Alternate History Considerations

 Alternate History:

Considering what might have changed had William of Normandy lost the Battle of Hastings...

https://www.quora.com/How-would-history-change-if-King-Harold-Godwinson-had-won-the-Battle-of-Hastings

Geoffrey Richard Driscoll-Tobin

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Mathematics, physics, programming, engineering, historyUpvoted by 

Brian Waldorf

, M.A. History, Arizona State University (2019)5y

Originally Answered: What would have happened if William the conquerer had lost the battle of Hastings?

There are various ways William could have lost during the battle:

1. When his horse was cut down and threw him facedown into the mud, if Earl Gyrth had not been intercepted he would have slain William. His army surrenders.
2. William survives but still loses the battle. His army remnants surrender.
3. William dies, but his subordinates continue the battle and win. Alan Rufus makes his father Eudon (Edward the Confessor’s older cousin) king of England.
4. William dies, his subordinates continue the battle and lose. His army remnants surrender.

Now, if William dies, then his eldest son Robert Curthose is too young (not to mention incompetent) to rule Normandy. I see trouble for the Duchy. How much trouble?

Conan II, Duke of Brittany, legitimate heir to Normandy, who is already leading an exceedingly powerful army, seizes Normandy in a lightning campaign in October 1066.

In our timeline, Conan attacked northern Anjou first and took its supposedly impregnable frontline castles before he marched into Mayenne and allegedly died of poison before he could reach Normandy.

In the “William dies” scenario, Normandy is in turmoil, dissension and civil war, and most Norman citizens welcome Conan as the strongest candidate for Duke and the one most likely to restore order.

Conan is descended from Alfred the Great through the Carolingian king Louis IV of France. He has great credentials, and the power, to rule both France and England.

Breton government has a light hand and a penchant for wealth creation, its officials being jurists and merchants. They are also keen on scientific teaching and learning.

Consequently, a cross-Channel empire is formed, like Henry II’s a century later, but larger, stronger, richer, better educated and definitely popular.

Expect accelerated political, social, economic and technological progress, creating a modern world without the intervening oppression, fanaticism and civil wars.

Medieval Research (for historical fantasy)

Image credit: https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2017/04/chaucer-hitteth-the-web.html--though the actual picture isn't from a copy of the Canterbury Tales, but a piece of fan-fiction--well, sorta. As the article says, "John Lydgate was such a super-fan of Chaucer that in his poem, The Siege of Thebes, he imagines himself bumping into the Canterbury Tales pilgrims on their road to Canterbury. This is Lydgate bumping into Chaucer's pilgrims, from 'The Siege of Thebes', by John Lydgate, Royal MS 18 D II, f. 148r

Pseudo-medievalism that simply reinforces misconceptions about the historical middle Ages has really annoyed me, and I tend to make my "medievalish" fantasy mirror the actual world in the details of daily life and culture more often than not. 

For that purpose:

(This post will probably eventually fractalize, but until then it'll just keep getting lots of updates.)

Names:

Update: I've found much more reliable and authentic sourcing for names: 

For really digging into medieval names, this is a very thorough site:

https://www.s-gabriel.org/names/index.shtml --has links to actual contemporary records (like this 13th-century Parisian census), organized by culture and time (more generally), here.

And then you can go look up the meanings and variations in this extensive dictionary drawn from real medieval sources (with references!) that includes the history of each name, when, where, and what variations have been used: https://dmnes.org/names

Medieval treatment of wounds:

https://www.quora.com/How-were-battle-wounds-treated-during-the-Middle-Ages

Medieval pilgrimages:

https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/pilgrimages-holy-land-and-communities-holy-land

Getting to the Holy Land overland was about 1500+ miles (from Paris to Jerusalem is about the same as LA to DC), and took months (going 25 miles a day, 60 days). They often began traveling in the spring with the hope of making it back before winter.  

Overland was more dangerous, especially after the Turks, in the 12th century, took over many of the areas crossed (eastern Europe to kingdom of Hungary and the Balkans, to Constantinople, to Anatolia, a region in western Asia Minor, and over the Taurus Mountains to Antioch, a Syrian seaport at the extreme northeastern tip of the Mediterranean Sea. From there they would proceed down the eastern coast of the Mediterranean through western Syria to Palestine and on to Jerusalem). 

And then the dangers: 

"A spring snowstorm could blow up, rivers could rise above their banks during the spring thaw, and bridges were often weakened by the ravages of winter. Whatever route they took, pilgrims confronted the danger of injury or illness, and many arrived in the Holy Land sick or exhausted from the journey. Some ran out of money. A drought during the summer could make food scarce, thereby causing it to become more expensive to purchase. Those who traveled by sea also had a long and difficult journey. Storms at sea could capsize the ships and send pilgrims to their deaths.

One constant danger was bandits. Pilgrims were easy targets, for they typically traveled with few defenses, although a nobleman and his companions might be armed, and prosperous merchants sometimes hired armed guards. Bandits knew that the pilgrims carried money and luxury goods to trade for food and other supplies along the way, and many robbers made a good living off them. Matters were no easier at sea. Pilgrim ships were frequently the prey of pirates, and the commanders of these ships had to go out of their way to avoid areas where pirates were known to lurk.

Another problem related to banditry was extortion. Along the way, local landowners and even entire villages demanded "toll" money for safe passage. Anyone who resisted paying the toll might be killed or at least mugged for money. In the Alps many local nobles held bridges and demanded a toll from pilgrims before allowing them to cross."

Image credit: https://www.istockphoto.com/illustrations/medical-symbols

And interesting to consider the Book of Numbers (Moses and the staff that cured snake bites) and Greek mythology (staff of Ascpelius and Hermes) so entwined in this now-common image

Medical Research (for fantasy story)

(or rather series of stories, the first being tentatively under the title abbreviated as TDS, though I imagine it will prove useful for others as well, and I'll just add to it as related topics arise):

I tend towards realism in whatever I'm writing, and fantasy is no different, so my recent research has included:

Amputation:

https://pamhealth.com/company/company-updates/life-after-amputation-what-to-expect-for-the-new-amputee (very helpful)

https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/definition-amputation

Strokes:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2902496/ (or stroke mimics caused by poison, rather).

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/stroke/symptoms-causes/syc-20350113 (general info on symptoms (including slurred speech, paralysis on right side, headaches, vision issues, etc.) and treatment (emergency treatments consists mostly of drugs that work on the blood to remove clot causing ischemic type--most common).

These aren't all the sites I looked at, but the most comprehensive, containing information in one place rather than scattered over the several others that I skimmed.

Blood-shot eyes: 

https://www.health.com/condition/eye-health/red-eyes-bloodshot

Treatment of wounds in the Middle Ages:

https://www.quora.com/How-were-battle-wounds-treated-during-the-Middle-Ages

Knockouts and concussions:

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-if-a-person-is-knocked-out-cold-for-more-than-a-couple-of-minutes-will-it-suffer-severe-brain-damages/answer/Chris-Price-69

Questing for the "ordinary" face?

Research topic 1: The ordinary face

First reveal of a detail in my story: the protagonist is a chameleon- a human one, that is (I know a book with a real chameleon for a main character could be quite original and inventive, but that is not for this work-in-progress).

But how to describe a character that doesn’t look singular at all, who could just as easily look like a dozen other people, and wouldn’t draw a second stare from anyone, or would be difficult for anyone to specifically remember and describe?

I first tried to find out if there was such a phenomenon as a “common face”.  Besides dozens of dermatologists’ articles that insisted everyone has different and unique skin, I most frequently ran across a study conducted by ------- in -------.  This study was interested in collecting faces and comparing them for rather different purposes than mine- to analyze what different peoples find beautiful in human faces from around the globe.  To this end, they collected pictures (“samples”) 100-1000?) of faces in various countries, and then “averaged” them by digitally combining the pictures with a sort of overlapping software.  The end results gave more even, balanced faces that didn’t quite look like any of the faces, but were generally rated more attractive in the subsequent part of their study, wherein they asked participants to rate the attractiveness of three different faces, one being a real face, the second being a combination of two, and the third being an average of several faces.  Interesting, but not particularly helpful for me.

So I resorted to quora.  I have a feeling this won’t be the last time I turn to that varied collection of experts and enthusiasts to address some curiosity of mine.  But even though one answer basically revisited the ----- study, I found plenty that was more on track, and certainly more intriguing (helpfulness is a quality I’ll determine partly at the end of this post, and partly when the books is finished- and hopefully published).

Even if you’ve never written a description of a fictional character, you’ve no doubt found it easier to describe an individual to someone else when you’ve got some marked feature to work with.  A cleft in his chin, a scar by his ear, thick eyebrows, small eyes, a crooked nose, a square jaw- these are all features you’ve at least heard of, read and can picture.  They often serve as a convenient shorthand for action writers in identifying unnamed characters who appear quickly in the midst of the action, but aren’t distinct or important enough to get names of their own.  However, what you  may not have found is that when a person doesn’t have something unusual about them in their appearance to latch onto, it becomes possible for people to mistake them for others.  One gentleman volunteered his experience having a ‘normal face’ that has gotten strangers from around the world to come up to him and insist they know him from somewhere- just where they’re not sure, but whether it’s a movie or an acquaintance, they see something in his face that seems familiar.  He just happens to know that, since he hasn’t been to that part of the world before, and he’s not famous, neither possibility is true, and they must instead be constructing from his “ordinary features” the face of someone else.

That would cause rather different scenarios than I’d originally thought of for my chameleon protagonist.  But another answer gave some more insight that seems to make more sense with what I’ve observed.  The actual appearance of the nondescript person is found in a certain kind of expression rather than a type of face- a dull, inexpressive and slightly stupid look that makes any face anything but memorable.  The opposite of charismatic, it’s apparently something that most actors and security personnel learn how to do- so it being a skill for my protagonist doesn’t sound implausible. 

In conclusion, it appears that there is such a thing as an “ordinary face”- but it might not have the effect of just blending in that I originally thought it might.  On the other hand, there is a way to intentionally look forgettable, developed as a skill rather than acquired naturally.  Sounds workable for my MC, who will probably be both plain and adept at blending in.

Ultimately, however, all this research into what makes faces memorable has raised some other questions for me:  What makes faces memorable?  Is it regularity in the features, or similarity to the majority of other faces we’ve seen in various aspects, a combination, or something else (something personal but not purely physical, like charisma, expression, etc)?

What I find incredible is that to Our Maker, we are all Unforgettable, each perfectly unique and just as He intended us to look.  A very comforting fact when accepted, though nevertheless a source of questioning and doubt before that.

But, as I do have to focus on actually writing this novel, rather than exploring every tempting rabbit hole of enquiry that presents itself along the way (those are both my joy, help, and bane), I will save that search for another time.