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Originally Posted by Astromancer
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I've often thought of a sort of 'reverse Britannica-6' where, instead of Princess Charlotte surviving childbirth as the divergence, it's Queen Victoria dying during her first childbirth in 1840 - leading to Ernest Augustus as king.
Instead of the hopeful and wild Great Britain or Britannica-6, or the at least robust and industrious Victorian Great Britain, Britain is reeling from the deaths of two beloved female monarchs in childbirth, and under the reactionary conservative rule of King August.
It's 1848, just eight years since the divergence, and the 'Springtime of Nations' has hit August's England. Things could go two ways: a crackdown that leads to a more conservative and aristocratic authoritarian Britain & Europe (think Kaiser's Germany), or a relaxation (even abdication by August and the crown taken up by his blind son George) perhaps becoming a model on the Continent.
Q6, and obviously Infinity is working for the latter, Centrum for the former.
What's more, there are signals in Interworld and even The Pile that this world is unstable, could still be an echo wobbling post-change - and could still move quantum!
This then begs the question of how it shifted in the first place. Was it natural, like parallels, or induced, like altered echoes? Both Infinity and Centrum only recently found this world, but the change is recent enough that it could have been a renegade from either, swagman who hated Victoria, etc.
The world is named August-1. August-2 is a close world in 1968 where the only difference is that February never lost its two days to July & August, so the calendar is different, but everything else is the same (except some dates - America celebrates its independence on The Second of July, while Texas Independence Day is February 30th...).