions, and as an effort not to get piled by both europeans and the Golden Horde, makes the relatively small jump from Nestorianism to either Catholicism or, prehaps more likely Greek Ortodox (given that it Nestorians was closer belief wise to Othodoxism than Catholicism).

Reason for being focused on Othodox, would be that Constantinoble is a closer one to talk to, and they predominantly have traveled though Othodox christianity ... And i believe it would be better if they only took the southen Poland (the north would be defended by a Teutonc Order/HRE Allience), but instead grabbing say, Greater Poland, Mazovia, Hungary, Trencsén, Moldavia and Bulgaria (and prehaps Vidin and Raska while we're at it) to make a spacefilling blob between HRE to the west/North (if they use the attack to incorperate Pomerelia), Golden Horde to the East and the Latin Empire to the south

A protential butterfly from how i'd see it (depending on said Khans powerzone) could be an allience between him and the Empire of Nicaea (or maybe it'll be the reemerged Eastern Roman Empire at that point after the reconquest of Constantinoble in 1261), helping them surive the onslaught a handful of years later from the emerging Osman Sultanate, and/or take over as the successor state of Byzans after the OTL Civil war in 1341, instead of the Serbian Empire
 
The Mongol Khanates that occupied European countries did not annex them but rather made them vassals, which the Mongols did in the Rus states.
 
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The Mongol Khanates that occupied European countries did not annex them but rather made them vassals, which the Mongols did in the Rus states.
But various previous waves of steppe nomads that had got as far west as Hungary -- most recently the Magyars -- had found it a suitable place in which to set up home, so why not Mongols? I agree that anywhere north or west of there would probably be turned into tributary states instead, but their taking direct control of the non-Hungarian parts of what's now Rumania [in the modern-day OTL] too would seem plausible bearing in mind that those had also been inhabited mainly by nomads not much earlier on...
 
Reason for being focused on Othodox, would be that Constantinoble is a closer one to talk to, and they predominantly have traveled though Othodox christianity ...
I agree. Also, The Mongol Khans absolutely rejected the Catholic Church's policy of Papal Supremacy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_supremacy)
After all:
"[FONT=&quot]In Heaven there are both the sun and the moon. But on earth there can only be one Khan.”[/FONT]

Pope Innocent IV
and Guyuk Khan discussed (in letters) the Khan's conversion to Christianity. The Khan was unconvinced.

However, I can definitely see a Mongol Byzantium. Perhaps Guyuk Khan, trying to play his Christian (Georgia and Armenia) and Muslim (the Anatolian Seljuks) against each other, uses the Seljuks to conquer Constantinople, then lets Christians govern over it (perhaps David Narin, to get him out of Georgia). Over the next two generations, the western half of the Ilkhanate is Christianized. When the Mongol Empire crumbles, the Turkic-speaking Byzantines beat back Osman, and form their own gunpowder empire in Anatolia and the Balkans.

Maybe?

Or, as Sian said, it can be the Golden Horde that gives us a Christian Mongol State. I'm not sure what POD can save the Golden Horde...actually, I've just been talking about how Mongols wouldn't touch Catholicism, but what if one of the four would-be-Khans petitioned Rome for support in the 1360s?

Another POD: Algirdas was born a woman, and was married to a Golden Horde Khan to create a Mongol Lithuanian Empire.
 
a Mongol Khan, thats aware of the need for PR could easily abuse the, at the time popular, myth of Prester John, An asian christian King ruling a christian empire surrounded by muslims and pagans. Say by claiming rights of rule inherited from him, but pressured into moving westwards.

Succeding in tying himself to that myth would do much to stop the european leaders (specially the theological leaders) from getting rid of the new big player on the european scene.
 
Was Prester John an Orthodox thing as well as Catholic? If it was only Catholic, there would need to be a legitimate Catholic threat to Mongol power, that the Khans could counter with the Prester John myth. Maybe this could be a ploy of the Ilkhanate against the Latin Empire?
 
I think this is the possible way in order for a Christian Khanate in Europe to happen the Khan, the Golden Horde gets the King of Rus title, if the Golden Horde satisfied the Rus principalities.

I think you could use the POD where in Lev II of Galicia gains Krakow as a POD this is possible because in this POD Galicia-Volhynia annexes Krakow with the aid of the Mongols the other parts of Poland becomes a Poland that is a Vassal of HRE but without Lesser Poland but this will also please one of the vassals of the Golden Horde and also Lev II of Galicia could also annex parts of Hungary once Andrew III of Hungary dies which will lead to the Khan gaining the throne of Rus, Khans will start to convert to Orthodoxy after they gained the throne of Rus and intermarry with the Ruriks of Kievian Rus which will lead to direct Mongol rule and integration of the Rus principalities once the male lines of Rurik die one by one just like what Lithuania did in OTL.
 
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Was Prester John an Orthodox thing as well as Catholic? If it was only Catholic, there would need to be a legitimate Catholic threat to Mongol power, that the Khans could counter with the Prester John myth. Maybe this could be a ploy of the Ilkhanate against the Latin Empire?

the myth came from stories about Thomas the Apostle starting a christian community in India, some of which (prehaps, secondhand evidence at best) traveled to Constantinoble doing Pope Callixtus III (somewhere between 1119-1124 then)

Remember, at the time the myth came around (early 12'th century) the official schism between Rome and Constantinoble was still within mans memory and not really that important people not in the higher ranks
 
the myth came from stories about Thomas the Apostle starting a christian community in India, some of which (prehaps, secondhand evidence at best) traveled to Constantinoble doing Pope Callixtus III (somewhere between 1119-1124 then)

Remember, at the time the myth came around (early 12'th century) the official schism between Rome and Constantinoble was still within mans memory and not really that important people not in the higher ranks

There's also the other theory about how Yelu Dashi's defeat of the Seljuk Turks influenced the legend of Prester John too, since he was a non-Muslim who inflicted a defeat on a great Muslim empire, at approximately the time that the legend sprung up.
 
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