Was the adoption of conventional tailplanes as 'everyday aircraft' inevitable, or are there other designs that can be just as good? I originally asked a variant of this on Worldbuilding.SE, but they didn't seem to like it. So I apologize if it's out of place even here.
I ask, because I've been forming in my head an alternate history or two that would logically involve a completely fresh start to aviation; no Wright Brothers, no Otto Lilienthal -- the entire world looks slightly different on a political map.
Because the world is different, it would be lazy of me to just import elements of our timeline without understanding why things developed the way they did. Our world, in general, appears to have rolled with canard planes and later adopted the tailplane for just about every conceivable function for fixed-wing aircraft.
That alone seems to imply that the tailplane is the superior choice to any other design, but is it really? Or was it just a case of technological and economic inertia?
Since 'superior' can be subject to opinion, I'll try to narrow down some criteria:

The design has comparable advantages in stability, lift production and maneuvering.
The design has comparable economic advantages; it doesn't necessarily require more time and resources to build and maintain.
The design does not (necessarily) incorporate concepts that require an advanced and well-developed understanding of fixed-wing aerodynamics. These would be among the early aircraft designs, or at least a short time into successful flight, so things like vortilons, fly-by-wire, etc. would not be present.

There are definitely plenty of wacky creations like Burt Rutan's Quickie, the V-173 and Miles M.39, but I'm sure there are good reasons none of them ever became popular...right?
If you write an optimizer which modifies the wing spans of a virtual aircraft, you will end up with a big wing in the middle and a smaller one at the tail if your goal was to achieve good performance, a wide cg range and docile behavior. So yes, a concurrent evolution would also result in a conventional layout.

Why no canard?


The forward wing is more highly loaded for stability. Adding control surfaces there would reduce the possible control effectiveness. Putting them at the large rear wing will result in higher stick forces and higher lift changes for the same pitch moment changes.
For the same reason, the wing cannot utilize its full lift potential because the canard has to stall first.
Since the wingspan of the canard is smaller than that of the wing, the wake of the canard will hit the wing and disturb the lift distribution over span there.
For directional stability a tail is still needed, even though it is only used for vertical surfaces. Alternatively, the canard wing can be swept and winglets be used for directional stability, but adding sweep will reduce the efficiency of the wing.


This all puts the canard at a distinct disadvantage. It works, but comes at a price.

Why no flying wing?


Flying wings have low pitch damping and a very limited center of gravity range.
They often cannot have trailing edge flaps for extra lift during slow flight, so their take-off and landing speeds are higher than those of a comparable tailed aircraft. Or the wing loading has to be made lower, which hurts at high speed.
Even though a good flying wing design has sweptback wings, they are poorly suited to high transonic speeds. Their wing airfoils cannot have rear loading, so the critical Mach number at the same lift coefficient is much lower than for conventional configurations.