Showing posts with label Introduction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Introduction. Show all posts

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Point of Divergence

The basic premise of this alternate history is that Henry VI suddenly dies when he has his first bout of mental incapacity in August 1453.

From the information I’ve gathered Henry’s illness is described as ‘a disease and disorder of such a sort overcame the King that he lost his wits and memory for a time, and nearly all his body was so uncoordinated and out of control that he could neither walk nor hold his head up, nor easily move from where he sat.’ The sources I’ve read was that Henry was seemingly unwell beginning in early August and complained of feeling unnaturally sleepy on the 15th, the next day he was incapacitated.

With this information in mind the point of divergence (POD) from OTL is the night of 15 August 1453…

Introduction

This blog will document an alternate history timeline concerning the England civil war/war of succession known to many as the Wars of the Roses. I started formulating this timeline in December 2009 and started posting my ideas, including a roundly criticized false start, at Alternate History.com in the Before 1900 Discussion Board, I developed a 7-month timeline from August 1453 to February 1454 that I posted in from December 2009 to January 2010. However, I had designs for a long-term timeline and ever since the final post of my thread I’ve been researching and slowly outlining a longer timeline of my original idea.

In our timeline (OTL), the Wars of the Roses were a series of conflicts between the competing the Houses of Lancaster and York, which were cadet branches of the House of Plantagenet that had ruled England since 1152 when Henry II ascended to the throne following the death of King Stephen. The causes of the Wars of the Roses range from deposition of Richard II and accession of Henry IV, the loss of England’s conquests in France, and the general lawlessness and economic deterioration during the 1440s and early 1450s especially concerning the finances of the crown; but in my timeline the general cause will be crisis of succession following the death of a childless monarch.

The entries in this blog will concern this alternate timeline (TTL), biographies of individuals within the context of TTL, family histories within TTL, and from time-to-time have posts concerning things in OTL. This is also a long-term project, while my first several entries will be in quick since they’ve been completed for over a year, expect there to be long gaps between entries in the future. I hope you’ll enjoy and I hope to hear from you.