Talk:Through Darkest Europe

Finally, and with a much better title, too, IMHO. TR (talk) 20:12, December 12, 2017 (UTC)


 * The title's an improvement. The premise, as laid out here, sounds quite simplistic. The history of vast swaths of Earth, where millions upon millions of lives play out over the course of centuries, should defy such trends as "One is a religious backwater and the other is enlightened." (As if religion and enlightenment were incompatible, anyway.) Turtle Fan (talk) 07:15, December 13, 2017 (UTC)


 * I argue the premise is somewhat more complicated than that; our protagonist's journey to Rome sounds like an exercise in neo-colonialism. But, yes, it starts at a simple place.  Still, it's not WWII or ACW, and it's a stand-alone, both of which increase my enthusiasm. TR (talk) 15:34, December 13, 2017 (UTC)


 * Granted. Hopefully we'll be able to write a worthier summary when the time comes. Turtle Fan (talk) 00:02, December 14, 2017 (UTC)

Excerpt
Available here. TR (talk) 21:09, July 31, 2018 (UTC)


 * Predictable. A lot of "Oh, look, everything's backwards!" And even a side-trip into "I wonder what the world would be like if it were forwards--nah, that could never happen."


 * I don't mean to shit on it, but I really don't think I'll have much interest in this one.


 * By the way, I noticed lots of Arabic versions of familiar names (of course): Dawud, for instance. Yet there's one instance of Jesus, one of Christ, and none of Isa. I found that mildly surprising. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:51, August 1, 2018 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I suspect HT went with simplicity for the audience rather than authenticity. He did the same thing with the Hellenic Traders--he used the proper Greek names for everyone but Alexander the Great, since he was so familiar to the readers. Jesus would certainly be the same way. For that matter, I noticed a reference to the Byzantine Empire in the excerpt, which is a pretty Western European bit of nomenclature, but again probably more familiar to the reader, and easier to use than getting bogged down in the "Easter Roman Empire" conversation.


 * I'm reading the Hellenic Traders now so I'm a bit surprised I didn't think of that. (I find it irritating when the changed spelling forces me to mispronounce a familiar name, like "Platon," or when it's so different that I fail to recognize a name I know, as when Ajax became "Aias.") Of course, the point there isn't to emphasize difference. And the two references would have made it abundantly clear to Whom the Arabic name referred.


 * I find it intriguing enough so far. What made this the "Grand Duchy of Italy" instead of the "Kingdom of Italy"? Why does this fictional pope need help from the Dar al-Islam?


 * Interesting question about the Grand Duchy. If I had to take a stab at it: Between the Renaissance (which presumably never happened in this TL) and unification in the 19th century, the competing local powers of Italy were forever in shifting alliances with French and Spanish kings and Holy Roman Emperors. Very few Italian rulers claimed kingship before the nineteenth century (though Naples had a few) so they were invariably considered junior partners in these alliances, client states or proxies.


 * Maybe some French or Spanish king or Holy Roman Emperor (though that's less likely, as an emperor still clearly outranks a king) succeeded in getting the horse he backed to unify Italy and consolidate power? Encourage, say, the Duke of Milan to promote himself to Grand Duke, and you've made it clear that he's come up in the world and isn't going back down, but because he's still not a king, you've also made it clear he's still a Trump to your Putin.


 * Now that doesn't mean Italy is still a client state; they may have managed to go their own way in the intervening years, but kept the title for tradition's sake. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:57, August 2, 2018 (UTC)


 * Tuscany was a Grand Duchy under the de' Medicis, a family that was certainly ambitious (to put it mildly). Perhaps they kept going growing Tuscany until they ate Italy? It's not as interesting as your suggestion, and I can't explain yet how Rome would become the capital in that scenario, rather than Florence.


 * After a few generations, people would gradually stop thinking of the Grand Dukes as Florentine or Neopolitan or Venetian and start thinking of them as just Italian. At that point, the temptation to wrap the regime in reminders of faded imperial glory (what's-his-name was very clear that a lot of ancient history has been preserved in Rome) grows awfully strong.


 * Still doesn't explain how the ruler of such a country could absorb the Papal States without his own subjects revolting. Unless maybe the Pope at the time was not an "Aquinist," and the Grand Duke pitched his occupation of Rome as a way to compel orthodoxy out of that pope and any other reform-minded pontiffs who might be elected in the future? Turtle Fan (talk) 09:52, August 2, 2018 (UTC)


 * With the very little we know, that seems possible. At one point, Khalid reflects that the pope's status as a "secular prince" depended on both the personality of the pope AND that of the grand duke. That suggests that, while the Vatican may be nominally/legally independent (and I don't think that's quite clear yet), the Grand Duchy still has a lot to say about the papacy. TR (talk) 17:58, August 2, 2018 (UTC)


 * Indeed, indeed. The pope's temporal power could be even more tenuous than it is under the OTL Lateran Treaty. Which is strange, as this does seem like the kind of society where theocracy would thrive. And Khalid is clear that most if not all of Europe is Christian-dominated, and I got a sense that there was no Reformation and the Pope led all of Christendom. If both those are true, then wouldn't the other European rulers object to the Italian Grand Duke exerting such a strong influence over him? Turtle Fan (talk) 20:33, August 2, 2018 (UTC)


 * I suspect there have been schisms and maybe something akin to the Reformation. I don't see Aquinism forcing that level unity in European Christianity. After all, Wahhabism and other Islamic movements continued to appear even with Al-Ghazzali's philosophy available in OTL. There were proto-Protestant reform movements in OTL long before Luther was born.  Several were actually quite close in time to the POD(s), and so they might have caught on better than they did in OTL.


 * I'm really not sure how Aquinas could be so all-important in and of himself at all; Church history is fairly crawling with theologians on his level, any number of whom could be used to cancel him out.


 * But if there was a Reformation (and I suppose we don't have enough one way or the other to say, though I did somehow get the sense that there hadn't been) against a backdrop of a rigorously anti-intellectual Europe--very interesting indeed. The Reformation and Counterreformation interacted with Europe's scientific history in all sorts of complex ways. Turtle Fan (talk) 19:41, August 3, 2018 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, while Khalid is focusing on the reversal of Aquinas and Al-Ghazali and how Aquinas "stunted" Europe, the mere fact that he and Dawud are in Italy at all fairly screams that the Islamic world has done its bit to fuck over this Europe in much the same way that OTL Europe helped fuck up the Islamic world. HT is much too aware of history to not include that parallel, and Khalid makes it clear that his country has a vested interest in propping up a reformer pope. TR (talk) 16:10, August 3, 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes. I would be interested to see at what point exactly geopolitics started looking significantly different, and what effects Islamic colonialism had to prevent European hegemons from emerging.


 * Actually, that might be why Italy doesn't have a king, come to think of it: Maybe the Muslims set about breaking up unified European nation-states before they can become regional hegemons (I can't imagine there's a German Empire, for instance) and so whoever unified Italy acted like it wasn't such a big thing to try to avoid attracting unwanted attention. Turtle Fan (talk) 19:41, August 3, 2018 (UTC)


 * Also, Sicily is not under Italian rule, which is noteworthy, but doesn't reveal much since the Muslim world did take Sicily a time or two. TR (talk) 03:31, August 2, 2018 (UTC)


 * Yeah, a Mediterranean AH always allows lots of wiggle room there. Turtle Fan (talk) 09:52, August 2, 2018 (UTC)


 * As for the Pope asking for Berber help--could be anything. The book might have a chance to win me over if it launches into a smart thriller and keeps the "It's Opposite Day for stereotypes about Western Europe and the Middle East!" stuff to a tolerable minimum.


 * It does seem odd that there's some sort of analog of the Lateran Treaty in effect; if Italy's so full of religious fanatics, that should not be possible, as public opinion would surely have been strongly enough on the Pope's side to compel the Grand Duke to tread very lightly indeed. I would instead look for a caliph who's got a small Vatican-sized chunk of an otherwise secular Middle Eastern metropolis; that's a case of "Look! It's backwards!" that flows from the premise organically. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:57, August 2, 2018 (UTC)


 * "Caliph [Blank]'s secular power didn't extend past Mecca, but Muslims the world over listened to him." I suspect that's coming. TR (talk) 16:10, August 3, 2018 (UTC)


 * Yeah. Turtle Fan (talk) 19:41, August 3, 2018 (UTC)


 * And it does seem like it will add some variety to our project here. TR (talk) 22:03, August 1, 2018 (UTC)


 * We've already got Aquinas and Algazel thanks to IHP. Now we'll add a section saying "They switched!" Turtle Fan (talk) 02:57, August 2, 2018 (UTC)


 * Well, there is a tossed offer titular reference to Urban II and the First Crusade. Maybe we'll get enough detail there to justify articles. The visit to Pope Marcellus IX might give some character a moment to think about other popes, like that scene with the Governors-General of the NAU. Or we might get such a scene might for the Grand Dukes of Italy. Plus we don't know that much about other parts of the world yet. TR (talk) 03:31, August 2, 2018 (UTC)


 * It appears Seattle has displaced LA as the West Coast's most important metropolis. If so we'd have a counterexample to HT's notorious civic pride.


 * Which means Chief Seattle was still around in this world. I suppose Harry might shoe-horn a quick reference to the "chief who [fought][made peace with] [Muslims].  TR (talk) 16:10, August 3, 2018 (UTC)


 * It does all remind me a bit of Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, specifically of Muslim explorers colonizing first Europe (almost devoid of human life two centuries after the Black Death proved much, much more virulent) then most of the places that Europeans later colonized. Not a great book, but some of that stuff was intriguing. Turtle Fan (talk) 09:52, August 2, 2018 (UTC)