If you showed an alien a geographic view of Europe, and a short lesson on history until the fall of Rome, they'd undoubtedly guess that France is bound to be a world superpower and architect of the future world order from material circumstances alone.Yet the craggy Iberian peninsula seeded half a continent with their descendant and language, the British backwater conquered half the planet, birthed superpowers, and made their language global.What went so wrong with France?
You know the king of england was a huge faggot and philip the iv send over his whore daughter to outbreed the english monarchy. Practically speaking both countries are france
>>18058316They created their own rival in England, then failed to either keep them a subject of the French crown or lose to them badly enough to result in dynastic unification. Pretty much any other outcome of the Hundred Years War would have resulted in a French dominated dual state ruled from Paris, French culture would have won if their king had lost.
>>18058335Then France would have had female monarchs and that's unacceptable.
The Huguenot involvement in trade and settlement slowed France down a lot.
>>18058316>a geographic view of EuropeBritain and Iberia clearly have superior geography. Britain is an island while Spain is only connected by land through a mountainous and largely intraversible isthmus, almost as good as being an island. Both also sit alongside important maritime trade routes and if you give the alien a more zoomed out view they can see that there's two easily conquerable continents to the west that Britain and Iberia have the most direct path towards.France meanwhile is protected by mountains to the south and southeast, which is good, and by two different seas that are separated by Iberia, which is good for defence, but if you have to split up your navy in two seas you will be the masters of neither. The plains in the northeast, however, severely lack defensive terrain, other than rivers which isn't enough. Access to maritime trade routes and the New World is good, but less ideal than for their northern and southern neighbours.>a short lesson on history until the fall of RomeNobody knew that France was even going to be a thing in the late 400s as at the time it was split in 3 different Germanic kingdoms and 1 Roman rump state.And if you're a retard who calls Constantinople Rome, the 1450s is just when France finally won the centuries-long rivalry with England over Frances own territory and when they finally started to rein in their upstart vassals. That France would become an absolute juggernaut over the next decades was not given considering it had been an absolute shitshow for the past couple of centuries.
>>18058316europe is a sub continent of asia
>>18060439It's technically a peninsula in Afro-Eurasia
>>18060439Asia is just Anatolia
>>18058316Which material circumstances do you mean? Anyways, France was very influential in the 17th and 18th centuries - but often at the cost of its population. The wars of Loius XIV bled the land dry and the revolutionary and napoleonic wars would follow a similar route. And yet french customs, fashions and ideals found great appeal at the courts of other european states.
>>18058316>What went so wrong with France?The French Crown lost control of Great Britain.
>>18059962>Britain and Iberia clearly have superior geographyIberia is right next to Africa. For that reason alone Iberia was more under constant threat than France was.
>>18062324Only for as long as the nafris had an Iberian foothold. After they retook everything in the 13th century but Granada, which was left as a harmless tributary state for another 200 years, they had nothing to worry about other than the Berber piracy that plagued the entire Mediterranean.
>>18062364>they had nothing to worry about other than the Berber piracy that plagued the entire Mediterraneanthis was actually a pretty big deal
>>18062942Sure, but it wasn't an existential threat.
>>18058316France perfected bureaucracy, prioritizing internal administration over external expansion.
>>18063287>treasury is empty from constant continental wars>meanwhile britain enriches itself with colonial business
>>18058316before american cultural imperialism, france was the cultural center of the worldit's still the economic heart of europe, together with germanythey didn't do too bad in colonial times, either, though they did not lead the way
>>18058323Cope
France became a bugman civilization obsessed with bureaucracy and surrendering. They spent their power juice on painting and guillotining their best, while the G*rms and Anglos were out there grinding.
