OOC: Too late, plot twists and so forth make that solution unworkable.
IC:
The End of This Story.
History did not end on December 31st 1790. This story, about the return of chaos, war and revolution to one of the infinitely-numbered alternate Earths, probably did; though ofcourse as all true stories it was never-ending, this was, at least, a logical ending point.
The outcome of the First Worldwar and the treaties of 1754 was the hegemony of France - now reformed into the Holy Roman Empire - over the world, its allies in EUA and Japan (future Greater East Asian Republic) also rising to great power status. Yet they were not unchallenged; there remained other great powers: Brazil, Byzantium, Russia, China and, to a lesser extent Britain and Scandinavia; the former four were more-or-less clearly revnachist, the latter two, though allies of the Empire, had some grudges with it as well.
What came afterwards is well-known; after several decades of "bad peace", war came again. In 1783, the British fleet was crippled by an Imperial preemptive attack; this was probably the beginning of the Second Worldwar, as soon after, Russia and Egypt protested the Imperial attack against Britain and declared war - immediately, they suffered, attacked by the Imperials and their allies. Though by 1785 Egypt had collapsed and a pro-Imperial Caliphate was declared in its much-reduced reduced territories, both Britain and Russia had soldiered on (the latter retaking Novgorod and badly damaging the Imperial North Sea Fleet), and the Imperials were attacked by rebels in Europe and Seguians in West Africa.
Although at first Imperial victory seemed inevitable, as the Empire was gradually bogging down on all fronts its future was apparently turning more uncertain. In 1786, despite the skillful rout of the Way of the Peace Mediterranean rebels, Emperor Valerien's fortunes reached their lowest point, the Emperor himself forced to hide to save his life from assassins. The Byzantine Empire entered the war on the Anglo-Russian side, soon scoring great victories, while Scandinavia, previously a loyal ally of Paris, now wavered and signed separate peace agreements; Xin Han China, while remaining neutral, overran northeastern India and destroyed the Rajput Empire, in the process violating rebel-occupied parts of Holy Roman Burma...
Yet the turning point was in that same year - after it, Imperial fortunes quickly recovered. The European rebels were virtually wiped out or reduced to insignificance; the Russian fleet's renewed North Sea campaign was only superficially succesful; the Byzantines, in their grand advance, had overstretched their forces and failed to destroy the Imperial forces in Italy - had they succeeded, the Empire would probably have been crushed, but Basileus Ioann IX had commited way too little troops to the war effort, and that mistake doomed the coalition and saved the Empire. The Russian offensive in the Ukraine was succesful, but the price was too high, and morale declined. Lastly, but possibly most importantly, Japan - soon to be reorganized into the Greater East Asian Republic - had rejoined the Imperial alliance system and attacked China and Russia with overwhelming success. This continued into 1787, as the Byzantine forces were outmaneuvered and routed in Italy and Bavaria, and the Russian fleet, expelled from British harbours (as Britain already made a separate peace treaty with the HRE), was destroyed, while GEAR forces destroyed Xin Han China and advanced further into Siberia, crippling the Central Russian industrial powerbase. Embittered by defeats, starvation, conscription and economic collapse, the Russian people rose up under the Populists, while the political elite in Moscow, in a desperate bid to retain power, declared the militaristic Kanzler Suvorov (who was personally commanding the Russian forces in Lithuania at the moment) deposed; their Provisional Government soon proclaimed Russia's unconditional surrender. This was the beginning of the end, even as Suvorov pledged to fight on and as the Byzantine basileus finally introduced conscription.
Thus we came to the year 1788, the last year of the Second Worldwar. Early on, a series of treaties had supposedly ended the war, excepting the Byzantine portion; the Treaty of Turku removed Russian monarchy (by then merely symbolic in any case), limited the Russian military and forced the turnover of vast Russian territories to the victorious powers; Estonia, Ingria, Karelia, Novgorodye, Arkhangelsk and Novaya Zemlya went to Finland, Courland, Lithuania, the Ukraine and the Kuban went to the Krakow Union, Georgia and Russian Armenia were united under a Kingdom of Georgia (subservient to the Krakow Union), Kazakhstan went to Persia and the eastern half of Siberia (including the Far East) went to GEAR and the reborn Mongol Empire. By the Treaty of Langzhou, both Siberia and China were partitioned between the two latter ones. Lastly, the Treaty of Dakar ended the war in West Africa; in exchange for amnesty for himself and tolerance for his religion, the Caliph of Segu had abdicated and turned Segu over to the Imperials.
Yet in truth, this wasn't the end. Revolts in China and Segu were defeated quite quickly, but in Russia, chaos broke out quickly as the Provisional Government fell apart, Kutuzov, recalled from Siberia, took power himself, but almost immediately had to fight with Suvorov, who, with a large segment of his army, marched to retake Moscow. Harried by Populist guerrilas and Imperial air strikes, the Suvorovian army was weakened by the march, and routed in the decisive Battle at Moscow; Suvorov himself disappeared, according to some departing to live out his life as a hermit, according to others - fleeing to plot his return to power; by then, his forces on the Western Front were also defeated by the Krakowians and had disintegrated altogether. Kutuzov had technically accepted the Treaty of Turku, but himself was soon assassinated by a Populist; after that, Russia collapsed into chaos, allowing the victors to enforce their gains in any case. In the end, as was long expected, Dmitriy Alekseyevich Lukov, head of the Populist Party, came to power and proclaimed the People's Republic of Russia (at present, a fairly loose confederation of Populist urban and rural communes) encompassing all of the remaining Russian territories. The world is yet to make anything of this strange new state; nevertheless, it had managed to survive thus far and defeat the weakish military warlords.
In the Middle East, Shaikh Almasra of Badawistan was overthrown and Mahdi-Shaikh Israfil came to power, immediately calling for a Jihad and launching an invasion of Persia which actually managed to take the ill-defended capital, Shiraz, and destroy it completely; meanwhile, the Byzantines had launched an offensive of their own, and took Teheran. But the tides soon turned; as the core of the Persian army returned from Central Asia, the overstretched, disorganized Badawin forces were routed at Najafabad near Isfahan, and the Persians soon advanced back into Dubai; meanwhile, the Egyptian Caliph had jumped into the fray as well; though defeated in Yemen, the Egyptians used the diversion of most of the Badawin forces there and on the Persian front to require seize Mecca and Medina. Under constant attacks, the Badawins soon collapsed into civil war and tribal strife, Israfil himself dying in battle along with his most die-hard followers at Riyadh, briefly renamed to "True Damascus" and now attacked by the Persian hordes.
As for the Byzantines, they too were crushed; their desperate last-moment conscription efforts had provoked greater Turkish and Bulgarian uprisings, while failing to stop the numerically-superior Impero-Krakowian force marching to Adrianople. In the city itself, a fierce battle was fought, with high causalties on both sides, but the Impero-Krakowians won and thus were free to press on to Constantinople itself; meanwhile, to the north, the Byzantine "Romanian Pocket" collapsed, freeing up more troops for the decisive assault, during which Constantinople was levelled - completely destroyed by artillery, seaships and airships, and the heavy fighting within the city itself; what remained after all that was destroyed in any case. Ioann IX fell in battle; the Byzantine Empire was crushed yet again (between the Impero-Krakowian Balkan forces, assorted rebels, the Imperial troops that landed all over southern Anatolia, the Persians pressing westwards in full force and the Caliphal Egyptians attacking in Palestine), and a second resurrection seems unlikely.
In any case, with the Byzantine Empire destroyed in a series of fierce battles, the Second Worldwar was now trully over, just in time for some new ones to begin.
For instance, in northern Canada, several fierce clashes between polar bears and penguins have been sighted, conveniently distracting people's attention from some interhuman fighting in the region, that nevertheless was soon over, a few secret bases up in smoke and hoarse cursing in the air - the leadership of the secret terrorist organization based there was not captured, it had been hiding elsewhere all along, although this still was a considerable setback.
Elsewhere in the New World, a far more noticeable war occured. Despite Emperor Pedro II's best efforts, he continued to come under severe attacks from the left (which demanded reforms) and the right (which demanded an invasion of Paraguay) alike; when he refused to either crack down on either of the two groups, or follow the advice of either (a lot of eithers, I know), he merely antagonized both the population and the military, as was shown by several attempts on his life. A radical republican movement sprung up and gained much support; several terrorist acts occured, including the assassination of Pedro II's brother and Brazilian commander-in-chief, Luis de Alcantara. As rumours spread that he was killed on the orders of Pedro II who feared his popularity amongst the military, a coup d'etat was launched by the new commander-in-chief, Marshall Aluizio de Almeida, who established a military dictatorship and forced Pedro II into exile. Strangely, the forceful takeover by the military that naturally disrupted the government system didn't solve all of the country's problems within seconds; if anything, things got worse with republican uprisings and terror... Although the rebels were easily crushed, their leadership merely retreated into the underground. Seeking to fortify his power, Aluizio declared himself Emperor and ordered an all-out attack on EUA and Paraguay. Although the Americans did expect something like that, they were surprised by the scale of the offensive; quickly introducing conscription - usually considered a last-moment gesture - de Almeida attained overwhelming numerical supremacy, and crushed the southern EUA border forces in a series of battles. Paraguay was overran, and in the south the Brazilians were only barely stopped at Buenos Aires, still taking Cordoba amidst several Incan and Platine anti-EUA uprisings. The EUA seemed doomed, but in truth, its commanders already launched the life-saving, table-turning offensive. A fleet of huge "capital airships" attacked the undergarrisoned key Brazilian cities; large forces were airlifted there and quickly captured Belem, Salvador and Rio de Janeiro. During the battle for the latter city, de Almeida himself fell. As a second, overland American offensive overran the Amazon Basin and as the EUA fleet crushed the Brazilian one at Cabo de Sao Roque, Brazil collapsed amidst republican and anarchist revolts and interfighting between military warlords. And yet, its armies, cut off from their home, pressed on to avengethis and perhaps to get bargaining pieces. The war dragged on into 1789 and 1790; even though the Platine rebels mostly defected back to EUA, and the Brazilian supply routes collapsed, their forces pressed on in alliance with the Incans and occupied the southern third of EUA. Eventually the Brazilians ran out of steam; desertion and internicine fighting increased, rebellions destroyed their control of the countryside, and the Americans had by then crushed the Brazilian republicans as well after they proved uncooperative; diveriting their grand airfleet to the south, the Americans gradually bombed the Brazilian forces into submission and moved in to restore order.
In Britain, a civil war took place - between the National-Egalitists of Chester B. Runners and a vague anti-Egalitist coalition. It is curious that neither the mainstream Egalitists - most of whom had defected to NE in any case - nor the British government - which fell apart, especially after the pro-Egalitist Charles IV's highly-suspicious death - took any part in this; the army split as well, the old cadres supporting the Coalition and the new ones, including the former Home Guards - the National-Egalitists. In any case, after the assassination of Charles IV, Runners, an influential Egalitist MP, declared that this was a part of a treasonous, anti-Egalitist, anti-British conspiracy, and mobilized the paramilitaries and military forces loyal to him, capturing several key cities with the help of local workers; his various enemies, chiefly the more fervently anti-Egalitist army commanders and conservative MPs, formed a Southampton-based coalition. Warfare, even more gruesome and fierce than that which seen here during the Second Worldwar, decimated England; Scotland and Ireland almost immediately declared independence, and received Imperial guarantees and assistance against National-Egalitist revolters. Still, with the Imperials unwilling to actually intervene in the civil war itself, the National-Egalitists managed to crush the Coalition arranged against them, and declared the "English Nation", which, though still alive, is on the fringes of European politics and under an informal economical siege.
Another war was fought against Scandinavia - at times declared the "fourth superpower", despite still being considerably behind the other three. Both this and the present Scandinavian government's change of course in foreign politics - to the Emperor's dismay, involving neutrality in Europe, separate peace with the Empire's European enemies and pursuing an active colonialist policy; in other words, betraying the HRE and threatening both its own interests and those of the Greater East Asian Republic, keen to unite as much of East Asia under its benevolent rule as possible. To that end, arrangements with the HRE were already worked out, Sumatra and Burma were purchased, peacekeepers used Preahthaimranma's collapse into civil war (after yet another military coup) to annex it into GEAR, and the counter-insurgency campaigns against various rebels and terrorists all over the empire were highly succesful. Yet a thorn in GEAR's side remained, the Scandinavian holdings in Terra Australis, which Prime Minister Olaf Krake persistantly refused to sell; the Scandinavian intervention in India did not particularily endear Scandinavia to the GEAR neither. As for the Imperials, they had also set their eyes on Scandinavia's African holdings, and also disliked the Scandinavian presence in Gujarat, as it stood in the way of the Holy Roman Empire's conquest of India...
Long story told short, the Scandinavians were suddenly attacked all over the world. Their fleets and trade routers were wiped out, the Imperial airfleet bombarded their cities; on the land, Imperials occupied Jutland, and captured the Scandinavian colonial possessions in Africa with overland and amphibious assaults; in India, a multi-pronged invasion routed both the distracted Marathis and the Scandinavian peacekeepers in Gujarat. To add insult to injury, the overambitious Scottsmen seized Iceland. Krake's government soon collapsed, as surely as the Scandinavian economy and military; the new government decided resistance to be futile, and soon signed a peace treaty, accepting all the Imperial demands and thus losing Scandinavia's entire colonial empire (that's right, even Greenland), plus the German holdings. Needless to say, the Imperials went to defeat the remaining resistance in India - Chinese warlords, Muslim rebels and Marathis alike were crushed, having failed to form an united front. Also, the Congolese "states" were subdued in another lightning campaign.
With several more purchases and annexations, the new tri-partite world order was set in stone; the "acronym empires" - EUA, HRE and GEAR - ruled supreme, having reduced competition to harmlessness or beyond, and reinforced their grasp on their lands both new and old. Ofcourse, this new order would not last forever neither, and already, conflicts and tensions existed and multiplied. After a decade or so, a new war for global domination would begin - a one fought by proxy and subterfuge, in the markets and the embassies of lesser powers.
But that, ofcourse, would be a completely different story...