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I pledge allegiance to King George I of the Most

Sovereign Kingdom — The United States of
America...

"In 1963's The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick imagined the assassination of FDR as a 'point of divergence,' in
history, triggering a domino of events starting with a weak Vice President Garner taking office. Unlike FDR, Garner
maintains the stance of isolationism through the war. The Allies lose without America's help and, shortly thereafter,
 the
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Axis powers turn their attention to conquering the U.S. Which they do, in 1948."
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A genre of Speculative Fiction stories (sometimes called "Uchronia" or "Anachronism"), set in a world
where one or more historical events unfolded quite differently than they did in the real world.
Essentially, this is What Could Have Been turned into an entire narrative genre.

Often set some time after the event (called a "Point of Divergence", or POD, by fans of the genre),
such stories typically describe a Present Day world vastly changed by the difference, or follow another
major historical event in light of the change. Sometimes linked with a Time Travel story; the point of
divergence is often caused by travelers from "our" timeline (OTL in alt-history parlance) seeking to
effect a desired change. The protagonists may be original characters or actual historical figures.
Lampshade Hanging occurs often in these types of stories (an Allohistorical Allusion); often, a
character will stop to muse on what the world would be like if history had gone the way it did in the
real world. Which, we suppose, is Truth in Television... after all, lampshading this trope is the entire
point of alternate histories.

The setting of an alternate history is often described as a What If?. Popular alternate history settings
include:

What if World War I never happened?

What if World War II never happened?
What if the Central Powers had won World War I?
What if the Axis Powers had won World War II (see page quote)?
What if the Cold War had turned hot and given way to World War III? (Works of this type made
during the Cold War count as Speculative Fiction, but works made post-1991 count as this trope.)
What if fascism or communism rose to power within the Anglosphere (e.g. via the American
Communist Party or the British Union of Fascists) in the 1930s?
What if the Soviet Union had won the Cold War, never dissolved while still leaving the Cold War
intact, or never existed (typically painted as the result of the Russian Civil War ending in a Tsarist
victory)?
What if the United States and the South Vietnamese government had won The Vietnam War?
What if the Confederates had won (or at least stalemated) The American Civil War?
What if a famously assassinated historical figure (e.g. Julius Caesar, Abraham Lincoln, John F.
Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., or John Lennon) was never killed, either through the assassination
attempt failing or never occurring?
What if a famous assassination attempt survivor (e.g. Andrew Jackson, Andy Warhol, Gerald Ford,
or Ronald Reagan) was killed? Or an infamous assassin picked another target instead (e.g. Mark
David Chapman going after David Bowie instead of John Lennon)?
What if Richard Nixon
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What if a major social movement (e.g. abolitionism with or without a Civil War, the Civil Rights
Movement, first/second-wave Feminism, or the LGBT+ rights movement) never happened or was
successfully suppressed?
What if Napoleon had won The Napoleonic Wars? Or never even rose to power?
What if X Religion (Buddhism, Christianity, Happyology, etc.) never caught on? Or caught on
somewhere different?
What if The British Empire had successfully suppressed The American Revolution?
What if a key battle of a war had a different outcome?
What if a particular pivotal individual never came to the position that made them famous or was
never born to begin with?
What if the Roman Empire (or some other famous former empire) had never fallen? Alternately,
what if the Roman Republic never fell and the Empire never rose?
What if the Aztecs had defeated Cortez and his allies?
What if Europe never colonized the rest of the world (particularly Africa and/or the Americas) to
begin with?
What if certain tools or weapons (firearms, radio, space travel) had been cost-effective and
widespread earlier, later, or not at all?
What if a particular presidential election (common examples include particularly pivotal and/or
controversial elections like 1860, 1896, 1912, 1948, 1960, 1968 and 2000) had turned out
differently?
What if the K–Pg asteroid had never hit, or hit at a different time?
What if an important historical figure didn't die early, or did die early?
What if one small and seemingly irrelevant detail was changed?
What if something completely unforeseeable occurred?
More recently but still just as popular, what if the September 11 attacks and/or the Great Recession
never happened?
What if this piece of alternate history was never written?

A secondary type, sometimes called "honorary alternate history", consists of Speculative Fiction
stories written a considerable period of time ago, and set in a time period which has since passed.
This is what happens to stories set 20 Minutes into the Future when the twenty minutes have passed.
This type of unintentional alternate history has its own trope: Failed Future Forecast.

Examples of alternate history can be found in literature as far back as the 1st century BC; the Roman
historian Livy wrote a treatise about what might have happened (Ab Urbe Condita, book 9, chapters
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material, it's not beyond the imagination to consider them Fan Fiction of history itself.
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In real life, Counterfactual History is a real discipline, looking at reasonable conjectures. For example,
historians have carefully examined the threat of invasion of Britain by Germany in 1940 and
suggested that, though British defense was rushed and rudimentary at that point, so were German
attack plans. Thus, Germany would almost certainly have established a beach head, but would not
have succeeded in maintaining it.note  Unlike its literary equivalent, scholarly counter-factual history
tends to focus on the short-term effects, as extrapolating long-term trends into the future has proven
to be tricky even for what did happen.

It is different from an Alternate Universe, where the difference is in the fictional elements of the story.
"What if Superman's ship landed in Soviet Russia?" or "What if Charles Xavier died before creating
the X-Men?" are examples. However, the alternate universe may lead to alternate history as well:
Alternate Reed Richards may change human society, Dr. Doom may give up ruling Latveria and begin
to conquer or destroy actual countries, or Red Skull may be elected President. In those cases, the
alternate history is a side consequence, not the basic premise.

Bear in mind that, other than the point of divergence and the consequences of it, the setting must still
be close to the real world. A real time period filled with unrealistic stuff at all corners is not alternate
history, it's something else. For example, the middle ages filled with elves, dwarves, orcs and magic is
a Medieval European Fantasy, and a more modern setting with them is an Urban Fantasy. If the point
of divergence is an unrealistic event (for example, "what if an advanced alien ship crashed in
Germany during WWII and the Nazis got all sorts of alien tech from it?"), then see Weird Historical
War.

Often, the change's ultimate source is For Want of a Nail. If "historically unimportant" characters are
involved, expect In Spite of a Nail. For less drastic changeovers (such as slight differences between
their world and ours), see Never Was This Universe. Some settings will undo these changes with
Rubber-Band History.

See the Alternate History Tropes index for a list of common plot devices in this genre. The
plausibility and realism of Alternate History is measured on the Sliding Scale of Alternate History
Plausibility. If the differences are unintentional, see Artistic License – History.

For examples of Alternate History work, see Alternate History Literature and Alternate History Web
Original.

Examples:

Subcategories:
Anime & Manga
Alternate History Literature
Comic Books 
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Alternate
Fan Works
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Literature

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Live-Action TV
Tabletop Games
Video Games
Webcomics
Web Original
Western Animation
Other Media

Video Example(s): Feedback

Operation Prangertag
Babylon Berlin explores a hypothetical scenario in which Weimar Germany is toppled by a reactionary,
anti-democratic Reichswehr coup in 1929, leading to the restoration of the German monarchy.

Example of:

Military Coup

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Steampunk Index Alternate Techline

All of Time at Once Time Travel Tropes Alternate-History Nazi Victory

Norwegian Nights FanWorks/Real Life Apocalypse: WW3

Player Character Timeline/Call of Duty Kill Sat

Historical Fiction Hollywood History Costume Drama

All Planets Are Earth-Like Otherworld Tropes Alternate Tooniverse

Afrofuturism Speculative Fiction Beast Fable

Crossover Cosmology Urban Fantasy Tropes Historical Fantasy

Alternative Character Interpretation Older Than Feudalism Amoral Attorney

Zombie Fic Fanfic Alternate Universe Fic

Stand by Me The '50s Running Gag

1 Million B.C. Anachronism Stew Ambiguous Time Period

Actual Play Genres Bad Girl Comic

Alternate History Tropes This Index Is Anachronistic

Works Set in World War II Historical Fiction Costume Drama

Adventure Fiction Crime Novel

Action Horror Hybrid Genre Bromantic Comedy

Alternate Universe Alternate Timeline

Alliance of Alternates Speculative Fiction Tropes Alternate-History Nazi Victory

Altar Diplomacy WeAreNotAlone/Tropes 0 to D Alternate-History Nazi Victory

Alternate Continuity TimeImmemorial/Tropes A to G Alternate Universe

Assassin's Creed III ImageSource/Video Games (A to L) Nothing Up My Sleeve

All-Natural Snake Oil QuoteSource/Cracked Appeal to Nature

Pyrrhic Victory Overdosed Tropes Ridiculously Human Robots

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