Herman Hessian Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 8 hours ago, Bully Wee Villa said: Watching a bit about the Hundred Years Wars and was wondering something. Say Henry V had survived a few more years after Agincourt and managed to install himself as King of England AND France, how would he or his successor have ruled? Would they have lived in London and run France as an English colony or would he have fucked off to Paris and run things the other way round? I always get the feeling that those old kings cared more about France than England. it's interesting (sic); he was defacto king of france on his death (having been heir apparent to the french throne, a status which passed to his son): any projection about how the joint rule might have worked out probably needs to assume that he'd have continued to be less of an arsehole than Henry VI turned out, but medieval politics was so unstable that there's no certainty that would have been the case; let's go with the supposition that he was able to reign unopposed for another two or three decades; the Anglo-French state would have been utterly dominant in Europe, with the naval and military might to crush any opposition; I imagine the power-base would have been on the continent simply as an expedient way to administer what would inevitably have been ever-growing holdings as a warrior-king and figurehead; the running of England could have been left to his son who - ultimately answerable to daddy, probably wouldn't have been in a position to f**k everything up to anything like the extent he actually managed; on that basis, there would have been no (immediate) requirement for the Wars of the Roses, and the extended period of peace and security throughout the second half of the 1400's would have seen England become more powerful still; the relative standing of Spain would have been hugely diminished by the pre-eminence of the Anglo-French state, probably to such an extent that - eventually - there would have been no need for Henry VIII to marry Catherine of Aragon; therefore the entire English Reformation probably wouldn't have come about, nor the whole schism that followed with Mary and Elizabeth; the entire religious landscape of England would have been radically different which would have resonated down through the following centuries, impacting the Stuarts, William of Orange, the Jacobites - everything ! Suffice to say that Henry V's fatal bout of the shits and the ensuing chaos of his son's reign ultimately de-stabilised England to a massive and long-lasting extent; we'd have probably won the world cup loads more, too.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotThePars Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 They’d have probably won a load more world cups as well if they hadn’t forced their own brand of sporting colonialism in forcing everyone to play cricket. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bully Wee Villa Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 They should have just ensured that nobody else played their sports, then called themselves "World Champions" anyway, like the Americans do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrewDon Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 I'm currently binging on Dan Carlin's Blueprint for Armageddon. I finally decided just to dive into it as it got recommended to me a few times and I don't have as much knowledge of WW1 as I would like to have. It really is hugely fascinating and well-researched, and Carlin is an excellent storyteller. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tongue_tied_danny Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 22 minutes ago, DrewDon said: I'm currently binging on Dan Carlin's Blueprint for Armageddon. I finally decided just to dive into it as it got recommended to me a few times and I don't have as much knowledge of WW1 as I would like to have. It really is hugely fascinating and well-researched, and Carlin is an excellent storyteller. My knowledge of ww1 is largely limited to the western front and Gallipoli. The eastern front and the Italian front etc are hardly mentioned in British documentaries. I'm keen to learn more. How deep does he go into the other fronts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotThePars Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 I'm currently binging on Dan Carlin's Blueprint for Armageddon. I finally decided just to dive into it as it got recommended to me a few times and I don't have as much knowledge of WW1 as I would like to have. It really is hugely fascinating and well-researched, and Carlin is an excellent storyteller. He makes some really weird claims (nobody knows who Gavrilo Princip was or the sort of suggestion that without the assassination of Franz Ferdinand there wouldn’t have been a First World War) but he’s really good at telling the story of what happened and obviously puts loads of time into researching the topics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotThePars Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 My knowledge of ww1 is largely limited to the western front and Gallipoli. The eastern front and the Italian front etc are hardly mentioned in British documentaries. I'm keen to learn more. How deep does he go into the other fronts?I listened to it the other week and he focuses largely on the causes and German military tactics from what I remember. The section on the German artillery and shelling of Belgian forts is wild. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tongue_tied_danny Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 I'm currently reading Hue 1968 by Mark Bowden. This is about the battle in Vietnam that was depicted in Full Metal Jacket. I'm a few chapters in and it's a decent read so far. It's fairly balanced, giving both sides of story where possible. Well worth checking out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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