History Literature / LookToTheWest

* DoomedHometown - A statistically improbable number of the timeline's.[[TheCallKnowsWhereYouLive heroes]] have their houses, villages, towns, or cities burned to the ground. Well, three, four at the outside, but this has proven enough to make the "Burned House Hero" a fandom running gag and to see the timeline humorously rechristened "Look To The Burning House Where Your Family Used To Live".

The timeline makes use of an idea known as "Alternate Timeline Brothers" in which people may be shaped by circumstances in different ways, be mergers of different siblings, have different names and lead different lives, but are fundamentally familiar. Such characters, and other dramatically different things having the same name, are indicated with an *asterisk, short for "alternate".

The prose timeline is augmented with a "raw" record of events, a helpful wiki page, and frequent maps.

It begins with [[ForWantOfANail George II of Great Britain tripping up on his coronation carpet]], and from there things stay much as we know them for a couple of decades, then gradually diverge. The world is already noticeably different in 1795, when things start diverging dramatically and very, very bloodily. The timeline is currently in about 1829, but chapters are thematic, not chronological.

[[http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=157898 Read it here]]. [[http://alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=178247 And continued here.]]

* NoSwastikas: Averted with the short-lived [[spoiler: Etrurian Republic]]

* AirstripOne: After a rebellion by French-speakers in Quebec, the Empire of North America either anglicises (Montréal -> Mount Royal) or outright renames (Quebec City -> Wolfeston) all its settlements with French-sounding names.

* FalseFlagOperation - [[spoiler:The Meridians use the New Spanish flag against the Portuguese in the course of the Popular Wars.]]

** Similarly, after adopting Russophile cultural policies to appease those alienated by the earlier Tsars' westward-looking stance, Russia Russifies some of its more German-sounding names.

** Also inverted. Without being preoccupied by the war against the South American UPSA, the Royal navy could have defeated the invading fleets of Revolutionary France before they reached Britain's coasts.
* BalkanizeMe - China and Japan headed into this. Also happened to Spain due to the Congress of Copenhagen, with Portugal taking Galicia, Castile as a Portuguese puppet, and Aragon as part of the Crown of the Three Sicilies. [[spoiler:Then seemingly turned back around with the New Spanish reconquest of Spain, reuniting most of the country.]]

* HeroicSociopath - Michael Hiedler. A man whose burning hatred of just about everybody fuels his dark charisma ([[AdolfHitler just for fun, try saying his name out loud]]). May, or may not, [[ImAHumanitarian eat people]].

** King Henry IX is close to Charles James Fox and other Radicals in Parliament. Naturally, his political enemies nickname him "[[DrMcNinja King Radical]]".

* HunterOfHisOwnKind - ShowWithinAShow example. One of the seminal works in the "[[SteamPunk Automaton fiction]]" craze of the 1820s-1850s period is ''The Venator'', about a KillerRobot whose role is to hunt down and kill the last of his own rebellious kind, and once this is accomplished, to [[NoPlaceForMeThere dismantle himself]].

* [[TheChamberlain Chamberlain, The]] - Charles Fox.

* KneelBeforeFrodo - King Louis XVII of France does this at the end of the Popular Wars to his rebellious army as a dramatic gesture that subdues their rage--he also gives all the veterans the right to vote.