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That was too close... Five assassinations that never were

Great examples, but it looks in a couple of places like the sentences have gotten a bit cut off/garbled.
 
Great examples, but it looks in a couple of places like the sentences have gotten a bit cut off/garbled.
Thanks - have quickly gone through and tightened up. How does it look now?
 
The Bismarck one is fascinating. It's probably late enough that a collision course that same year with Austria is not avoided and the outcome might be much the same as Bismarck was not a military commander (though it's possible butterflies intervene to change the outcome of Königgrätz), but the war with France, if it happened, would be under very different circumstances and probably not one into which Napoléon and Ollivier would so blindly blunder. For that matter, Luxembourg might go to France in 1867.
 
The Fanny Kaplan attempt at Lenin is an interesting one because she did, of course, actually shoot him — and, arguably, succeeded, though not as she would have liked, because, while it took several years, Lenin did in the end die as a result of his wounds from the assassination ‘attempt’.

Obviously, if Lenin had died immediately, it would have had immense consequences for the history of the Soviet Union; but, conversely, if her shots had missed entirely, or she had, for some reason or another, aborted the attempt, Lenin could have lived much longer, which also would have had immense consequences for both the history of the Soviet Union.

For example, in either case, Stalin’s path to power is much less clear; IOTL, Stalin‘s measures to take control of the Communist Party were very much facilitated by Lenin’s long decline. If he had died right off, Stalin was not in any real position to take control of the country and the party in 1918, and, if whoever takes over in 1918 (assuming the Bolshevik dictatorship doesn’t collapse entirely) gets themselves securely in power, Stalin isn’t going to have that same opportunity as he did in the 1920s. On the other hand, if Lenin survives relatively healthy and well into the 1920s, he probably has the chance to marginalize Stalin that it’s likely (though by no means not certain; accounts of “What Lenin Would Have Wanted” are a combination of conjecture, wishful thinking and propaganda come up with by the various sides after the fact with relatively in the way of reliable sources) that he had intended to do, which would, again, make Stalin’s path to power less clear.

Lenin’s long-term survival or his immediate death either causing the Bolsheviks to split early, or split later, or not split at all, or split but with Lenin explicitly leading one faction rather than the factions fighting over replacing him, has a whole host of consequences and butterflies to affect the rest of twentieth century history across the planet.
 
There were so many possible ones.
Arguably the John Major one was less pivotal than the others, but @Skinny87 would have been sad if it wasn't in there.

I could so easily do "Five more..." with, say:
-An early Victoria one (Say, by Edward Oxford in 1840 - how would the Victorian age have unfolded? Effects elsewhere?);
- Bush senior killed by the Iraqi attempt (Iraq War II happening far earlier, pre-Blair, with more justification - what would the knock-on effects here have been without any prospect of Blair being damaged by an Iraq War that was over before he began)
- The stupidly incompetent Shah of Persia killed by Fakhr-Arai in 1949 (five shots, point-blank range, one grazed him and the others missed). How would the Middle-East have unfolded without him? Would the Ayatollahs still have ended up in power? If not, how would Iran have evolved and what would the region have been like?
- Saddam Hussein killed by the gunmen firing on his vehicle from ambush in 1982. Huge repercussions for everything that happened afterwards.
- Charles de Gaulle in 1962 - if one of the machine-gun bullets had found his head...
 
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You've got trouble with the 18xx years.

Mind you, the assassination of Queen Victoria in 1940 would be a new TL.
Dammit!
(Edited, thanks)
Then again, the Eternal Queen being murdered... yeah, there's a story there.
 
- Charles de Gaulle in 1962 - if one of the machine-gun bullets had found his head...

This one is just so easy to happen: if Boissieu is a second or so late in his warning to his father-in-law, de Gaulle is probably hit. That leaves Gaston Monnerville as interim President. It probably means the Fifth Republic never switches to direct election of the President, and without de Gaulle to set his stamp on his custom-made Republic, the President, while remaining the most important person of the state, never accrues as much power and legitimacy as they generally did under the Fifth.
 
Dammit!
(Edited, thanks)
Then again, the Eternal Queen being murdered... yeah, there's a story there.

For over a hundred years, Britain and her Empire have been protected from invasion, dissent or economic decline by the benevolent aura of her eternal monarch.

Now a coalition of her enemies conspire to do the one thing they can guarantee will finally cause the sun to set on the British Empire.

They must kill Queen Victoria.
 
For over a hundred years, Britain and her Empire have been protected from invasion, dissent or economic decline by the benevolent aura of her eternal monarch.

Now a coalition of her enemies conspire to do the one thing they can guarantee will finally cause the sun to set on the British Empire.

They must kill Queen Victoria.

Victoria Falls (2019)

Inevitably Starring

Olivia Colman

(gratuitous lesbianism optional)
 
For over a hundred years, Britain and her Empire have been protected from invasion, dissent or economic decline by the benevolent aura of her eternal monarch.

Now a coalition of her enemies conspire to do the one thing they can guarantee will finally cause the sun to set on the British Empire.

They must kill Queen Victoria.

No spoilers on the current Girl Genius storyline!
 
I once sketched out a TL in which President Ronnie Reagan (John Hinckley Jr. 30 March 1981), Pope John Paul II (Mehmet Ali Ağca, 13 May 1981), and finally, HM The Queen (Marcus Serjeant, 13 June 1981), were all successfully assassinated on live television in one of my depressive, dystopian moods.

It then built to a climax.

Never went through with it though.
 
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I once sketched out a TL in which President Ronnie Reagan (John Hinckley Jr. 30 March 1981), Pope John Paul II (Mehmet Ali Ağca, 13 May 1981), and finally, HM The Queen (Marcus Serjeant, 13 June 1981), were all successfully assassinated on live television in one of my depressive, dystopian moods.

It then built to a climax.

Never went through with it though.

It would be interesting to see whether people were calling it a parallel to 1968.
 
They might be doing busy dealing with the resultant fire before such comparisons can be made.

It was initially an AH.com thought experiment on how to get Thatcher to resign in the most humiliating manner,

The Queen getting assassinated on her watch, and the ensuing chaos, was the best I could come up with.

The working title for the TL was...

9780140050998-uk.jpg
 
For over a hundred years, Britain and her Empire have been protected from invasion, dissent or economic decline by the benevolent aura of her eternal monarch.

Now a coalition of her enemies conspire to do the one thing they can guarantee will finally cause the sun to set on the British Empire.

They must kill Queen Victoria.

It's already a book!
 
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