Or William, son of Henry I - no White Ship disaster, no Plantagenets!
Or for much more bang up to date - imagine if Harry were currently heir to Charles III?
Second sons do seem to have a wildcard quality about them.
That’s an interesting one. Whatever the effect on Ireland (I mean it’s not like the English were benevolent enlightened rulers prior to the reformation) it would have had a huge effect on England. The perception of Charles I was “soft” on the “catholic atrocities” committed in Ireland, and that this showed his catholic sympathies was one the big triggers for the civil war. And without the civil war British and world history are very different.
Charles’s general attitude towards Parliament would have caused a civil war sooner or later on something or other that he wanted to raise money for.
Not sure that’s true. He would have definitely faced resistance to his authoritarian tendencies. Without the perceived “clear and present danger” of catholic hordes descending from Ireland with the connivance of the king, I’m not sure that resistance would have crossed the line to a widespread armed rebellion.
My favorite would be if JFK had gotten assassinated just a couple of years later, partway into his second term, after he’d pulled us out of Vietnam. LBJ would have still been able to get all of his domestic successes–Voting Rights act, Medicare, etc.–on the back of his parliamentary skills and enormous sympathy for the martyred president, with none of the foreign policy debacles that wrecked his presidency. Probably could have gotten re-elected, big, in 1968, giving his the same six years to get stuff done.
It was Charles that resorted to arms, first to impose a uniform (with the Church of England) liturgy on the Church of Scotland, then to assert his authority over Parliament when they wouldn’t give him the money he wanted for his Scottish war and demanded all the reforms listed in the Grand Remonstrance.
Granted, much of that depended upon fear of Catholic restoration and imposition in England, but for conspiring to that end it blames an English papist party at court; Ireland doesn’t get much of a mention. And when Charles did raise his army, it wasn’t recruited from Ireland, nor did he side with the Catholic uprising in Ireland.
Bumping a zombie because I missed this the first time around.
What if Yakov Sverdlov hadn’t gotten sick and died in 1919 at the age of 33?
Sverdlov was a second tier member of the Bolsheviks. His job was to handle the administrative duties of the party and regime.
His death created the opening that Stalin stepped into. Stalin used the office to fill the government with people who were loyal to him in order to make his bid for power when Lenin died in 1924.
If Sverdlov had lived, Stalin wouldn’t have been in a position to seize power and Lenin would probably have been succeeded by Trotsky or Bukharin.
Granted they might have been less paranoid in wiping out perceived enemies within the Party, but open to argument as to how much less repressive either of those would have been, more widely, in the dash to industrialisation and collectivisation or in dealing with the international situation.
That is an interesting one. Though TBH I think Stalin still comes out on top, the other contenders were clearly outmatched by his politicking and back stabbing skills (the fact he recognized how important Sverdlov’s apparently insignificant position was for marshalling power within the party shows that)
I’d say if Stalin did fail it would definitely be Bukarin, Trotsky (despite being the obvious successor) had absolutely no skill in politicking and pissed everyone else off
What that would mean is hard to say. The collectivization policies were his policies (Stalin used them as a weapon against him to portray him as a authoritarian before adopting them wholesale once he had been neutralized)
What if J.Edgar Hoover had been demoted following fallout from the Palmer Raids?
A. Mitchell Palmer was Attorney General in 1920, and responded to a growing threat of anarchist violence (in the form of a series of bomb attacks) by authorizing a series of widespread arrests targeting dissidents.
He had put Hoover in charge of a newly formed bureau of investigation, and it was Hoover who put the raids in motion. Since they were arresting people on shaky grounds, oftentimes relying on nothing more than political affiliation (the ACLU was formed in response), the public eventually came to criticize the action.
Palmer was out of his role as Attorney General by 1921, but. Hoover managed to escape any blowback. To the contrary, he turned his division of the Justice Department into one of the most formidable levers of power in American government.
That wouldn’t have happened if Hoover had taken the fall.
If SCOTUS hadn’t elected the Shrub as president, the US might be much further along in doing something about climate change.
Probably not obscure enough for this thread.