“The warnings reached inland ahead of the wreck’s story, carried by an interpreter whose Japanese was trusted because it never sounded foreign…João Rodrigues. Christmas passed without bells. A hearth burned in Edo. Questions arrived clean + sequential… reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/on-the-twe...

I don’t claim to know the history of Asia-Pacific well. However, I do know accounts of it from interactions in Europe. This is to balance the 12 Festive Frontiers. On the 11th Day, coming up! Make sure to subscribe for its drop: reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/subscribe substack.com/@zeitgeistme...

Want your New Years predictions given the Medici lens? Check out how, below!

“Winter 1462, maths of empire looked settled. Mehmed II had spent the previous decade teaching Europe how inevitability felt. Constantinople had fallen in 1453—epically—it was not romantic in the slightest, it was blood and gore. Happy Christmas! Then.. reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/christmas-...

Was Vlad Dracul a vampire? History doesn’t care. But he was a demon. This isn’t a silly history of him haunting— that’s so played out. This is a Xmas raid that might have killed Mehmed II who was bent on revenge and taking extraordinary risk. Paid. Stay tuned reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/subscribe

“South of the Alps, an English exile stops writing—he’s an obscure, at that point Protestant who studied greatness at Cambridge before BloodyMary: he is Francis Walsingham. Correspondence, once punctual, frequent, fervent, ends without farewell. Why?.. reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/influenza-...

This isn’t a silly: what if the Spanish Armada won? Or if Mary Tudor has killed Elizabeth? So. Done. This is a real analysis of the very documented and deadly influenza epidemic in London Christmas 1558. And let’s just say: it is NOT simple. Stay tuned. Full essay available for paid subscribers.

“By the final days, Cairo, as capital, behaves like a node in a system that expects strain and plans accordingly. Cavalry formations drill north, holding position. Irrigation works are reinforced to narrow approaches. Signals are standardized. Messengers move on schedule substack.com/@zeitgeistme...

“Christmas Eve arrives early in Lorraine that year, hard and sudden, without courtesy. Snow falls sideways outside Nancy, not the soft ceremonial kind but the kind that erases edges. Roads vanish first. Then landmarks. Then plans. The Moselle freezes… reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/on-the-eig...

“Winter already governs the empire by 1415. Power moves on frozen roads. Authority crosses rivers locked into glass. Decisions depend on whether a man on horseback reaches the next city before fever or frost intervenes. For Sigismund of the House of Luxembourg… open.substack.com/pub/rerouted...

A last minute gift for the history nerd who already owns everything? For one day only, I’m opening five (5) custom ReRouted by History commissions—built from the ground up, written to order, and delivered before Christmas Eve night. Historical, rigorous reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/24-hour-ch...

“He orders—violating protocol—the chain crew to wake. The iron is to rise early. The chain begins to lift out of the water like a serpent of metal. Links drip black and heavy. Strain. Pulleys squeal. The sound carries farther than it should in cold air… reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/on-the-six...

“Frost clings to the stones along the Arno. Breath turns visible in cloisters and workshops. Doors close earlier than custom. The pattern feels familiar because it is. Fever circulates. Rashes bloom. Weakness follows. Servants whisper. Mothers pull children closer… substack.com/@zeitgeistme...

This project exists because imagination functions as rehearsal. Societies strengthen their future by expanding their sense of what remains possible. If you believe history unfolds through choices that shape horizons, this work is written for you. Paid subscription: open.substack.com/pub/rerouted...

“The storm does not announce itself. It tightens. The sea darkens first, flattening in a way seasoned pilots distrust more than waves. Wind follows in uneven bursts, not enough to frighten, enough to distract. Canvas strains. Hulls complain. No time... reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/on-the-fou...

I am sorry in advance for multiple posts. But the sickness of this era needs defining even more at this moment. The Princess Bride is not only a Shakespearean-level classic for the ages, but morality displayed in such stark contrast. Trump proved who he was.Join me later substack.com/@zeitgeistme...

“Philip IV commits the state to simultaneity. Lists finalize. Wax hardens, plans depend on morning arriving everywhere at once. Every door. Every house. Every brother. Authority expects time itself to obey. The Templars feel the pressure before it announces itself… open.substack.com/pub/rerouted...

“Bartolomeo Colleoni stands at the center of this constraint. His campaigns across Lombardy shaped him into the consummate condottiere, a figure who understood terrain, momentum, and morale with an instinct sharpened by decades of paid war…. reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/the-lion-w...

“Two figures glided across Osman’s furs with the quiet assurance of men who had ended fathers, brothers, chiefs. Their hands held woven silk cords. Old Turkic craft. Silent. Final. A method chosen when steel offered too much sound and too much story…. reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/on-the-sec...

“The day sharpened into a moment that changed far more than the battle. The fog that could have blunted the Ottoman bowstrings is where we reroute our history, that hinge that could have changed a century—in our tale, it created the illusion of a collapsing empire… open.substack.com/pub/rerouted...

“Christmas morning did little to soften the knives in Naples. The Pope’s chamber might have glowed with prayer but the rest of CastelNuovo became winter forges of panic. Caetani understood instantly: hesitation was contagion. If resignation was refused… reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/on-the-fir...

Be sure to gift the gift of subscription, even for only a month, you won’t want to miss this series! substack.com/@zeitgeistme...

“Under this thunder of pride and pressure stands Mircea cel Bătrân, the aged prince of Wallachia. The crusaders believe they know all. Bayezid believes he owns it. In the dark beneath the Danubian canopy, the hinge of history waits for a misplaced hoof… reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/the-forest...

“One divergence begins in that volatile winter. A single shift. A single choice. This is all it takes for history to reroute itself. Not Ferrante’s treachery. Not a French landing. Not a papal betrayal. The baronial alliance refuses to fracture but rallies instead… open.substack.com/pub/rerouted...

“Florence woke in the ash-gray dawn: sounds of bells rolling across the Arno. They rang in a rhythm the city had not heard in years. For markets reopening. For councils reconvening. For a city that had outlived the plague, the siege, the papal curses… reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/the-treasu...

“When her coffin was carried through the forum, crowds did not chant her name. They recited her: Law is the language of the living, not the lament of the lost. The phrase echoed through the arches, then through centuries. Chroniclers called her Livia.… reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/the-second...

“The walls bristled with hired courage. Mercenaries lined the battlements. Averardo’s men sallied out, torched siege engines, poisoned horses, whispered through camps that the gold had run out. For Hell, was rehearsing itself in the fields of Tuscany… reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/part-ii-th...

You won’t want to miss tonight’s EPIC: FROM PETER’S PURSE TO CAESAR’S CHEST Part II — The Siege, the Dowry, and the Disappearing Bride Florence Marries the Empire, Betrays the Church, and Births a Dynasty in Shadow reroutedbyhistory.substack.com

That night they divide Gaul like partners in an inheritance. Rome will keep her scribes and seals. The Franks will keep their swords. Together they form a realm neither barbarian nor imperial, but both. A monarchy founded not on divine destiny, but on the idea that… open.substack.com/pub/rerouted...

“Suppose the ice cracked differently that winter. Suppose Charles lived through the melee: carried from the field to the sound of Margaret’s orders, her letters already riding toward London. In this rerouted by history, the phoenix of Flanders rises… reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/the-phoeni...

“Between 1140- 220, the Church of the Bons Hommes and Bonas Femnas flourished quietly from Albi to Alès, from Toulouse to Lombardy. It was a parallel Christianity—organized, literate, astonishingly humane. Its records survive in chronicles… reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/the-hereti...

“Rivalry Worthy of the Bard: Shakespeare’s Verona was only a dress rehearsal. Romeo+Juliet, that immortal quarrel between love and lineage, took its cue from real Italian vendettas—wars of blood and banner that tore through the 13th & 14th centuries, this rerouted… open.substack.com/pub/rerouted...

“Before both armies—legionaries, Franks, foederati—Childeric draws a dagger and cuts off his own long hair, the sacred Merovingian divinity badge. The crowd gasps. Warriors beat their shields in horror. He lifts the golden braid skyward. Romans, stunned reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/the-long-h...

Stay tuned Sunday for a ReRoute of real life history that would have swooned over! substack.com/@zeitgeistme...

“History remembers kneeling men in her presence before it remembers her name. Yet, before emperors bowed in snow, Matilda of Canossa had already built the Italy they begged upon. Daughter of the powerful House of Canossa: la Gran Contessa was just that… reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/the-counte...

“She wore mourning black trimmed in garnet thread, the color of ripe Nebbiolo grapes pressed thin. Her veil was gauze. Her expression, folio-flat. She walked through the hall as tables gleamed like a cruciform mirror—crossed arms of hospitality & trap… reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/the-wine-t...

“Snow presses the cloister like penance. Friars whisper behind doors too thin to hide tremors of rumor: a disguised French queen has crossed the border. Her retinue carries no crest, only sealed letters marked with Florentine scent. Catherine steps from her carriage open.substack.com/pub/rerouted...

@awscloud.bsky.social goes down an WOT fans…

“By 1388, the Swabian League of Cities was the most ambitious experiment in collective governance Europe had seen since Rome fell. Free Imperial cities: Ulm, Augsburg, Nördlingen, Heilbronn. They had bound themselves against robber knights and predatory princes… open.substack.com/pub/rerouted...

“History, ever uncomfortable with competence, let the March of Cilicia fade like mist after prayer. By the 1140s, scribes wrote of a Latin fort in the hills once ruled by a woman of the cross. The Byzantines folded her enclave into their maps as a dot without name… open.substack.com/pub/rerouted...

If Ridley Scott wanted to go full fantasy with Gladiator II, he might as well have actually done a plausible restoration of the Republic right after Commodus! Luckily, we reroute the history here on what might have been! Check it out: open.substack.com/pub/rerouted...

Here’s the Gladiator II film Ridley Scott should have made about a real story of the emperor after Commodus who did attempt to restore the a quasi-republican system. We reroute it and see if he had succeeded…stay tuned Friday!

“Ahmad al-Mansur inherited the absolute crown & built an empire of splendor: the El Badi Palace, the conquest of Songhai, the sugar fortunes of Marrakech. Imagine a single difference: a fever, a vision, a moment of revelation on that blood-soaked plain… reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/a-rerouted...

Stay tuned tonight!

“Something of Hadrian lingered there. Something of Antinous. What if the Red Sea’s most remote outpost, Farasan, was never a garrison at all, but a grief disguised as devotion—a palace hidden in coral where an emperor once tried to escape the world?.. reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/the-palace...

“Into this fevered imagination walked a woman: Theophanu, Byzantine-born, Ottonian-crowned. Married into the West in 972, widowed too young, regent of an empire that doubted her, mother of a boy many believed destined to close the book of history itself reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/the-regent...

“For those pretending Machiavelli stands at his shoulder—whispering clique cynicism into his ear, validating each abuse—let us call the esteemed Florentine secretary to the stand. His writings are clear, his intent sharper still. Demolish distortion reboottherenaissance.substack.com/p/maga-misre...

“In real history, Crusaders took Antioch, carved principalities, and toppled Jerusalem in 1099. But here, with the pilgrimage dissolved in the mud of Nicaea, Fatimids fill the void. Jerusalem falls not to the West, but to Cairo, everything changes... reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/the-road-t...

“At the heart of that frost stood one woman, denied her coronation yet crowned by circumstance: Elizabeth Stuart. She was no Winter Queen where she wore the Bohemian crown. No, she became something greater. What followed was Europe’s first Cold War… reroutedbyhistory.substack.com/p/the-winter...

Since today still feels like summer, I went out and decided to start rereading one of my favorite books that has inspired me to dive into historical writing myself: The Darkening Age by #CatherineNixey. I forgot how striking this dichotomy of quotes is.