To ask which historical crossroads you wonder about?

[HoneyParsnipSoup]

For me it’s wondering what would’ve happened had Catherine of Aragon had a son and Henry hadn’t divorced her. Country may well be totally different.

Yes, I meant things would have gone very differently had she died from smallpox in 1562! She almost did. I think either Mary QoS would have taken the throne at that point, or maybe Catherine Grey…I often think about how it might have turned out.

Mary Queen of Scotland and England, and a revival of Catholic hopes and of happier times with France.
(Shed still have been a royal disaster though, probably chasing after Essex or some other courtier when she was expected at a peace conference!)

Are you trying to be funny, or do you really not get what the thread is about?

I think of that one quite a bit. Breaks my heart!

Ah ok..didn’t know that

Mary was never going to have a smooth and easy path to unifying England and Scotland under the Catholic Church even if she’d inherited both crowns, though…both England and Scotland had pretty entrenched reformist factions in the political elite, so I think it would have been an absolute car crash. I wonder whether the English contingent would promote Catherine Grey’s claim against Mary, purely because she wasn’t catholic. Most of them sided with Mary I against Jane Grey in spite of the religious difference, and I think a lot of them bitterly regretted it.

Not trying to be funny and do get what post is about

stop policing me please!

I have a lot of these alternative history wonderings about Ancient Rome.

What if Julius Caesar hadn’t made Octavian his heir? Or if Octavian hadn’t accepted his inheritance? Or if Pompey’s wife hadn’t died but instead given birth to a son, who would have been Caesar’s grandchild? There are so many what-if moments in the civil wars, but these are the ones that I find most intriguing.

What if Christianity hadn’t become the official religion of the empire?

What if Anne Boleyn had had a son?
sorry if it’s been mentioned already.

OK then. I won't point out Elizabeth died in 1603, either.

I think Henry VIII divorces shaped the English Empire (Europe wouldn't trade with us because of emancipation from the Pope). So if he'd not divorced, or killed fewer of his wives... who knows!

I often wonder about Beeching's idea to close railways being cancelled. Imagine the train routes we'd have available now!

What about the Interregnum period? What if they'd properly thought outside the box about lines of succession, and they'd elected somebody more competent than Oliver Cromwell's son. Would we all be sitting around dolefully looking at our pantries of fasting food and slagging off our un-Puritan neighbours for having a sneaky bit of carol-singing and mince-pie action?

No that is fine - I was wondering whether 1603 for some reason I thought James was 1603

although you could stop being so petty and policing others

it doesn’t really matter - it’s a fun thread

The Owen Tudor bit gets me going always.
But even that liaison could have lain quiet in history had not Henry VI legitimised their sons, at the same flipping time as he legitimised the Beaufort line from John of Gaunt!
It’s as though he were ensuring that at a certain point in (say) 1485, there'd be a just about legit Lancaster claimant should any pesky son of York seize his (Henry’s) throne if his own royal son perished, out of the heirdom.
Blimey! For a man mentally ill, he seems to have foreseen the near future very clearly.

Op. .what amazing thread. Thank you for suggesting it. Sliding moments...the other path. Enjoying reading everyone posts...

You better go up thread and tell that poster Henry 7 didn’t kill Richard 3rd

The trains be amazing

I know, proper Kings that were willing to actually go into battle and not just start wars and let everyone else do the fighting.

There is an interesting documentary around with a young man who has the same spinal condition as Richard III who has a suit of armour made for him by a specialist armour maker and is taught to ride a horse and use a sword. Demonstrating that it was possible for Richard to have fought well in battle.

I often wonder if there was a reset to the year 4000 BC whether civilisations would have developed in the same way - would the same countries and peoples be powerful and rich?

I think in some cases the way things have developed is inevitable, due to natural resources and climate and so on. But in other cases, surely different decisions would be taken about eg colonisation, borders, and discoveries would be made in different places at different times.

If Ireland hadn’t been partitioned when (most of) it gained independence
How the Irish language would have developed if the British hadn’t imposed the Penal Laws
If Europeans had never colonised the Americas and elsewhere
If the meteor didn’t kill the dinosaurs

If France and Britain had stood up to Hitler when the Nazis marched into the Rhineland in 1936.

It would be lovely to have all those little rural railway lines still running! I would rather have no car but a cheap and reliable railway system!

For me it’s more ‘what if the media hadn’t irrationally taken against Ed Miliband?’.

There is a counter factual if David had been elected Labour leader, but I think it’s more likely to have been that it accelerated a turn away from Labour - more of the same New Labour stuff that was already dated.

I think Ed could have been a much more acceptable face of a somewhat more left-leaning Labour than Corbyn. The ‘Red Ed’ stuff was just silly scaremongering, and he certainly wouldn’t have mired the party in antisemitism and Brexit.

Another one is ‘what if Corbyn had just worn a proper black coat at the Cenotaph?’

Well that's the big one isn't it. If the dinosaurs hadn't been wiped out and mammals never really got started, would the dinosaurs have got clever.

Or if earth had been a little bit closer or further away from the sun.

Oh, I heard about this! It's really fascinating.