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Description
This one is inspired by Modesitt's "Of Tangible Ghosts" series [link]
although I've left out some of the more ASB elements (and I'm not talking about ghosts )

The Holy Roman Empire [1], after centuries of slow, one nibble at a time expansion, has come a cropper with its latest effort to puppetize Britain. Nuclear weapons have been around since the 60s, but are kept limited in number under various treaties: after all, what civilized person would use such a thing? Unfortunately, thanks to aid from Columbia and Russia, the British "special technologies" defense program had gone further than the Imperial government in Vienna suspected, and when push came to shove, someone screwed up badly. [2]

Currently the Empire is licking its wounds: it's only lately that it has been able to crush the last of the anti-empire resistance that broke out all over Europe when Imperial infallibility was seen to be puntured, and has not even been able to prevent Columbia from putting forces in England under the excuse of giving aid to the devastated country. (the British government has relocated to Scotland). Worse, not only has the shaky Columbian-New France entente of the 90s failed to fall apart, but the Russians have joined after pitching the former "appeaser" faction out of power. With much grumbling, the Empire (which considers itself the epitome and natural unifier of European, Christian civilization) has signed a pact of mutual defense against Russia with the barbarous heathens of Chung Kuo...

Columbia is a looser federal organism than OTL: with the northern and southern British-speaking colonies divided by a more successful New Netherlands, it never formed into a unified federal system, but rather a looser union of regional southern (soon to split into Virginian and Carolinian), mid-atlantic and northern confederations or "commonwealths" (most with varying internal federal organizations of their own), to which were later added others as expansion westward took place. With a weaker central government, a civil war was avoided and expansion of slavery negotiated away: slavery slowly died out under an international barrage of tutting and finger-wagging. Although there still are a fair number of African-Americans, a more vigorous back-to-Africa-or-anywhere-else effort to solve the "ex-slave" problem led to the establishment of a larger and more politically stable "Liberia" in southern Africa, and a lot of US blacks in the Caribbean.

There was still a War of the Spanish Succession, in which the French did some more astute horse-trading, and made off with New Spain: renamed New France after a member of the royal family fled there during the *Revolution (the monarchy was not restored in this ATL), after a turbulent 19th century (the present Emperors are descended from a Napoleon-analogue) it has emerged as an important second-rank power in the 20th. Historically with a very prickly relationship with the Columbians, they have to some extent kissed and made up in the face of Holy Roman meddling in the western hemisphere. It is a country where the elite speak french, the middling classes speak spanish at home and french at social occasions, and the poor speak only spanish or Indian languages. Confusingly, the capital is still Mexico city.

The Children of Zion, a Mormon-analogue [3], went west to escape persecution and broke away from New France during its 19th century civil war: they still resent the Columbians for grabbing northern California before they could. A surprisingly high-tech and modern nation, New Zion has opened up to the outside world a bit over the last generation, although such local customs as elective autocracy and Breeding Prodigiously are still retained. For some odd reason, they don't get along well with the Jews.

Spanish S. America became independent as OTL, and is a major theatre of international competition as one of the two major chunks of the globe not clearly tied to one great power or another, while the major local power, the Brazilians, tries to create its own sphere of influence in the area. Spies, saboteurs, suborned officials and "military missions" are common, and a lot of local spy stories are set in South America.

The Scandinavian Norden alliance is neutral but armed to the teeth.

Canada is also French-speaking, a neutral since it has an even messier history with the Columbians (who stole the Arctic Territories from them, they'll point out to any foreign visitor) and follow a policy of neutrality. Both Canada and New France have benefitted from a flow of immigrants from the Old Country since it was overrun by the HRE, which also has led to a stronger anti-Vienna sentiment.

The south African cape is still Dutch-speaking, and a neutral thanks to geographical distance from Europe: with fewer black inhabitants than OTL South Africa, it is still run by the whites.

The Holy Roman Empire is an absolutist state, with a somewhat opaque (to outsiders, anyway) balance of power between the bureaucrats, the Emperor, the secret police, and the military (there is a Parliament, but it is packed with Emperor-supporters and fairly hapless): although very cultured and civilized and pro-art and culture, it is a brutal regime towards anyone who resists authority or preaches seperatism, and has been nearly genocidal in the methods it has followed to maintain control over the oilfields of the Arabian peninsula. Jews are tolerated as long as they avoid acting Jewish or have lots of money, but the Empire has no tolerance for uppity Arabs and Africans. It is an empire with universalist ambitions, and has long term objectives of unifying all of Europe and perhaps the Americas as well, although some of the more boastful noises from the syncophantic press have died down a bit since 2008.

Russia is something of a giant, cold banana republic with atomic weapons, a backwards absolutism which has managed to crush all its revolutionary movements in the name of unity against the fearsome Holy Roman Empire, but nowadays the Emperor is largely a puppet of powerful elements in the government and army, backed by the essentially fascistic Rodina movement: industrial development continues now with Columbian investment, "pro-HRE" elements are purged, and Jews are packing their bags.

Nastier than either of these is China, here known as Chung Kuo: it is a military dictatorship resembling Saddam Hussein's Iraq, with similar methods for maintaining order and internal security, only with seventy times the population and a genuinely well-led army. It is the world's most disliked "bad boy", although the main difference between its secret police and that of the HRE is that HRE secret police tend to be rather more discreet.

Here the British were driven out of India by violent revolt, spearheaded by the Muslim community (conquering Afghanistan in the end turned out to be more trouble than it was worth), rather than Gandhian moral poses, sophisticated political lawyering and British fear of being seen as Bad Guys. Unfortunately, various regional movements failed to find a common recipe for a unified India, and in the end the charismatic leader of the Muslims in the NW simply carved out his own nation, and while the major Hindu movements quarreled among themselves and massacred Muslims, carried out a bloody "march to the delta" across North India. It was his son who declared the restored Mughal empire, on the basis of some genological records somewhat more dubious than the Donation of Constantine connecting his father to the wise and tolerant Babur. Given recent behavior in the middle east, the Muslim-dominated NME has poor relations with the HRE.

Unwilling to be drawn into a fight with the HRE, the Australians broke off from the British Empire in the 20th century and established itself as a regional power, allied to the south Indian Union, the most democratic (and still slightly British-friendly) of the successor states to the *Raj. The increasing power of Chung Kuo has in the last decade has broadened this alliance, even to the point of bringing in its old rival and frequent boogeyman, the Empire of Nihon.

Nihon is an Empire, but a fairly civilized and democratic one (for Japanese and increasingly, for Koreans and Taiwanese. For Indonesians, not so much). A major technolgy leader, Nihon's principal concern is the containment of Chinese power: although Sino-Japanese relations were never as bad as OTL (a somewhat earlier and capitalistic successful modernization of China meant Japan never invaded their relatively stronger neighbor), Chung Kuo is unlikely to be satisfied with anything less than a Chinese-ruled Taiwan and South Korea, and a "Finlandized" (puppetized would be better) Nihon.

Long hamstrung by decentralized government, political quarrels between a weak Presidency and a strong head of Parliament, and a lack of access to neutral sources of fossil fuels, the sucess of the new coal-gasification program (developed using New Zion technology) and a great expansion in the use of nuclear power have brought greatly increased energy independence, which combined with a new Parliament leader from the President's party, have led to a far more agressive and outwards-looking foreign policy in recent years. Whether the "Mexico Pact" alliance will be enough to deter the alliance of mighty Chung Kuo and the still-formidable HRE from getting up to further mischief, nobody is sure: indeed, some suggest that the formation of large-scale interlocking alliance systems rather than the formerly rather fluid international power system, rather than guaranteeing peace, will in fact bring about a global nuclear war...

[1] Austo-Hungary is almost the OTL post 1848 term for the Austrian empire, which in turn was supposed to be the leader of the HRE before Napoleon got into the act: and the original POD is supposed to be in the 1500s!

[2] The Austrians have been conquering Europe one genocide at a time (in the books) for generations, and nobody is developing atomic ICBMs to defend themselves? Pull the other one.

[3] Two and a half centuries of divergence and you still get Joseph Smith? Maybe if you are a believing Mormon yourself...

Description
This one is inspired by Modesitt's "Of Tangible Ghosts" series [link]
although I've left out some of the more ASB elements (and I'm not talking about ghosts )

The Holy Roman Empire [1], after centuries of slow, one nibble at a time expansion, has come a cropper with its latest effort to puppetize Britain. Nuclear weapons have been around since the 60s, but are kept limited in number under various treaties: after all, what civilized person would use such a thing? Unfortunately, thanks to aid from Columbia and Russia, the British "special technologies" defense program had gone further than the Imperial government in Vienna suspected, and when push came to shove, someone screwed up badly. [2]

Currently the Empire is licking its wounds: it's only lately that it has been able to crush the last of the anti-empire resistance that broke out all over Europe when Imperial infallibility was seen to be puntured, and has not even been able to prevent Columbia from putting forces in England under the excuse of giving aid to the devastated country. (the British government has relocated to Scotland). Worse, not only has the shaky Columbian-New France entente of the 90s failed to fall apart, but the Russians have joined after pitching the former "appeaser" faction out of power. With much grumbling, the Empire (which considers itself the epitome and natural unifier of European, Christian civilization) has signed a pact of mutual defense against Russia with the barbarous heathens of Chung Kuo...

Columbia is a looser federal organism than OTL: with the northern and southern British-speaking colonies divided by a more successful New Netherlands, it never formed into a unified federal system, but rather a looser union of regional southern (soon to split into Virginian and Carolinian), mid-atlantic and northern confederations or "commonwealths" (most with varying internal federal organizations of their own), to which were later added others as expansion westward took place. With a weaker central government, a civil war was avoided and expansion of slavery negotiated away: slavery slowly died out under an international barrage of tutting and finger-wagging. Although there still are a fair number of African-Americans, a more vigorous back-to-Africa-or-anywhere-else effort to solve the "ex-slave" problem led to the establishment of a larger and more politically stable "Liberia" in southern Africa, and a lot of US blacks in the Caribbean.

There was still a War of the Spanish Succession, in which the French did some more astute horse-trading, and made off with New Spain: renamed New France after a member of the royal family fled there during the *Revolution (the monarchy was not restored in this ATL), after a turbulent 19th century (the present Emperors are descended from a Napoleon-analogue) it has emerged as an important second-rank power in the 20th. Historically with a very prickly relationship with the Columbians, they have to some extent kissed and made up in the face of Holy Roman meddling in the western hemisphere. It is a country where the elite speak french, the middling classes speak spanish at home and french at social occasions, and the poor speak only spanish or Indian languages. Confusingly, the capital is still Mexico city.

The Children of Zion, a Mormon-analogue [3], went west to escape persecution and broke away from New France during its 19th century civil war: they still resent the Columbians for grabbing northern California before they could. A surprisingly high-tech and modern nation, New Zion has opened up to the outside world a bit over the last generation, although such local customs as elective autocracy and Breeding Prodigiously are still retained. For some odd reason, they don't get along well with the Jews.

Spanish S. America became independent as OTL, and is a major theatre of international competition as one of the two major chunks of the globe not clearly tied to one great power or another, while the major local power, the Brazilians, tries to create its own sphere of influence in the area. Spies, saboteurs, suborned officials and "military missions" are common, and a lot of local spy stories are set in South America.

The Scandinavian Norden alliance is neutral but armed to the teeth.

Canada is also French-speaking, a neutral since it has an even messier history with the Columbians (who stole the Arctic Territories from them, they'll point out to any foreign visitor) and follow a policy of neutrality. Both Canada and New France have benefitted from a flow of immigrants from the Old Country since it was overrun by the HRE, which also has led to a stronger anti-Vienna sentiment.

The south African cape is still Dutch-speaking, and a neutral thanks to geographical distance from Europe: with fewer black inhabitants than OTL South Africa, it is still run by the whites.

The Holy Roman Empire is an absolutist state, with a somewhat opaque (to outsiders, anyway) balance of power between the bureaucrats, the Emperor, the secret police, and the military (there is a Parliament, but it is packed with Emperor-supporters and fairly hapless): although very cultured and civilized and pro-art and culture, it is a brutal regime towards anyone who resists authority or preaches seperatism, and has been nearly genocidal in the methods it has followed to maintain control over the oilfields of the Arabian peninsula. Jews are tolerated as long as they avoid acting Jewish or have lots of money, but the Empire has no tolerance for uppity Arabs and Africans. It is an empire with universalist ambitions, and has long term objectives of unifying all of Europe and perhaps the Americas as well, although some of the more boastful noises from the syncophantic press have died down a bit since 2008.

Russia is something of a giant, cold banana republic with atomic weapons, a backwards absolutism which has managed to crush all its revolutionary movements in the name of unity against the fearsome Holy Roman Empire, but nowadays the Emperor is largely a puppet of powerful elements in the government and army, backed by the essentially fascistic Rodina movement: industrial development continues now with Columbian investment, "pro-HRE" elements are purged, and Jews are packing their bags.

Nastier than either of these is China, here known as Chung Kuo: it is a military dictatorship resembling Saddam Hussein's Iraq, with similar methods for maintaining order and internal security, only with seventy times the population and a genuinely well-led army. It is the world's most disliked "bad boy", although the main difference between its secret police and that of the HRE is that HRE secret police tend to be rather more discreet.

Here the British were driven out of India by violent revolt, spearheaded by the Muslim community (conquering Afghanistan in the end turned out to be more trouble than it was worth), rather than Gandhian moral poses, sophisticated political lawyering and British fear of being seen as Bad Guys. Unfortunately, various regional movements failed to find a common recipe for a unified India, and in the end the charismatic leader of the Muslims in the NW simply carved out his own nation, and while the major Hindu movements quarreled among themselves and massacred Muslims, carried out a bloody "march to the delta" across North India. It was his son who declared the restored Mughal empire, on the basis of some genological records somewhat more dubious than the Donation of Constantine connecting his father to the wise and tolerant Babur. Given recent behavior in the middle east, the Muslim-dominated NME has poor relations with the HRE.

Unwilling to be drawn into a fight with the HRE, the Australians broke off from the British Empire in the 20th century and established itself as a regional power, allied to the south Indian Union, the most democratic (and still slightly British-friendly) of the successor states to the *Raj. The increasing power of Chung Kuo has in the last decade has broadened this alliance, even to the point of bringing in its old rival and frequent boogeyman, the Empire of Nihon.

Nihon is an Empire, but a fairly civilized and democratic one (for Japanese and increasingly, for Koreans and Taiwanese. For Indonesians, not so much). A major technolgy leader, Nihon's principal concern is the containment of Chinese power: although Sino-Japanese relations were never as bad as OTL (a somewhat earlier and capitalistic successful modernization of China meant Japan never invaded their relatively stronger neighbor), Chung Kuo is unlikely to be satisfied with anything less than a Chinese-ruled Taiwan and South Korea, and a "Finlandized" (puppetized would be better) Nihon.

Long hamstrung by decentralized government, political quarrels between a weak Presidency and a strong head of Parliament, and a lack of access to neutral sources of fossil fuels, the sucess of the new coal-gasification program (developed using New Zion technology) and a great expansion in the use of nuclear power have brought greatly increased energy independence, which combined with a new Parliament leader from the President's party, have led to a far more agressive and outwards-looking foreign policy in recent years. Whether the "Mexico Pact" alliance will be enough to deter the alliance of mighty Chung Kuo and the still-formidable HRE from getting up to further mischief, nobody is sure: indeed, some suggest that the formation of large-scale interlocking alliance systems rather than the formerly rather fluid international power system, rather than guaranteeing peace, will in fact bring about a global nuclear war...

[1] Austo-Hungary is almost the OTL post 1848 term for the Austrian empire, which in turn was supposed to be the leader of the HRE before Napoleon got into the act: and the original POD is supposed to be in the 1500s!

[2] The Austrians have been conquering Europe one genocide at a time (in the books) for generations, and nobody is developing atomic ICBMs to defend themselves? Pull the other one.

[3] Two and a half centuries of divergence and you still get Joseph Smith? Maybe if you are a believing Mormon yourself...