Border rearrangement

All you know about the TL is that Spain extends to the Loire, Italy extends to the Rhone, leaving France no Med. coastline, but France extends to the Rhine. Switzerland is intact. Also, each nation is about as homogenous as in OTL (so the northern population of TTL's Spain aren't just a bunch of conquered French).

So, how'd this happen?
 

Faeelin

Banned
In the Albigensian crusade, the catalans won at muret. It's as Spanish as Barcelona is, especially Tolouse.

Marseilles joins one of the italian city leagues, as well as avignon. (Really, the entire region is more like italy than france at this point). It's not quite Italian linguistically, but is culturally northern Italian.
 
The Visigoths won at Vouillé, so Southern Gaul never became Frankish, let alone French. Ostrogothic Italy absorbed Provence. Frankish energies were thus diverted northeast.
 
Duncan,

That's a very good idea.

I had the idea (well, it was someone else's on the old board) that perhaps the Muslims can conquer southern (non-Frankish France), but that's it (perhaps there's a Muslim victory at Tours, but it's narrow enough that the Muslims are deterred from further adventures). The Franks then expand north, as Duncan suggested.

Hmm...how would an independent (like OTL) Switzerland come about in such a TL, though? In OTL, they were mountain people who were sick of the Hapsburgs. A Muslim Spain would affect the rise of the Hapsburg dynasty so much that Switzerland might not even exist in this TL.

The scenarios with the POD during the Germanic migrations set off even more butterflies.
 
Interesting design, sounding much like the map of Europe on the death of Clovis. It would appear that the Visigoths and Ostrogoths managed to form a durable alliance, which deterred the Franks and Justinian, perhaps later also defeating the Muslims. Meanwhile the French concentrated on absorbing the Burgundians and expanding beyond the Rhine without much success. Of course, without the fighting against the Visigoths and Muslims, Charlemagne and his family never rose to power, leaving three solid powers instead of one prone to wild swings depending on the relative skills of the king.
 
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