A possible impact near the Milky Way of a former major merger in the
  Local Group
  The Milky Way (MW) dwarf system presents two exceptional features, namely it
forms a thick plane called the Vast Polar Structure (VPOS), and the two biggest
dwarves, the Magellanic Clouds (MCs), are irregular galaxies that are almost
never seen at such a proximity from a luminous, L* galaxy. Investigating from
our modelling of M31 as a result of a former gas-rich major merger, we find
that one of the expected tidal tail produced during the event may have reached
the MW. Such a coincidence may appear quite exceptional, but the MW indeed lies
within the small volume delineated by the tidal tail at the present epoch. In
our scenario, most of the MW dwarves, including the MCs, may have been formed
within a tidal tail formed during the former merger in the Local Group. It
leads to a fair reproduction of the VPOS as well as to a simple explanation of
the MCs proximity to the MW, i.e. accounting for both exceptional features of
the MW dwarf distributions. However this scenario predicts dark-matter free MW
dwarves, which is in apparent contradiction with their intrinsically large
velocity dispersions. To be established or discarded, this requires to further
investigate their detailed interactions with the MW potential.
