The Alteration
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The Alteration is the title of a 1976 novel by Kingsley Amis, set in an alternative present in which the Reformation did not take place.
[edit] Plot introduction
In this timeline, there are two pivotal divergances from our own world, which occurred when Prince Arthur Tudor (d.1501)and Katherine of Aragon had a son from a short-lived union which proved sterile in our world. Accordingly, when Henry VIII ("the Abominable") tried to usurp his nephew's throne, there was a papal crusade to restore the rightful heir. Secondly, Martin Luther was reconciled to the Roman Catholic Church, and even eventually became pope, so no Reformation was necessary. Thus, in this twentieth century, the Papacy still holds sway across Western Europe, although New England has broken away to form a 'schismatic' Protestant Republic.
The main character, ten-year-old Hubert Anvil, is a chorister at St. George's Basilica, Coverley, for whom tragedy beckons when his teachers and the Church hierarchy, all the way up to the Pope himself, decree that the boy's superb voice is too precious to sacrifice to puberty. Despite his own misgivings, he must undergo castration, the alteration of the title. During his abortive escape from church authorities, we gain insight into this world, with some references to alternate world versions of political and cultural figures in our own timeline. Hubert's mother carries on an illicit affair with her confessor, but his brother, Anthony, is a liberal dissident from repressive church policies. The Pope is a Machiavellean Yorkshireman, who engineers a Malthusian war to eliminate 'surplus' Europeam poor. Little different from sixteenth century Europe, the Alteration's world is polarised between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, although internal combustion engines are in preliminary stages. Their proliferation is however curtailed by the Papal encyclical Petroleum Veto.
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