Stupid Luck and Happenstance
is an AlternateHistory.com story by member Peabody-Martini. It features the outcome of a very different World War I in which a slight change in the Verdun Offensive in 1916 causes a different ending to the war, and a world in which Germany becomes the dominant power in Europe, yet with much, much less of the nastiness that it entailed in our world.
Unlike most timelines on the website, the story is told less through a sequence of events or a summation of the major movers of the world, but rather, is a character-centric narrative in which the actions of a few people (some of whom embody the "stupid luck" in the title) cause sweeping changes in the world around them.
Stupid Luck and Happenstance provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Kat Mischner.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Kat Mischner (redhead) and her friends Gerta von Wolvogle (blonde) and Helen von Richthofen (brunette) definitely embody this.
- Butt-Monkey: The usual fate of a would-have-been prominent Nazi. And more than a few would have been US presidents.
- Chest of Medals: Guess.
- The Fool: Most everyone who is a viewpoint character; though Emil Holz and Kat Mischner in particular start off as this before maturing into the roles they're thrust into.
- Hidden Backup Princess: Subverted with Jehane, who, though the last of the Romanovs descended from Nicholas II, only survived because Stalin's assassins failed a spot check, and that there are no plans for the Germans to install her on the throne, for that matter.
- Historical Domain Character: Lots of them, par for the course in an alternate history; but instead of focusing on monarchs and politicians like most timelines in the post-1900 section of the site do, the viewpoint characters are mostly not this.
- New Job as the Plot Demands: Kat has been an Abwehr agent, Special Forces soldier, Royal bodyguard and Police Detective. Some of them only in training before her career is interrupted, but still.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: Margot Blackwood.
- Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman: Quite a few actually. John F. Kennedy got a job in intelligence in this timeline, Adolf Hitler became a quadruple amputee in a ward where the doctors and nurses are Jewish...
- Rotating Protagonist: The story is told through numerous viewpoints, although Emil Holz followed by Kat Mischner and later on Princess Kristina take the lion's share of the viewpoints.
- Slap-Slap-Kiss: Emil and Maria started off their relationship as this.
- Too Dumb to Live: Margot Blackwood keeps try to antagonise one of the most socially powerful and personally deadly people alive.
- Took a Level in Badass: Kat, again and again. Arguably to the point of deconstruction, however, since she never really wanted to do so. Most every viewpoint character is this too, what with Emil going from Soldat to one of Germany's finest generals within the span of a quarter-century.
