MstrTal
The above post is the"official" history in the alternate timeline, with the changes put down to the prisoner transfer at the end of the war (causing ALL the political differences seen), the true reasons why only known to high-ranking members of two rival conspiracies... The story is about them, and the apocalyptic war secret prophecies tell both sides they will win to gain control of the entire human race...
As it is Sci-Fi, it is eventually revealed that the changes to the timeline are because of two rival god-like voices that are manipulating events... One is prescient, using her visions of all the possible futures to try and create a world where she is worshipped and controls it through a religious ruling caste of telepaths, while the other is trying to prevent that and let mankind find its own way without her manipulation...
It is revealed that the female presence, thousands of years earlier, had tried to manipulate an earlier civilisation to create her empire by giving them prophecies through telepaths... Those visions, from the "Lit Path Of Destiny" (as oppose to the "Darkness of possibility" that regular prophecy doesn't see) saw her followers take control of the world and impose her religion across it... But because of the "
curse of prophecy", that the future can be changed by our reaction to it, her followers turned against her and tried to alter the future for their own ends...
To stop her reaching anyone else they wiped out all their telepaths, ensuring that the "lit path of destiny" she shared with them remained their secret, their Illuminating knowledge, and basically acts an 'origin story' for the Illuminati...All the changes to the timeline are seen to be"the curse of prophecy" in action, and result from them trying to change the original future, using the prophecies of an apocalyptic war to lead a conspiracy that will create the war, and see them seize control of the world and ethnically cleanse it...
Other changes then occur when high-level telepathy starts to emerge again, and the two rival presences start manipulating a fight-back against the Illuminati, both centred around one man... To the female presence and her new followers, he is referred to as the "bringer of darkness", the messianic figure who can change the destiny of the entire human race, and will lay waste to the world during the wars to stop "The Fallen" (how she refers to the Illuminati since they fell from her grace)...
But, to the Illuminati, he is the source of their own messianic 'phoenix' myth, his apocalypse being the ethnic cleansing they desire...
The story focuses on how both sides, both inspired by different interpretations of the same prophecies, seek to alter destiny to put this man in charge of their armies and use him to wipe out their enemies... The second presence tries his best to free this man from the manipulation of his rival presence, and use him to stop her gaining control through the religious cult she has built up, which now leads the only group capable of stopping the Illuminati from ethnically cleansing the entire world...
All of this is uncovered as 'learned information' (it 's all mapped out to tie in with the origins of all the characters and 'alternate reality' organisations) rather than info-dumps, and all the major changes are coordinated time-wise to be seen on screen during certain episodes so that the "official events" as described in the first post are seen (with the audience knowing that they are the cover for the REAL events that are happening amongst the two conspiring groups)...
All the changes (both official and unofficial) are seen and explained on -screen, and are central to both the theme and the actual plot (for the most part, they ARE the actual plot)... There have been times my room looked Hiro's in the "string future"
Jammill