Returning to Dis' PoD:
- If that Incan-Peru thing is neither Inca Empire nor Peru, then what is it? [Something] of the Andes?
- That larger North American state, is it Francophone or what?
- Portugal. Was Portugal thwarted/considerably hindered in its bid to dominate the Indian Ocean trade? Because that might explain several things.
Going back to my PoD now, as I apparently "forgot" to answer some of Dachs' questions:
In the event that this is made into a NES along the lines that have been indicated by many persons in WWW3, who would the player control, the King or the Cardinal?
The Cardinal, duh.
...and you gave them lots of Portugal's old colonies plus the former Belgian Congo, just for jollies?
Yessss... Well, someone had to seize them and the Flemings were on the roll, so.
When did this republic form - was it made out of Flanders in the aftermath of the Fifty Years' War, or did it arise in some other pleasantly destructive manner?
It was actually quite boring; they gradually separated themselves from the HRE, had some local power-struggles and mini-revolutions (but it was less radical than in OTL, so there were more aristocratic elements left in the end than in OTL), and pulled themselves together to a) defend themselves from France and b) compete with England/Britain. They still did get partly incorporated into the HRE at a later date (early 17th century), though it was a very loose incorporation that merely allowed them to focus on assorted colonial pursuits under the Imperial umbrella; this arrangement gradually disintegrated, though an alliance was retained.
The Fifty Years War left the country in shambles, with many old institutions quite seriously damaged; this paved the way for a somewhat more unitarian form of government, plus various social reforms, though those went nowhere near what the assorted radicals demanded and still demand.
Ilmen. a.k.a. Ilmen Slavs. But in this case it's used for Novgorodians and the Slavic inhabitants of the area of modern Tver (the state, not the city) in general.
And how did these Baltic Wars shape up - were they along the lines of a constant struggle between Denmark and the Empire, with varying coalitions on both sides, or was there something else entirely driving the conflict?
Initially it was a three-way struggle between Denmark, HRE and Tver (Sweden and Poland sometimes tried to act up as well, but nothing good came out of it for any of them, except perhaps for Poland during the more recent phase of the struggle). Eventually the Danes fell from their zenith and since then it was either the HRE against Denmark, or the HRE against Tver, or both against the HRE, and sometimes they brought in France as well (just once, actually, in the early 19th century).
who took over Sicily in the absence of the Hautevilles
All kinds of people, let's just say that it's potential was squandered far more than in OTL. Ultimately, some local noble got the throne after the Egyptians were finally thrown out by a popular uprising in mid-18th century.
did Italy unify through that 1840s war that you mentioned between France and the HRE, or was it in the aftermath of the Egyptian collapse, or through sheer nationalistic revival with minor support from someone like Egypt, Sicily, France, or Hungary, or a combination of the above, or something entirely different upon which you will spend a good long time elucidating?
Lets just say that when the Age of Nationalism came, it hit the Holy Roman Empire (heretofore in control over Italy, amongst other places, though via a puppet aristocratic republic confederacy type thing) very hard. Control over Italy had partly declined over time as the Empire was busy in other areas, but was fully overthrown later in the 19th century (probably not without some Egyptian and Chernigovian support); Poland also broke away (with fairly explicit Tverite assistance), but elsewhere the Imperials were ultimately able to maintain law and order, scaling back to regroup and deal with the economic crisis before taking any action to reassert hegemony.
After the hoops I've had to jump through I'm not entirely trusting of ArcMap's scaling feature, so something else is going to probably force me to reconstitute it either today or tomorrow anyway.
