A Strong Lance And A Missing Fox

A Strong Lance And A Missing Fox:
In this world the armies of Granada do not the receive the two ill omens that demoralised them in 1492. Thanks to higher morale and sheer luck they are able to hold off the Spanish and battle and preserve their kingdom. A Spain still distracted by Granada refuses to fund the fantastical ideas of a certain Genoese merchant/explorer and instead focuses its efforts on completing the Reconquista. Butterflies flap from there.

The Portuguese discover the Americas via Brazil and fail to really capitalise on their discovery like the Spanish in OTL. The English, French, Spanish (Granada fell in the early 1500s) and to a lesser extent Dutch and Swedish instead steal most of the Americas from them. Different players end up in different areas but overall the Amerindians end up in as sorry a state as OTL. The Colonial Era takes off from there and the world is connected through lines of trade. The establishment of these routes leads to cultural exchange, cultural diaspora and eventually imperialism and expansionism across the world. Eventually there is a new age of intellectualism and an Enlightenment equivalent as well. Rebellions and revolutions afflict the nations of the world and radically shift power balances that have existed for centuries. An Industrial Revolution takes place and changes the world forever as mass production raises living standards, sparks new invention and leads to even more free thinking whether for good or ill.

Today a major power in the world is the Empire of Feng China. It took a while for China to catch up with the Europeans once industrialisation began but thankfully butterflies had already led to a different dynasty overthrowing the Ming. These guys were a more practical and open minded lot and remembered the old Ming tradition of seafaring and exploration. Feng China is a massive industrial power that, whilst confined politically, is an immense economic power and has participated in cooperative military missions several times already. China's modernisation was a slow and arduous process with many rural areas still fairly backward and poor but at the very least the Eastern half of the country is wealthy and modern. China managed to dodge the Manchu and the cultural humiliation of OTL as well as anything resembling the Warlord Period, World War II and the Communist government. Instead China has seen a continuation of several cultural traditions which have often stifled their development but have also preserved a lot more of their culture and heritage. China's power has finally emerged in the influence they have over other nations. Their empire is centralised and (generally) homogenised and their sheer economic productivity gives them an immense amount of power.

The United Kingdom of New England and Mexica is another major power though they have yet to reach anything like Great Power status. They are formed from the larger and more important former English colonies in the Americas that successfully revolted and won their independence. Linguistically the nation has an English speaking upper class a working class that speaks the various Amerindian languages and dialects and a middle class that speaks a strange amalgamation of the two (dialects depend on where they live). Currently there is a move to establish English as the only language to be taught in the fairly new state education system but there are serious protests from people worried about cultural whitewashing. They have built a small alliance system of their own and are a major exporter of oil, an industry they are expanding through synthetics and oil based products.

The Germanic Federation rose to supremacy in Europe in the 19th Century after a series of wars that finally led to popular nationalist uprisings in most of the German States. The Federation is a very loose organisation with the cultural divisions of the different states and polities of Germany very well represented. Autonomy is still prized in nearly every German state and the voices calling for proper unification are often drowned out by their opposition. However this structure has allowed them to absorb a lot of different groups. The Hapsburgs were eventually absorbed after a small constitution curtailed their attempts to subvert the other German states. The Netherlands were the most difficult to annex but they too eventually joined and added their colonial empire to the Federation as well. German colonial efforts were mostly individual affairs with the Netherlands taking the lead followed by Austria and then a distant Prussia. Life in Germany is varied depending on the region you live in but Austrian culture and Prussian militarism are becoming increasingly popular and may serve as a base for some kind of homogenisation movement. Germany is also a land of the sciences with numerous new discoveries being pioneered in universities and laboratories across the nation. Many are superfluous things but a lot of the greatest achievements in chemistry and physics have come out of the Germanic Federation and many big business owners look forward to a future where German workmanship and the powers of SCIENCE build a mighty utopia from which they will rule the world and bring about a Golden Age for mankind.

Britain was united in a slightly different manner and the Tudors lasted longer. The monarchy is still around and fairly influential compared to OTL but these guys are Catholics (as is most of the rest of the country) and descended from a branch of the House of Orange. After the loss of their American territories they took a while to properly recover and whilst their investments in Asia never panned out like they would in OTL, their African territories have more than made up for it (sort of). They are currently building as many rail-roads, factories and modern cities as they can in order to boost productivity. They abolished slavery in their empire well over a century and a half ago but they have still used a lot of, at times, forced labour and only recently dropped the institutional discrimination against the dark skinned people of their empire. Whilst they are Catholic the British have often been separate from the rest of the Catholic Church and have turned rather secular in recent decades s their interests cause conflict with the other Catholic nations. Britain also started the industrial revolution like OTL and have only just begun a new period of scientific research and development in order to catch up with their rivals once again.

Butterflies led to the Ottomans having a temporarily more successful career in the Ukraine and other nearby areas. The Muscovites were beaten down to the point where they never recovered and instead the Novgorodians took their place in Northern Russia at least. A union with Sweden, who took control of the growing empire, led to further growth and expansion across Northern Asia. The Empire of Sweden-Novgorod is a strange nation with a more Nordic culture than OTL Russia and a more 'Scandinavian' attitude as well. They have also been far more efficient and competent as well and avoided the massive instability, reactionism and revolutions of OTL Russia. Wars with the Ottomans, Polish and Chinese have gone back and forth in terms of favour but the Russians have had a decent run at expansion and empire-building. An ATL New Sweden was more successful in this TL and has become increasingly more independent minded over the last few decades and a lot of political groups have emerged with the most moderate demanding more autonomy at the least.

Technology is at about OTL Mid 1950s but without nuclear power. Progress on atomic reactions are close to success but they have yet to complete anything yet. There have been a few big wars in the past century but nothing close to OTL World War II at the very least. The World War I equivalent saw the collapse of the Spanish, Japanese and French alliance system and the dismantling of most of their empires as well as the confirmation of German rule in Continental Europe. The Ottomans joined the British, German, Swedish and Chinese alliance in the last few years but got little out of it for their troubles. Things have been getting rather restless in the Ottoman Empire as of late and a lot of radical ideologues have begun to spring out of the woodwork as people become increasingly dissatisfied with a Sultan who has  consistently proven himself to be an incompetent and a Court (still ruled by Janissaries) that is widely known as being indolent and corrupt. Meanwhile the Empire of New France is still smarting from the hits they took in the Great War. They proved too strong and distant for the victorious powers to keep attacking them, they grabbed what was left of the French nuclear project and they have picked up the mantle that their homeland dropped. The current Emperor (a former military prodigy) is a bit of a Napoleon type figure and he has plans involving his neighbours, well thought out plans at that.

Credit to B.Munro/Quantumbranching for the organization of Sweden.