History Literature / Timeline191

* StuffedIntoTheFridge: Sylvia Enos does ''not'' have a happy ending, to put it mildly. Anne Colleton's ending is even more [[BodyHorror gruesome]] but also marks decisively the end of her KarmaHoudini status.

* BlackAndGreyMorality: The Confederates may be an analog for Nazi Germany, but calling the United States the "heroes" in this series would greatly stretch the definition. To cite just two examples, the revelation of the Confederate concentration camps is largely met with indifference because the Union doesn't care too much for blacks themselves, and after the war thousands of Floridian civilians are rounded up and executed in retaliation for an attack on a Naval vessel.

** The CSA has the "[[UnfortunateNames Mule]]" dive bomber (a.k.a. "[[AwesomeMcCoolName The Asskicker]]"), a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuka Ju-87 Stuka]] with the serial numbers filed off.

* NotSoDifferent:
** Stonewall Jackson invites Frederick Douglass to eat with him in his tent after Douglass is taken prisoner by Confederate soldiers. They both expect the other to be the personification of evil, but are surprised to find that they have some things in common.
** Also from ''How Few Remain'', General Custer's constant mockery of the Mormons' polygamy while occupying Salt Lake City looks more hypocritical when he conducts an affair with a local woman that is nipped in the bud when his wife arrives unexpectedly.

* WashingtonDCInvasion: The proximity of how close D.C. is to the Confederate border sees the city get rather quickly overrun by the Confederate offensive at the start of the Great War. It's not 1917 when the Confederacy is on the retreat that the U.S. reclaims it.
** It's actually because of fear of this trope that D.C. since the 1880s has only been the de facto capital of the U.S. (largely only used for Presidential inaugurations). The U.S. Federal government has setup shop in Philadelphia for the most part.

* SpiritualAntithesis: To Turtledove's ''TheGunsOfTheSouth''. Both series share the basic premise of a Confederate victory in the American Civil War but ''Guns of the South'' it was on account of time-travelers trying to MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight while the series here has a far more mundane point of divergence with the Union never intercepting Lee's lost Special Order 191 dispatch. In addition, ''The Guns Of The South'' ends on a more hopeful note with the implication the United States and Confederacy will work more closely with one another along with better racial relations for blacks. While the whole series is a kickstart to an 80 year cycle of bitter war between the United States and Confederacy.
* SpiritualSuccessor: To ''Literature/TheGunsOfTheSouth''.

* SmashTheSymbol: One of the two cities the U.S. drops it's first superbombs on is Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston being the capital of the first state to secede during the Civil War, as well as the state where the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter. Signaling the U.S.'s intention to end the Confederacy for good.

* NoKillLikeOverkill: [[spoiler: In response to Featherston having Clarence Potter dentate a superbomb in Philadelphia, the U.S. drops it's first superbomb on Newport News believing Jake Featherston was located there. Wiping out an entire city just to try and kill one person]].

[[caption-width-right:350:WW1's latest change.]]

* IndustrializedEvil: The Confederacy under Featherston is industrial evil on the scale of Nazi Germany, using the most modern and efficient practises to exterminate the African-American populace.

* JerkassHasAPoint: At Jefferson Pinkard's trial, he offers no defence - not even "I was only Following Orders" - but points out that while his actions were horrific [[spoiler: instituting their version of the "Final Solution"]], the victorious North only cares about what the Confederates were doing ''because it was the Confederates who were doing it''. Given other comments from Northerners elsewhere, he clearly has a point (not that it saves him).

** Clarence Potter.

** Union soldier Boris Lavochkin of ''In At The Death'' is a psycho. And there's always [[TheFundamentalist Gordon]] [[KillItWithFire McSweeney]].

** Sam Carsten has extremely fair skin, and burns easily - a bad trait for a sailor. As a result, he can often be seen slathering sunblock onto his skin, but it does little good - he still gets badly burnt. Forgotten all that? Don't worry, Sam will helpfully mention this ''every single time he makes an appearance''. Multiply this by [[LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters fifty other characters]], and soon enough a 200 page book becomes a 500 page book.

** Surfing pioneer [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Kahanamoku Duke Kahanamoku]] puts in an appearance in US-occupied Hawaii during the First Great War and even shows off some of his moves [[spoiler: before he is arrested and executed as a British informant by the occupation government]].

* BlackAndGreyMorality: The USA isn't always a nice place to live, but the CSA is a Nazi hellhole by the end.

* SettingUpdate: ''Timeline-191'' is basically European history of the 19th and 20th century [-MOVED TO AMERICA !-] Featherston is Hitler, West Texas/Kentucky/Sequoyah suffers a fate identical to Austria/Sudetenland, [[SignificantAnagram Irwing Morrell]] is an American CaptainErsatz of Erwin Rommel and the Battle of Pittsburgh becomes the equivalent of our Battle of Stalingrad. Blacks, Mormons and Indians become the equivalent of Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and other nationalities that died in our world's Holocaust. It may not be particularly inspired, but it works well both as a story and as a HistoricalInJoke. The only real outliers are the fate of Canada, which is occupied by the United States at the end of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, and American politics, which are far too soft and democratic (albeit increasingly left-wing after UsefulNotes/WorldWarI) to make a meaningful parallel to the Soviet Union. Still, the Confederate invasion of the United States in 1941 strongly parallels, militarily, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, though the geography is ''tremendously'' compressed (Ohio and eastern Pennsylvania compared to the whole of Europe east of Warsaw) and the United States is somewhat more prepared.

** Surfing pioneer [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Kahanamoku Duke Kahanamoku]] puts in an appearance in US-occupied Hawaii during the First Great war and even shows off some of his moves [[spoiler: before he is arrested and executed as a British informant by the occupation government]].

* BadassGrandpa:
** General Custer is a pretty poor general, to the point where some of his underlings consider him a PointyHairedBoss, but a scene where he foils an assassination attempt (on himself) by '''throwing a bomb back''' at the would-be assassin before it explodes shows why he managed to rise so high in the military hierarchy in the first place.
** Anyone who manages to survive the entire series from beginning to end certainly counts!
** Many are old enough, few are literal grandparents. Cincinnatus Driver literally is. Clarence Potter, Abner Dowling, and Sam Carsten are old enough and badass enough, but never had kids. Jonathan Moss is one of the most badass, but [[spoiler:his wife and daughter were killed by Mary Pomeroy's bomb]]. Irving Morrell and Flora Hamburger/[[spoiler:Blackford]] aren't yet but likely will be shortly after the end of the series.

* DoubleReverseQuadrupleAgent: Cincinnatus Driver, a lowly black truck driver in Kentucky, starts as an ActionSurvivor and ends up as a go-between for all sides (the USA, Confederates, and black Marxists) in the conflict during the First Great War, taking [[TookALevelInBadass several levels in badass]] in the process. He eventually becomes a US auxiliary ([[BadassGrandpa despite being in his fifties]]) during the Second Great War. The man even had ''Teddy Roosevelt order the head of the Kentucky State (read: secret) Police to release him and pay him $100 (in 1920) out of his own pocket'' at one point!

** UsefulNotes/CalvinCoolidge ran for President in 1928 and 1932, winning in the latter. He died before he could be inaugurated, and his running mate UsefulNotes/HerbertHoover became President.