Discussion: What was your first Alternate History idea?

[Georg von Frundsberg]

I had always been fascinated by imaginary maps and world-building at least from the age of 10, but I first knew about Alternate History through the Fandom site (back then it was called Wikia). I cannot exactly point out which idea came first but here are some of the earliest ideas (Looking back they are a bit oversimplified and sometimes unrealistic...)

1. Hapsburg victory in the Thirty Years War: Gustavus Adolphus died fighting in Poland in 1629 so the Swedish intervention was narrowly avoided, followed by a combined Imperial-Spanish campaign in the Netherlands which forced the latter to accept a humiliating peace, although its independence was preserved. The Austrians were able to impose centralisation reforms in the Holy Roman Empire while Spain remained the global colonial power for a much longer period.

2. Soviet victory in the Battle of Warsaw. I've read this TL https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/what-if-the-red-army-captures-warsaw-in-1920.200193/. I thought it was a shame that it was incomplete, so I tried my best to continue the story. I didn't continue very far since it was my first attempt to write a story.

3. The United Arab Republic was more successful (ignoring current politics), a country that stretches from Oran to Basra. Israel still exists, although as a rump state.

My current TL project is actually a fairly new idea. I got this inspiration in 2023 as I was looking at European royal family trees on r/usefulcharts (the Youtuber).

 

[Valentinian]

Back in 2018, I had the idea for a timeline where Aaron Burr becomes a Federalist. So, I started to write a timeline so I could write a story I could post on here.

By the 1860s, the timeline alone is 150 pages of a Word document. Then, I worried that I could not do it justice and that no one would read that detailed of a timeline. A lot of it is politics and I know everyone loves the big wars. So I get worried that no one will read it, so I don't post it and, of course, no one reads it.

 

[ennobee]

I guess

 

[ennobee]

I guess my first alternate history idea came when I was 12 or 13 years old and a huge fan of everything aircraft related. It had something do with the fact that most of the books about aircraft in the school library were at least ten years old, so I got treated to lots of glorious visions of what people in the sixties or even the mid fifties thought like what we would be flying by 1980. Of course, at that time 1980 was just a year or two away so I imagined a very Mary-Sue power dream timeline where not only the BAC.188 the Fairey Rotodyne and the Convair X.20 Dynasoar were actually built in numbers but also where I got to fly them and do some really heroic stuff while at it ( this was also the time Thunderbirds got its first reruns)

When I got bored with that, I flipped back the pages of the book to the very beginning and made up another all Mary-Sue SI where I got to be an early airplane pioneer in 1909 or earlier even.

 

[twovultures]

Wrote out a whole "Caesar loses at Alesia" timeline shortly after I discovered this site. Bored my family and friends to tears talking about it, had the Gauls colonizing Greenland and Newfoundland within a few centuries of Caesars failure. I take comfort in, whatever nonsense I have posted on this site, I never posted this first timeline.

 

[Aluma]

Wrote out a whole "Caesar loses at Alesia" timeline shortly after I discovered this site. Bored my family and friends to tears talking about it, had the Gauls colonizing Greenland and Newfoundland within a few centuries of Caesars failure. I take comfort in, whatever nonsense I have posted on this site, I never posted this first timeline.

And we'll forever suffer in not knowing its greatness!

 

[Gnomepilled]

Outside of the typical Sunday School alts (I wanted to meet Uriah and kill Jezebel and save Jesus and stuff) I was obsessed with Fascism. I would read everything I could about it and had my own ideas. I didn't really know what Fascism actually was so in my head it was actually some generic evil warband like orcs in Warhammer. I didn't know what Italy really was either, so in my imagination I imaged Italians as basically orcs conquering the world but with wizards and stuff. Also I think George Washington returned and saved the day and something about the Confederacy joining the fight against the evil Fascists. Also this was the biblical end times.
My actual first timeline was a generic what if Germany won ww2.

 

[Aluma]

(I wanted to meet Uriah and kill Jezebel

Thats a rather interesting scenario

and save Jesus

Lets..not doom all of humanity forever >.>

I didn't really know what Fascism actually was so in my head it was actually some generic evil warband like orcs in Warhammer. I didn't know what Italy really was either, so in my imagination I imaged Italians as basically orcs conquering the world but with wizards and stuff. Also I think George Washington returned and saved the day and something about the Confederacy joining the fight against the evil Fascists.

What a clusterfuck
I like it

My actual first timeline was a generic what if Germany won ww2

Aw

 

[Mitridates the Great]

I'm not really sure what my first attempt was but it was probably more ASB than anything else. I have several that I remember but I couldn't say what came first, but it was probably something with a POD in the 20th or 19th century at the earliest. I didn't know much about the older times... maybe it was the Decembrist Russia successful.

 

[Gnomepilled]

Thats a rather interesting scenario

Lets..not doom all of humanity forever >.>

What a clusterfuck
I like it

Aw

To explain the part about Uriah thing I was really obsessed with the the Bible when I was a kid. Still am to some extent. Now of course I didn't know what the actual theology was beyond the trinity, I just thought of it was cool stories that happened in the past. My favorite parts were apocalyptic stuff and the Old Testament. I just wanted to hear about the armies of God slaughtering Canaanites.

 

[ennobee]

To explain the part about Uriah thing I was really obsessed with the the Bible when I was a kid. Still am to some extent. Now of course I didn't know what the actual theology was beyond the trinity, I just thought of it was cool stories that happened in the past. My favorite parts were apocalyptic stuff and the Old Testament. I just wanted to hear about the armies of God slaughtering Canaanites.

Thinking of that, I would have probably piled on to Samson, not the part with him flipping back and forth between his wife and his wife's sister, but just the idea of an alternate time where you could gain superpowers just by refusing to cut your hair.

 

[Dalek]

Back in the early 90's, when I was around 14 or 15, I didn't even know that alternate history existed as a genre. I remember messing around with a Red Dawn type story, but it never really got past notes and a very basic outline. Things were a lot harder to research back then, too!

 

[Gnomepilled]

Thinking of that, I would have probably piled on to Samson, not the part with him flipping back and forth between his wife and his wife's sister, but just the idea of an alternate time where you could gain superpowers just by refusing to cut your hair.

My favorite books in the Bible were Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. I just thought they were really cool and wanted to live in Israel. My favorite judge was also Samson. I loved the stories of Saul, David, and Solomon and the decline of Israel. I didn't get the whole anti monarchy message though.

 

[ParasaurEwan]

A stupid one where Japan becomes democratic before WW2, but still does the whole conquer the whole Pacific thing and somehow wins. America nukes italy for some reason, and for some reason Oakland becomes a giant Koreatown. Made all the way back in 2017.

 

[Gnomepilled]

A stupid one where Japan becomes democratic before WW2, but still does the whole conquer the whole Pacific thing and somehow wins. America nukes italy for some reason, and for some reason Oakland becomes a giant Koreatown. Made all the way back in 2017.

Sounds better than mine at least.

 

[Aluma]

A stupid one where Japan becomes democratic before WW2, but still does the whole conquer the whole Pacific thing and somehow wins.

This time it was their turn to spread democracy 😎

 

[ruffino]

I don't know the first one, but the first serious one, investigating with some friends, was one in which Philip II's Invincible Armada triumphed and invaded England, and what consequences it would have had (it ended with an earlier Thirty Years' War, and with a attempted invasion of the Ottoman Empire)

 

[CarlosTheAltHistoryGuy]

Mine was a Kaiserreich ripoff with I made with poorly drawn countryball maps, the most interesting detail remember from it is that France falls in 1915-16ish and the Germans have to pull a North Africa campaign to defeat the exiled French.

As for my first wikiboxes, they were about my fic and an alternate history thing I'd planned with Gore winning 2000 and 2004

 

[Kloka]

Thinking of that, I would have probably piled on to Samson, not the part with him flipping back and forth between his wife and his wife's sister, but just the idea of an alternate time where you could gain superpowers just by refusing to cut your hair.

“Are you pondering what I’m pondering?”
“I think so,Brain,but if Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares,why does he keep doing it?”

- from a Pinky and the Brain episode where the Brain thinks that by cutting Samson’s hair and making a wig out of it he can be as strong as Samson

Thread tax: probably something to do with space

 

[Panzer_Goose119]

I'm still working on it, but essentially it's a what-if scenario where the Soviet leadership was basically in a much weaker state and so were forced to make a lot more compromises with the people which led to an overall much more democratic Soviet state. I hope to publish it as a novel at some point.