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The Fourth HoS List Challenge

The Fourth HoS List Challenge

  • SenatorChickpea

    Votes: 2 22.2%
  • Charles EP M.

    Votes: 3 33.3%
  • Mumby

    Votes: 3 33.3%
  • Time Enough

    Votes: 3 33.3%
  • Tsar of New Zealand

    Votes: 2 22.2%
  • Callan

    Votes: 4 44.4%

  • Total voters
    9
  • Poll closed .

Venocara

God Save the King.
Pronouns
He/him
Welcome everyone to the Fourth HoS List Challenge!

How it works is simple: every fortnight there will be a theme, and the challenge is to write an alternate Head of State list (with an accompanying description of no less than 200 words) based on that theme. The theme is intended to be a prompt, and as such the amount of focus you give to the theme can vary as much as you wish. Cabinet lists are also acceptable. All HoS/Cabinet lists should be plausible. Unless stated otherwise, the list can be for any country in any time period.

The theme for this challenge is “The Fall of the Empire”.

Fun fact: On this day 102 years ago the last Kaiser of Germany, Wilhelm II, was forced to abdicate following a popular revolution, thereby bringing Germany's 48-year Imperial period to a close.

Entries should be posted in this thread and you can submit as many entries as you please but only the first will be considered to be competitive. At the end of the contest a public vote will be held to decide on a winning list. Entries are open with immediate effect, and will close on the 28th November.

Any questions, comments or suggestions are welcome either in this thread or sent to me by PM.

Good luck everyone, and I'll see you again on the 16th!
 
'Someone had blundered'

GOVERNORS-GENERAL OF INDIA

James Andrew Broun-Ramsay, Lord Dalhousie, 1848-1856


Dalhousie is one of the most controversial British rulers. He expanded the Indian Empire dramatically, moving into Burma and crushing the Sikh Empire. He laid down telegraph lines and railroads, and built up the subcontinent's postal network. His educational reforms would, in the long run, become foundational for India's modern school system.

And then there was the Doctrine of Lapse. Various British (English) historians have defended this policy- some out of expediency in the years of the 'lonely Kingdom' when criticising the imperial administrators and aristocrats of yesteryear was unwise, some who think it was a gamble that could have paid off in the long term under more able successors, and some who want to think that all the problems of the Empire were caused by Dalhousie's successor.

FitzRoy Somerset, Lord Raglan, 1856-1858

The short, glorious Russian War was an unexpected triumph for Britain and her allies. Much was made of the 'Great Pincer,' where Raglan's easy seizure of Sevastopol and the resulting diversion of Russian troops made possible the Royal Navy's descent upon Krondstadt and St Petersburg. The role of the French, Swedes, Piedmontese and Ottomans was not acknowledged at the time, or since.

Raglan was a hero, and had to be rewarded. An old man, he should never have been given his position in India, but the wave of popular enthusiasm for the 'Grandfather of Crimea' saw the Company bounced into asking him to take up the governor-generalship.

Throughout 1856, Raglan's aides worried that India was in the hands of an old man suffering from depression and dementia. To general surprise, Raglan's health survived the Indian summer, but it was believed that by the summer of 1857 the Governor-General could resign with dignity and hand the reigns back to a younger, more able man.

On March 29th, 1857, Sepoy Mangal Pandey was arrested for mutiny.

GRAND VIZIERS OF THE MUGHAL EMPIRE

Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, 1857


A poet and the personal physician of Emperor Bahadur Shah II, Ahsanullah Khan was too weak a man to lead the War of Renewal. The Emperor's closest advisor, he was absolutely unprepared for his patron to be thrust into the role of figurehead of national rebellion. His incompetence is best illustrated by his shameful dithering over the massacre of British prisoners in Delhi in 1857. Some of the rebel leaders were brutal as a deliberate strategy to make surrender to the vengeful British impossible. Others, like the elderly emperor, wished for no bloodshed against the defenceless prisoners and their families. Ahsanullah was too afraid to act, telling an aide that if he passed on the Emperor's orders to stop the killings 'if we remonstrate with them [the killers] now, they will kill us first and then murder the prisoners.'

It has been argued that 1857 was a battle of the ineffectual. On the one side, a Mughal court led by a Vizier totally unsuited to the urgent task of unifying the disparate rebel groups and forging them into a true nationalist alliance; facing him was a still formidable Company army who could survive the great storm so long as they took quick action to neutralise Delhi and entrench in the great cities until reinforcements arrived.

Unfortunately for the British, quick action was not a skill of Lord Raglan. The allies and subordinates who took Sevastopol were not present; instead, contradictory orders were dispatched all over the country, sending his scattered armies one way and then another, changing objective as the old man panicked, diminishing his limited resources when he needed to consolidate.

The Mughals still came close to losing many times in that first terrible year of the war; but eventually Bahadur Shah realised that though he had never chosen this path he was now irrevocably committed to it. He dismissed his poet-vizier, and in his place chose a rapidly rising officer.

Bakht Khan, 1857-1866

Once a subedar of the Company, Bakht Khan was a highly able man with a greater understanding of his colonial masters than that possessed by most of the rebel leaders. He rose to prominence as general of the rebel sepoys at Bareilly, and led his men to Delhi where it became apparent that he was the most able of the rebel generals present. The Emperor's son Mirza Zahiruddin had been appointed the leader of the rebel forces, but though intelligent and energetic he had no experience whatsoever. Mirza was quickly promoted still further to the ceremonial role of 'Commander in Chief, while Bakht became Grand Vizier and Lord Governor-General of the rapidly assembling army.

Leaving the civilian administration largely to Ahsanullah's aide Zahir Dehlvi, Bakht built up the greatest Indian army since the fall of the Khalsa. To Bakht's grateful astonishment, it was August before Raglan sent an army to besiege Delhi. He had waited until the first reinforcements had arrived in the sub-continent, but the governor-general was infuriated at the general who led them- another 'hero' of the Russian War, who seemed like a reliable pair of steady hands to lead the hastily thrown together First Relief Contingent. The man spent another three weeks arguing with Raglan over how the campaign should be conducted before finally leading his men to the Mughal capital- angry at the unexpected resistance along the way, and butchering civilians as he went.

Bakht Khan had built a formidable set of defensive works before Delhi; let the other Rebel generals go on the offensive throughout Northern India, he reasoned, and the British would waste far too many resources at the Imperial capital. The siege would take months before either side had to take decisive action; only a fool would try and storm Delhi in the first week.

On August 25, 1857, George Bingham, Lord Lucan inspired a poem.


TREATIES OF WITHDRAWAL FROM INDIA 'The Retreaties,' 'The Shameful Treaties,' 'The Glorious Concessions.'


TREATY OF DELHI, 1859
-
signed by John Lawrence, acting governor-general of India and Governor of the Punjab, acknowledging Mughal sovereignty over Northern and central India.

TREATY OF LAHORE, 1865
- signed by Viscount Canning, governor of Bengal. The Sikh Army had been the great hope of a British reconquista- Lawrence's gamble that Duleep Singh could be used as a figurehead for the British attempt to undo the Humiliation of Delhi backfired disastrously. With Lawrence dead, and Duleep Singh the 'First of the Princes' the Mughal Empire now extended to the Punjab and the supposedly autonomous Sikh stewardship of the northwest.

TREATY OF GOA, 1887

- signed by Lord Ripon, though the collapse of British rule in Hyderabad and Mysore is generally traced to the great famine of the 1870s. Oddly, the next victory for Indian nationalism was delayed by Tsar Alexander, whose attempts to reach a warm water port in the Persian gulf saw tens of thousands of Russians die horribly in Afghanistan, Kashmir and Balochistan in what amounted to little more than a distraction for the Peacock Throne.
By the mid 1880s however, Delhi was free to send guns, gold and 'volunteers' across the border. The Treaty of Goa was not actually signed by the Mughals but by the newly independent princes, upon the neutral ground of Portuguese India (itself on borrowed time, of course.)
Their 'petition for annexation' would not be formally accepted until the 1890s.

TREATY OF CALCUTTA, 1921

- signed by Winston Churchill, shortly before his suicide.
 
Sheriffs of Novacal

1750 - 1785, Charles Edward Stuart

"Bonnie Prince Charlie" had given up on the idea of a Stuart restoration, at least in Scotland, and went for the next best thing of seeking his fortune as a 'private citizen' in the Central American colonies. With his charisma, wealth, and name, he became a famous man in the colonies - and a war hero in the various skirmishes with Spanish-backed natives and Spanish "privateers" - and was elected governor of Darien before being appointed as the first Sheriff of the newly rationalised Novacal colony. He set about centralising Novacal's institutions, liberalising the economy, and creating an internal slave trade to end reliance on outside forces, making both the Auld Country and the new land wealthy. He also created his own national parliament as North America waged a revolution, justifying that this would prevent any such problems in Novacal - also because it would reduce the power of the regional governors yet further.

1785 - 1801, Malcolm Abernathy

1801 - 1839, Charles Abernathy Stuart

1839 - 1862, Charles Abernathy Stuart II


The next few decades would see Novacal become increasingly autonomous, but with Scotland reliant on the New World riches to keep England at bay and be a power in the world, it was allowed as long as the money came through. Malcolm Abernathy was Stuart's son-in-law and recommended as his replacement, but historians are now certain that Charlotte Abernathy was actually the power behind the throne. Either way, Abernathy "retired" earlier than he needed to and his son changed his name to the old monarchical standard. The monarchs back in Britain were very unimpressed but as long as this was happening far away in someone else's colony and wasn't causing any problems for British interests...

Novacal became a key part of the world order when Stuart got involved in the Haitian Revolution, sending troops to rescue the white population and forcibly carve out the Novacal Domingue colony on the Haitian coast in the process. He would go on to capture land from Colombia in the aftermath of its revolution.

But as abolitionist sentiment grew, it became an embarrassment than Novacal was running a slave economy from the 'Indians' and black population, and a scandal erupted when it came out that Haitians had been captured and forcibly shipped across to mainland Novacal. Charles Abernathy Stuart II did not care: he had his great-grandfather's charisma and ambition, his grandmother's quiet scheming, and his dad's sense of Fuck You All I'm Running Novacal, and he had a lot of wealthy businessmen and politicians backing him.

So when the American Civil War broke out, he saw the Confederates as kindred spirits and considered: what if Novacal went its own way? And when the French installed a client monarch in Mexico, he saw his chance, offering Novacal forces to Maximillian's banner and then...


Kings of Novacal

1862 - 1869 or 1871, Charles I

Scottish loyalists were quickly squashed and Novacal sent aid & troops to the Confederacy. It was costly in treasure and blood, but 'Charles I' foresaw a grand world of expansionist, civilising white rule across North & Central America and Caribbean, with slavery as their right. South America would bend the knee. If Britain got annoyed, well, they could be wealthy without as much European trade. And for a brief period after the United States agreed to an armistice, it seemed he'd pulled it off.

Except then the Confederacy turned out to be poorly run and a lot of surplus guns - some Union surplus appearing very new.... - was reaching disgruntled slaves. And the Mexicans kept rebelling against their European overlords. And those surplus guns were reaching Haiti a lot. Charles I had got 'victory disease' and tried to keep Novacal troops in all three places, overestimating their ability and underestimating the rebellions. As the loss of blood and treasure mounted, he realised this was failing and so in 1868, he cut his losses and focused solely on stopping Haiti.

That was too late - the United States Navy and the Royal Navy teamed up to obliterate Novacal's under excuse of stopping slave trade, then forcibly took Novacal-Domingue and struck a deal with Haiti to leave most of it in exchange for them ending the slave trade. Emperor Maximillian surrendered to the rebels and agreed to abdicate soon after, and the Confederacy fell apart. Novacal was now friendless and bankrupt.

1869 or 1871 - 1898, Malcolm I

The young prince (his elder brother having died of consumption) declared his father had "failed the once-proud land of Novacal" and that it was time to "accept a wind of change" in regards to slavery, which mostly meant Novacal could no longer keep the slave economy going if it wanted to stop being isolated. The resulting civil war would rage for two years before Malcolmite forces ran the old king to ground.

Malcolm was a callow youth who was used to the best and cynical enough to cloak himself in progressive & abolitionist language to keep that. The devastation done to Novacal and the death of 5% of its white population would make this extremely hard, so Malcolm made sure to have the Loyalists looted for all they were worth and had senior slaves given freedom & ownership of 'liberated' plantations to get them back up and running. The end result was large pockets of black and 'Indian' landowners, all owing him. Novacal would now be infamously unstable, with ethnic violence, crime, and mass movement as the country dealt with the new status quo - but Malcolm was alright!

As he kept chess-playing the landowners, the industrialists, and the political class, he didn't notice communist rhetoric was reaching the now-multiracial, relatively youthful working class. Malcolm just thought that was the students, who would need a slap now and then. He learned this was wrong when a bomb went off at his Hogmany party - though he didn't learn it for very long.

1898 - 1899, Rose I

A flighty socialite who wasn't at the party because of having sex with someone else's betrothed luck, Malcolm's daughter had to lead the country during its second civil war. Luckily for all concerned, Rose was not her father or grandfather - she realised fast this could end with her losing and being shot, so she renounced all claim to the throne and formally surrendered to the communists before legging it with as much wealth as she could carry. The country was saved from a brutal war, almost:

1899, Edward I

The king's bastard and a captain in the army, the moody, brutal-minded Edward was one of the best counter-insurgency officers Novacal had. Rather than accept defeat, he declared himself king and was recognised by many of the world's governments.

Unfortunately he wasn't recognised by half the army and the civil service and all the other things you need to run a war. Foreign marines landed in Darien too late, finding the "Last King of Novacal" hanging from the docks as a warning.

The People's Republic of Novacal would spark a dozen new uprisings and wars across the Americas, then into Russia, and by the end of it a lot of other empires were dead as well.
 
Manifest Failure

Presidents of the United States of America


1845-1849: Henry Clay (Whig)
1844 (with Theodore Frelinghuysen) def. Martin Van Buren (Democratic), John Tyler (Independent 'Democratic-Republican')
1849-1851: Levi Woodbury (Democratic)
1848 (with Lewis Cass) def. Henry Clay (Whig)
1851-1856: Lewis Cass (Democratic)
1852 (with Joseph Lane) def. Millard Fillmore (Whig), Lewis Charles Levin (Native American)
1856: Attempted impeachment of President Cass, Congress deadlocks, de facto beginning of the American Civil War
1856-1863: American Civil War; Presidency disputed
1863: The Peace of St Louis between the armies of North, South and 'The Great Khan'; end of the American Civil War

Manifest Destiny. A phrase that trips of the tongue. It had captured the American imagination before those words had even been written down. Perhaps the idea that the whole continent should belong in their hands had begun before they were even Americans, the moment the Mayflower set ashore. And for a long time it looked like it really was destiny. In little more than thirty years from the young country's independence, it doubled in size. A wave of settlers headed west, looking for their fortune, and carrying with them the certainty that all they surveyed belonged to them. The native people who had lived there for unnumbered centuries? An inconvenience, nothing more.

But as is so often the case with empires, the progress of the ever expanding frontier was interrupted by affairs at the metropole. Namely, that of slavery. A certain group of American settlers had gone a little bit too far west, and somehow ended up in Mexico. Objecting to Mexico's anti-slavery laws, they declared an independent republic. This new republic soon sought admittance to the United States. Up until this point, westward expansion seemed to largely benefit the generally anti-slavery (or rather, 'not actively practicing slavery') North. Admitting Texas raised the prospect of not only a new slave state, but further expansion southwards, to the benefit of so-called Slave Power.

The 1844 election was fought largely upon the issue of admitting Texas into the Union - the Democrats were largely supportive, the Whigs opposed. But this was complicated by the personalities involved. The eventual competition saw the Whigs and Democrats both running ostensibly anti-Texan candidates, and the complicating factor of President Tyler's independent run saw Henry Clay narrowly ushered into the White House.

Clay's Presidency is remembered largely for what didn't happen i.e. the failure to annex Texas. Texas' diplomatic isolation soon saw it fall prey to that element of North America that had been overlooked for so long. The Natives. Namely, the emergent power of Comancheria, led by a man known more often by the nickname he was given by white men eager to see historical analogue. The Great Khan.

The Comanche had come to accommodations with the Texians by 1844, but with the prospect of annexation seemingly off the table, Texas soon fell under new bellicose leadership who sought to continue Manifest Destiny even if the United States wouldn't. And this inevitably brought them into conflict with the Comanche. The short Comanche War of 1848 was not one that the Texians could realistically afford, and it ended with independent republic reduced to a tributary state, with the Comanche permitted to range across their frontier.

The Comanche War destroyed Clay's reputation and led inevitably to the Democrats being elected in 1848. In the meantime however, the Comanche had turned their eyes toward Mexico. The Mexicans were still struggling from the aftermath of defeat at the hands of Texas, and crucially if they wished to fight the Comanche had to pass through Texian territory. With their easten boundaries secured, the Comanche were permitted to raid across Mexico's northern frontier, ultimately forcing the Governor of New Mexico into a similar tributary agreement.

If the advocates of Manifest Destiny hoped to see the frontiers of American civilisation extended purely by dint of a Democrat occupying executive office, they were to sorely disappointed. Woodbury, a former Supreme Court Justice, was by nature a cautious man and hardly a firebreathing advocate of the institution of slavery. While he saw slavery as an institution written into the Constitution, he also saw the Constitution as an organic document that could be amended. While the pursuit of fugitive slaves into free states was permitted, there would be no extension of the frontiers of Slave Power. As more states were admitted into the Union from the North, the South felt increasingly confined by their borders. In time, an abolitionist majority would exist in Congress, and there was nothing they could do about it.

There was a small amount of amelioration with Woodbury's death and the rise of Lewis Cass. Cass saw how limited the avenues of American expansionism had become and so began supporting filibusters in their attempts to establish American-ruled fiefdoms in Central America and the increasingly chaotic mess that had once been called Mexico. Santa Anna's defeat at the hands of the Texians and then Comanche had led a wave of secessions and civil war across the country. A great opportunity for ambitious men from America to carve out their own little kingdom.

This policy grew increasingly controversial as the years went by, as it became ever more clear that any state established by a filibuster coincidentally introduced slavery and undermined the inclusion of the native population in any ostensible democracy. The only exception seemed to be John Fremont's Republic of California, but that was little more than a couple of handfuls of pioneer families and a few forts holding it together. Despite all of this, Cass was re-elected in 1852 thanks in part to the Know Nothing movement whose primary objection to filibustering was the potential annexation of a great deal of non-white Catholics.

Matters came to a head in 1856 as William Walker sought to bring Nicaragua into the Union as a slave state. A narrow Congressional majority opposed it, but the mixture of Whigs and Know Nothings were themselves too divided. The revelation of the crimes of Walker in establishing and maintaining his rule in Nicaragua shocked a nation. The circumstances of what a 'State of Nicaragua' would look like in the Union, and whether what Walker had built would even meet the criteria of a republican form of government as guaranteed under the Constitution, shocked the Congressional Opposition into a momentary unity. Cass had sowed ruin and misery throughout the nations of Central America, and he was no longer fit for office.

The bitter Congressional debates of 1856 are too well storied to be repeated here, suffice it to say that the verbal battles there were the opening salvoes of the long, bitter American Civil War. Cass's attempted impeachment, Lane's flight from Washington, the Legitimacy Crisis as Nathaniel P. Banks was raised up from Speaker to the Presidency even as Cass refused to leave the White House. As brother turned against brother and the United States was turned into a bloody battlefield, there were those who saw amidst the chaos, opportunity.

Comancheria had grown rich from Mexican bloodletting, but also from the California Gold Rush which had turned Fremont's ill-conceived venture into a genuine, if chaotic, nation. In the absence of William Walker's promised Nicaragua Canal, and with the only other way to get to the Pacific from the East being a lengthy voyage around Cape Horn, passage across the lands of the Comanche was the only way to reach the legendary riches to be found in California. Fremont couldn't guarantee their safety - California inevitably became yet another tributary of Comancheria. Their western frontiers were now secure, there would be nothing coming from the south to harm the Comanche any time soon. And now, the United States, whose denizens had thought themselves the Providence designated masters of a continent, had fallen into civil war.

These were the days in which the Great Khan earned his moniker, but he soon made it clear to the Americans he was no mere horselord. Having taken the Five Civilised Tribes exiled to the so-called Indian Territory under his wing, he made deals with first the North and then the South over who he would assist in their efforts to establish the Legitimate President. A war which may have lasted three or four years lasted about twice as long as the balance of power shifted on the edge of a knife. The eventual result was one entirely to Comancheria's benefit. The Peace of St Louis saw the lands of the Five Civilised Tribes restored in the South, under Comanche protection, with freedom of passage for Comanche patrols. While the North still had access to its Pacific Coast, in practical terms the Comanche held the reins, replicating what they had done for settlers going west to California.

For Americans and Dixons, the Peace of St Louis is largely remembered as the end of the Great Experiment, as their two nations were finally severed from one another. For the Comanche, this moment was a high point. The Great Khan proved to have the same staying power as his namesake. His conquests unravelled only a couple of generations after his death. But the man ended the myth of Manifest Destiny, as thoroughly as it was possible to do, and neither of the United States' successors would ever attempt to replicate that vision.
 
The Fall of New Rome:

'Duce' of the Italian Empire:

1936-1939: Benito Mussolini (National Fascist Party)

1939-1943: Italo Balbo (National Fascist Party-'Balboian')
1943-1946:Rodolfo Graziani (National Fascist Party-'True Fascism')
1946: *Collapse of the Italian Empire, Creation of the Republic of Italy*

Prime Minister of the Republic of Italy:
1946-1948: Attilio Piccioni (Democratic Coalition)
1948-: Palmiro Togliatti (Popular Democratic Front)

1948 (Majority) def: Attilio Piccioni (Christian Democratic), Giuseppe Saragat (Social Unity), Giorgio Almirante (Italian Social Movement)


In Early 1939 as the World looks ready to go into War, Mussolini falls off a horse and dies. After a brief (and bloody) power struggle Italo Balbo becomes 'Duce' and decides against joining the War Effort against the Allies for the most part, instead using the time where the allies are distracted to crush remaining native forces in Ethiopia and Libya, crush partisans and rebels at home and pursue his own vision of Fascism. But eventually the war comes up to ahead and staying neutral is no longer really an option for Fascists in 1943, with Nazi Germany deciding to organise a coup against Balbo and replacing him with someone closer to there ideals. Rodolfo Graziani joins the War Effort with the Axis and brings the War against Britain. This subsequent year long distraction as Britain spends it's time destroying the Italian's African Army is mainly seen as a sideshow but the embarrassment and the resentment with Graziani taking over from the popular Balbo causes Italy to collapse into Civil War and infighting as Fascist fight Fascists whilst the Communists, Socialists and Mafia use the collapse to there advantage. By 1946 the last holdout of the 'Italian Empire' is destroyed by a combination of Communist Partisans and British Paratroopers as Soviet Tanks roll into the Frankfurt.

A hastily created Republic pulls together a 'Democratic' Coalition to restore Democracy and order but with Britain licking it's wounds under the Atlee Government, America busy in grinding remaining Japanese resistance into dust the only real people who have an vision for the region are the Soviet's and as part of there 'Finlandisation' project money is poured into the Italian Communist and Socialists parties and so following there first free election since the 1920s, the Italian's gain a Communist-Socialist Coalition Government.

And so has one Empire falls, another takes it's place...
 
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Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame

Heads of the House of Hanover, their Titles and Styles

1760 - 1800:
George III "the Farmer, the Martyred", King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, Arch-treasurer and Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg
1800 - 1801: George IV "the Unready, the Dissolute", King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, Arch-treasurer and Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg
1801: Acts of Union; Kingdom of Great Britain and Kingdom of Ireland (1542 - 1801) become United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

1801 - 1814: George IV, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Arch-treasurer and Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg
1814: Electorate of Hanover becomes Kingdom of Hanover

1814 - 1822: George IV "the Dissolute, the Divorced", King of Great Britain and Ireland, King of Hanover, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg
1822 - 1826: Frederick "the Soldier-King", King of Great Britain and Ireland, King of Hanover, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg
1826 - 1835: Ernest Augustus I "the Bloody", King of Great Britain and Ireland, King of Hanover, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg
1834 - 1839: Irish Revolution / Irish War of Independence
1835: Great Revolt or the Second Glorious Revolution;
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland becomes Commonwealth of Britain (1835 - 1849)
and Kingdom of Ireland (1835 - 1842)

1835: Augustus, Duke of Sussex, King (claimed) of Great Britain and Ireland

1835 - 1842: King Ernest Augustus I "the Exile", King of Great Britain, Ireland, Hanover, and Britain-Across-the-Seas, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg
1836: John Company's Betrayal; Honourable East India Company recognises Commonwealth of Britain (1835 - 1849) as legitimate government of Britain
1837 - 1838: Canadian Revolution; Upper and Lower Canada become United Republics of Canada
1842: Irish independence recognised in Treaty of Calais (1842); Kingdom of Ireland (1835 - 1842) recognised as Irish First Republic (1835 - 1849)

1842 - 1849: King Ernest Augustus I, King of Hanover and Britain-Across-the-Seas, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg
1849: Crown Colonies of New South Wales, Swan River, North Australia, South Australia, New Zealand, and Van Diemen's Land become Kingdom of Australia

1849 - 1851: King Ernest Augustus I, King of Hanover, Britain-Across-the-Seas and Australia, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg
1851 - 1853: King George V "the Blind", King of Hanover, Britain-Across-the-Seas and Australia, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg
1853: Quiet Revolution; Kingdom of Australia becomes Commonwealth of Australia, recognises Commonwealth of Britain (1851 - 1894) as legitimate British government
1854: Great Mutiny; majority of Royal Navy ceases to recognise authority of "Britain-Across-the-Seas" and defects to Britain or Australia; title of 'King of Britain-Across-the-Seas' lapses into disuse as colonial holdings are liquidated.

1853 - 1866: King George V, King of Hanover and Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg
1866: German War; House of Hanover deposed as rulers of Hanover and Brunswick-Luneburg; title becomes defunct and House Hanover continues to assert claims in pretence from exile in Austria

1866 - 1878: King George V, King of Hanover (claimed), Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg (claimed)
1878 - 1884: Crown Prince Ernest Augustus II, King of Hanover (claimed), Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg (claimed)
1884: Brunswick Succession; Crown Prince Ernest Augustus II recognised as Duke of Brunswick, refuses to relinquish claims to (defunct) Kingdom of Hanover and Duchy of Brunswick-Luneburg, and is in turn prevented from assuming ducal throne

1884 - 1910:
Crown Prince Ernest Augustus II "the Quarrelsome" King of Hanover (claimed), Duke of Brunswick (disputed) and Brunswick-Luneburg (claimed)
1910: The Brunswick Compromise; Ernest Augustus II renounces claim to Duchy of Brunswick; Hereditary Prince George assumes title of Duke of Braunschweig

Heads of the House of Hanover (Elder Ernestine)

1910 - 0000: Crown Prince Ernest Augustus II, King of Hanover (claimed), Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg (claimed)

Heads of the House of Hanover (Official)

1910 - 0000:
Duke George VI "the Prodigal", Duke of Braunschweig

Heads of the House of Hanover (Younger Ernestine)

1911 - 0000: Hereditary Prince Ernest Augustus II or III "Bonnie Prince Ernie",

A successful assassination attempt on George III, the death of Prince William in the Napoleonic Wars, and the would-have-been Prince Regent drinking himself to death saw the pressures for reform in British politics stymied throughout the 1820s. The sense of paralysis was made worse by George IV's successors, autocrats who leant towards the High Tories and blocked efforts at Catholic emancipation, political reform, and worker's rights.

Eventually, though, things would have to change.

The Second Glorious Revolution, when it finally came, was short and anticlimactic. The scale and speed of the revolution saw much of the aristocracy jump ship early on, with even the King's own brother siding against him, at first claiming the crown before formally renouncing his titles as the tides of revolution swept a quasi-republican regime into power.

Any hopes for using Ireland as a British Vendée were dashed when the Irish ulcer, having festered under the rule of avowed Orangemen, took the chance to explode into a rebellion and civil war of its own, though it would be an infinitely more brutal and protracted affair as the the remnant loyalist forces were dislodged house by house and village by village.

Retreating to Hanover and relying upon the good grace of the loyalist segments of the fractured Royal Navy to maintain contact with what was left of the Empire, the Hanoverians canvassed fruitlessly for aid from the rest of Europe in restoring their throne. True, the new Britain was a hotbed of radicalism twenty miles from Europe, but after the truly disastrous effort to land a royalist invasion force at Margate in the wake of the 1848 Revolution the appetite for intervention dried up. The Great Powers were simply more interested in asserting their own places in the power vacuum left by the British retreat from the world stage than in mounting what would obviously be a costly intervention to restore a power who had meddled in their affairs for the past century and more. Save for a close relationship with the reactionaries of Austria and Russia, Hanover would go it alone.

Bereft of any real aid beyond the symbolic, then, the Hanoverian grip would slip from India, then the Canadas, then Ireland, then Australia, and ultimately - when Austria's empire proved even more febrile and sclerotic then the Hanoverian dominions - Hanover itself.

Over the course of a short few decades the Hanoverians had thus fallen from the crowned heads of an empire on which the sun never set to little more than a travelling troupe of embarrassing impoverished cousins languishing in the salons of Europe, as the list of titles held was overtaken by the list of those merely claimed. With the farcical dispute over Brunswick resolved with a renunciation that split the vestigial House of Hanover into three squabbling tribes, fighting to recoup what little prestige still lay with the family name.

Outside of their Austrian exile, the Hanoverians are seen with bemusement in their erstwhile domains, who for the most part have done quite nicely without them. As Republican Britain reasserts itself on the world stage with a victory over Spain and mends fences with their cousins in America, the few aging monarchists who flocked to the banner of the so-called Bonnie Prince Ernie are beginning to sense their chances at a Restoration may be longer than they hoped.
 
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So, I'm not quite sure if this exactly fits the theme of the challenge completely, but I certainly feel like it does. It's not the most realistic or plausible list, but it's an interesting one to say the least. It charts the downfall of the British Crown and the rise of a revolutionary successor state in its place, although that successor state doesn't expand like its predecessor does and is centered around the British Archipelago, hence why I think it works for the challenge.

Anyway, with that out of the way, here's In the Darkness Bind Them!

A list based partially off of a brainstorm idea for my timeline thought up by @Time Enough and partially off of a Wikibox bandwagon over on the other place.

In the Darkness Bind Them

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Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom
1931-1935: David Lloyd George (All Party Government) [1]
1936: Rotha Lintorn-Orman (British Fascisti-Conservative Coalition) [2]
1936-1937: Stafford Cripps (Labour-Conservative-Liberal Coalition
) [3]
1937-1938: Stanley Baldwin (Conservative Party) [4]
1938: Fallen Government (Parliament Dissolved, Royal Party Established) [5]
1938-1940: Rotha Lintorn-Orman (Royal Party) [6]
1940: Fallen Government (United Kingdom Dissolved, Establishment of the British Witanaġemot) [7]


Brytenwalda of the Mythopoetic Witenaġemot
1942-1973: J.R.R. Tolkien (Mythopoetic Society) [8]
1973-: Christopher Tolkien (Mythopoetic Society) [9]


[1] In 1931, David Lloyd George brings about a Keynesian All Party government with the support of King George V and SIS Chief Sidney Reilly. It manages to chug along fairly well for the next couple of years, up until the death of the King in 1936...

[2] ...At which point Reilly, arch-monarchist and Conservative that he is, partners with political firebrand and ultra-royalist Rotha Lintorn-Orman (her OTL substance abuse is curtailed enough to prolong her life and make her into a legitimate political candidate) to pull off A Very British Coup in order to bring about a British Fascisti/Conservative Party Coalition government, albeit one that is primarily Tory-dominated...

[3] ...A government that is promptly opposed by Stafford Cripps, Harold Macmillan, and the young King Edward VIII. Reilly and Lintorn-Orman protested, saying that it was for the good of the King and Empire, but eventually relented. Cripps and the Labour-Conservative-Liberal Coalition steer the ship of state safely until 1937. Meanwhile, writer, poet, philologist, Great War veteran, and academic J.R.R Tolkien publishes a lecture entitled On the Mythopoetic Nature of Man. In the lecture, he outlines how the cultures of Men have crafted their own myths throughout the ages and explains that by embracing the mythopoetic practices and integrating mythological themes and archetypes into his own life, the modern man can remake himself in the mythic image of those who came before him.

[4] The Conservatives regain the majority in 1937 and Stanley Baldwin becomes Prime Minister. Despite the tumult of the Reilly-Orman Coup, British politics seem to be stabilizing once more. King Edward VIII continues to be a popular and well-liked monarch, despiteIn the same year, Tolkien publishes another lecture, On the Virtuous Pagan and the Theory of Courage, in which he expands upon the ideas expressed in On the Mythopoetic Nature of Man, outlining what he called the Pagan Theory of Courage in which Man, identified as the "virtuous pagan", is driven to do the right thing even in the face of certain defeat without the promise of reward or salvation. Much like in On the Mythopoetic Nature of Man, he advocates for the modern man to embrace the Pagan Theory of Courage alongside mythopoetic practices for the betterment of all.

[5] In 1938, King Edward VIII proclaims his desire to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson, to the horror of the Conservative government and the British Establishment. Unwilling to concede or abdicate the throne in favor of his brother Albert, Duke of York, the British Dominions threaten to break off from the Crown, and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin ends up resigning in protest. Seeing an opportunity to once more gain political power, Sidney Reilly begins to meet with the King, gradually isolating him and encouraging him to exercise his royal prerogatives. Emboldened by the machinations of Reilly, Edward declares that he will go through with his marriage to Simpson. When Parliament protests, the King proceeds to dissolve Parliament, with the aid of Reilly's men and the newly-christened Royal Party of Rotha Lintorn-Orman, who he appoints as Prime Minister.

In response to these developments, Tolkien and a number of fellow academics, including C.S. Lewis, his elder brother Warren, and Charles Williams form the Mythopoetic Society, dedicated to fighting against the perceived moral decline of British society and promoting mythopoetic principles among the British populace, with Tolkien himself embarking on a speaking tour throughout Britain. Before long, groups known as Tolkien Clubs begin to form throughout Britain, their members intent on embodying the mythopoetic principles laid out in Tolkien's writings, efforts that are encouraged by Tolkien and the Mythopoetic Society.

[6] The Royal Party rules for two years, becoming increasingly dictatorial and authoritarian as the Dominions begin to break off from the Crown and the British populace starts to grow uneasy with the state of things. More and more Tolkien Clubs are formed, as membership in the Mythopoetic Society grows expeditiously. Government officials and Royal Party members become targets for assault and harassment from the so-called Mythopoets. In 1939, Tolkien publishes a manifesto, The Fellowship of the Witenaġemot, in which he proposes a new form of society, based on mythopoetic principles and named after the Anglo-Saxon political institution of the same name, led by a leader known as the Brytenwalda, an Old English word meaning "Britain-ruler".

[7] The Mythopoetic Revolution begins, as armed and organized Mythopoets rise up and begin slaughtering government officials and Royal Party members alike. Tired of the dictatorial rule of the Royal Party, the British population joins in the revolution, spurred on by the speeches of Tolkien and other leaders of the Mythopoetic Society. Those members of the British establishment who didn't flee the chaos and bloodshed of the revolution and weren't already involved quickly joined the revolutionaries, hoping to escape retribution as the Mythopoets began to win victory after victory. After two years of bloody conflict, the Mythopoets emerged victorious as the Royal family fled abroad, with King Edward and his wife fleeing to Germany, the Duke of York escaping to Canada, the Duke of Gloucester seeking asylum in the newly-consolidated Australasia, and the Duke of Kent finding himself in distant South Africa. The architects of the defeated royal government, Reilly and Lintorn-Orman, are quickly found and executed, the former being beaten to death by enraged Mythopoets and the latter being beheaded in Trafalgar Square. The United Kingdom was no more and in its place, the British Witanaġemot rose like a phoenix from the ashes of revolution.

[8] As the British Witanaġemot took its first breaths as an independent nation, the Mythopoets led by Brytenwalda Tolkien set about rebuilding a war-torn nation along mythopoetic lines. In the decades to come, the Witanaġemot recovered from the revolution, with the Brytenwalda and the Mythopoetic Society governing first from 10 Downing Street, before relocating to Central London and the rebuilt Crystal Palace (rechristened as the Mythopoetic Palace) in 1945. As the new society flourished and the nation became reinvigorated over time, the Witanaġemot grew in power and prosperity too, as the Mythopoetic Military built itself into a formidable force. After a brief Continental War waged against the German Reich alongside the Italians and the Free French of North Africa in the late 50s and early 60s, during which the exiled King Edward was executed with his debauched wife Wallis Simpson, the Witanaġemot had proven itself as a European power, albeit an isolated one. After the Continental War, Brytenwalda Tolkien oversaw the reconquest of both North Ireland and Ireland proper to unite the British Archipelago, and afterwards...stopped. Gone were the days of British colonialism, of imperial ambitions, of the subjugation of native peoples in the guise of "civilization". Now, was a time for peace and prosperity, not war and plunder. Britain would finally know the peace that the Mythopoets sought to forge in their quest for the greater good. The architect of this new age of peace, Brytenwalda Tolkien, died in 1973 of a bleeding ulcer and chest infection, and his son Christopher was voted in by the Mythopoetic Society as the second Brytenwalda.

Elsewhere, the House of Windsor stagnated and faded from relevance as the years went by and the march of history passed them by. The former Duke of York settled into life with his family in Canada, content with being a private citizen rather than a monarch. His brother, the Duke of Gloucester, became Governor-General of Australasia, a position that he was eventually able to leverage into the creation of a new monarchy, that of the Kingdom of Australasia. Finally, the Duke of Kent took a ceremonial position as monarch of South Africa and proceeded to take full advantage to live a life of debauchery before dying of an overdose in 1943.

[9] The new Brytenwalda, Christopher Tolkien has been thus far content to continue his father's policies of peace and prosperity, well aware of the price that was paid in blood to establish the Witanaġemot during his father's rule. Whether that will continue for the foreseeable future is yet to be seen, though international observers are optimistic. The one thing everyone is certain of, however, is that the mythopoetic society established by the first Brytenwalda will continue to exist long after his death and well into the 21st century.
 
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Is it weird that the most shocking part to me is Tolkien waltzing into Ireland?

I wonder if you could sprinkle in some of Tolkien's weird OTL anarcho-monarchism to design actual policy.
 
Is it weird that the most shocking part to me is Tolkien waltzing into Ireland?

I wonder if you could sprinkle in some of Tolkien's weird OTL anarcho-monarchism to design actual policy.
To be honest, the Ireland bit was more or less a creative decision on my part, since it seemed logical for the Mythopoets to desire Ireland to be a part of the Witanaġemot, given the beliefs of the Mythopoetic Society. Although Tolkien did have ties to Ireland, having been raised in the Church of Ireland and there being a debatable amount of Celtic influence on Middle-Earth. That being said, I didn't really put a lot of thought on what their actual policies would be like and just wanted to run with an idea that wouldn't seem out of place in WMIT, though I might have to if I decide to do some wikiboxes for the setting.
 
1964-1979: Leonid Brezhnev (CPSU) †
1979-1983: Dmitry Ustinov (CPSU)
1983-1984: Nikolai Tikhonov (CPSU)
1984-1994: Yelena Bonner (Sakharov Bloc-Glasnost)

1984: Volodymyr Shcherbytsky (Communist)
1989: Yury Vlasov (Communist), Pyotr Demichev (Independent)

1994-1997: Sergei Kovalev (Glasnost)
1994: Anatoly Kashpirovsky (Patriot Union), Yury Vlasov (Communist), Yegor Ligachev (Independent)
1997-2000: Konstantin Kobets (Independent)
2000-: Valentina Tereshkova (Motherland)

2000: Viktor Anpilov (Communist), Mikhail Gorbachev (Social Democratic), Anatoly Marchenko (Independent)
2005: Sergei Kovalev (New Glasnost), Viktor Anpilov (Communist)


The collapse of the Soviet Union was nasty, brutish and short. Analysts in the Nixon and Connally Administrations could not have know just how dire the Soviet economy was by the end of the 1970s. While Western economies overheated and found themselves overtaken by rampant inflation, continued low oil prices through the decade meant there was no respite for the Soviet Union's economic woes, as debts mounted and basic living standards began to collapse after a decade of collapse. When the ailing Brezhnev died of a stroke in 1979, this slow collapse began to become apparent to Western analysts. The Ustinov-led troika of hardliners attempted harder and harder crackdowns on dissent which could not cover up the fact that basic public services were breaking down, shops were running out of food and even the military were struggling for basic supplies. The quick collapse in the standard of living quickly inflamed dissent and protests across Soviet Union, which in turn only led to crackdowns that quickly escalated in their violence and disorganization.

The crimes of the Ustinov era were left officially underexplored, with only a select handful of midranking scapegoats ever properly held to account for the spasms of of violence and repression that flared up increasingly undeniably across the Eastern Bloc. For the West, a pivotal moment in this slow collapse was in October 1983 when Andrei Sakharov, sent into internal exile and de-facto house arrest as the crisis escalated, was killed in his home by armed guards. Whether this was the actions of a panicked flunky amidst a fast-changing situation in Russia's streets or on direct orders of the Kremlin is still hotly debated, but it only further discredited the regime at home and abroad. Ustinov's failing health saw him replaced with an inoffensive placeholder who came to only preside over the full collapse of the empire.

The first and (mostly) free elections of the new Russian Federation were won by a national and international hero. President Bonner had a lot on her side: the vast international support and aid of the Brown Administration, goodwill with the new leaders of post-Soviet states, and an explosion in hostilities in the Middle East that caused massive oil shortages in the West and boosted the oil exports of a ruined economy in the East. While the truth commissions didn't go as far as they were supposed to and mutualised and democratised state industries increasingly fell into the hands of private conglomerates who were backed up with extreme physical force. While Yelena Bonner retired popular, the cracks in democratic Russia were starting to fall, with the economic boom and personal popularity in their leader papering over the cracks of dissatisfaction with capitalism and a greatly diminished Russia that had decisively lost the Cold War.

The cracks spread into collapse Bonner's less charismatic successor. While most observers believe that he won the most votes in 1994 it is clear that Western and business interests helped him along, fearful of "unpredictable" celebrity demagogues who wanted to reverse the private enterprises of the previous decade. But the economic boom was ending, and market shocks and the collapse of the price of oil hit Russia especially hard, as a new American Administration demanded harder and harder austerity in return for economic aid. Soon, just like in the decade before, protesters were marching in the streets, watched by anxious law enforcement barely in control. The ultimate trigger for the collapseJ of democracy was the sinking of an aged nuclear submarine Barents Sea, which not only killed the crew but spread radiation over hundreds of miles, causing mass panic across Russia and much of Europe, and Kovalev was forced to appeal for international aid. The total diminishment of Russia at the hands of liberal democratic neglect was the final straw for an ailing, dysfunctional state, and in October of 1997 the world woke up to the news that Sergei Kovalev had resigned and that General Konstantin Kobets had assumed the presidency, as troops moved to "protect" the Kremlin, the White House, the airports and the television stations.

The crackdown on opposition parties, on the media, on civil society, on Chechen nationalists and all manner of "subversives" that followed received far less condemnation than Ustinov's had a decade earlier, even as Western observers were increasingly unnerved by Kobets Administration's increasingly militant rhetoric regarding lost Russian territory. They were relieved by the eventual announcement of much-delayed elections in the year 2000, and the Western media preferred to talk more about the milestone of the first woman in space becoming the most powerful woman in the world instead of Tereshkova's increasingly militant record as an opposition member of the Duma under Bonner and Kobets, lamenting the end of the Soviet Union and the diminished status of Russia, as well her loudly cheering on the coup and crackdowns and Kobets. When after her landslide victory she appointed her predecessor as a particularly powerful Prime Minister, there were no more illusions.

As the Motherland Union consolidated it's power over Russia and backsliding on it's rights, rebuilding it's military and stationing more and more troops on the borders of Poland and the Baltics, Tereshkova insisted that she was merely restoring Russia's lost greatness. In 2005, violence against Russians in Crimea apparently warranted a full-on occupation, a "referendum" on sovereignty getting held on the same day as her landslide re-election. Across Europe's capitals diplomats began to wonder if the dissolution of NATO was perhaps the greatest blunder since the end of the Second World War.
 
Despite the welcome increase in the number of entries (and the high quality of those entries), unfortunately it does appear that the rules of the challenge are being ignored somewhat, especially in regards to plausibility. At least one of this month's entries must be considered to be entirely in violation of this rule, and whilst I do encourage and enjoy the use of creative and imaginative ideas the rules should not be flouted.

In any case, thank you to everyone who competed in this month's challenge. Submissions are closed and the poll is now up.
 
@Venocara, it's your contest, and your decision.

But if you're trying to give this thing legs, I think it's a serious mistake to ignore Persephone's entry- it's one of the most original Heads of States lists the forum's seen in a good long while. Surely right now the thing to do is encourage people to enter well-written lists- like that one- and let the readers decide whether or not it works for them.
 
@Venocara, it's your contest, and your decision.

But if you're trying to give this thing legs, I think it's a serious mistake to ignore Persephone's entry- it's one of the most original Heads of States lists the forum's seen in a good long while. Surely right now the thing to do is encourage people to enter well-written lists- like that one- and let the readers decide whether or not it works for them.
Yeah, it's a pretty solid list even if it leans implausible (which I assumed was more "no steampunk zombies" or "Churchill can't be Labour all along" more than "Tolkein started a poliitcal movement")

I'll be honest, while I appreciate the vote of confidence, I don't really mind if it's excluded. While I was going off of suggestions by Time Enough for my own timeline and thus thought it was plausible enough for the theme, it doesn't bother me if it isn't. It was one of several ideas I had, such as Warlord era!Russia or Warlord era!America, both of which might be equally implausible, but it's no big deal to me.
 
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