9 Celtlands By Mobiyuz Watch

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Is this trend dead yet? If so, who cares. I'm here with this again. Now, contrary to the other two I've done, this one isn't set as an in-universe thing for Celtiaid Am Byth, not even Timeline 31, but purely 9 alternate histories for their own sake. Though I did cheat slightly and include the Celtiaid Am Byth timeline for A1, because I can. Sue me. Anyways, here we go. There's also a theme to this: the first row is the British Isles, the second row is Europe, and the third row is the Celts abroad. Enjoy.

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A1: The Empire of All Celts

In the year 274 AD, Tetricus II flees the collapse of the Gallic Empire and re-establishes himself in Britannia by appealing to the local Romano-British nobility and Celtic tribes, creating a nation-state that over time would grow to encompass all of the British Isles. Remaining mostly pagan as well, the Empire is an outlier in Europe for its tolerant and meritocratic society at a time when much of Europe is ruled by dogma and absolutism. Despite its isolation and near-continuous wars with Europe, it eventually emerges as a leading power not just in Europe, but in the world.



B1: The Celtic League

Through the 2020s, the continued decline of the United Kingdom in the aftermath of Brexit, the Coronavirus Pandemic, and the rise of rampant right-wing English nationalism leads to a political reshuffling in the British Isles where the states of Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales vote to secede from the United Kingdom, and in an interesting twist the small state of Cornwall also votes to leave following a resurgence of Cornish nationalism and identity. This also fuels a peaceful independence movement in Brittany to establish an independent Breton state, and shortly after this the Celtic League is established within the European Union as a bloc of the six Celtic states for their combined interests and the promotion of their mutual needs, especially as England becomes an increasingly rogue state hell-bent on isolation from not just Europe, but the world.



C1: The Kingdom of Britannia

The story of Queen Boudicca of the Iceni is almost mythical: beaten and abused by Roman soldiers, her daughters raped, her lands sacked. In vengeance, she raised a coalition army of Celts across southern Britannia with herself as leader and sacked every Roman town and garrison she came across. With a final victory at Watling Street, the Roman forces in Britannia were broken and Nero ordered a total withdrawal from the island. Britannia would never again see such direct Roman attempts at invasion, with Rome content to leave this troublesome and restless island to its own devices. Boudicca, meanwhile, now commanded southern Britannia as her own kingdom, establishing herself as Queen of Britannia and setting her new capital at Londinium, now named Buddugoliaeth (to the Romans, Victoria).



A2: Kingdom of the Gauls

Even in the act itself, there was a sense that the Battle of Alesia would be the make-or-break moment, and the position of both the Romans and the Gauls was tenuous, with the Gauls in the city starving and the Romans close to being overwhelmed by a Gaulish relief force. A last desperate effort at a cavalry flanking maneuver to disrupt the Gauls backfired tremendously, opening a section of the Roman walls and allowing the Gauls to trap and decimate the Romans, with Caesar himself being killed. With this final loss after a string of victories, Caesar's campaigns were ended and Rome would forever retreat in fear of these fierce warriors, leaving the Republic in chaos with one of its leading citizens now dead. Vercingetorix himself would then claim the title "King of the Gauls", and choose Alesia as the new capital of a united Gaul.



B2: Galician Confederation

Carthaginian victory in the Second Punic War would have a rippling effect across the Mediterranean World, not least of which was in the regions to the northwest, where increasing Carthaginian and Roman influence had been clashing. With Rome now driven back into the Italian Peninsula for good, Carthage was able to invest further into the rich silver mines of Iberia as a means to recover from the war, though their lack of a direct ability to control the lands immediately beyond the southern half of the peninsula hampered this significantly. As such, Carthage would approach the Gallaeci to the north and through several new dealings agreed to confederate with surrounding tribes as a Carthaginian client state, helping to guard the northern frontier and protect Carthaginian business interests in the area.



C2: Galatia

Having spread as far across Europe as they had, the Celts were not prepared to stop when they reached the fringes of the Greek world. It took the reign of Nicomedes I of Bythnia allying himself with several Celtic tribes in a war to finally allow them to cross the Hellespont and invade Anatolia, causing chaos for many years until they settled in central Anatolia. With their base of power established, the "Galatians" would remain a scourge of the Hellenic world long through the rise of the Roman Republic until the death of both Pompey Magnus and Julius Caesar in Egypt saw the Republic shatter. With the known world now in chaos, the Galatians seized the opportunity to invade westward, stopping at the Aegean Sea and creating for themselves a Kingdom out of the scraps of the Roman World.



A3: Papar Iceland

When all of Europe had soon met the spread of Christianity, there was little recourse for those who wished to live a eremitic life away from major settled areas. Despite this, a group collectively called the "Papars" had found a new option, a land far and away to the northwest where no humans lived at all. It was a treacherous voyage, but still many chose to make the journey. And as with most things, where the few lead, the many followed. Soon, men, women, and children began to make the voyage as well, disappearing over the horizon to a land many doubted even existed. It took the arrival of the Norse Vikingr in the late 800s AD to confirm for good that this island existed, which discovered a thriving community of Irish-speaking Christians, isolated so far from Europe. The Norse were quick to establish trade relations and settled among them, helping define the island as a unique Norse-Gaelic culture for centuries to come.



B3: Hy-Brasil

At the height of the Black Death, millions had died across Europe and millions more were laid low by the disease. While the island of Ireland was devastated by the plague, a local madman declared that he would escape to the mythical island of Hy-Brasil, and there he would eventually return with a cure. Desperate for salvation, twelve families soon amassed a small flotilla of ships that sailed into the west, never to be heard from again. They were simply assumed to have sunk until European exploration of the Caribbean returned news of strange red-haired and white-skinned men to the north, and upon investigation they (or rather, their descendants) were rediscovered, having created a new society settled on the manifold islands in the Bay of Hibernia that had also married into and integrated with the local native populations, creating a new society that was still Christian and Gaelic, but unlike anything in the old homeland.



C3: New Caledonia

English domination and imperialism in the British Isles quite frequently came at the expense of the non-English cultures on the isles, all of them some flavor of Celtic. One of the most notable consequences of this was the Highland Clearances, a cultural genocide of the local peoples that sought to destroy their ancient way of life and force them to become more English. Many could not continue to live in this land, and so emigrated far to the corners of the world, the largest community going to the north island of New Zealand. There, resentment against their English overlords would simmer and fester, until eventually the local Gaels came to an agreement with the native Maori inhabitants to rise up in unison against the British colonizers. The battles were hard-fought but ultimately, Maori-Gaelic resistance and the distance from the British mainland forced London to simply concede the islands. The two groups then agreed to a quasi-confederal state named New Caledonia-Aotearoa: living in the same territory, the Maori would pledge loyalty to their own King of Aotearoa, while the Gaels formed the Republic of New Caledonia to govern their own people.

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