History Literature / LookToTheWest

* UsefulNotes/COVID-19Pandemic: Plays a role in the Thande Institute storyline, making it hard for the dimension-hopping team to return to OTL Earth. Also influences TTL, as the Black Twenties sees a similar outbreak of the plague.

%%* TheChessmaster Jean de Lisieux.

* UsefulNotes/COVID-19: Plays a role in the Thande Institute storyline, making it hard for the dimension-hopping team to return to OTL Earth. Also influences TTL, as the Black Twenties sees a similar outbreak of the plague.

* COVID-19: Plays a role in the Thande Institute storyline, making it hard for the dimension-hopping team to return to OTL Earth. Also influences TTL, as the Black Twenties sees a similar outbreak of the plague.

* COVID-19Pandemic: Plays a role in the Thande Institute storyline, making it hard for the dimension-hopping team to return to OTL Earth. Also influences TTL, as the Black Twenties sees a similar outbreak of the plague in the middle of a nasty conflict.

* COVID19: Plays a role in the Thande Institute storyline, making it hard for the dimension-hopping team to return to OTL Earth. Also influences TTL, as the Black Twenties sees a similar outbreak of the plague in the middle of a nasty conflict.

* RiddleForTheAges: No-one ''really'' knows what happened to [[spoiler:Lisieux]], though many theories are put forward. [[ShrugOfGod Not even the author]]. Likewise with [[spoiler: who shot Joshua Churchill]].

* NuclearWeaponsTaboo: Zig-zagged. There is no taboo against ''using'' nukes, with dozens of (tactical) nuclear weapons used in anger in the modern era. There is, however, an even larger taboo against using them against [[WouldNotShootACivilian civilian targets]] (and, related to this, against putting them on ballistic missiles rather than bombers). In fact, there's something of a taboo about using missiles at all, since one of their earliest uses was by the Societists, and the ENA (mistakenly) thought they were threatening civilian targets.

* NuclearWeaponsTaboo: Zig-zagged. There is no taboo against ''using'' nukes, with dozens of (tactical) nuclear weapons used in anger in the modern era. There is, however, an even larger taboo against using them against [[WouldNotShootACivilian civilian targets]] (and, related to this, against putting them on ballistic missiles rather than bombers).

* NuclearWeaponsTaboo: Zig-zagged. There is no taboo against ''using'' nukes, with dozens of nuclear weapons used in anger in the modern era. There is, however, an even larger taboo against using them against [[WouldNotShootACivilian civilian targets]] (and, related to this, against putting them on ballistic missiles rather than bombers).

* InsideOutsideSlur: The split of the Radical party into "Purple" and "Green" factions leads to the term "over-ripe aubergine" for someone who looks green, but is actually purple.

** Societists are also responsible for the Scientific Weapon, a euphemism so desceptive that they managed to get two Meridian officials to sign off on the first use of [[DeadlyGas death luft]] without either of them realising what it actually ''was''.

* AmericaIsStillAColony: With George III identifying more as American than British, the impetus for independence is considerably lessened. In fact, from George onwards the Hanovers generally see being Emperor of North America as a more significant title than King of Britain, with the result that eventually [[spoiler: the ''British'' declare independence]].

** Volume VIII ends with [[spoiler: A disease strangely similar to Covid-19 appearing in England in the framing story, with rumours that it escaped from a lab being dismissed because the lab in question was a ''physics'' lab. In other words, exactly the sort of lab that might be trying to reverse engineer the research team's transporter tech, if they've realised what it is]].

* Volume VIII ends with [[spoiler: A disease strangely similar to Covid-19 appearing in England in the framing story, with rumours that it escaped from a lab being dismissed because the lab in question was a ''physics'' lab. In other words, exactly the sort of lab that might be trying to reverse engineer the research team's transporter tech, if they've realised what it is]].

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".

Look To The West, written by Thomas "@/{{Thande}}" Anderson, is one of the longest-running and acclaimed alternate timelines on Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom, a site dedicated, unsurprisingly, to AlternateHistory which also gave us ''Literature/DecadesOfDarkness'' and ''Script/AHDotComTheSeries'' (Thande is also a writer on the latter).

* UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans: Jean de Lisieux. The Societists are also implied to be like this. (At some point between Sanchez and the horrific end of the Pandoric War, Sanchez's "It is an unforgivable crime to take a human life" has had "without good reason" added to it.)

* TheChessmaster Jean de Lisieux.

* CaliforniaDoubling: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/look-to-the-west-volume-viii-the-bear-and-the-basilisk.495774/page-40#post-21967832 An article]] describing the Societist film industry notes that one advantage they had was filming in exotic reaches of the Combine, then adds that filmmakers in California are very good at making diverse parts of the country represent everywhere in the world.

* 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.
** 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.
** After Corea invades China, they restore the ancient Corean names to every village and city they conquer.
** The Societists give all the cities and territories under their control bland "Zone''x''Urb''y''" names in keeping with their philosophy that acknowledging the differences between different regions leads to prejudice, division and war.

[[http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=157898 Read it here]]. [[http://alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=178247 And continued here.]] [[http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=258681 And here.]] [[http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=354968 And here as well.]]

** Moritz Benyovsky is recorded in a destroyed Chinese tapestry as "[[Series/DoctorWho The Bringer of Chaos, the Destroyer of Worlds, the Oncoming Storm]]".

* FramingDevice: The crosstime exploration team in the present day ([[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture of 2015]]).