You have ever half planned some ATL timelines who likely will never be written?

Let Liberty Ring: A successful Liberian state.

The Lion of Africa: Marcus Garvey comes to power in Liberia in the early 30s.

Sheba’s Legion: Emperor Haile Selassie I goes to Berlin in 1936.

 

Several if one only had more time.
-Charels V & I leaves the Burgundian parts to Ferdinand and the Austrian Habsburgs, as being part of the HRE. This gives the Habsburgs an open road through the Prince-Bishops that now have to let the Austrians pass where OTL they could block the Spanish. Thus walking into the Netherlands along the river Rhine, quickly crushing the rebellion again. Also this shifts the balance of power more towards the Emperor away from the electors.

-1848 Hilarity insures when Billy clears the streets of Berlin with a bit to much grapeshot and the local regiments chase the Guard units and Royal family out of the city and then the country. Then FJ goes to Frankfurt, being 18 he gets convinced to go by a cute girl, and accepts the crown from the gutter, passes Hungary to Max. ect. ect.

-Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and Princes Juliana go for a lovely low-key personal visit to A-H. Get invited by FF to travel down to Sarajevo and see the troops. Boom goes the grenade and not only does FJ lose his heir, but the Netherlands loses the entire royal family. Fun is had in the Hague when they realize that their worst nightmare has come true as the new King is a full on German.

With the Netherlands in the war Liege and Antwerp fall almost immediately. German Army not only get two more Corps, for their right flank. But more importantly the railroads, rolling-stock, rivers, and barges to make their logistical constraints mostly disappear.

Small DEF (2000 Marines plus assorted units from the Fortress troops that are now no longer required.) shows up on the Serbian border to avenge the Queen and little Princess. As there is no room on Northern Serbian border get deployed in the areas reserved for A-H 2. Armee, that went straight for Galicia, and manage to cross Danube against limited opposition.

Indian & ANZAC troops get diverted to DEI to get mauled by the veteran Dutch troops. Dutch Indian Navy together with German East Asia squadron raise merry hop with Entente shipping and suddenly too small RN Squadron. Requiring transfer of several pre-Dreads and assorted RN vessels to clear the Singapore Strait and ...

 

I would love to read both... (for the latter specially if FJ is able to marry his first love interest, Princess Anna of Prussia, and Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria end as Queen of Hungary as wife of Max).

For the first: Karl will never give Burgundy to his brother so you have three ways to get an Austrian Burgundy:
1) The Habsburg never inherent Spain
2) Karl never became King of Spain as his younger brother Ferdinand replace him as heir in Castile and Aragon like their grandfather Ferdinand II of Aragon wanted
3) Philip II never married Mary Tudor (likely because she never became Queen of England) and Karl decide to leave Burgundy to his daughter Maria (wife of Ferdinand’s heir Maximilian).

 

This is less an actual timeline per se but rather the amusing elaborate set up if I eventually actually write this stuff out. I call it....

The Reagan Revolution!; or, Power Without Knowledge!

Basically, Alexander Haig becomes Reagan's VP, and the 1981 assassination attempt succeeds, eventually creating a strange twisted 21st century with five viable political parties. In the meantime it would feature, among other things:

• A surviving Duvalier regime armed with chemical warheads
• A Posadist Heaven's Gate as a Cuban Aum Shinrikyo
• A non-Communist China
• Soviet Premier Zhirinovsky
• Independent Kurdistan
• President Perot
• A North Korea that's really poor but not evil

 

I always have two scenarios in the back of my mind.

The first is about Emperor Theodosius II not dying by falling off a horse in 450, and the consequences on the christological debates at the time. Essentially, you get Miaphysitism as Orthodoxy in the Eastern Empire, while Dyophysitism (OTL Chalcedonian definition, i.e. Catholicism, Greek, Russian Orthodoxy, etc.) is relegated to second class status. For one thing, this means stronger religious cohesion in parts of the Eastern Empire, but also a longer survival of Arianism in the western successor kingdoms and an exiled Pope of Rome trying to keep Dyophysitism alive. This one is already fairly fleshed out in the early stages.

The second is about a different 1878 Congress of Berlin, with Germany backing Russian claims more forcefully and favoring them over Austria. Eventually this leads to a closer alliance between Russia and Germany, while Austria slowly drifts towards France's and Britain's camp. This has pretty far reaching consequences around the globe, and sets up a very different modern world.

Not sure if I'll ever post anything, but I can't help but return to these scenarios. It's actually difficult to read some OTL history of these periods, and not constantly think about the implications for the scenarios. I tend to oscillate between the two, depending on which period interests me most at the time.

 

Stillington’s Great Matter

POD is Elizabeth of York became the second wife of Maximilian of Austria between the death of Mary of Burgundy and that of Edward IV. Stillington and Richard of Gloucester still go on with their OTL stunts but forgotten to think to the consequences of putting in doubt the legitimacy of the daughter-in-law of the Emperor, as the Pope (under request of Emperor Frederick) claimed who any judgement in the matter about Edward IV and lady Eleanor Talbot was of his esclusive competence and so.
The best who Stillington and Gloucester can hope to obtain now (and with inconfutabile proof of a valid wedding of Edward to Eleanor) is having the wedding of Edward and Elizabeth declared invalid but with their children declared legitimate under the “good faith” clause. As Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury are dead, then Elizabeth is the rightful Queen of England so Maximilian (who has a very good Lancastrian claim of his own as descendant of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster on his mother’s side) invade England, Richard III died in the battle and Maximilian and Elizabeth are joint crowned as rulers of England (with England destined to their eldest son Edward). Cecily of York marry James IV of Scotland as programmed, Henry Tudor married Anne St Ledger (who is penniless but still daughter of a Yorkist princess so better than other cousins of the Queen, excluding Margaret of Clarence).
Margaret of Clarence, heiress of the whole Beauchamp/Montagu inheritance after the deaths of her brother and cousin married Thomas Grey (second son of Elizabeth of York’s half-brother, OTL second marquess of Dorset).

 

A few years ago I started a timeline about a successful Welsh colonisation of Patagonia starting 50 years earlier than OTL which stalled when I realised I didn't know enough South American history to plausibly continue it past the mid-19th century. Every now and again I look at it with a view to restarting it, maybe someday.

I've also wanted to do something with an obscure incident in the summer of 1157 when Henry II was invading Wales and his army was trapped in an ambush mounted by Owain Gwynedd and almost wiped out, with Henry himself being one of the few survivors. The point being if he gets killed his heir is the two year old Henry (though his wife is pregnant with the future Richard I), England falls into chaos and Owain runs rampant. Again, I didn't really know enough of the complexities of Plantagenet successions to make it plausible.

 

I remeber the Welsh Patagonia TL. Very good stuff, one of the few I caught up from the beginning and followed to the end. I do hope you resume or restart it.

EDIT: I'm by no means expert in South American history, but, being Brazilian, and having attempted to do a 19th century Brazilian TL, I could try to help with research if you are interested.

The Medieval one is a great idea too.

 

Sort of a weird idea I have is a timeline where the 19th Century plays out with similar beats and parallels to the 20th Century.

It starts with the French revolution being averted and a massive European war breaking out in the 1810s between Britain, France and Russia against an Austrian Empire that has been able to corral the rest of the HRE into following them and has signed an alliance of convenience with the Ottoman Empire to parallel WW1. In the aftermath a revolutionary wave sweeps Europe but is mostly contained except in Russia where an alt-Jacobin Republican dictatorship is established to parallel the rise of Communism. The European powers spend a decade or so recovering before a new great European War breaks out that leaves Europe divided between a dictatorial Republican East and a Constitutional Monarchist West paralleling WW2 and the start of the Cold War. In the 1850s a successful Taiping Rebellion overthrows the Qing and takes control of China, except for Formosa which remains a Qing holdout propped up by Europeans to parallel Communist China. Japan is opened to the West earlier and results in an earlier modernisation to parallel the rapid transformations that Japan experienced after WW2. In the US the balance of power between free and slave states shifts more decisively towards Free states and slavery is gradually abolished from the 1850s-1870s paralleling the Civil Rights movement. The Republican Regimes collapse in the 1890s paving the way for a right-Hegelian end of history with Constitutional Monarchy seeming to emerge as the most advanced form of government.

 

In addition to my Arminius TL and "Berber Muhammad" TL (aka Romano-Berber wank), I also planned some less related TLs. Like an uncolonised Madagascar TL where Madagascar ends up like OTL Thailand in the 19th century and also has a strong navy (relative of their position and strength so they aren't really "pulling a Meiji") and defeats either the Portuguese and/or the Dutch.

Even less related, I wrote a bit of an alt-9/11 TL where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in his days at North Carolina A&T befriends a classmate radicalised by his group and travels the South where he gains a new perspective on how to most damage the United States. He targets Memphis, Tennessee, since he finds it a city full of typical Americans which also holds huge strategic importance (thanks to witnessing the failed 1994 Fedex Express Flight 705 hijacking combined with the bridges across the Mississippi) as well as cultural importance (Graceland, Beale Street). On Black Friday 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists detonate a truck bomb outside the Memphis Pyramid at the start of an NBA game between the Grizzlies and Phoenix Suns, killing thousands. Around that time, al-Qaeda operatives have detonated a truck bomb on the Hernando de Soto bridge carrying I-40 as well as the Memphis and Arkansas Bridge. Al-Qaeda terrorists detonate a truck bomb outside Memphis International Airport during holiday travel on Black Friday and kill over a thousand while providing cover for the hijacking of a Fedex flight at the Memphis airport and fly it right back into the terminal to cause largescale destruction. Police efforts that day in Memphis are drawn toward a mass shooting and arson at Graceland as well as a mass shooting on Beale Street and the start of the attacks, an arson of a synagogue which al-Qaeda can initially blame on neo-Nazis. I devised this scenario in response to a thread proposing to how al-Qaeda could strike the American heartland.

 

This really intrigues me and reminds me of a comment John Gray (I think) once made about the Communist revolutions in Russia and China: far from making them more 'different' from the West, the revolutions made those countries the most 'Western' they've ever been in that they imported in toto an Enlightenment European philosophy as their governing system.

 

Greencorns and Rednecks: The Green Corn Rebellion is more successful and Oklahoma and the surrounding states experience a drawn-out guerilla insurgency that lasts until 1920 when an amnesty is declared. During the 20s Green Corn Bands play a major role in resisting the rise of the Second Klan in the South and Mid-West and are also involved in the labour unrest of the time. When the Great Depression hits a Second Green Corn Rebellion breaks out in the South and Mid-West. An exploration of the political and cultural legacy of an established tradition of armed Socialist Insurrection and Social Banditry in the US.

 

I'm currently reading the Faces of Muhammed which is about European perspectives on the Prophet Muhammed over the centuries. I was quite interested in how more positive portrayals of Muhammed and Islam began to appear during and after the Reformation. Partly due to Catholic and Protestant polemicists comparing their rival sects negatively as being worse than Muslims, internal Catholic disagreements over the immaculate conception looking favourably on Islam's support of the doctrine and even some Unitarians would draw on Jewish and Muslim sources when making their argument for the Unity of God to the extent that they were seen by other sects as being a gateway for Islam. Later on some Deists would view Muhammed as an ideal religious reformer bringing about a pure monotheism and once the religious wars started up many would begin to look favourably at the stability and religious tolerance of the Ottoman Empire as a model to follow.

All this got me thinking about what the consequences of a massive Ottoman wank, sort of like Kayser-i-Rum by @Soverihn, where the Ottomans are able to conquer Italy and Austria just as the Reformation is breaking out. With the centre of the Church and German Hapsburg territory under the Turkish yoke the forces of Catholicism have lost a lost of their moral, political and military authority which kicks the Reformation into overdrive. As the subsequent religious wars rage throughout the Holy Roman Empire the Ottomans are able to extend their influence into it through backing and playing various players against each other and offering a safe haven for various heretics. Over time some European Princes convert to Islam as a means of courting Ottoman support and out of the understandable view that Christianity isn’t working out so they might as well give Islam a go. At some point the Bohemians elect a Muslim convert as their king as a compromise candidate who would be able to serve as a neutral arbiter between the different sects.

The Ottoman occupation of Rome results in a schism in the Catholic Church with the Ottomans installing a puppet Pope and an independent Anti-Pope moving to Avignon and later Spain. The schism also gains a theological dimension with both sides taking different stances on the controversial question of the Immaculate Conception with the Ottoman Pope taking a pro side and the Anti-Pope taking the con side. Michael Servetus flees to Ottoman Territory and is more successful in building support for Unitarianism. Operating within Muslim lands gives him more access to Islamic theological and philosophical sources and as a result he incorporates more Islamic influences into his brand of Unitarianism. Later on some of his followers would take things further and convert, becoming prominent apologists for Islam in Europe and confirming the fears of anti-Unitarians that Unitarianism was a gateway to Islam.

 

I'm currently considering an ATL timeline where the Almohads win the Battle of Los Navas in 1212 (right now I have written how the battle led to the crusing of the Coalition of Catholic forces - forcing continued Almohad domination of Southern Iberia), in OTL, they lost due to a local Spanish shepherd, Martín Alhaja, who led the Catholic forces through an obscure mountain pass around the Almohad forces and took them by surprise. That one battle basically secured Christian domination of the peninsula from then on.

My ATL starts with the random killing of Alhaja by marauding Almohad soldiers circa 1200 after he rejects converting to Islam. Maybe I'll continue the timeline to extend to a recovered Al-Andalus - being reborn from mere ashes like a phoenix. But right now, I'm so busy in my final year of secondary school, so that will likely wait until the summer

 

Have you read A House of Lamps by @dontfearme22? Because I think that timeline has that same PoD.

 

well thanks for the ideas mates i will be sure to credit you all

 

I was not aware of that, thank you very much. I will be sure to binge read that now.

 

If these three PoD's correspond to the order you listed them in the heading, that last one sounds like it will be VERY interesting!

 

nah, the heading gets the last two in the wrong chronological order. Just to screw with perfectionists

 

The biggest thing is the ottoman getting Rome,that way the Pope become like the orthodoxian patriac for the catholics out there, as you say, they slowly will take concept of Islamic Theology over the time.