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Makemakean Does Various Graphical Things!

Faces of Nordic Reunification

View attachment 10119

Greetings!

So I see you’ve met Professor Iivari? My sincere apologies...

Oh, yes, of course I know he’s brilliant. One of the most clever men in the three kingdoms, the grand principality, and the four duchies, but he can be unhinged… his mind all over the place. Rather arrogant. Quite annoying.

If I may introduce myself, then, I am Johan Sigvard Qvarn, Professor of Eloquence at Stockholm Radical University and Secretary-General of the Commission on Elections at the Royal Tabulation Bureau. You wouldn’t guess it from my accent, of course, but I’m actually originally English. I was actually born in Middlesex! Father and me came over in ‘17. Back then, the family name was Mill, and I was born John Stuart. Father was very keen on fitting in into his new country, and so Swedified our names.

You know, in my (relative) youth, I was actually quite active in the radical wing of the Cap party! I twice stood as a candidate for the Riksdag in Stockholm! Didn’t come anywhere near winning, of course, but what do you expect if you’re running in Stockholm on a platform of abolishing the guild system? No, no, now my days as a partisan hack are long since over, and I am just a simple, humble civil servant with an interest in the statistics of elections.

On election night, I’ll be baby-sitting two young tablemasters over at the Palace of Statistics, and operate the Magnificent Suleiman as the results come in. I hope they haven’t oversold you on how interesting this election night will be. For a variety of reasons, no party can gain anything near a majority of seats, and we have a pretty good idea of what will happen everywhere. It will be quite a boring event, I fear, with nothing unexpected to be expected to happen.

Well, yes, I suppose it kind of is a truism to say that I do not expect something unexpected to happen, but you get what I mean...

Anyway, you’re still welcome to come!

Some quick notes here.

Due to the author's particular fondness for the place, Stockholm Radical University (Radikala Högskolan i Stockholm) is basically meant to be UCL-but-in-Sweden, the idea being that Jeremy Bentham and some other English radical intellectuals in his circle emigrating to Sweden in the late 1810s on account of a government crackdown on radical and liberal thought, and they end up founding the Radical University in the 1820s. Kind of like how UCL was founded as a university for non-conformists in OTL, so too here there is a connection to frikyrkliga, with the institution basically having gotten off the ground thanks to a large donation by an industrialist who had converted to the Methodist faith.

The particular position of Professor of Eloquence is meant to be the English translation of Professor i Vältalighet, which used to be a reasonably common title you could hold at our Swedish universities in the 17th century and originally meant something along the lines of "Professor of Rhetorics", but which eventually died out as interest in rhetoric as a subject worthy of study in itself died out. Nowadays, it only exists officially in the position of the Skyttean Professorship at Uppsala.

In this timeline, Professor of Eloquence has come to be kind of a catch-all term, something that universities give to people who for one reason or another are worth having around as tenured faculty, and who is knowledgeable enough in a number of fields to be a useful contributor, but not necessarily sufficiently knowledgeable in any one of them to merit a professorship in that field on its own, or whose field of study is just generally difficult to pin down. In Americanese, it would be something like "Professor of Undeclared", or an academic version of "Minister without Portfolio".

If you visit Stockholm Radical University in the 1860s, you are likely to see Professor Qvarn running around a lot in the Mathematics Department, History Department, and Economics Department, but not actually being tied to any one of them.

The Radical University is located somewhere in the eastern part of Kungsholmen, which seems reasonable as the entire island basically was undeveloped until the late 19th century OTL, and so would have been a place where they could get cheap property.
 
Well, so I'm going to have to do something I rather had hoped that I wouldn't have to do, but since I've already postponed this for ages because it feels so staggering, I might as well admit that I'm never going to do it. I'm keeping the Mercator Projection for the election map on the grounds that fixing the projection turns out to be far more difficult than I imagined it would be.

I have failed you. -_-

Sorry.
 
Rich (BB code):
Lane, Stångenäs och Sotenäs

Unionist Cap          714        64.6%
Cap                   391        35.4%

Population  27616
Votes       1105

UNIONIST CAP WIN
Plurality 29.2%

I feel plurality is a better translation than majority for the Swedish word that tends to be used when discussing FPTP elections, namely, flertal.
 
Faces of Nordic Reunification

View attachment 10119

Greetings!

So I see you’ve met Professor Iivari? My sincere apologies...

Oh, yes, of course I know he’s brilliant. One of the most clever men in the three kingdoms, the grand principality, and the four duchies, but he can be unhinged… his mind all over the place. Rather arrogant. Quite annoying.

If I may introduce myself, then, I am Johan Sigvard Qvarn, Professor of Eloquence at Stockholm Radical University and Secretary-General of the Commission on Elections at the Royal Tabulation Bureau. You wouldn’t guess it from my accent, of course, but I’m actually originally English. I was actually born in Middlesex! Father and me came over in ‘17. Back then, the family name was Mill, and I was born John Stuart. Father was very keen on fitting in into his new country, and so Swedified our names.

You know, in my (relative) youth, I was actually quite active in the radical wing of the Cap party! I twice stood as a candidate for the Riksdag in Stockholm! Didn’t come anywhere near winning, of course, but what do you expect if you’re running in Stockholm on a platform of abolishing the guild system? No, no, now my days as a partisan hack are long since over, and I am just a simple, humble civil servant with an interest in the statistics of elections.

On election night, I’ll be baby-sitting two young tablemasters over at the Palace of Statistics, and operate the Magnificent Suleiman as the results come in. I hope they haven’t oversold you on how interesting this election night will be. For a variety of reasons, no party can gain anything near a majority of seats, and we have a pretty good idea of what will happen everywhere. It will be quite a boring event, I fear, with nothing unexpected to be expected to happen.

Well, yes, I suppose it kind of is a truism to say that I do not expect something unexpected to happen, but you get what I mean...

Anyway, you’re still welcome to come!

Oh my god you made John Stuart Mill a 19th Century Scandinavian David Dimbleby?!
 
Oh my god you made John Stuart Mill a 19th Century Scandinavian David Dimbleby?!

I suppose I sort of have, yes. :)

Actually, the reason why he ended up in Sweden was pretty much just a by-product of me actually wanting to have Jeremy Bentham come to Sweden near the end of his life after the Napoleonic War, just for the purpose of having UCL* end up in Sweden rather than England. It then kind of fit that James Mill and young John Stuart would come along with him, and I just kind of liked the name Johan Sigvard Qvarn so much that I made a note of using him at some point in the story.
 
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Got a terrible cold again.

I find it odd that seeing how I am incredibly hypocrondriac in nature, and worry about cancers and flesh-eating bacteria and skin diseases to no end, I'm actually not feeling the least bit concerned about the coronavirus business.

Anyway, decided to update my design for Countess Rosencrantz.

IMG_1041.jpg

Hrm... She looks like a fat butterfly, or at the very least a very well-to-do bumblebee.
 
Got a terrible cold again.

I find it odd that seeing how I am incredibly hypocrondriac in nature, and worry about cancers and flesh-eating bacteria and skin diseases to no end, I'm actually not feeling the least bit concerned about the coronavirus business.

Anyway, decided to update my design for Countess Rosencrantz.

View attachment 18073

Hrm... She looks like a fat butterfly, or at the very least a very well-to-do bumblebee.
She feels a little like a rejected character from The Fairyteller,that show about Hans Christian Andersen’s stories that used to run in my country back in the day:





In a good way,though.
 
I was never too pleased with my design of Admiral von Platen, who served as Chancery President for a year in the 1770s after Leijonhierta resigned in scandal and the Marquis of Mandal suggested when pressed on the matter that if he was Emperor of Scandinavia, he would appoint von Platen for the job of Chancery President. So I've updated it:

vonPlaten.png
 
I was never too pleased with my design of Admiral von Platen, who served as Chancery President for a year in the 1770s after Leijonhierta resigned in scandal and the Marquis of Mandal suggested when pressed on the matter that if he was Emperor of Scandinavia, he would appoint von Platen for the job of Chancery President. So I've updated it:

View attachment 20005

Looks very Geoffrey Palmer in full 19th century regalia and beard. I like it.
 
He looks kind.

Unlike with Emmy Noether, I can actually find nothing to indicate that he was a particularly kind individual (with Emmy Noether, there exists ample evidence to indicate that that woman was the Salt of the Earth). Of course, unlike with Alexander Grothendieck, I can find nothing either to indicate that he was a particularly unkind individual (there is plently of evidence to suggest that Grothendieck really was an arsehole).

A cursory reading of his Wikipedia article though reveals that he was a firm supporter of the Prussian monarchy with a strong distaste for the French Revolution. Also, he had an attitude towards how mathematical prose should be written that, though elegant, I firmly detest.
 
Working on a Christmas card for the first time since 2015, I believe... This one's been in the making for a long time, but I just very recently got Photoshop. While I'm currently using Photoshop for work purposes mainly (as indicated above, it is useful for a topologist to have Photoshop), I felt that paying £250/year for the software, it sort of demanded a Big Project:

ChristmasCard 2021.png
 
Trying to come up with a design for Princess Ernelinde is proving a mess. For starters, I have no idea how to design what kind of a dress royalty would wear in a steampunk world. Hell, I wouldn't even know where to begin if I were to design dresses for women period.

princessErnelinde1.png

Second, I sincerely wish I could draw people from other point-of-view than purely in profile. It's always that annoying 45 degree angle. And then I wish that I could actually recreate faces that I've already drawn in a consistent fashion. I really need to start practicing drawing more again... (If only I had more time!) Hell, as it's looking now, it might just be easier trying to pinpoint a few points on the face, and then use geometry to mathematically-...

Oh right, last time I had in mind a project like that it led to nowhere... Well, I suppose we can always hope that I am more lucky this time...?

Anyway, Princess Ernelinde is Emperor Arthur and Empress Frederikke's youngest daughter and favourite child, born in 1859, following Arthur and Frederikke's reconciliation after several years of living apart and being on generally very bad terms. She is named after the main character in Philidor's opera Ernelinde, princesse de Norvège, which happens to be Arthur and Frederikke's favourite opera.

In the summer of 1874, when she was still only fourteen years old, King Karl III Matthias of Bohemia sought her hand in marriage. Arthur and Frederica were a bit concerned regarding the difference in age between the two, but eventually concluded that the match would be workable. The young princess seemed quite happy about the idea herself. The Union Minister for Foreign Affairs, Hugo Hubert Ribbing was a bit baffled, having not been aware of that the King of Bohemia had an interest in a Nordic bride, but he certainly didn't object to it. After all, a royal marriage of this nature could be a first step toward bringing Bohemia into the Nordic orbit in as far as German affairs were concerned, perhaps even eventually have Bohemia enter the League of Lyksborg. As the Acting Chancery President while Nicolas Andersen was away on the Italian Riviera with his family for a vacation, he tentatively gave the match his go-ahead, and sent a wire to Andersen informing him of as much, while a date was set for two weeks later for a public announcement of the engagement, with a wedding to follow once Ernelinde came of age.

It is rather unclear what happened next. It is known however that Nicolas Andersen received the telegram of the news in the evening of Friday the 19th of June. Very soon after this, he appears to have decided to cut his holiday short, leaving his wife and children in Italy for the moment, for at 3 o'clock on Saturday the 20th, he boarded a train in Genoa heading for Paris, arriving on Tuesday morning the 23rd, and there boarding a skyship headed for Gothenburg, where he arrived late in the evening on Thursday the 25th. At 22:14, he was granted an audience with the Emperor and Empress, at which no notes were taken. The meeting lasted until 4:11 the next day. In the morning of Friday the 26th, the Emperor and Empress informed the Bohemian ambassador that they were calling off the marriage with no substantial explanation given.

Of course, since no public announcement was ever made, very, very few people know about this, and among those that do, there is virtually only speculation. Andersen himself appeared in the Folketing the very same day, and a statement was issued that his return had been prompted by urgent matters regarding immigration to Lapland that he needed to attend to.

No need to worry about Princess Ernelinde though. She would in 1882 marry Count Christoffer Adlersparre, a man much closer to her in age, becoming the first Nordic princess to marry someone who wasn't royalty in several hundred years. They had seven children, and by all accounts a very happy marriage. Best of all, she didn't have to live through the mess of the War of the Bohemian Revolution, which was probably for the better.
 
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