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4[[quoteright:300:[[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIII https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/5093a6cc8db37_preview-300_2695.jpg]]]]
5[[caption-width-right:300:I pledge allegiance to [[UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington King George I]] of the Most Sovereign Kingdom — The United States of America...]]
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7->''"In 1963's ''Literature/TheManInTheHighCastle'', Creator/PhilipKDick imagined the assassination of [[UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt FDR]] as a 'point of divergence,' in history, triggering a domino of events starting with a weak Vice President Garner taking office. Unlike FDR, Garner maintains the stance of isolationism through the war. The Allies lose without America's help and, shortly thereafter, the Axis powers turn their attention to conquering the U.S. Which they do, in 1948."''
8-->-- '''Website/{{Cracked}}''', [[https://www.cracked.com/article_18360_6-assassination-attempts-that-almost-f2340ked-world.html "6 Assassination Attempts that Almost F#@cked the World"]]
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12
13A genre of SpeculativeFiction stories (sometimes called "Uchronia" or "{{Anachronism|Stew}}"), set in a world where one or more historical events unfolded quite differently than they did in the real world. Essentially, this is WhatCouldHaveBeen turned into an entire narrative genre.
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15Often set some time after the event (called a "PointOfDivergence", or POD, by fans of the genre), such stories typically describe a PresentDay world vastly changed by the difference, or follow another major historical event in light of the change. Sometimes linked with a TimeTravel story; the point of divergence is often caused by travelers from "our" timeline (OTL in alt-history parlance) seeking to effect a desired change. The protagonists may be {{original character}}s or [[HistoricalDomainCharacter actual historical figures]]. LampshadeHanging occurs often in these types of stories (an AllohistoricalAllusion); often, a character will stop to muse on what the world would be like if history had gone the way it did in the real world. Which, we suppose, is TruthInTelevision... after all, lampshading this trope is the entire point of alternate histories.
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17The setting of an alternate history is often described as a WhatIf. Popular alternate history settings include:
18* What if UsefulNotes/WorldWarI never happened?
19* What if UsefulNotes/WorldWarII [[HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct never happened]]?
20* What if the Central Powers had won World War I?
21* What if [[AlternateHistoryNaziVictory the Axis Powers had won]] World War II (see page quote)?
22* What if the UsefulNotes/ColdWar had turned hot and given way to WorldWarIII? (Works of this type made ''during'' the Cold War count as SpeculativeFiction, but works made post-1991 count as this trope.)
23* What if fascism or communism rose to power within the Anglosphere (e.g. via the American Communist Party or the British Union of Fascists) in the 1930s?
24* What if [[RussiaTakesOverTheWorld the Soviet Union had won]] the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, never dissolved while still leaving the Cold War intact, or never existed (typically painted as the result of the Russian Civil War ending in a Tsarist victory)?
25* What if the United States and the South Vietnamese government had won UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar?
26* What if the Confederates had won (or at least stalemated) UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar?
27* What if a famous assassination victim (e.g. UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar, UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln, UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy, UsefulNotes/MartinLutherKingJr, or Music/JohnLennon) had survived (whether because the attempt failed or never occurred)?
28* What if a famous assassination attempt survivor (e.g. UsefulNotes/AndrewJackson, Creator/AndyWarhol, UsefulNotes/GeraldFord, or UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan) ''[[FictionalizedDeathAccount was]]'' [[FictionalizedDeathAccount killed]]? Or an infamous assassin picked another target instead (e.g. Mark David Chapman going after Music/DavidBowie instead of John Lennon)?
29* What if UsefulNotes/RichardNixon was impeached, successfully weathered Watergate, or never ordered the burglary that began the scandal to begin with?
30* What if Music/TheBeatles never broke up-- or never formed?
31* What if a major social movement (e.g. abolitionism with or without a Civil War, the UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement, first/second-wave UsefulNotes/{{Feminism}}, or the LGBT+ rights movement) never happened or was successfully suppressed?
32* What if UsefulNotes/{{Napoleon|Bonaparte}} had won the Napoleonic Wars? Or never even rose to power?
33* What if X Religion (Buddhism, Christianity, Happyology, etc.) never caught on? Or caught on somewhere different?
34* What if UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire had [[AmericaIsStillAColony successfully suppressed]] UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution?
35* What if a key battle of a war had a different outcome?
36* What if a particular pivotal individual never came to the position that made them famous or was never born to begin with?
37* What if the UsefulNotes/RomanEmpire (or [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire some]] [[UsefulNotes/GenghisKhan other]] [[UsefulNotes/ByzantineEmpire famous]] [[UsefulNotes/TurksWithTroops former]] [[UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan empire]]) had never fallen? Alternately, what if the Roman Republic never fell and the Empire never rose?
38* What if the [[ModernMayincatecEmpire Aztecs had defeated Cortez and his allies]]?
39* [[VikingsInAmerica What if the Norse had formed permanent settlements in North America?]]
40* What if Europe never colonized the rest of the world (particularly Africa and/or the Americas) to begin with?
41* What if certain tools or weapons (firearms, radio, space travel) had been [[GivingRadioToTheRomans cost-effective and widespread earlier]], later, or [[AliensNeverInventedTheWheel not at all]]?
42* What if a particular presidential election (common examples include particularly pivotal and/or controversial elections like 1860, 1896, 1912, 1948, 1960, 1968 and 2000) had [[WhatCouldHaveBeen turned out differently]]?
43* What if the [[ApocalypseHow K–Pg asteroid]] had never hit, or hit at a different time?
44* What if an important [[HistoricalDomainCharacter historical figure]] didn't die early, or ''did'' die early?
45* What if one [[ButterflyOfDoom small and seemingly irrelevant detail]] was changed?
46* What if something [[AlienSpaceBats completely unforeseeable]] occurred?
47* More recently but still just as popular, what if [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror the September 11 attacks]] and/or the Great Recession never happened?
48
49A secondary type, sometimes called "honorary alternate history", consists of SpeculativeFiction stories written a considerable period of time ago, and set in a time period which has since passed. This is what happens to stories set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture when the twenty minutes have passed. This type of unintentional alternate history has its own trope: FailedFutureForecast.
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51Examples of alternate history can be found in literature [[OlderThanFeudalism as far back as the 1st century BC]]; the Roman historian Livy wrote a treatise about [[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/From_the_Founding_of_the_City/Book_9#17 what might have happened]] (''Ab Urbe Condita'', book 9, chapters 17-19) if UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat had invaded western Europe rather than the Mideast. The genre has become increasingly popular since the late 20th century, perhaps because it was a tumultuous century rich in "what if" opportunities, though TV and movie versions are less common. And given the material, it's not beyond the imagination to consider them FanFiction of history itself.
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53In real life, Counterfactual History is a real discipline, looking at reasonable conjectures. For example, historians have carefully examined the threat of invasion of Britain by Germany in 1940 and suggested that, though British defense was rushed and rudimentary at that point, so were German attack plans. Thus, Germany would almost certainly have established a beach head, but would not have succeeded in maintaining it.[[note]]The German navy was already inferior to the British navy before the start of the war and that inferiority was made much worse by severe losses suffered by the German navy during the conquest of Norway. Thus they would have no way of stopping the Royal Navy from establishing control of the Channel and cutting off any German troops landed in England from supply and reinforcement.[[/note]] Unlike its literary equivalent, scholarly counter-factual history tends to focus on the short-term effects, as extrapolating long-term trends into the future has proven to be tricky even for what ''did'' happen.
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55It is different from an AlternateUniverse, where the difference is in the fictional elements of the story. "What if Superman's ship [[Comicbook/SupermanRedSon landed in Soviet Russia]]?" or "What if Charles Xavier [[ComicBook/AgeOfApocalypse died before creating the X-Men]]?" are examples. However, the alternate universe may lead to alternate history as well: [[AlternateUniverseReedRichardsIsAwesome Alternate Reed Richards may change human society]], Dr. Doom may give up [[ThrowAwayCountry ruling Latveria]] and begin to conquer or destroy actual countries, or Red Skull [[PresidentEvil may be elected President]]. In those cases, the alternate history is a side consequence, not the basic premise.
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57Bear in mind that, other than the point of divergence and the consequences of it, the setting must still be close to the real world. A real time period filled with unrealistic stuff at all corners is not alternate history, it's something else. For example, the middle ages filled with elves, dwarves, orcs and magic is a MedievalEuropeanFantasy, and a more modern setting with them is an UrbanFantasy. If the point of divergence is an unrealistic event (for example, "what if an advanced alien ship crashed in Germany during WWII and the Nazis got all sorts of alien tech from it?"), then see WeirdHistoricalWar.
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59Often, the change's ultimate source is a ButterflyOfDoom. If "historically unimportant" characters are involved, expect InSpiteOfANail. For less drastic changeovers (such as slight differences between their world and ours), see NeverWasThisUniverse. Some settings will undo these changes with RubberBandHistory.
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61See the '''AlternateHistoryTropes''' index for a list of common plot devices in this genre. The plausibility and realism of Alternate History is measured on the SlidingScaleOfAlternateHistoryPlausibility. If the differences are unintentional, see ArtisticLicenseHistory.
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63For examples of Alternate History work, see AlternateHistoryLiterature and AlternateHistoryWebOriginal.
64----
65!!Examples:
66[[index]]
67[floatboxright:
68'''Subcategories:'''
69+ AlternateHistoryLiterature
70+ AlternateHistoryWebOriginal
71]
72* AlternateHistory/AnimeAndManga
73* AlternateHistory/ComicBooks
74* AlternateHistory/FanWorks
75* AlternateHistory/{{Film}}
76* AlternateHistory/{{Literature}}
77* AlternateHistory/LiveActionTV
78* AlternateHistory/TabletopGames
79* AlternateHistory/VideoGames
80* AlternateHistory/{{Webcomics}}
81* AlternateHistory/WebOriginal
82* AlternateHistory/WesternAnimation
83* AlternateHistory/OtherMedia
84[[/index]]

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