Alternate History

What is your favorite alternate history?

Mine is that the Byzantines would survive the siege on Constantinople in 1453 and end up joining the Spanish to the Americas, after which they set up a new colony "Nea Byzanteia", which would become the new Byzantine empire after they Ottomans defeat them in 1500, leading to a east-west rivalry between Ottomans and Byzantines.

I'm actually writing a book on this story btw.

Another one is that the order of Assassins would form an actual nation in 1185 to counter the Ayyubids, leading to the "Kingdom of the Assassins"

What is your favourite alternate history? Maps welcome.

Byzantium wins Manzikert because Constantine X is murdered before he ever sits the throne. Turks are driven back, and Byzantium keeps her rich, populous provinces.

>instead of fire, writing is the first thing humans discover/invent with tools

Just think of what would happen

My favorite is the alt-timeline where Catholicism fails to catch in the Roman Empire and becomes a minor religion, thus leaving us with a bunch of distinct cults with some major deities being shared.

inb4 that ottoman tripfag comes in and shits everything up

"man i can't see shit in this cave"

Do we really need two threads about this autism on the front page?

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I'm working on one that essentially the settlement of Leifsbudir in Newfoundland/Vinland becomes permeant in 1009. I actually really enjoy what I've wrote so far, but I kind of have to go out on a limb for the economic rationale of the original settling. Which is hard for me to do because I'm trying to keep it very grounded and realistic.

Right now, I'm in 1544 and the French are starting to colonize the gulf of the St. Lawrence and that Cartier and de Roberval's initial colonization and exploration missions are more successful from the boost of having small European settlements already in the area. What I'm doing with Nova Scotia in this same time period is really neat too, I'm setting it up for early English colonization and eventually it will become an English Catholic refuge. Basically I've written a history of Vinland from 1009-1500 and am using it as a base to write a larger alternate history that postulates what an earlier and more diversely settled European North America would be like

As a AH.com regular, my favorite is probably either Green Antarctica, where a massive Antarctic civ evolves from Austrslian Abos, Lands of Red and Gold, with Australian civilization rising from their fishing villages, or Peccari rex, Equus regina where horses don't die out in the Americas and a hodgepodge of civilizations form.

Check them out.

Byzantines never called themselves Byzantines and Byzantium was not a normal or commonly used name for Constantinople.

I like the Assassins thing

Yes but in my story, the Ottomans and Byzantines become cultural rivals. Both claiming heirs to the Romans, knd of like real life.

Once the Byzantines lose their European foothold, they lose the term "Roman" because the inhabitants of Greece would lose their identity.

Like what happened to the British settlers in the USA, they formed their own identity.

And I haven't started writing the Assassin story as I'm still busy with the Byzantine one but the premise is that the Ismaeli sect chose their own caliph, due to the Saladin claiming himself as Sunni caliph. This leads to all small sects in the Levant uniting under the Assassins and the Ismaeli caliph would rule the Khilafah al-Assassyya (Caliphate of the Assassins)

Because they unite, this allows them to defend against the Mongolians and the rest I haven't thought of yet.

Interesting, any link?

Does the colony become independent? Or do they become part of Denmark?

And then? Do they survive into the 2000s?

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Crazy, do you mean Christian cults or pagan ones?

It remained independent and mostly fell out of contact during the beginnings of the Little Ice Age the Greenland population migrated to Vinland rather than Iceland or Norway. What contact they do have is through occasionally traders, and picks up around 1400 with Basque, Breton and English fishermen looking for saltfish. Overtime the island fell to a system under what I called Kastamenn which works like loose feudalism over homesteads, this gave rise to several larger Kastamenn regions sparked by a session of the old Thing in 1406 (which is by now an irrelevant apparatus) that affirms that the rights of the Kastamenn, the rulers as facing a separate code of conduct and law than the normal freemen.

Scandinavia has not figured into the story yet, but Vinland has too much of a separate history thus far to ever accept their dominion. I'm planning on it consolidating around 1600 or so into a single state and forming a more modern Navy, as it sits on one of the most important fisheries in the world

i wonder what leads to more unity in a country: haveing one very intolerant religion that most peopled believed in to a extent. or having a buch or minor religions that are tolerant of each other

We should exchange research documents friend, also working on a novel set in a similar time and involving the Norse culture

The natives of North Africa demographically expand and takeover Sub Saharan Africa establishing Sub Saharan civilizations with trade systems in place, the blacks are either enslaved or exterminated from the area. The North Africans refer to blacks as kokor or beast men they tell their children horror stories involving blacks to make them see them as nonpeople.

When islam begins to expand in 700 A.D its halted from getting further into Africa due to the more developed north african kingdoms.

Elohim never creates Jesus thus Christianity is never invented leaving the middle east full of its original religions and Europe polytheistic and divided culturally, as roman try to make tribes adopt their religion the tribes of course reject it. The jews remain in the Levant and never leave since Islam never happens although they are frequently conquered by new middle eastern empires that would exist without Islam.

The latin alphabet is never invented, all humans in 100 A.D use a logographic system completely different from the asian ones for writing and speaking. As such every modern european language like even English will never exist in this alternate world.

A wobble changes the climate of the earth turning Central Africa into a dry savannah rather than the remains of Africa's rainforest that once was in the area of the middle east, this makes the black human never exist as the environmental selections in the Congo rainforest on prehistoric man is what lead to the birth of blacks meaning the already existing San humans would now become the dominant humans in Sub Saharan Africa.

About 4000 asians migrate from Sumatra in Indonesia into Australia,they quickly multiply and establish civilizations and kingdoms where as the Abos are Pgymies are driven to near extinction.

Darkest Hour's Kaiserreich.
Germany wins World War 1.

Very nice!

Caucasoid nomadic tribes crossed the Bering strait after the natives, later they build settlements and began the first kingdoms in the new world. Eventually they expanded until they were everywhere in North America including the West Indies, they were entering South America but referred to it as Buruko or the world of the savages in reference to the many feral native american tribes in South America.

Around 1400 A.D the New World Caucasoids discover the continent of Africa(from their point of view) by sailing to the West Coast, the blacks they meet being alien to them however are in high distate to them, but seeing all the land availiable they try to colonize it.

Around 1500 they notice the existence of Asia for the first time by sailing to China and trading with them.

Europeans didnt discover the new world till the late 1500s and when they discovered all the kingdoms in the New World they decided that war against the kingdoms was futile and decided in trade agreements.

Thus European colonization of the New World never happens, where as both the New and Europe fight to secure control over African land.

There's of course the "what if the Battle of Hastings went differently" and how it would change political development and the English language.

Another one I like to think about is how the US would be different if it held a larger amount of territory. Polk's super-deluxe sized US is a favorite of mine.

Ummayads don't lose control of Spain, Spanish never cross the ocean and colonize the Americas, Mayans and other mesoamericans develop European-style weapons and when foreigners do come they're prepared. Indigenous societies flourish, Mayan writing system spreads throughout Mesoamerica.

i would be interested in an alternate history where russia colonizes the americas.

There'd have to be an economic incentive and the Crimean War has to go differently.

incentive: russia is a shithole, california isnt that far from siberia.

But the Russian far east is pretty far from, y'know, anything that mattered.

Muslim invaders crush Don Pelayo and Asturias. They overrun Aquitaine and defeat Charles Martel at Tours.

In the East, there is no storm and the Arabs successfully siege Constantinople. The Eastern Roman Empire follows the example of the Persians and collapses.

The Eastern and Western forces converge in Italy. The Mediterranean trading and cultural area is never broken. Arabs in Europe basically usurp the Roman Empire and make Islam the official religion.

An enlightened, European form of Islam eventually appears.