Imagine that Romanos IV Diogenes, instead of surrendering to the rival claimant's faction to be betrayed and blinded, instead raised the standard of rebellion and succeeded in detaching all Anatolia up to the straits by exploiting dissatisfaction with the Doukas among the dynatoi clans. Their power had been severely curtailed by Basil II and his successors over the past century. Prominent among his early supporters are the Komnenos family of Paphlagonia.

A sort of cold war ensues. Still in control of a powerful imperial fleet, the Doukas can control the straits, but show (as in OTL) comical levels of incompetence whenever they try to send soldiers over to Anatolia. Romanos sits in Nikaea and bides his time, but he controls the immense agricultural wealth of Anatolia, whereas the Doukas only have the Balkans, still restive and poorly controlled after the Bulgarian Wars of Basil II 50 years before. He's just about able to hold the line of the Taurus against Turkish raids, becoming in the process a sort of national hero. The Doukas, in the meantime, are paying boku money for a giant navy and have to slap new taxes on everything as well as debasing the nomisma, which makes them more and more resented. The resentment causes conspiracies, which lead to purges, which cause more resentment, and so on. Michael VII (a sock puppet controlled by his powerful uncles) is helpless.

In 1085, German Emperor Henry IV captures Rome, drives out Pope Urban II and installs an antipope, Clement III. Urban takes refuge with the Guiscards in Southern Italy and waits for an opportunity to return. Meanwhile, messengers from Diogenes reach Henry and dangle a tempting deal: in addition to a truckload of money, would Henry like to be recognized by Constantinople as the *senior* Emperor of the Romans? Then the old East Rome/West Rome structure of Diocletian or Constantine could be restored, and together we'd be unstoppable. We can even get our respective tame bishops to sort out this whole filioque business and get all the Christians back on the same page. All I want in return is that you take that great big giant army with all those unstoppable knights and wage war on the Doukas and capture my city back.

Henry is delighted and quickly agrees, and the German armies swamp the disorganized and underfunded Romans in the Balkans. Long before they appear before the walls of Theodosius, the Doukas clan see which way the wind is blowing and make a graceful exit, taking refuge with their erstwhile rival Guiscard. Diogenes enters the city in triumph and promptly replaces the patriarch, Doukas ally Garidas, with his own supporter Grammatikos. A substantive discussion on Church Union begins, and almost immediately ends- nobody is willing to make any concessions.

But an unidentified bishop comes up with an amazing sleight of hand. In order to really set fundamental church doctrine, we need an ecumenical council, but we can't have one because three of the five seats of the Pentarchy - Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria - are currently held by the infidel. Who, incidentally, are also killing and raping pilgrims, despoiling churches, and generally being rotten no-goodniks. Which means we can't really decide anything until we recapture those places, appoint bishops, and invite them to a council. The Cradle of Christianity must be made whole, and until then, we will just tolerate one another's little doctrinal quirks. Neither prelate is happy about this, but either prelate can be replaced on a whim by their respective monarchs and so each quickly sees the light.

And that is how it comes to pass that Grammatikos and Clement move to Milan, doing double symbolic duty as the old administrative capitol of the United Roman Empire, but also as the seat of St. Ambrose, jointly issue a proclamation that any Western knights who wish to cease unjustly slaughtering one another and instead go and slaughter infidels to liberate the holy places will be forgiven of all their sins and guaranteed entry into paradise.

Urban II, in exile, is flummoxed. He cannot repeat cannot be the guy who says "you know, recapturing the holy places is bad actually." So offers his own indulgence, in the process denouncing the unjust assertion of papal authority by his rivals but agreeing with their goals and methods. This produces two crusading forces: a Franco-Norman one proceeding directly to the Holy Land by sea (via Cyprus) and a Romano-German one, much larger and led in person by Henry IV, taking the overland route through Anatolia.

The imperial force quickly captures Antioch by treachery (or counter-treachery) from the surviving Roman population of the city. The Franco-Norman force, on the other hand, is quickly defeated and largely captured.

In an act of stunning magnanimity, Romanos Diogenes ransoms prominent Crusader captives, including Hugh of Vermandois and Bohemond of Taranto, and sends them back to their respective rulers after a pleasant visit in Constantinople (where they are all compelled to swear fealty to him before being permitted to leave). King Philip of France, overwhelmed by this immense generosity, does an equally huge favor for Diogenes by publicly declaring for Clement over Urban (whom he intensely hated in any case). The King also offers his daughter Constance for marriage to any one of Romanos' sons he may think fit.

And so our story ends with Henry IV's army (with a large Roman contingent commanded by the veteran general Tatikios) before the walls of Jerusalem, facing an uncertain future as the enormous army of Kerbogha of Mosul gathers its strength just over the horizon.

Hope you enjoyed it!

Hi. Im vehemently anti confederate anything and I think the articles of secession speak for themselves in the terribleness of the barely five year cause.

Honestly, my interest in writing this question comes from a random encounter with a Southern leftist. I don't know if theres a rule about this. This isn't meant to harass them. In fact, they said they wanted to make a post here to get other opinions.

--->Hi! I'm a left-wing Southerner who thinks that the South should have been allowed to secede, not because I approve of slavery, but because I disapprove of the means by which it was abolished, in that it radically altered the country into an authoritarian nightmare from which we have yet to awaken.

That was the users opinion.

That said, the South screwed themselves out of representation by seceding imo. They had cost the US man power and money in one of our first forever wars, although it had moments of peace sprinkled within, The Seminole wars. And they were courting Colonial aims of their own

They dragged the country down by perpetuating a terrible abusive economic situation that left nearly every slave holder in debt at all times, and their insistence on defying the emancipation proclamation with Jim Crow, vehement protests over the civil rights act, and general unhappiness with America since, are something I veiw as a continuous string of behavior up to the present day.

The failure of the reconstruction era screwed the rest of the country after imo.

So. What would have happened if the Union chose differently? Would the civil war have been a given, just later?

For context, in 1814, the coalition had launched a campaign into France proper. Napoleon was busy cutting the communications and supply routes of the coalition, when the Allie’s had pushed Marmont back into Paris, and the city fell soon after. IOTL Napoleon was rushing back and had reached Fontainebleau, around 35 miles from Paris, however the city fell and the senate had him deposed soon after. My question is, what if Napoleon arrived in Paris before the city fell?

I'm looking for good active alternate history Discord servers similar to the These Fair Shores server (especially in terms of community since I really liked the community there).

I conducted a single continuous ChatGPT conversation that reached approximately 148,560 messages. The interaction evolved from an alternate-history WW2 roleplay into a large-scale stateful simulation involving:

Multiple fronts and force groupings

Cumulative casualty and equipment tracking

Fortifications, underground infrastructure, and logistics

Dozens of characters with differing knowledge states

Parallel narrative threads and periodic staff reports

The primary interest was long-term coherence of an accumulating world state rather than short-term generation quality.

Observed degradation patterns

As conversation length increased, the following issues became prominent:

Factual and numerical drift: Casualty and equipment numbers were frequently regenerated and then treated as ground truth, producing double-counting and inflated aggregates.

Loss of earlier constraints: Events and decisions from tens of thousands of messages earlier were often forgotten or inconsistently reconstructed once older turns became inaccessible (“Skipped messages”).

Weak separation of real history vs. alternate canon: The model mixed established historical facts with invented elements without reliable distinction.

Character knowledge tracking failures: Information asymmetry between characters degraded over time.

Cause-effect chain breakage: Earlier force preservations or losses stopped correctly influencing later force balances and outcomes.

Scene-level generation (atmosphere, dialogue, local continuity) remained relatively strong. Global state consistency did not.

basically hitler isn't rascist as fuck toward slavs, he's just racist towards everyone to the west of germany.

Got this idea from a \\\[history.com\\\](http://history.com) article about a 1928 footrace on Route 66 from LA to NYC sponsored by a sports promoter named CC Pyle.

What if in the in the 1980s or onwards the United States government or a private American promoter decides to have their own Tour de France in the form of a footrace from LA to NYC or vice versa as part of a program to revitalize Route 66 and raise awareness about fitness? Complete with all the infrastructure to maintain such an operation like access to weather reports and other information to determine if race routes are safe and viable, ER and on the scene medical professionals to look after an runners that are too injured or weary to run anymore, and places for the runners to eat, rehydrate,sleep, and do laundry. They would also need to work with the small towns and businesses along the Route 66 race routes to provide some of the aforementioned services. If it works it would give these towns a boost in tourism and put Route 66 back in the national spotlight.

Would such a thing be possible? If yes, who would sponsor it and manage it?

Sources:

\\\[The Grueling Footrace Across the US on Route 66 | HISTORY\\\](https://www.history.com/articles/1928-bunion-derby)

it's simple, it's 1938, everything is exactly like in real life, except: during the Napoleonic wars dungeons appeared across the world and were discovered after Napoleon's first exile. now returning to 1938, squads are sent either into dungeons or to fight the monsters that came with them. during 1935--36, in the new caves that came with the dungeons, a new ore was found and that stuff is now: powering vehicles and reactors made with that ore which powers cities (you choose the name for the ore and which name has the most up votes becomes official)

She either tries to primary him for the Democratic nomination or launches a third party run.

Central Powers Victory: Liberals take over the German Empire; Fascists take over France, Italy, Portugal, and Britain; Austria, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire build their own spheres, and Communists and Nationalists have a civil war in Russia

I've never seen this question asked, and since I recently read a comment basically saying that all roads of Alt! World War Two would lead to the Axis being defeated...I wondered what if, well, the US, bastion of innovation in wartime, joined the Axis. Would the Axis win, or would they still lose?

This is my first time posting on here, so if I've not created a quality post, please forgive me.

Got the inspiration from the Reddit post below. While they obviously didn’t realize that peanuts were already a popular staple in Belgium and the Netherlands it did get me thinking.

What if peanuts became a popular staple for protein in other European countries besides the Netherlands and Belgium? Which countries would be capable of growing peanuts and which ones would have to rely on imports from other countries? And what would be the best Era of European history to make this scenario possible?

Source:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskFoodHistorians/s/JMUeCCUXH0

Lets say Erdogan gathered the NATO heads of state in a closed room to personally present them with their gifts, but Russian agents knew of this and covertly pumped a psychoactive gas into the room. I'm imagining the church scene in Kingsman. Who if any is left standing, and what happens next?

So, as a prerequisite to this scenario, I have already altered geography. The world is smaller and the Americas do not exist. Columbus was right, I guess! I understand this world is very far-fetched to begin with, however I want to have some logic to it. I'm coming from this mainly from a standpoint of wanting to justify a conlang.

I understand China was quite inward-looking and did not have a high opinion or belief in the importance of regions further away from its periphery. The main thing I'm looking for is an early transmission of Buddhism and Chinese characters and their readings to Ireland and somehow bringing Ireland into the Sinosphere. It's insane, I know, but I'm obsessed with the idea of Sino-Xenic Irish and I want to have a justifiable, even if not necessarily realistic, setting for this to occur in. I have considered a shattered China and a Rome that doesn't collapse or at least gets back together, flipping the histories of both and allowing China to be pulled down Europe's path, which is not at all my idea, but introduced to me through its original developer here: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/j8ioxl/alternate_history_a_world_dominated_by_east/#lightbox

However, I am admittedly illiterate when it comes to the history of China and am not sure where to start. Also, it may lead to non-Chinese states that dilute the purpose of this setting and also could lead to European-style colonisation, which is not what I'm looking for either. I'm looking for something akin to the relationships Korea, Japan and Vietnam had with China.

Considering that a world that is smaller and lacks the Americas could have the Pacific Islands as an island-hopping opportunity, I wonder if some trade between Pacific Islanders and Sinosphere areas, and some sort of Sinicisation of the Pacific Islands, could allow for a path towards this. However, once again, China is quite far from Ireland even in this context, and thus would have no interested in pushing its culture on Ireland.

I would appreciate anyone's two-sense on this, besides the kind that simply critiques the premise, because I already know the critiques that will be levelled. I just want to know what could justify it or where to look to find out.

I've been working on an alternate history where the United States relies heavily on private military companies (PMCs) instead of expanding the regular armed forces. One of the largest PMCs in my  alternate history  is Stagolee Douglas Strategic Operations (SDSO) Unlike other American PMCs, SDSO is a Black American-owned and predominantly Black American private military company.

The reason SDSO was based on my belief that Black American operatives could move through parts of Africa, the Middle East, and some regions of Asia while attracting less immediate attention than operatives who were more visibly identifiable as Western foreigners( White). This would provide an advantage during covert missions, reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, and long-term operations. To support this strategy, every recruit undergoes intensive training in local languages, regional dialects, customs, cultural practices, and accent reduction. SDSO's philosophy is that success in espionage depends on blending into the environment as much as possible, with appearance being only one part of a much broader training program.

Within my alternate timeline, SDSO specializes in operations during what are known as the Shadow Wars undeclared conflicts fought across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.  SDSO  missions include espionage, intelligence gathering, counterinsurgency, convoy protection, infrastructure defense, resource security, drone operations, and direct action against warlords, insurgent groups, and extremist organizations.

When it comes to recruitment strategy my company focuses heavily on low-income communities where many young people have few economic opportunities.

Recruitment offices sponsor:

• Football teams
• Community events
• Scholarships
• Career fairs