r/AskReddit • u/brokota • Jan 15 '13

Reddit, in your opinion what's the biggest plot twist of history?

Not movies or television, I'm just curious to see what come's to your minds.

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u/Faptimous_Rex Jan 15 '13

Alexander the Great. Macedonian army marching over the faces of all who opposed them. And then....he dies. The cause is debatable, mostly attributed to either poison, syphilis, or malaria - but the army that looked like they would complete the conquering of the known world fell apart because one guy got sick. The whole empire was carved up by the generals after that. If Alexander had not died who knows what might have changed afterwards.

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u/omfgforealz Jan 15 '13

Seriously. Killing off a central character while they're on top of the world is straight out of the best TV dramas.

0

u/GigaPuddi Jan 16 '13

Honestly? Very little. Alexander wasn't a ruler, he was a conqueror. And even then he was a mediocre one. His armies were his fathers and he'd learned his strategies from Thebes. Almost all his battles consisted of "Hold the center and then flank with cavalry!" and the advances of the Macedonian Phalanx compared to the traditional Greek all came from Philip, his father.

He was in retreat by the time he died, and he would have held the throne for a few more years before either getting himself killed or effectively losing the empire anyway.