User blog comment:I am that guy/Question to the Community/@comment-4612798-20140508122835/@comment-4612798-20140510110902

The way I see it is that there is essentially two types of Alt-history. One is where you pick a POD and then write logically from that point.

The second is where you've got an end-point i.e. what the world looks like now, and then you write your way backwards to a POD. This is the method I chose. I pulled it out of the ASB by realising what the hell I was doing and eventually finding a point in time which didn't contradict what I was trying to do. And it ended up being about a century earlier than I expected.

I think the issue here is that you've picked both. You've chosen a high profile POD and also what you want out of it, and the two can't co-exist. So if you want the scenario above to play out then you might need to think a bit more long-term. A few months of post-POD changes will never keep your detractors happy. But moving the POD backwards by 5, 10 or 15 years might make all the difference - both to A-H's military potential (neutering LG's objections) and attitudes towards Italy (neutering Fed's). Perhaps Franz Joseph needs to kick the bucket earlier ushering in a new more coherent system of government? Or Italy oversteps its mark in Trieste in the late 1800s, something like that.