Great Briton

England

In this world, England has had a very tough and turbulent history. At around 510 AD in our timeline, the Anglo Saxons successfully invaded Britain and settled there, replacing the Celtic Britons in the area. In this timeline, England was one sole Celtic Briton nation called Sassan, formed by Áedh Brennus in 500 AD, and by the time of the Saxon invasion, Sassan was ruled by Aife Brennus. the Saxon attack in this timeline was much weaker, and did not successfully invade england. They did, however, land in East Anglia and manage to reach and seige Lundwyn (the Briton version of London) on March 12th, 512 AD. However, the attack was successfully repelled when 13,000 Anglo Saxon attackers were defeated by the Lundwyn garrison of 5,000 men and 10,000 re-enforcements from Kent. This marked the beginning of the end of the Anglo Saxon offensive in England.

The last Anglo Saxon was finally driven out in 515 AD. After this, Aife Brennus vowed to keep Sassan safe from any future attacks from Europe. He began to build up the Briton navy, using ships which were identical to ancient Roman ones and used tactics similar to that of Carthage. Despite this however, Sassan was not entirely safe.
43 years later in 558 AD, the ruler of Sassan is now Brian Brennus. He ran the nation, army and navy in a similar manner to his father Aife Brennus. However, Pictish tribes from modern day Scotland began to cross the border in 559 AD. The Druidist Picts did not like the Christian Britons, and craved lands in England. The picts managed to forge an army of 26,000 Picts, while Sassan had an army of solely 13,000 Britons. The Britons got pushed back all the way to Cambridge, Bristol and Oxford, with manpower and moral rapidly depleting. What saved the Britons in this war was a combination of the Irish tribes taking advantage of the war and invading the Picts, a Briton general with an ingenious plan and a Pictish man raising a rebel army to take the Pict throne.
I'll only be covering the Briton general here, and I'll cover the Pict rebellion and Irish invasion in their respective sections.
In 561 AD, a Briton general by the name of Bradan decided to utilize Sassan's powerful navy. He made a plan to board as much troops as possible onto ships, and to strike at the Pictish capital of Lothain, which was a coastal city, and force the king to surrender. The plan was given the go-ahead by the king and they left the port in Lundwyn on April 2nd, 561 AD. By the time they arrived in Lothain, they took the Picts completely by surprise. The 6,000 Briton soldiers quickly overran the 1,000 Pictish defenders and took the Pict king and heir prisoner, and forced him to accept peace. On April 26th, 561, all Pictish forced withdrew from Sassan.

After the Pictish invasion, Sassan finally knew they could never be safe. The king ordered Hadrian's wall to not only be rebuilt, but heavily upgraded to hold off any future Pictish attacks against Sassan, and keep the country as safe as they could possibly make it.

Up until 1254, things changed in the British isles. While Sassan is still an independent country, their neighbours have changed. The Picts became more centralized and formed the Kingdom of Scotland, and Ireland became a centralized kingdom aswell in 1010, missing only Munster and Tyrconnel. Despite the formation of Scotland however, relations where still bitter between the Scots and Britons, and border skirmishes frequently broke out. However, one fatal day would spell the possible doom for Sassan. On January 20th, 1254, Sassan king Oédacer Brennus died with no heir. The only person left with any relationship to the king was a princess from France, Helene Capet. Because of this, France successfully inherited the lands of Sassan. This was not taken well by the Scottish, who lawnched an official attack on February 6th, 1254 to try to conquer England. By the attack was repelled, and England was officially under French rule.
As part of French rule, the kingdom of France began to bring in French settlers to try to assimilate the local populace in 1258. This was not taken well by the Britons and a series of protests broke out, until 1269, rebellion finally took place under command of Alwyn Faughn. Alwyn times the rebellion perfectly, when the french army began an offensive in Spain and the french only had a garrison of 10,000 men. Alwyn led a force of 26,000 peasons to take Lundwyn, and defeated the 2,000 french defenders there. Then, he began to take other Sassan cities until he managed to unify the region once again.
His attempts were met with hostility, however. In 1271, a 29,000 man force from France landed in england in an attempt to fight the rebels. But the army was defeated on the shores of Kent, when the french couldn't land enough troops at one time to fight the briton rebels, who knew about the plans for invasion in advance due to a captured French diplomat. Finally, in 1273, Sassan was once again a unified kingdom under Alwyn Faughn.

Despite independence, Sassan faced another major problem. The population had a significant 38% French population which wanted to be re-united back with France. The minority began to loot Celtic stores, Rob Celtic houses and even form street gangs that targeted Celtic people and often murdered, robbed an even raped Britons in Sassan. This was most prevalent in Manchester, where the French population was mostly concentrated. In order to combat this, king Alwyn Faughn began to deport massive amounts of French settlers back to France. The French population in Sassan went from 38% of the total population to only 6%. The king decided to sell the remaining 6% off to slavery, and many Briton nobles bought these slaves and had them work on farms, meaning that every single Frenchman in Sassan was either deported or became enslaved. While condemned by the kingdom of France, this action helped stimulate Sassan economy and production of goods, meaning they had more goods to trade with bringing in cash to Lundwyn.

In 1362, Sassan was ruled by its first queen named Boudica Faughn. Her reign over Sassan was a vital one, and left a mark on Sassan history forever.
To start, she was a perfect reflection of the old Byzantine Basilessa Theodora. She gave more rights to women in Sassan, enhances religious devotion in Sassan and began to develop cities outside the capital region, like Norþanhymbra (Northumbria) and Cymru (Wales). She was also very tough on rebellions, beating them down mercessly as soon as they arose. And that's just the beginning or her reign. In 1370 she attempted to launch an attack against Ireland. Her plans were to land in Dublin, and then take Ulster, while simultaneously moving south to take Leinster, while eventually moving to take the Irish capital of Cork and forcing annexation of the entire island. The invasion was commenced, but the invading force only managed to take Dublin before they were overrun by both the inhabitants of Dublin and the Irish army, with the Briton force consisting of 23,000 men, while the Irish military consistinf of 19,000 men plus 30,000 civilians.
Another thing Boudica tried to do was attempt to get into the Holy Roman Empire. She was worried of a French invasion to re-establish French dominance in the region, so she went to the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Bohemia, and attempted to get in. But after many requests, Sassan never made it in due to cultural differences and the fact that the was seperated from the mainland.  One thing Boudica successfully did, however, was development of the nation. She managed to grow many cities across the empire, included Lundwyn, Carnarvon, Truru and more, giving Sassan a much larger population than it initially had. She finally passed away on 1393 and was replaced by her son Aldwyn Faughn.

1432 was a very tough time for Sassan. The kingdom lost alot of people and alot of valuable land. To start, the ruler of Sassan was Sean Faughn. Ever since the final days of his father's rule, Sassan has been undergoing massive famines. When he took power, thousands have already perished to starvation. Ontop of that, he effects of overcrowded cities from Boudicas rule finally began to take effect. Disease, crime and fires were rampant in populated cities, and there wasn't enough food to feed the population. Sean attempted to control this by encouraging people to move out of the city into the farmlands, but this only made it worse, since they brought the diseases to the rural areas and spread sickness among the farmers aswell, making food production even worse. In 1440, two rebellions sprung up in Wales and Cornwall, wanting independence for both regions. Sean attempted to subdue the rebellions, but ultimately failed. The new Welsh kingdom for all of modern day Wales, while Cornwall for both the province of Cornwall and Devon. Since Devon was almost entirely Briton, this would be the first time since French ownership of Sassan that a majority Briton area is under control by a foreign culture.
Finally, the disease, famine and unrest ended in 1452. Sassan lost the regions of Wales, Cornwall and Devon in the disaster. But that's not all.

Sassan has not been under Scottish or Irish attacks recently due to the fact that they had population superiority over the both of them combined, due to Boudica's rule. Because of this, the Britons had a larger army so the other Celtic nations never dared to attack Sassan. But because of rebellions, crime, famine, plague and mass exodus in Sassan, the population drastically decreased, and they no longer had the population advantage over its neighbours. They're were finally on par with their Celtic neighbours, and they knew this. Sean attempted to raise the population again back to what it once was, but he died on March 2nd, 1453, before he was able to implement his new laws.

The date is 1492. King Ailill Faugh is rulling Sassan. The country has had a very long and violent past. Invaders, assimilators, disease, crime and famine are a part of Sassan's history, and it's what made the country and its inhabitants tough. But now they look across the sea. To a new lands, which they hear is called; "America".