How It All Works

This article describes the underlying rules and limitations I’ve placed on myself (and thus on others) on how Keine Zeit functions as a project. Each of these rules are not set in stone: they may evolve over time, change or even be discarded in their entirety. I prefer for these things to be settled as we go along.

The 1930 rule
Unlike projects of similar nature, Keine Zeit doesn’t wish to model the history of the entire world from the ground up. Neither does it want to just explore one point of divergence, since this would most likely be impossible given the current scope of the project.

Because of this, I’ve decided on a hard stop on where possible divergences in Keine Zeit begin and end: the story of Keine Zeit begins in 1657 and ends in 1930. If needed, the beginning point can be extended to the entire 17 century, and the end can encompass some ideas up to 1930’s, but not further.

For our purposes, everything that happened in *our* world before that time is officially canonical and can be used as points of divergences.

The Butterfly Principle
The butterfly effect states that a small change in one state can result in result in large differences in a later state. As fun as it would be to just, for example, declare that Napoleon was just never born in our world, the effects this would have on the entire world are too grand to model properly, resulting in a world that would be utterly alien and alienating to the larger audience. Because of this, Keine Zeit’s points of divergences strive to be either as small as possible, or cover events whose ultimate end result was a mere matter of whim, like the selling of Alaska or survival of Tymish Khmelnytskyj.

For the sake of simplicity, we assume that most major events and events aren’t covered by any PoD’s happened exactly as they did in our world (Napoleon lived and lost, Americans and Haitians win their revolts, World War 1 happened, etc.), what will be different are individual elements of these events. Thus though the end result may be the same, the sum of these divergences will still give us a different outcome.

The Rule of Interconnection
A lot of the world is interconnected in weird and peculiar ways and no country’s history is truly independent from what was happening to their neighbours. Keine Zeit has a “canon” – events that happened that cannot be undone and from which other events have to be based on. This canon is absolute: it can’t be retconned, removed or edited in a way that would impact other events. A lot of these events will be listed in the article dedicated to the Points of Divergence.

The Ruler Anonymous rule
A lot of alternative history suffers from the effects of the “Great Man Theory”, where most of the history could be explained by the impact of actions of a few Great Men. You, most likely, know a few of these Great Men yourself: Stalin, Hitler, Lincoln, Ataturk, Queen Victoria, etc. And though tempting as it is to just explain most of history that way, I find this theory to be reductive, as it doesn’t take into consideration...pretty much anything else. Not to mention that a lot of these men are also in themselves quite controversial figures and I personally don’t want to deal with these controversies more then necessary.

Because of this, the Ruler Anonymous rule is created: unless required, I will omit mentioning the names of any national rulers or governors, unless they are required. It would either be assumed that either the historical leadership of “our” world applies to Keine Zeit as well (such as the case in monarchies), or the names of the leaders are simply not important in the grand scheme of things. We focus on cultures, heroes are but a part of said culture.

Links
Other important articles to read:
 * Keine Zeit
 * Terminology