Your Point of Divergence

[The Blaatschapen]

And while I'm sure that was a satisfying little chuckle, Arch, several of my people were among those ribbons the Turks strewed about the countryside.

That's the history of our lives, alas - sometimes you're on the right side, sometimes you're on the wrong side. Swings and roundabouts. Look at it this way... I needed a chuckle after spending the best part of 20 years wringing my hands in despair over my role in the deposition of Romanus IV (though I take some consolation in knowing I wasn't the only person taken in by Psellus, the old charlatan). And I certainly had my comeuppance in May 1453.

I also gave them your name but I doubt any of them managed to find you, seeing as how you were in Thessalonika and anyway, they were fairly low down the food chain.

Allow me to apologise a millenium on for missing them. It really was fairly pressing personal business; certainly I couldn't let the Court know about the ... issues. But yes, it would have been unlikely that one of the Protospatharoi would have been introduced to Provencal peasants, even if they had been able to deliver a letter to one of my secretaries prior to my return to The City. I mean, they might have put their grubby Provencal paws all over my maniakion!

This is not a roleplaying forum

[Farnhamia]

That's the history of our lives, alas - sometimes you're on the right side, sometimes you're on the wrong side. Swings and roundabouts. Look at it this way... I needed a chuckle after spending the best part of 20 years wringing my hands in despair over my role in the deposition of Romanus IV (though I take some consolation in knowing I wasn't the only person taken in by Psellus, the old charlatan). And I certainly had my comeuppance in May 1453.



Allow me to apologise a millenium on for missing them. It really was fairly pressing personal business; certainly I couldn't let the Court know about the ... issues. But yes, it would have been unlikely that one of the Protospatharoi would have been introduced to Provencal peasants, even if they had been able to deliver a letter to one of my secretaries prior to my return to The City. I mean, they might have put their grubby Provencal paws all over my maniakion!

This is not a roleplaying forum

Take it up with the Mods. Anyway, Arch and I, and Gallo sometimes, try not to make these little forays into history too much of a threadjack. This one, in fact, has provided actual information relevant to the topic.

[The Blaatschapen]

This is not a roleplaying forum

Take it up with the Mods. Anyway, Arch and I, and Gallo sometimes, try not to make these little forays into history too much of a threadjack. This one, in fact, has provided actual information relevant to the topic.

I know that you do Too bad it usually isn't about a history topic that I have more than average knowledge about (dutch history, starting from the dukes of Brabant)

[Farnhamia]

Take it up with the Mods. Anyway, Arch and I, and Gallo sometimes, try not to make these little forays into history too much of a threadjack. This one, in fact, has provided actual information relevant to the topic.

I know that you do Too bad it usually isn't about a history topic that I have more than average knowledge about (dutch history, starting from the dukes of Brabant)

I heard grand stories about Duke John I when I was living in England in the late 13th century. I never met him, he died while I was still exploring my new environs, but from what I heard, he was a model ruler.

[The Blaatschapen]

I know that you do Too bad it usually isn't about a history topic that I have more than average knowledge about (dutch history, starting from the dukes of Brabant)

I heard grand stories about Duke John I when I was living in England in the late 13th century. I never met him, he died while I was still exploring my new environs, but from what I heard, he was a model ruler.

He was quite a decent ruler. We still have a song about him.

We also had the Joyous Entry, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyous_Entry_of_1356 not quite unlike the Magna Carta

[Nadkor]

I heard grand stories about Duke John I when I was living in England in the late 13th century. I never met him, he died while I was still exploring my new environs, but from what I heard, he was a model ruler.

He was quite a decent ruler. We still have a song about him.

We also had the Joyous Entry, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyous_Entry_of_1356 not quite unlike the Magna Carta

Oh, who was he entering?

[Vazdania]

Simple Question: If you could rewrite one single event in history, what would it be?


I would chose the Battle of Königgrätz so that the Confederates had won and Prussia would have been defeated and afterwards hold responsible for it's treason in court. Of course one cannot know what would have happened, but I'd say the German-French War had never happened, as well as WW I and WW II. Today's Germany would probably still be a confederacy of a bigger Austria (Hungary would probably be independent though), Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, Sachsen, Westfalen and Hannover, while today's Eastern Germany could be Poland today.

The American Revolution

[Farnhamia]

He was quite a decent ruler. We still have a song about him.

We also had the Joyous Entry, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyous_Entry_of_1356 not quite unlike the Magna Carta

Oh, who was he entering?

Almost 20 minutes before that joke. I am disappoint.

[Farnhamia]

Simple Question: If you could rewrite one single event in history, what would it be?


I would chose the Battle of Königgrätz so that the Confederates had won and Prussia would have been defeated and afterwards hold responsible for it's treason in court. Of course one cannot know what would have happened, but I'd say the German-French War had never happened, as well as WW I and WW II. Today's Germany would probably still be a confederacy of a bigger Austria (Hungary would probably be independent though), Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, Sachsen, Westfalen and Hannover, while today's Eastern Germany could be Poland today.

The American Revolution

Yes? What about it? Perhaps have the colonists take Canada? Then after that, amply supplied with arms by the French, they sweep across the continent, creating a great an glorious democracy on the smoking ruins of Spanish tyranny, finally quenching their arms (and legs) in the Pacific Ocean?

[The Blaatschapen]

He was quite a decent ruler. We still have a song about him.

We also had the Joyous Entry, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyous_Entry_of_1356 not quite unlike the Magna Carta

Oh, who was he entering?

Well played

[Conserative Morality]

Isn't it obvious?

(Image)

Throw in some genocide/culture destruction forced migrations, political corruption, massive slave trade and the spreading of a religious sect that helped usher in the "Dark Ages."

*wakes from terrible slumber*

Entirely incorrect. The Dark Ages are defined as such not because the Roman Empire destroyed everything around it, but because the Roman Empire was no longer around to lend it's light to Europe. At least not properly, the whole thing had been in decline for about two centuries and technically the Eastern Empire was still around, but they never regained Rome's former glory. The Dark Ages are known as such due to the loss of Roman learning and technology, not because of the slave trade, or the corruption, or the forced migration, or even the spread of Christianity.

The slave trade was a factor in the fall of the Roman Empire, but it wasn't exactly a scarring event in Europe's history, the forced migrations were generally "Violent barbarians get the fuck out of our newly conquered land", and hardly a common event, since Romans liked to tax things, and as much as I dislike Christianity, it's probably one of the factors that stopped the Dark Ages from being more serious than they were.

[Wisconsin7]

This is not a roleplaying forum

Take it up with the Mods. Anyway, Arch and I, and Gallo sometimes, try not to make these little forays into history too much of a threadjack. This one, in fact, has provided actual information relevant to the topic.

Technically speaking, he was taking it up with a mod.

[Serrland]

I would pay sooooo much money to see the look on his face when good old Peter the Hermit stumbled onto his land.

I don't know about the look on his face (I was taking care of some personal business in Thessalonica that particular day), but his daughter was fairly sniffy:

"Meanwhile Peter, after he had delivered his message, crossed the straits of Lombardy before anybody else with eighty thousand men on foot, and one hundred thousand on horseback, and reached the capital by way of Hungary. For the Frankish race, as one may conjecture, is always very hotheaded and eager, but when once it has espoused a cause, it is uncontrollable."

She was rather taken with Bohemund, though.

And she well should be! Who could look upon one of la Maison d'Hauteville without immediately being lovestruck? Even if he led a force against her father. He had the good sense to go galavanting around in Thessalia rather than spend his time in dirty, smelly old Apulia. When Anna Comnena delivered a backhanded compliment by finishing a sentence with "was partly marred by a general air of the horrible" she was clearly referring to the stench of southern Italy hanging about him.

Perhaps another (highly implausible, as far as I'm aware) point of divergence would have been him marrying Anna rather than that dreadful Constance woman.

[Hardened Pyrokinetics]

So did most Britons, thus it still wasn't taxing the shit out of them in regards to the time period.

Conceded.

And the smuggling wasn't helping at all...

Oh, let us not forget that good ol' Benny completely ignored what the colonists actually wanted, so when the British parliament asked if they'd mind new taxes to pay off the war they started in the first place, Benny said yes and then appointed a friend of his to oversee the collecting of said taxes. When the colonists go pissed, what did parliament do? Withdraw the taxes.

Oh, and that Boston Tea Party? Let us never forget that the American colonists dressed up as natives during it in order to make the British believe it was a band of uppity natives who pulled the stunt.

Oh, and the crowner: Why did the Colonies revolt? It wasn't taxes, or oppression, or any of the other crap spewed by Americans who never did the research. The biggest and most despicable reason the colonies revolted? Britain was going to keep Québec Catholic and set up a semi-independent Native American protectorate to the west of the colonies, that would just happen to prevent westward colonial expansion.

Chew on that one.

[Ende]

Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum.
I smell the blood of an Englishman,
An angry one.

No, America would not do better if it was under English control.

[Miasto Lodz]

I would change the plants and algae distribution in the Jurassic period to gain rich oil deposits within the borders of Poland.

[Ovisterra]

I couldn't ever do that, so I don't think about such things.

[Hardened Pyrokinetics]

Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum.
I smell the blood of an Englishman,
An angry one.

No, America would not do better if it was under English control.

Canadian, actually, and I never said anything about Merica remaining under British control.

Just not gain its independence through racism, bigotry, lies, self-centeredness, and bloodshed.

[Liars United in Telling the Truth]

I would change the course of the meteorite that killed off the dinosaurs...dinosaur people ftw

[Ende]

Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum.
I smell the blood of an Englishman,
An angry one.

No, America would not do better if it was under English control.

Canadian, actually, and I never said anything about Merica remaining under British control.

Just not gain its independence through racism, bigotry, lies, self-centeredness, and bloodshed.

Wait, what? I know that lies, self-centeredness, and bloodshed were involved, but notsomuch racism and bigotry.

And hey, Canada is awesome.

[Spiral Sun]

Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum.
I smell the blood of an Englishman,
An angry one.

No, America would not do better if it was under English control.

Canadian, actually, and I never said anything about Merica remaining under British control.

Just not gain its independence through racism, bigotry, lies, self-centeredness, and bloodshed.

The colonies all had their own ideas and goals. The New Englanders wouldn't have had much chance to gain from Ohio, anyways.

[Hardened Pyrokinetics]

Canadian, actually, and I never said anything about Merica remaining under British control.

Just not gain its independence through racism, bigotry, lies, self-centeredness, and bloodshed.

Wait, what? I know that lies, self-centeredness, and bloodshed were involved, but notsomuch racism and bigotry.

And hey, Canada is awesome.

The two biggest reasons for the insurrection in the first place were Britain's plans of keeping Québec Catholic (instead of forced conversion to Anglicanism) and setting up a semi-autonomous Native territory that would just happen to stop westward expansion of the Colonies.

Canadian, actually, and I never said anything about Merica remaining under British control.

Just not gain its independence through racism, bigotry, lies, self-centeredness, and bloodshed.

The colonies all had their own ideas and goals. The New Englanders wouldn't have had much chance to gain from Ohio, anyways.

Yet they fought a goddamned war over it that drew in Britain and forced the increased taxation (and they weren't even paying that much...) in the first place. Funny how that works out.

[Kemaliste]

- Battle of Vienna should have been won, no doubt the Empire would have a different progress then, god damn some traitors, stupid commandors and conflicts inside the Army that caused the defeat, Ottomans just lost against their own mistakes unfortunately.

- Sheikh Said rebellion did not happen. We could have kept Mosul and Kirkuk which are full of oil under our rule.

- 1980 American backed coup never happent, thus 1960 left-wing backed revolutionary coup and its great produce 1961 constitution that provided bicameral system and advanced democracy could have been preserved, and the domination of conservative capitalists over politics would not be triggered, especially %10 threshold.

[Hardened Pyrokinetics]

- 1980 American backed coup never happent, thus 1960 left-wing backed revolutionary coup and its great produce 1961 constitution that provided bicameral system and advanced democracy could have been preserved, and the domination of conservative capitalists over politics would not be triggered, especially %10 threshold.

Said left-wing group would acknowledge and apologize for the Armenian genocide, correct?

[Tahar Joblis]

They would need to run out of momentum eventually, lest Mongolia is emptied. Then again, the Turks did well for themselves doing that...

They would need some sort of bureaucracy to administer the territory they conquered in order to keep it.

Oh, sure. That's what they did - they came, they saw, they conquered, and then they set up a new administration with many of the old local apparati intact.

There are two very key points in the Mongol expansion; Chinggis's death in 1227 and Ogedei's death in 1241. Both happened to be perfectly timed to preserve Europe; Chinggis's death came right after the first successful incursion through Europe, which delayed the invasion of Russia, and the conquest of central and eastern Europe (from Turkey in the south to Poland in the north) was well underway when Ogedei kicked the bucket. The Mongolian armies retreated from Croatia, Hungary, Romania, and Poland on the cusp of finishing their conquests in order to participate in the heated selection of a new khan.

Ogedei was the last undisputed ruler of a united Mongolian empire; his death left the empire fragmented and uncooperative, and a lot of infighting took place after his death. In particular, Batu Khan, who ruled Russia, was at odds with the powers that be back in Mongolia and China, which put a crimp in expansion along the northwestern frontier.

Eventually, of course, the Mongol overlords more or less assimilated into the native cultures. Postponing Chinggis's death or Ogedei's death both make for very good tipping points that let you explore a radically different history, Ogedei's death in particular; without Ogedei's death happening just when it did, for example, we expect that the Mongols finish consolidating control of Hungary and Poland; which puts their holdings right up against Frederick II's borders. If Ogedei holds out another 20 years before drinking himself to death - not completely unthinkable - most of continental Europe could very plausibly pass under Mongolian dominion and be under the rule of Mongolian overlords for a few generations before the overlords assimilate or are overthrown.

Sets the stage for a very different world. Small change.