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AH Fiction Settings

ChrisNuttall

Well-known member
One of the things I’ve been considering, in my desire to do another pure AH novel, is the problem of finding a setting that doesn’t require massive infodumping and/or crosstime travel. PODS in the Second World War, American Civil War and American Revolution are fairly common because they’re already fairly well-known, at least amongst the alternate history fanbase. A timeline set in a world so different to ours that there’s no points of compatibility might as well be a fantasy world.

I’ve been thinking about these ideas:

-A story set in a world where Cortes declared independence from Spain, shortly after the conquest of Mexico.

-A story set in a world where Prince Louis (or possibly King John) won the Magna Carta War.

-A story set in a world where Napoleon went to the Ottomans instead of Revolutionary France (or simply never had a chance to take power.)

What do you think?

Chris
 
Not sure about Ottoman Napoleon, not too familiar about the state of the Ottoman Empire at the time, although Bonaparte pulling a Muhammad Ali and making himself ruler of Egypt could be interesting.

Now, Louis the Lion as King of England offers a lot of cool possibilities and is both similar and different enough to OTL events (William the Conqueror, William of Orange) and popular AH ideas (the ever-popular Spanish Armada) to make for something enticing to readers, I’d hope. Whether this should be a tale of resistance ala Sherwood or Byzantine court intrigue as in The Cursed Kings is another matter.

Cortez having his own little Empire is an even better scenario with even greater potential, from dealing with religious and demographic problems (Nahuatl might remain the official language along Spanish, immigration might be reduced in some quarters, and what would the Church make of such a move?) to the political issue of a potential Cortez dynasty developing in the midst of cutthroat conquistadores who have personally witnessed just how successful they can get. Books like Malinche and Tlaloc Weeps for Mexico could be good for getting a feel of the time and place. Of course, possible plot points are endless, from Japanese Embassies in the 1620s to failed Spanish attempts to bring Mexico back under the fold to dealing with Mayan insurrections to priests navigating this strange new world to inter-caudillo conflict (or even between Cortez’s sons), to Cortez’s plans for Pacifix exploration to whatever kind of relationship Mexico has with the Inca and the conquistadores that’ll come afterwards, depending on how Spain is changed by Cortez’s example.
 
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