© 2003 by John W. Braue, III

A thing that is sometimes warned about in writing alternative history is the "eternal empire" fallacy: the delusion that our pet society will overcome all obstacles to reign triumphant throughout space and time. I contend that we can also write poor alternative history by taking this warning too literally.

Let us consider an oft-debated question, one which is superficially answered easily: when did the Roman Empire fall? One can justify a range of answers, from "the mid 3^rd century" (on the argument that the Dominate was fundamentally different from the Principate) to "not yet" (on the argument that the Western Roman Empire simply changed its name to "the Roman Catholic Church" – the mother of all Chapter 11 re-organizations). The membership can certainly provide at least a half-dozen other plausible dates.

For reasons such as this, I don’t see a problem per se with an AH that includes a 20^th century Roman Empire – that is, a polity that calls itself "the Roman Empire", reigned over by a man who calls himself "Roman Emperor". We note that part of Mussolini’s fascism was the explicit invocation of the glory that was Rome; a wiser choice on his part as to which side to back in World War II might have presented us with the spectacle of a Roman Emperor in Rome today. Indeed, were it not for his discrediting of Roman symbology, we might have the short-term expectation of an "Emperor of the (New) Romans" in Brussels.

Now, as I have said, I don’t see a problem with an AH that includes some survival or revival of the Roman Empire in the 20^th century. I do have a problem a problem with a Roman Empire whose boundaries, customs, and languages haven’t changed since the days of Claudius I. No one would argue that the Byzantine Empire of Basil Bulgaroktonos, the Holy Roman Empire of Frederick Barbarossa, or the Catholic Church of John Paul II, was identical to the Augustan Principate. We might, therefore, take the warning against the "eternal empire" as a warning against the "eternally static empire", the notion that, having achieving its ideal (according to the author) nature, it will then freeze in place, never to be swayed again.

This theory cuts both ways. On the one hand, we ought certainly not be afraid of invoking the past, even of having our societies and those who rule and order them deliberately them (although the extent to which that revival is but a cosmetic shell masking an entirely culture must be determined by circumstance). On the other hand, even the most brilliantly described AH, or the most logical development from the PoD, must be seen as implausible if it freezes solidly in place after a century or two.