Recent content by Il Besarion

I always understood it that people living in the western regions of Turkey were the ones with actual Greek ancestry ( ie related to people from across the Aegean), and that the rest of the Anatolian Greeks were just Hellenized over the centuries of Greek/Roman/Rhoman rule

Not hard, actually. Otl Christianity was dominant in North Africa and the Middle East before Islam. It just needs to be more successful in Iran and Central Asia and less so in Europe

And you would have to make whoever rules on the mainland less interested in Britain, unlike otl

This is hard to accomplish without moving the British Isles further west; the English Channel and the North Sea are too small and navigable to prevent crossings.

As I understand it from reading these scenarios in the past, Philip II would rip Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt off the Achaemenids and be content with that. Macedonia would have roughly the boundaries of otl East Roman Empire. And then he would consolidate. Philip was more of an...

Not an expert on this period... But maybe have Granada conquered in the 1200s? They were all that was left until 1492

Otl during the Cold War this *sort of* happened with the existence of East Germany. But that doesn't really count

This Rome would have a Hellenic character to it, and be directly on the coast. It would also be slightly more southern oriented instead of dead center (like otl Rome), potentially making northern expansion more difficult, but I think it's doable.

What is the possibility of Italy becoming the center of one of these empires, a few generations after being conquered? Assuming no heavy plow, and Italys massive population relative to her neighbors. It would be pretty ironic

Late Medieval Serbia could become a great power without losing to the Ottomans. Or a Great Moravia that isn't destroyed by the Magyar Invasions

One would argue that Bulgaria in the 10th Century was already a great power- they ran riot in the Balkans under Symeon I

So many butterflies that this alternate 20th Century would be almost impossible to predict. You would need a pod in the 17th or 18th Century at the latest to have no slavery or African Americans. There wouldn't be anything like the United States we know

Have Manuel Komnenos father an heir sooner than otl. When he died Alexios II was too young to rule and ended up overthrown/killed, causing the chain of bad emperors leading up to 1204

I honestly feel like the biggest wild card in all of this, is Western intervention in East Asia and how that plays out. If the mainland collapses into a warring states period (or a new dynasty replaces Qing) that's likely going to increase. The British and French will likely compete over spheres...

Possibly. If Japan is strong enough and can keep other powers away, they can project a more direct influence over Korea