Ye Olde England: No Norman Invasion

Susano

Banned
It was already half the way to become North Germanic, the reason I could see it rejoin North German were the Hanse, without the focus on French and the strong Norman aristocraty I could see English towns and cities joining the Hanse, and that would give mutual intelligible dialects a borst on both sides of course there's a good chance that Low Frankish, Frisian and Danish would join this mutual intelligible sphere.

As said, small chance of that. And I wouldnt really describe English as halfways North Germanic...
 

Thande

Donor
It was already half the way to become North Germanic,
Not really, only half of England was ever under the Danish or Norwegian sphere of influence and that was fading by the 1060s. OK, there was the case in 1069 where the Northumbrian rebels invited the Danes back to rule them, but I don't think that would last in the long run.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
Yeah, English had already diverged and I don't see why it would grow closer to any of the continental Germanic languages again, though it wouldn't go as far away as OTL without the Romantic injection either.

There is the Old English Wicipǣdia now, which helps illustrate the state of the language at the time we're talking about. Not exactly mutually intelligible with any other Germanic language.

Surprisingly it were both with (old) Low German, Frisian and Danish (and likely also with Low Frankish)
 
(OTOH, most of our biggest colonial triumphs in OTL were mainly due to colonial ventures and companies operating almost independently of the Crown)

I'd disagree majorly - they were a success because England had a relatively high degree of political centralization. Nobles could be trusted to go off on found little feifdoms in America, becuase they had no power bases back home; in, say, New France, everything was run by the king, because he couldn't trust any of his nobles with anything, because he was too busy putting them down (over and over and over again).

In the early modern age, lack of centralization is always and everywhere a problem.
 

Susano

Banned
Why is why THE politcial struggle of the 17th and 18th centuries was the one of absolutist monarchs against the estates. Even in Germany - just not in the HREGN as a whole, but in the single states. Mostly, themonarchs won, but in Mecklenburg for example the estates won - Mecklenburg was so backwards in the 19th century, not only did it have no constitution, the Estate still ruled, too!
 
Guys

Question. Taking the simplest solution, say Harold wins at Hastings. Do you think Normandy is weakened, resulting in an earlier/more powerful France or does it put more energy into France and keeps its separate identity, leading to a weaker, later unifying France? Probably depends in part at least on how devastating a defeat and how quickly or not Normandy gets a strong new ruler?

Steve
 
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