So is the PoD thirteenth century or later?
Thirteenth century, but not within your area of expertise.
I am not really sure about that civil war in particular, but my point is that up to the mid-14th century or so, the
overall history of the Byzantine Empire remained within the same (very) general course, though with many small and medium-sized accumulated changes and would-be divergences that were made null by chaotic power-struggles and later on by the rise of the Ottomans. After that things get diverged in a big way in that region as well.
I think that a major reason for Zhu Di's cautious approach to how far the treasure fleet would go, and indeed where it would go, is attributed toward the fact that he was paranoid about Zhu Yunwen's very suspicious death. As I stated before the PoD removes that suspicion by having Zhu Yunwen's corpse readily identifiable. Hence without that thought pressing on his mind he reached out more in terms of exploration as well as securing and widening the reach of Chinese maritime trade.
It is true that the main purpose of the treasure fleet was to refill the imperial coffers after the very costly civil war, but as I said before, Zhu Yunwen's death limited the full potential and scope that the treasure fleet could have potentially achieved. Obviously I can't say for certain whether it would have happened or not because Zhu Yunwen WAS burnt beyond recognition and hence one cannot know if Zhu Di would have ordered exploration or not.
That being said the motives behind this exploration would have been for trade.
That doesn't really answer my question. All the trade you could want is in the opposite direction. The Chinese were not, to my knowledge and with certain exceptions, particularly keen on exploration for its own sake, but there is always Africa or something to explore.
however the major reason was to replenish the imperial coffers.
If so, then that's pretty ironic considering the results.
having the outcome of the 14th century struggle for dominance in Anatolia among the Turkish successor emirates to the Seljuq state, with the Crusaders and the Byzantines repeatedly intervening go EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as in OTL when there were several other, stronger candidates for leadership among the Turkish states alone, never mind the neighbors both East and West.
It seems to me, however, that the biggest stretch was having the Ottomans come into being and survive early on more or less the same as in OTL. I recognise that they had some good competitors, but I think they
did have a fairly good starting position, and their victory was far from the least likely outcome. The struggle itself worked out rather differently; it's just that the ultimate outcome of the early-to-mid 14th century parts of it was similar to our own.
Let me put it this way: I could've eradicated the Ottomans on a whim (I considered doing this at first) and so created yet another red herring in addition to the many already in place. You are having a hard enough time solving this as it is - would you really have liked it if I added something that would give you a
good reason to think that the PoD was one thing or another that happened to the Byzantine Empire?
Especially on a Guess-the-PoD map where putting in an unnecessary number of butterfly effects just obscures the original PoD and makes the exercise pointless.
Or in other words, this.
I'm disappointed that you hold me in such low esteem to think that I'm a racist
Pretty sure that's not what he meant.
So is the PoD thirteenth century or later?
