Alternate History Wank: Difference between revisions

Note that [[Tropes Are Not Bad|this is not necessarily a bad thing]]. Sometimes a plausible timeline with a purposefully maximized British Empire can be informative and entertaining, or valuable for some artistic purpose. Sometimes it's just a matter of [[Rule of Cool|doing something fun and entertaining]]. It just may require a lot of [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]].

 

 

Compare and contrast with [[Alternate History Screw]], the inversion of this trope.

* This treatment is really popular for famous empires, though "bad guy" empires tend to be the most popular for wank status. For every "Rome never falls" timeline there seem to be at least three "USSR and/or Nazi Germany takes over the world".

 

* ''[[Code Geass]]'' is a weird case. '''Britannia''' rules half the world, but not the British Isles. Japan, despite being a Britannian colony, seems to have been one of the last non-superpower country and its independence is treated as central to world politics, thanks to its large deposites of [[Mineral MacGuffin|Sakuradite]].

 

* '''Canada''' in ''[[CSA: Confederate States of America]]''. In this alternate history, that nation refused to hand over its escaped American slaves because it was the right thing to do and suffered with a walled US/Canadian border called the Cotton Wall. Furthermore, for this national choice, Canada reaps the great prize of all the artists of African descent (and several whites as well, including a certain [[Mark Twain|Samuel Clemens]]) that would have enriched American culture with Rock music, Motown and many others now feed Canadian culture. As a result, Canada becomes the pop culture centre of the world. The CSA itself is the same way, it's built on such a silly amount of historical fallacies that it's nearly impossible to take seriously. Though it makes rather silly [[Rule of Cool]] assumptions such as having Lincoln attempt to escape the CSA's forces by the Underground Railroad, it pales in comparison to having the CSA annex the entire North, along with large parts of South America to form a "tropical empire", and then there's the whole thing about a slave-owning society surviving into the modern day without collapsing into a third world country. Despite the CSA being isolated from the rest of the world and culturally stagnant, its economy still runs fairly well.

 

* '''The Angevin and Polish empires''' of Randall Garrett's [[Lord Darcy]] mysteries. The stories are set in an alternate timeline where most of the Northern Hemisphere is divided between two great ruling powers: the Anglo-French Empire, which extends over most of Western Europe (except Italy) and the Americas and is ruled by the Plantagenets; and the Polish Empire, which has conquered virtually all of Eastern Europe. The timeline splits in 1199, when Richard the Lion-Hearted ''doesn't'' die from the crossbow bolt at the siege of Chalus-Chabrol, but recovers, repairs his ways, and goes on to be a great king... Oh, and did we mention that these books take place in the 20th century, and that both empires are still going? Sure, it doesn't look anywhere near modern, but that's just because they use [[Magitek]] instead of normal tech.

* '''The Domination of Draka (South Africa)''' in S. M. Stirling's series on [[The Draka]]. The premise is that a colony in OTL's South Africa gains independence from Britain around when the United States of America did in our timeline, upholds [[Complete Monster|horrific ideals]] within its borders (including slavery), and manages to take over the world by the end of the series (Yes, sadly the image chosen for this very page was ''just the beginning'' of the wankitude). This is handled in such a way that it made the [[Wall Banger/Literature|Wallbanger page for literature]]—the civilized nations of the world [[Idiot Ball|just ignore the threat of a large, slave-holding, militaristic empire until it's too late]]. Let's just say that one [[Fix Fic]] that was intended to make [[The Draka]] less of a [[Villain Sue]][[Mary Suetopia|topia]] ''still'' started in the mid-20th century with [[Anthropic Principle|them having almost all of Africa and a good chunk of the Middle East...]]

* Given that ''[[Atlas Shrugged]]'' clearly doesn't take place in the "real" 20th century, it can be argued to be an '''Objectivist''' Wank. (Inverted, in that the Strikers are proven utterly correct not by conquering the world (though they may do so after the end of the book), but by watching the rest of the world shred itself.)

 

* In the ''[[Buck Rogers]]'' comic strips, '''Mongolia''' conquers most of the world in [[The Future]]. This is probably so they can have Ghengis Khan-style [[Yellow Peril]] villains.

 

* In the ''[[GURPS]]'' tabletop gaming supplement ''GURPS Alternate Earths 2'', one of the settings is an alternate 19th century in which '''Ming China''' rules practically the entire world.

** Ming-3 is merely one example of this trope in the ''GURPS Infinite Worlds'' setting, which is loaded with such examples. '''Aztec Earth''', '''Roman Earth''', '''Japanese Earth''', '''Islamic Earth''', the list goes on. One other notable example is the self-explanatory [[Stupid Jetpack Hitler|"Reich-5"]].

** We also have a minor [[Deconstruction]] in [[Multiversal Conqueror|Centrum's]] universe: There, [[The House of Normandy|Prince William the Aetheling]] didn't die in a ship crash, allowing him to unite the British Isles and start the empire far, far ahead of schedule, effectively skipping the [[High Middle Ages]] and going directly to [[The Renaissance]], with the '''Angevin Empire''' leading the whole way. The ''cultural ideals'', however, did not evolve to fit with the tech level, with their feudalistic leanings eventually leading to a [[World War III|full-scale nuclear and biological war]]. By the time the survivors somehow managed to pull their act together, they've evolved into a completely different society as a backlash.

 

* ''[[Chrono Cross]]'' fell hard into this trope. Guardia, a kingdom that stood for a ''thousand years,'' defeated Magus and his army, and is now defended by Crono, Marle, and Lucca who are mighty time traveling heroes... is taken down by '''Porre''' on the southern continent, in the span of less than 15 years.

** We don't really know the extent of the changes caused by their time travel. It might very well be that the elements from ''[[Chrono Cross]]'' gave an unfair advantage over natural magic from ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'', especially when trained in their use by Dalton. If they had elements at all. We also don't know the order some of the events happen, so Lucca's death could very well have happened prior to the war ever starting, and Crono & Marle (and maybe Lucca) would not likely have the capabilities to stand up to a total army, especially if they had superior training in their abilities.

* ''[[Freedom Fighters (video game)|Freedom Fighters]]'' might qualify as this. The point of divergence is 1945: '''Russia''' drops The Bomb on Berlin, instead of the USA dropping it on Japan. As a result, Russia takes over the world.

 

* A single comic of ''[[Dresden Codak]]'' has the protagonist writing "'''''Dinosaur'''''wank" alternate history fiction. The asteroids that caused the Permian and Cretaceous extinctions didn't hit the earth in her alternate history, resulting in absolutely absurd symbiotic relationships between species, including a pair of species where one evolved for intelligence while the other evolved for obedience and dexterity.

** [[Somewhere a Palaeontologist Is Crying|It's not really correct to call it "Dinosaurwank", since dinosaurs never existed in that universe]].

 

* The various ''Strangerverse'' timelines from [[AlternateHistory.com]] ''invokes'' this trope. The entire point of the timeline is to have a certain country that will eventually end up covering the entire Earth. The story itself is that a time traveler from the future came to the past gave an [[Applied Phlebotinum]] to a major historical figure that will help his country in doing this task. Examples include:

** [[The Britwank Empire]] ('''Great Britain''')

 

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[[Category:Alternate History Tropes]]