AH Challenge. Make York the English Capital City

[libbrit]

Its as simple as that-think of a chain of events, POD etc for the English capital city to become unequivocably York, not London. Go as far back as you want-to Roman times if you like. IMO this doesn't mean London would cease to be the economic capital (its geographical position is clear in any TL). But politically-it neednt have always been so

 

[Superaquaspiderbatman]

Its as simple as that-think of a chain of events, POD etc for the English capital city to become unequivocably York, not London. Go as far back as you want-to Roman times if you like. IMO this doesn't mean London would cease to be the economic capital (its geographical position is clear in any TL). But politically-it neednt have always been so

York had a sizeable Danish population until the St. Brice's Day massacre, AFAIK.
Maybe if the Danish kings had not lost control of the crown of England, administration could have moved up North, to more "culturally familiar" surroundings.

 

[Joyeux]

Alfred the Great loses, Wessex falls, the vikings have a couple of kingdoms in England, one of the important ones has their capital at Jórvík, eventually the viking kingdoms unite.

Okay, so it's not technically 'England' but it's all I could think of at the moment.

 

[M79]

*Black plague in 1348 kills Edward III of England
*Black Prince assumes mantle as Edward IV
*David II of Scotland negotiates with Edward IV to keep Scotland in exchange for cancellation of ransom following capture at Battle of Neville's Cross
*Edward IV negotiated with Scottish nobles who are vehemently against the claim. Edward marries into the House of Stewart and agrees to move the capital to York that it might be closer to the Scottish lands.
*English lords are not happy with the decision but do not revolt and London remains a major trading bastion, with firstborn sons being Prince of Wales and secondborn sons being Prince of London
*Edward IV continues war in France with destruction of Auld Alliance ruling Scotland as independent kindgom in personal union until his children come of age

 

[False Dmitri]

Alfred the Great loses, Wessex falls, the vikings have a couple of kingdoms in England, one of the important ones has their capital at Jórvík, eventually the viking kingdoms unite.

Okay, so it's not technically 'England' but it's all I could think of at the moment.

That's my unfinished TL from a few years ago. And after the kingdoms unite, of course it's 'England'... what else would they call it?

Even in that scenario, London was already considerably bigger than York in Alfred's day. So even with Jorvik being the royal capital, some recognition has to be given to London, and it evolves as a kind of mercantile city-state within the kingdom. (That's something I'll include in the TL if I ever go back to it.)

 

[EternalCynic]

Unmentionable Sea Mammal succeeds and Hitler occupies southern England, with northern England and Scotland remaining "free" under a puppet regime. York serves the role of Vichy.

 

[david31]

Have the Northumbrian supremacy of the eighth century be continued for a couple of more centuries with all the Southumbrian Kings forced to acknowledge Nortnumbrian Bretwaldas. Have the Danish Great Army beaten off in it's attack on York and forced southwards to conquer both Mercia and Wessex. Have the "English Reconquest" carried out by a King of Northumbria rather than Edward the Elder.

This sequence of events would mean that the political centre of gavity of the Kingdom would be in York although London would remain important for its trading links and proximity to the Continent. Of course a capital in the North of England would mean that the Kingdom wouldf be more influenced by events in Scandinavia and the Celtic Fringe.

 

[The Professor]

Hmmm,
Perhaps if we weaken both Mercia and Wessex so that Northumbria maintains control as Bretwalda/
A lack of Mercia would create a stronger divide between the Saxon kingdoms and Angle Kingdoms.
Then we create a stonger Viking/Danish takeover so that the ATL Danelaw boundary is a Angle-Saxon boundary.
Then we consolidate the Danish Angle Kingdoms into a single England based around Jorvik and voila York is the capital of England.
Admittedly this England excludes most of the South but grant an expansionist King and divided Saxon kingdoms and it'll soon expand.

 

[david31]

If for example King Ecgfrith could have won the Battle of Nechtansmere against the Picts and maintained the Northumbrian supremacy in the north of Britain it might have been possible to re-establish control over Merica (lost to Penda's son Wulfhere). Of course all this would depend on heirs strong enough to maintain the supremacy and given the fractious nature of Northumbrian dynastic rivalries in the eighth and ninth centuries in OTL it might not have proved possible to maintain at its greatest extent.

However the Danish invasions of the late ninth century might have been able to takeover the expanded Northumbrian Kingdom as a going concern - or at least as a confederacy of viking settler states - which might have led to a East Coast Viking kingdom from Inverness to the Humber exploiting the great northern trade route running from Dublin-York-Hedeby-Kiev-Constantinople

 

[TheNordicBrit]

An alternate 'Harrying of the North', which rather than leading to the slaughter of much of the northern population, William I slaughters the southern population. Though I'm unsure if that'd actually work as William I would want a southern capital for strategies sake, so he may just re-populate southern England with Normans, Frenchmen and Flemish people.

 

[The Uchronian]

Its as simple as that-think of a chain of events, POD etc for the English capital city to become unequivocably York, not London. Go as far back as you want-to Roman times if you like. IMO this doesn't mean London would cease to be the economic capital (its geographical position is clear in any TL). But politically-it neednt have always been so

I've got a simple one with a Cold War POD: A somewhat limited nuclear war erupts over an earlier Cuban crisis in September, 1962. The U.K. loses London, Sheffield, Manchester, Belfast, Norwich, Portsmouth, and a few parts of the Midlands(the town of Dudley is never heard from again, and Birmingham itself is rather....well, ruined), on top of some of the more important military bases.

York, however, survives, as does a few other places like Londonderry and Liverpool. And it's York that PM McMillan chooses as his home base now that 10 Downing Street is just a pile of radioactive rubble like much of the rest of London, due to it's being amongst the least immediately damaged areas in the U.K.