Australian Culture

>>"[Wrede] is willing to mess with our history but not hers" I thought it was illustrative. The writer of the book didn't want to change, alter or eradicate Europeans; European history was a sacred standard for her.<<

I think that is a prevailing truth. It is also true of many other alternate history writers and stories, particularly in terms of people who focus on one thing and fail to realize collateral ramifications.

On the other hoof, it is also true that alternate history is like literary Jenga. Every change you make causes the dynamics to shift, and the more you change, the more unstable the whole thing gets. After some point you have to resist the temptation -- or recommendations -- to change more things (unless absolutely necessary to support your core motif) or else it will all come crashing down.

And of course writers, like everyone else, can get tired. Few things are as frustrating as nearing the end of a big section of work only to have another big section of work dumped on you. I've had characters, and occasionally first-readers, do this to me. Sometimes I just have to set the project aside for a while until I have the energy to do it justice.

As for changing history in my storyline: if you think Australian history gets stuffed in a blender, wait until you see early American history get thrown under a train. (I haven't seen much of Europe yet but I suspect it will get similarly mulched.) The core question I want to examine in this storyline is: How would humanity respond if they discovered another species, clearly sentient but clearly not human, during the period when Europe was expanding into other people's territory and essentially treating other humans as subhuman? (Short answer: badly.) That has tremendous impact on the memes and processes of the time, and offers a lot of different ways to say things like "Humans can be gallant," "Humans can be wicked devils," and "Abusing people is stupid and destructive, suffer, you cad, suffer while I bring out the Authorial Wringer of Doom and pour bleach on the oozing rags of your soul!" (Yes, I like watching nasty characters reap the misery they have sown. I'm a sadist that way.) So it doesn't just change the course of history, it impacts religion and philosophy and ethics and what-all else.

One of the more achesome things to watch is humanity making the herculean effort to absorb a realization it wasn't ready for yet ("humanity is one") and then, precisely because they're out of their depth and exhausted from that effort, fail horribly-epic-botch to make the next leap to "sentient life is one." Some individual results vary on both tests, but those are the trends.