No, or rather not directly.
Generated by the Swiss, or was this an Italian or Low Countries thing? Also uh when did they pop up?
Neither of the three; the original movement appeared in the early 15th century, but it changed, evolved and spread quite a lot since then.
Kızılbaş? Some other kind of religious-related issue, expanding on the usual 16th century Ottoman brigandage, government rebel, and peasant rebel issues in Anatolia? I suppose now would be a good idea to ask if that Iranian thing is Safawiya or Turkoman or whatever it is.
All of the former were definitely a part of it, but not more than that. The latter would be a pertinent question indeed; it is neither of the two, though somewhat closer to the former in some regards I suppose.
Would that be a first-order effect of the PoD, secondary, tertiary...? Might it be something to do with the Nicopolis crusade?
Tertiary, and the Balkan crusades don't have a direct connection to this.
...or was the PoD related to the final stages of the Order's struggle with Lithuania for Samogitia? Or, in fact, the Order at all...
No.
Hmm, or maybe Vytautas managed to perform well against that Golden Horde army on the Vorskla...
Well, not exactly, but Lithuania
did do rather better (and rather
more) against the Golden Horde in this world, at least early on.
So, a Slavic-ruled state? Claims descent from the grand princes of Kiev?
Yes (though it would be more accurate to say that it's
Russian-ruled, what with ethnic complexity and all) and yes and to be fair its
current rulers
do as a matter of fact descend from a branch of a Rurikid branch that actually did rule Kiev on several occasions.
Under what circumstances did the Prussian branch of the Order seize Kurland?
Under the circumstances of internal power struggles in the Order, religious dissension, assorted foreign intervention and, ofcourse, the confusing set of intrigues that ended with the establishment of the Kingdom of Livonia. The Livonians and their Danish allies at first tried to secure Kurland as well, but the newly reformed (no, not in
that way) Order was propped up by both Sweden and, rather less enthusiastically and somewhat unexpectedly, the Gediminids. Ultimately after a few years of somewhat inconclusive fighting skilled diplomatic maneuverings by the Order's leadership managed to keep the situation from dissolving into something like the OTL Livonian War, even though Livonia itself remained independent and pro-Danish (and un-Catholic, though secretly the Grandmaster was really only too happy about that).
So it is ruled by Lithuanians. Is that the area of the PoD, then?
No, but it was of huge importance for the PoD's eventual effects on greater European affairs.
