Recent content by Elfwine

If the Ottomans manage to somehow take control of Ethiopia, that's not the same thing as being willing/able to devote the resources to holding it long term - as into the 21st century - as far as priorities (vs. trading it to some other power for something more important, perhaps). So in hopes...

I'm not 100% sure I 100% agree with this wording, but it does seem like you need an expressly "this is the one true way" attitude about atheism (as far as "is actively anti-religious", as opposed to "we don't actively hold to religion and don't care what you do") to come from something.

Thank you for your explanation of what you mean by "material".

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. Spiritual being real is not the same thing as spiritual and material being the same thing.

Correct me if I'm wrong as this is from my limited understanding as a non-believer (it's complicated, so "agnostic" will do), but isn't "spiritual" being very real a big part of Christian understanding of these concepts? Not just angels and demons, but well - everything? It'd make as much sense...

I thought you meant something like that, but didn't want to assume I was reading you right.

For clarity's sake: A temporal force as opposed to what?

I'm not sure making the disruptions the Emperor intends to make to Japanese society even greater is going to give him more supporters to rely on, or make it easier to address those who don't want these changes.

I'm not sure why you're quoting my posts on France's internal affairs here.

With or without the Byzantines, the incentives to cut out the middle men are pretty much the same. You'd see a lot of changes in other regards with a surviving Byzantium holding Anatolia, but I'm not really sure there's much distinction between a strong enough Byzantium to have any impact on...

That's not a quality that's going to make his ambitions any easier to achieve, to say the least. At best it means once anyone crosses him once, or even seems to cross him, he's going to spend time and energy past the point someone like his grandfather would have thought the point had been made...

This brings up a troubling thing for Richard, in that preventing what happened OTL is not necessarily the same thing as Richard being in the clear - Edward II managed to avoid being actually kicked off the throne longer than Richard did (measuring from when Richard came of age), but he still...

I am not convinced that Philip (father or son) is necessarily willing to compromise over anything important to him, regardless of what Habsburgs did or did not do in general and in other times and places. Is confrontation inevitable in all possible worlds? No, but if the Irish are going to just...

It would make sense from someone acting rationally on what's important and what can be put on the back burner, but Philip (as in his father) and Mary do not strike me as that pragmatic or likely to have their son be. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'd definitely wager on Philip II seeing...

"How interested is Philip II in asserting control of Ireland, and what does that involve?" feels like the answer to the question of what next. Hostility is not some inherent inevitable thing, but it's pretty predictable that Philip isn't going to accept traditional Irish law instead of English...