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  1. How Would a Surviving Byzantine Empire Affect the Age of Exploration?

    I don't think it would have much, if any, impact. European states engaged in cut-throat trading competition with each other all the time in spite of their common religion, and the benefits of going straight to the source of a good and cutting out the middlemen are obvious. Plus...

  2. Church-State relations in a world with no Reformation

    One thing I wonder is how Church-State relations could fit in with politics more generally. I could see people who are in favour of a strong, centralised state being in favour of a more Gallican approach, whilst those who prefer a more decentralised or limited government might want to give the...

  3. Church-State relations in a world with no Reformation

    I was thinking that the Church does a better job reforming itself in the decades leading up to 1517, meaning that any Reformation analogue doesn't attract enough support to form a viable alternative. Alternatively, you could have princes unilaterally imposing a form of Gallicanism, as...

  4. Church-State relations in a world with no Reformation

    In Henry's case, there was a pre-existing religious movement which provided the justification for making himself head of the Church. Without the Reformation, there wouldn't have been, and Henry's unlikely to get nearly so much support for such a blatantly schismatic act.

  5. Church-State relations in a world with no Reformation

    As it says on the tin -- if the Reformation never happens, how would Church-State relations likely develop? On the one hand, the trend was towards more centralised states, and as part of this process the kings of Europe are going to want to increase their control over the Church in their lands...

  6. AHC: Instead of Eastern and Western Roman Empires, make another split work.

    If we want an alternate split, maybe a tripartite division would be best. One third could have Gaul, Britain, and Spain; the second could have Italy, North Africa, and Illyria; and the third could have Greece, Egypt, and the East. This would create coherent states with defensible borders (which...

  7. Challenge: European queen comes out as a lesbian and marries a woman

    If adelphopoiesis is accepted in this society (TBH I think its OTL prevalence gets greatly exaggerated, but maybe this could change as part of the POD), I think the queen would be able to go through with it without more than perhaps a bit of gossip, assuming she'd not already unpopular. But that...

  8. Challenge: European queen comes out as a lesbian and marries a woman

    Would it be fair to say that witch-hunting was primarily a German phenomenon rather than a Catholic or Protestant one?

  9. Challenge: European queen comes out as a lesbian and marries a woman

    Living in the countryside and working on a farm is much closer to the life we evolved for than living in a megacity and working on a computer. We know from the experience of zoos and the like that many animals struggle to thrive if kept in artificial conditions, even if they have much better...

  10. Challenge: European queen comes out as a lesbian and marries a woman

    Adelphopoiesis ("brother-making") was, as the name suggests, conceived of as analogous to a familial relationship, not to a marriage. Nor was it ever at all widespread.

  11. How early would you need to change American colonial history to guarantee an Anglo-American sovereign relationship close as Anglo-Canadian in 1883?

    An even more striking analogy would be the Social War in ancient Rome. Basically, Rome's Italian allies (who were theoretically equal and independent states, but in practice subordinate vassals) wanted Roman citizenship, but Rome refused to grant it to them. Eventually, in 91 BC, the allies...

  12. How early would you need to change American colonial history to guarantee an Anglo-American sovereign relationship close as Anglo-Canadian in 1883?

    Britain didn't have the wherewithal to occupy the whole of the Thirteen Colonies by military force, so a British victory is almost certainly going to be accompanied or brought about by granting concessions to bring the rebels back onboard.

  13. Challenge: European queen comes out as a lesbian and marries a woman

    According to Suetonius, Nero had the man castrated specifically to try and turn him into a woman so he could then marry him. IOW, even Nero saw marriage as a heteronormative institution, so someone who tried to openly marry someone of the same sex would be seen as even more depraved. Wasn't...

  14. Challenge: European queen comes out as a lesbian and marries a woman

    The queen bangs her head and loses all self-preservation instinct and political nous. Oh, and the same accident ends up completely overriding her outlook on life and replacing it with a 21st-century liberal one. "Coming out", "lesbian", and "marriage to her same-sex partner" are not ideas that...

  15. WW1 starts with Tanks

    A car is a much bigger target than a man, though, and can't lie down or dig in like an MG team can. Cavalry of this period went out of use largely because they were too easy to shoot, and an unarmoured battlefield car would face the same problem.

  16. Is there any way for Rome to survive?

    Yes, probably simpler just to have Donatism not take off in the first place.

  17. Is there any way for Rome to survive?

    The Romans did that IOTL; the problem was that, by the fifth century, they were no longer strong enough to do this.

  18. WW1 starts with Tanks

    If they're intended to go into firing range, I'd expect they'd want at least a bit of light armour to defend against small arms fire. Based on the accounts I've read from the Boer War, I'd say that magazine rifles were a bigger factor than artillery. Artillery was the big killer of WW1, true...

  19. WW1 starts with Tanks

    A light tankette-style vehicle should be doable: basically a two-man, car-sized tank, with one person driving it and the other firing the gun. Its smaller size would make it easier to build and engineer than a "proper" tank, and it would have obvious use in an infantry support role, making it a...

  20. WW1 starts with Tanks

    TBH I think the focus on trench warfare might be a red herring. Military thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were well aware of the difficulties new weapons posed for infantry, as illustrated in (for example) the Franco-Prussian and Boer Wars. Getting your soldiers through the...
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