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Tibby's Graphics and Grab-Bag Thread.

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The Holy State of Deseret is a primarily Anglophone country with a large Castillian minority. It is known as the religious centre of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church. It is widely considered to be one of the countries that are ran on theodemocratic lines, where the line between church and state is blurred, albeit the Mormon Church's influence is not as overt as other theodemocracies' faiths are, thanks to the first President, Joseph Smith Jr., being a firm follower of the ideals of Southron philosopher Thomas Jefferson.

The way the Deseret model of theocracy works is ultimately down to the bicameral model of its Legislative Council. While the lower chamber, the House of Commons, is conventionally elected via simple mixed-member proportional and works like a standard parliamentary lower chamber, the upper chamber, the House of Elders, is considerably more powerful than would be expected and is elected from religious-based functional constituencies, with the Mormon population getting the lion's share via their dominance of Deseret.

The presence of the House of Elders has always been a sticking thorn in the side of Deseretan secularists, who have consistently decried the overt presence of religion in government. The House of Elders started off as a chamber directly appointed by the Mormon Church leadership, hence the name House of Elders as it tended to have senior Mormon leadership be appointed there. As Mormonism started to shrink as primarily-Catholic people moved north, especially into the population-soaring New Vegas Autonomous Ward, pressure was put on the government by an increasingly-sceptical people who wanted a directly-elected upper chamber. Or at least one where they would have a say.

Hence the present House of Elders, an inventive solution to maintain Church influence over government while still maintaining democracy. Based on the religious census, the 120 seats are allocated out to each religious denomination. For the major ones [basically only Mormonism (60%) and Catholicism (20%)], they are of course permitted to split theirs into regional constituencies. The Catholic members of the House of Commons and the Catholic Elders work together to determine how it is split for them, and it has consistently been a primarily north/south divide, with the south being divided into New Vegas Ward and the rest of the Mojave Stake. The Mormon Church on the other hand, takes charge of how they divide their regional constituencies, and it does tend to favour established politicians high up in the Church.

Of course, in the religious-based House of Elders, there exist the abstentionist Secular Federation that stands for election, but refuses to take their seats out of principle at opposition to the whole "constituencies based on religion" thing. They tend to do well with the Irreligious constituency, but the size of the Mormon constituencies mean they're guaranteed at least a few seats there too.

Deseret is also known for two other things apart from Mormonism - gambling and transhumanism. Both of which doesn't quite gel with the standard world's perception of Mormonism. Gambling was an illicit but hugely popular "black market industry" in New Vegas along with alcohol (illegal in Deseret since the 1920s) and in the 1950s a canny conservative leader came up with the idea of making New Vegas an autonomous ward and granting it exceptions to many of the moral laws, in exchange for higher tax on the now legalised casinos. This windfall from legalising gambling led to the leader's party dominating government for twenty years straight and constructing the now-generous Deseret welfare state.

New Vegas nowadays is a very very developed city that soars high, defying the dry and inhospitable ground it was built on. And much to hardline moralists' displeasure, it is a very "loose" city morally, with alcohol, gambling, the like being big industries. And as for the second element, transhumanism, Mormonism has a part of its theology the belief you can become like God. Transhumanism was interpreted by a certain share as alike that belief, and so in major cities, but primarily Salt Lake City and New Vegas, transhumanism has became a popular thing for Mormons, especially those of a more liberal and progressive bend. Updates commonly seen elsewhere, like eye-pads, are seen as too basic for them. For a good example of transhumanism just go to the Deseret Museum of Art where a popular artist, Jocosa Martin, regularly shows her works. Martin only paints in two colours - paryl and chi. Those are the labels she uses for millimetre waves and x-rays respectively. To a normal observer with unenhanced vision, her paintings make no sense as they are either blank white canvasses or just random colours. To someone who can see paryl and chi, they are described as beautiful paintings that portray the true broadness of human experiences.

Overall, Deseret is a quiet, forward-thinking even if definitely not secular, place. Certainly a stable one compared to its neighbours to the north...

[the usage of "paryl" and "chi" to mean millimetre waves and x-rays comes from Brent Weeks' Lightbringer Series and is not my invention.]
 
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The Kartvelian People's Kingdom, or just Kartvelia for short, is another post-Socialist country that has decided that to reforge an independent national identity and move on from the failed days of Socialist Republicanism, it must restore the old monarchy. Luckily for Kartvelian monarchists, the Bagrationis managed to solve their succession dispute by that point via a strategic marriage and there was only one heir by the late 1990s.

Some people in the West still refer to Kartvelia by its pre-Socialist exonym of Georgia, but this is widely seen as deprecated and archaic by the 2040s.

Kartvelia defines itself as a "people's kingdom, made out of ten principalities and one federal city". The term autonomous region was in use by the Kartvelian Democratic Republic up until the Bagrationi Restoration, where it was replaced with principality. There are no such princes for most of them. In the case of Abhkazia, the King of Kartvelia also is the Prince of Abhkazia, recognising the Bagrationis' originating from there. In the case of Mingrelia, the House of Dadiani (once Princes of Mingrelia up until 1867) was restored in the 2010s after a referendum.

This enthuasism to cover themselves with monarchist symbolism must be understood in the wider context of the old Twilight Struggle between the West and the East in the 20th century. It was a fundamentally ideological fight between what the west considered "constitutional democracy", which more often than not was tied with monarchy (but not always, as this has to be noted) and what the east considered "popular democracy", which always was a socialist republic. The West believed that democracy itself was ideal, but that it had to be restrained in what they considered its worst impulses by a firm figurehead monarch who could provide wise guidance and be the "living spirit of the nation". The East's "popular democracy" looks superficially like the Western form of democracy, but it was one that had no restraints, and this, according to the post-Struggle narrative, led to purges, collectivisation, dictats, and at times the National Duma of the Russian SFR was more or less reduced to a rubber-stamp of a "Tsar in red robes".

The fall of the model of "popular democracy" seemingly vindicated the West's 'fusionist' argument that democracy must be restrained by monarchism, and republicanism as a whole took a blow that it is only just starting to recover from in 2040. Kartvelia's post-Socialist leaders were motivated by a wish to move on from those days and enter a 'bright, shining future' under the obviously successful model - Constitutional Monarchism.

Kartvelia's economic development has been somewhat inconsistent in the post-Socialist era, which has led to discontent against the establishment and the rise of a left-wing movement called Our Home is Kartvelia which has entered government for the first time in 2038, eager to prove all the naysayers wrong and make Kartvelia a more economically equal country. Rumours that they're funded by the GSU is of course, abound, but we've heard it before...
 
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Since a lot of TABE's rulers are monarchs, I might as well go full hog with fancy titles. I'll add to this every time I come up with a new title. Reminder that the stuff that are lists are stuff I add to every now and then. I do try to make new posts telling people I added to those, but you know.

His Majesty the Sultan of Agrabah
By the Grace of God, We Nicholas the Third of Our Name, Emperor and Autocrat of Russia in America; Tsar of Alaska, Tsar of Yukon, Tsar of Kaska Dena, Tsar of the Kutchin, Tsar of the Inuit; Lord of New Archangel, and Grand Prince of Moscow on the Matanuska, the Aleut Islands and the Alaska Valleys; Prince of Kodiak, Bering, Baranov, Fort Elisabeth, Anastasiagrad and others; Sovereign and Grand Prince of New Novgorod, St. Paul, New Russia, Omsk in Alaska, and Ruler of all the Lands Beneath the Denali; Sovereign and Lord of the Yupik, the Iñupiat and the Tsimshan: hereditary Head of the House of Romanov via the Archangel Line; Duke of Victory, Heir to the Russian Empire and all its Possessions, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth.
By the Grace of God, Magdalena II, Princess of Andorra
By Winter’s Will, Krakay the Ninth of His Name of the Ever-Bright House of Ikaaka, Emperor of all Penguins and of all Domains of Antarctica, Lord of the Pole of the South, Deliverer of the Sacred Midnight, Greenbane.
By the Grace of God, Alfonso VIII Martín, King of Aragon, of Valencia and of Mallorca; Prince of Catalonia; Count of Barcelona, of Roussillon, of Girona, of Osona, of Besalú and of Cerdanya; Grand Master of the Order of Montesa.
By Frank’s Favour, Jwala the First of Her Name of the Most Blessed Line of King Jwalia; Queen of the Lemurs and Lady-Paramount of Aranycha; Protector of the People, Commander of the Armed Forces, Steward of the Harvest and Ultimate Party Animal.
Her Majesty the Queen of Arendelle and Sovereign of the Atlantic Islands
Atlantis: Queen Lilia
Badakhshan: Sultan Muhammad Alexander
Bergetalia: Viceroy Andrej II
Bhutan: King Jigme Dukpa
Brasil: Prince Fergus IV
Brasil: Prince Gentasien III
Long form
By the Grace of the Manifest, His Most Royal and Imperial Majesty, Constantine the Fourteenth of His Name of the Most Honourable and Ascendant House of Pendragon, King of Britain and Steward of the Romans in the West; High King of Aotearoa-New Zealand, of Araucania and Patagonia, of Armorica and of Dumnonia; King of Arish, of Australia, of Belize, of Britain-in-Southern America, of British Columbia, of Cadiz and the Rif, of Canada, of Fiji, of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, of Mauritius, of Newfoundland, of the Philippines, of Ramalho, of Rhodesia, of Seychelles, of Trinidad, of Vanuatu, of the Veld and of the Vellai Islands; Emperor of Japan; Samraat of Britain-in-India; Lord Paramount of Cumbria and Liangkwang; Duke of Gwent and Torthar; Prince of the Ionian Islands, of Malta and Lampedusa, of Maui and of the Pepper Coast; Marquis of Guyana and of Socotra; Lord of the Antarctic Territory, of the Canary Islands, of the Cathwell Islands, of the Chagos Islands, of Cyprus, of Guam, of the Jovian Cities, of the Lunar Territories, of Panama, of the Paracel and Spratly Islands and of the Virgin Islands; Chief Executive Officer of the British Further Stellar Company; Scholar of Scholars, Protector of the Faith, Flameborn.

Short form
By the Grace of the Manifest, Costenhin XIV, of Britain and Her Overseas Domains King; Scholar of Scholars, Protector of the Faith, Flameborn.
Bulgaria: Tsar Simeon IV
Burma: Queen Hayma
His Purple Majesty the Emperor and Autocrat of All the Romans; King of the Hellenes, the Cretans and the Cypriots; Protector of the Holy City of Jerusalem; August One; Dragonborn
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Pavlo of the House of Skoropadsky, Fifth and Third of That Name, Hetman of the Cossack Hosts of Siveria and on the Don and of the Ukrainian National State, Protector of the Cossack Republic of Sagallo.
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Her Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty Andrea the Second, Holy Roman Empress of the German Nation, of This Name the First, Empress of Austria, Apostolic Queen of Hungary, Queen of Bohemia, Croatia and Illyria; Queen of Jerusalem, Archduchess of Austria, Duchess of Salzburg, of Styria, of Carinthia and Slovenia, of Carniola and of Slevania, Margravine of Moravia; Princely Countess of Habsburg and Tyrol, Princess of Trent and Brixen; Lady of Trieste, in the Windic March and of the Pannonian Avars.
...
By the Grace of God, We, of Jesse, David, Solomon, Bagrationi, Supreme by God, anointed and crowned by God, Tamar II, Queen of all Kartvelia, Princess of Abhkazia, Suzerain of Mingrelia and of all other lands, the Lady Paramount.
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By the Grace of God and the People the Princess of Media California and Lady of Buenaventura, Inyo, Los Angeles, Monterrey and the San Joaquin Valley, Protectress of the Yokuts.
Her Imperial Majesty the Huēyi Cihuātlahtoāni, María Carolina Coszcatl of the Most Excellent House of Moctezuma de Tultengo-Iturbide; By Divine Providence and the National Congress, the Empress of Mexico and Lady-Protectress of the Mexican States; Cihuātlahtoāni of México-Tenochtitlán; Duchess of Moctezuma de Tultengo.
By the Grace of God, George II Charles of the Most Royal House of Miskito, Sovereign King of the Mosquito Coast and Hereditary Chief of the Miskito Nation, Prince in Belize and of Bluefields.
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By the Grace of God and the People, Francisco VI Carlos López de León, King of Paraguay and Lord of the Guaraní, Duke of Ascunción and Protector of the River Paraguay.
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Yokhon the Fifty-Ninth of His Name, the Most Exalted One; High Guardian of the Nests of the Spared Race; Appeaser to the Great Destructor of the Ancient Ones; Chief Chieftain of All of the Spared Tribes of the Lands of Roarack
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By the Grace of the Divine and the Will of the Constitution, His Highness The Rajah of Sarawak
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Manuello Flibert, by the Grace of God, Duke of Savoy, Montferrat and Chablais, Prince of Piedmont, Carignano, Oneglia, Poirino and Trino; Prince of Carmagnola, Montmellian with Arbin and Francin; Marquis in Italy, of Saluzzo, Susa, Ivrea, Ceva, Maro and Sezana; Prince-Bailiff of the Duchy of Aosta; Prince of Chieri, Dronero, Crescentino, Riva di Chieri and Banna, Busca, Bene and Brà; Count of Maurienne, Tende, Asti and Alessandria; Lord of Vercelli, Pinerolo, Tarentaise, Lumellino and Val di Sesia; Suzerain and Protector of the Duchy of Kalos, Principality of Seborga and Counties of Nice, Monaco and Imperia, Prince and perpetual Vicar of the Holy Roman Empire in Italy.
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His Majesty the King of Yugoslavia, Peter the Fourth of that Name of the House of Karađorđević; King of Serbia, of the Bosniak Sanjaks, of Macedonia and of the Gheg Albanians; Lord-Protector of Montenegro.
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others to come, eventually. I have names down on the Excel, they're just a hassle to type up here.
 
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British Honours Levels. Bottom-Upwards

Servant Extraordinary (Serw Sarisaf)
Technically translated more correctly as "Most Excellent Servant", but sarisaf is traditionally translated in English as extraordinary. This originally comes from the need for more people to serve and advise the King and to get more people to fight without upsetting the nobility by ennobling any peasants. This, under British feudalism, was the highest rank any peasant could reasonably get, in theory. In reality, it was a great deal more flexible. Those days, it's more or less a knighthood to be honest, a mark of honour on people that doesn't mean they get a peerage. This is obviously not hereditary.

Lord / Lady of Their Manor (Dôn di Sew Muison)
Technically translated as "of Their Mansion", but the meaning is clear. This is the lowest and most irrelevant position in the British peerage. It can even be sold. The monarchy has been known at times to create those to sell off to gullible foreigners for money at times. The requirement that it be tied to some land or another was abandoned in the 1600s when a King decided he needed more money and somehow got away with it. There's a lot of Lords and Ladies of Their Manor who never even went to Britain in their lives. The position is hereditary, to make it even worse.

Minor Lord / Lady (Dônith)
This is the least important position in the British peerage that is still with some respect. It's the equivalent to a baron in the old English peerage, although slightly more common. It's one of the oldest positions in the British peerage, and according to British national mythology, it was the position Prince Arthur gave his warriors of the round table [the actual truth is rather more difficult to ascertain]. Hereditary, of course.

Lord / Lady Honourable (Dôn Illystr)
Technically more correctly translated as "illustrious lord/lady", illystr has been long considered the British equivalent to the English honourable. It is a title that, if bestowed, does not ensure it is inherited by the grantees, but it does guarantee that their heirs will be of dônith status. It can be seen as a temporary, one-lifetime-only, "update" to dônith to mark the personal achievement of the person in question or the work they gave to the realm.

Lord / Lady Parliamentary (Dôn Senadal)
This position traditionally gave people a hereditary seat in the Senate, like the one of Cathwell that Gwilim Pedid the Younger entered via an application of a writ of acceleration. Those seats have been more or less reformed away with time, but the Lords and Ladies Parliamentary still enjoy their ancient right to enter the Senate (mostly arranged ahead of time) to give speeches on what they think are the burning issues of the time. The position those days is seen more or less as a hereditary version of Dôn Illystr, and not with its old connotations.

Lord / Lady of Distinction (Dôn di Far)
Technically "Lord / Lady of Importance", but mar has been translated as both "important" and "distinguished". Basically the equivalent of Dôn Illystr for Dôn Senadal. If you're granted this post, you're basically also granted a hereditary Dôn Senadal position for your heirs. It's more or less considered a "medium"-level honour in the peerage, below the really, really exclusive ones, but above the perfunctory or "not really" peerages.

Castellan (Castelleir)
This post is the genuine deal that Dôn di Sew Cas pretends to be. Historically, it was a post granted by the King or petty nobles to freemen who were in charge of castle administration. Quite often, this post fell in the hand of lucky peasantry who were deemed 'worthy enough' by the King or by the petty nobles. It is always associated with specific castles due to this history, but the castellans have more or less defaulted into nobility over time.

Marquis / Marquise (Mârkis / Mârkes)
A Renaissance-created position (via stealing from Anglo-France), it more or less was given to prestigious Castelleir to kick them up the honour ranks a bit as well as the King's "favourites" from the lower ranks, it also was used to grant subsidiary titles to higher-up peers. It never really was an independent position in its own right, but it has been noted to be one of the most common positions for aristocratic Prime Ministers to come from.

Prince / Princess (Princeb / Princibes)
Possibly the oldest role in the whole British peerage, it was even the European-accepted ranking for the head of state in the medieval era as many were reluctant to recognise a Muslim as anything like a King and they still were overtly pledging fealty to the Byzantines anyway. Basically the equivalent to a "Earl" in the old English peerage [yes, "Earl" comes above "Marquis" in the British ranking, it's weird].

Duke / Duchess (Dug' / Dughedeg')
A later innovation in the 1000s, widely reckoned to be equal to Princeb/Princibes, even if coming ahead of them in the formal hierarchy, it really took off in the Renaissance as the position was widely considered more prestigious than Princeb/Princibes in European society, and never really quelled down. Plenty of foreign monarchs have British duchies, like the Alaskan Emperors being "Dukes of Victory" and whatnot.

Grand Duke / Grand Duchess (Gran Dug' / Gran Dughedeg')
Distinctively a 1600s creation as the Dukes at the time were unhappy with the new inflow of dukes which they saw as "common" and they wanted a new ranking that proved they were "better" than those. It came at the same time as a King seeking to improve his personal finances (the same one who sold a lot of Dôn di Sew Cas titles) so he basically created a new peerage position for the Dukes in exchange for huge donations. This was one of the straws that led the Senate to vote to restrain the King in his dealings and force him to cede some of the revenue to the national Treasury.

Prince / Princess over the Sea (Princeb / Princibes Per lla For)
In the complex ritual of ceremonial feudalism, it was inevitable that Britain's overseas puppets, ahem, satellite allies would be incorporated. Since they were heads of state of independent countries, they demanded a high position. So while their official status were recognised via a higher-up position heavily dependent on their status as British pup-allies, they received clear hereditary titles lower down for all time, namely that of "Prince / Princess over the Sea". It is the one that former British monarchical allies still retain even if they broke free of overt British influence.

Flame Prince / Flame Princess (Princeb / Princibes di Fflam)
Technically it could be translated as "Prince/Princess of Flame" or "of the Flame", and this is what some do, but it is more aptly translated this way as the di [x] construction is often used to add an archaic, ceremonial feel to a mere adjective. It is the equivalent to the French prince du sang, and is only granted to legitimate descendants of the House of Pendragon that are not within the Imperial Family. Which, considering the House has been going on for quite a bit, includes quite a few people. The dragon symbolism is characteristically British, and the House of Pendragon is not afraid to invoke it.

Petty King / Petty Queen (Rhui Min / Rhiant Min)
For the really minor independent countries that are firmly within the British feudal-industrial-corporate structure, the monarchs tend to get this ranking in the British peerage, and it is of course heavily dependent on their status. A rather important realm would get a higher ranking one, but this is one that tends to be handed out to the titchy realms to acknowledge their presence. They are still ahead of all the British peers, so it's still a honour.

King / Queen (Rhui / Rhiant)
The King of Britain may carry a lot of those titles around at this rank, but he is firmly above that rank thanks to his main title. This is mostly for the independent heads of state of the significant countries incorporated in the wider Commonwealth. The Queen of Burma for one. It tends hereditary, but it is heavily dependent on the status of the person in question. There are some republics within the Commonwealth that has their elected head of state be granted the equivalent of this role while they're in charge, and it is dependent on that status. Not a lot of republics, though.

High King / High Queen (Rhui Allt / Rhiant Allt)
Functionally, this is basically just the British monarch, even if the Burmese have been trying to get their monarch recognised as such. It's mostly used to grant foreign monarchs of Britain's top allies a good spot in the traditional pecking order, above any subservient countries of Britain's.

Land-King / Land-Queen (Terruin)
Technically this word is more "pertaining to the land", but when used as a noun, it denotes the British monarch's true position. They are the 'embodiment' of the land, in other words. This is the supreme position in the British peerage, most of the time. The Land-King/Land-Queen is guaranteed to be on top of the others in Britain and the wider Commonwealth, and has to answer to nobody, to swear fealty to no one. Well, unless...

Emperor / Empress (Imeradur / Imeradures)
The Byzantines come knocking. The British are very, very curious, they basically constructed a system where they're on top of everything, but because of a sheer dedication to seeing themselves as carrying on the Roman legacy, they refuse to stop ceremonially recognising the Byzantine Emperor as the ultimate feudal overlord. The British King may carry a lot of titles, they may wield two imperial titles around, but even he continues to pay homage to the Emperor in Constantinople, who is the true head of the pecking order in the feudal-industrial-corporate complex Britain made.
 
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Monarchs of Talossa (1791-present)
María I (Moritz) 1791-1851
"The Peasant Peacemaker"
Talossa's origins remain unknown. The historical myth is that the people ultimately came from Latin Africa, and so their language is related to Numidian. This has yet to be disproven. What we do know is that they broadly resided in France in the North, near the Netherlands, before migrating to New Orleans and ultimately heading North to settle in the then embyronic St. Louis Colony. Some time in the early 1700s, the Talossans decided that they needed to move further inwards, and went to the northeast, where they ended up founding a new settlement by a lake, which they called Milvoc'ht.

They somehow escaped the Seven Years War, but by the 1790s, the world was starting to be dimly aware of the Talossans' existence, and this worried them. They didn't want to be forcibly annexed into the English or British realms. They were aware the British tended to be, ah, eccentric, so they decided to plump for them as their new guardian instead. Before 1791, the Talossans were broadly a republic by default, but they knew that to get a better chance, they needed to present forth a monarch who could get Britain's respect. So they decided to have a lottery. 5 bent to get in.

And ultimately the one who got the winning ticket was... a low-born seventeen-year-old girl from the rough streets of Milvoc'ht who somehow saved up enough money for one ticket. The Talossans kept to their commitment though, and crowned her Queen María and sent her off with some government officials to Castreleon to hopefully persuade the King of Britain to promise protection, or at least not invade. They did not expect it to work, though.

The King of Britain at that time was Pedr VII, a man who was desperate for anything to distract him from his irritating Tosaig. So some people who was talking in badly mangled French accommodated by the only person in the entire Kingdom who could translate that to British, peaked his interest. Especially as they claimed to be from a distant kingdom in the west that was desperate for protection. Pedr VII found this fascinating and working through the translator, promised to grant Talossa protection from the other kingdoms in exchange for them vowing fealty to him as High-King.

Pedid was outraged that the King did this unilaterally, but it was just one drip-drop on the collapsing relationship between the King and the Tosaig that would ultimately break with the French Affair in which Pedid advocated welcoming the exiled King of France as a refugee. Meanwhile, María Moritz, Queen of Talossa, would return to Talossa with unexpectedly good news. Britain did indeed grant them protection. Celebrations were held all through Talossian land, and the streets of Milvoc'ht was loud with cheers for their land's newfound security.

Talossa would broadly be understood by the English and French to be under British protection from then on, so it was widely ignored up until the 1830s and the growing presence of Atlantic-Americans near Talossa. They held a low opinions of what they considered "backwoods French" and there was increasing conflict in the west side of the Great Lakes, what the Atlantic-Americans considered "Wisconsin" and Talossans "Visconça". María by then was in her forties and much more experienced at the art of diplomacy. While the Seneschal was managing internal politics, she was determined to calm matters down and avoid this issue. The Queen was acutely aware of the plan of Britain, England and Scotland to "harmonise" their northern colonies into a "Dominion of Canada". She entered negotiations with the King and Tosaig to get Talossa a respectful position within the Dominion that would guarantee Talossa's ancient rights to their language and property. This was finally hammered out in 1841, two years before Canada finally became a thing. She oversaw Talossa enter Confederation as an equal partner to the other provinces, and with its ancient rights respected.

It is thanks to María that "Talossan Law" is a distinct thing in 2040 Canada. She would pass away in her sixties, leaving behind a nation in mourning.

Stefan (Moritz) 1851-1868
"The International Man"
Her son and heir, Stefan, chose to continue on his mother's royal house of Moritz, rather than his father's rather obscure family name of Dixhet. Stefan was not his mother, who remembered very well her humble origins and presented herself as a "woman of the people". He was brought up in as much luxury as Talossa could provide, and was one of its first genuine aristocrats. Known as Talossa's "international man", he was very much used to hob-nobbing with the European elite and spreading knowledge of Talossa far and wide. Always with a fondness for cigars, he developed a chronic cough later in life, which shortened his lifespan considerably. Often clashing with liberal reformists in Talossa [the very same people his mother favoured], he would acquire a domestic reputation as an arch-conservative who defended the growing elite's interests.

His death would come suddenly at the age of 56, which was a shock to the nation.

María II Eleonora (Moritz) 1868-1923
"A Rock in Turbulent Waters"
The future Queen was a bookish young woman who basically was brought up by her servants as her father was away on some business or another, and even when he was at home was more interested in his card games and his alcohol than in his daughter and heir. Upon her father's sudden death, she became Queen at the age of twenty-five. Acutely aware of her sheer unpreparedness for being Queen, she gave consent for a regency council for the following four years while she was "polished" [in her own word] into the sort of monarch Talossa needed. This was a wise move.

The Regency Era saw some liberal reforms that were popular yet blocked by the stubborn Stefan, go ahead at last. The franchise was expanded, support for family farms were implemented and as Canadian politics increasingly influenced Talossa, the nascent socialist movement started to emerge. Once the Queen, formally educated in everything needed to be a monarch, was finally crowned in 1872, she oversaw a strong cultural reawakening of Talossan culture in reaction to increasing Anglo-American influence, especially in the neighbouring Metropolitan District of Chicago which was rapidly expanding. Acutely aware of the need to balance this with not scaring away profitable immigrants, María Eleonora would seek to, along with her Seneschals, push bills expanding support of culture in Talossa while allowing cities such as Milvoc'ht to rapidly expand with immigrants.

Always with her head in books, many wondered if she would ever get a spouse, but in 1874 she finally engaged a fellow Catholic, Prince Fernando of the House of Braganza and penultimate child of the Queen of Portugal. Portugal was always one of Britain's oldest allies, even despite their stark religious differences, and this marriage was considered diplomatically ideal. On a personal level, it somewhat worked, but was not without clashes.

They had five children, including the next two monarchs of Talossa, which proved a surprise and relief to many Talossan monarchists who doubted that there would even be one. Meanwhile, at a Canadian level, sectarian tensions started to spike between Protestants, Catholics and Muslims. In Talossa, the Protestants tended to be German and Scandinavian immigrants, and tended to be poorer than native Talossan Catholics. In her speech to the nation, spread around by newspapers, she emphasised unity and rising above divisions, while her Seneschals were told privately to try to calm divisions down. This, they tried their best to do, but as matters soured, it became more difficult. This led to the Talossan Socialist Party becoming more popular with Protestant immigrants while turning more explicitly anti-clerical. The Liberals and Conservatives received that news with dread.

Meanwhile, in more irrelevant yet important regal news, the British held the first Imperial Conference of monarchs under British protection, and "forgot" to invite the Talossan Queen. María Eleonora was not at all happy with this, and perceived it as a deliberate snub. Prince Consort Fernando heard this news, and feared it meant that Britain was turning away from Portugal, since the House of Moritz was the only British-protected royal house that the Braganzas married into. So some words were exchanged with relatives, and one day the British establishment got a rude awakening as Portugal frostily told them that they expected full respect of a Portuguese ally under British protection, namely the Kingdom of Talossa.

The formal alliance took a year or so to negotiate, but it was essentially a done thing by the time the British received the news. Costenhin XII considered Talossa a "piffling, irrelevant, tiny place full of dimunitive French peasants", but as the Senate voted to "caution" him against making any further diplomatic "forgetting", he made a note to invite Talossa to the second Conference, cursing while he did so.

Bizarrely enough, this whole affair managed to unite Talossa, even if briefly, in solidarity against the "faraway British". In that brief, shining moment, Talossans of any ethnicity or origin could agree that their country deserved respect from even the greatest power on the planet. And that would linger in later decades as people invoke "the spirit of 1881", and even nowadays, 1881 is noted as the event that "made" modern Talossa.

In the late 19th century, Talossa would see some of its politicians rise high in Canadian politics, including Liberal Antonio Galilot who ended up the "Quiet Kingmaker" of Liberal leaders, including enabling the rise of the "Redhead from Rhui Island" Aleisandr Bendith in the 1890s, and Conservative Françal Setemvar who was Finance Minister for seven years in the late 1880s and early 1890s under several different Prime Ministers. But none of Talossa's impact on late-19th century Canadian politics can be considered without the rise of the left-wing Socialists, which included many Talossans in its ranks, especially those of a more immigrant background. The left-wing of the Socialists had the German-born Victor Berger and the moderates had the half-Scottish, half-French Röviens La Follette. Despite both being from Milvoc'ht, they bitterly disagreed on a lot of issues, including how much to work with the Liberals. Berger, being from the anti-clerical tradition of Socialists [even if from a Catholic family himself], distrusted the Liberals and considered them and the Conservatives to be the same. La Follette was from a political family with ties to the Liberals [leading Berger to dismiss him as a "Liberal in Socialist clothing"] and so advocated working with Liberals on key aspects that benefited workers.

The Berger-La Follette split would dominate the Canadian Socialist Party for decades, and surprisingly enough weaken their more revolutionary aspect as they expended their struggle on fighting each other and not on radicalising the workers. This would lead the Plains to be more disillusioned with establishment politics and more interested in revolution, leading to the Crisis of the 1920s. But that's for later. La Follette decided that unlike Berger's focus on Canadian-level politics, that Talossa would be ideal to form a Socialist government. In 1898, in the wake of Aleisandr Bendith winning a Liberal victory at the Canadian-level, the Liberals and Socialists [under the "Social-Liberal Pact"] convincingly defeated the Conservatives and gave María Eleonora and Talossa their first-ever Socialist seneschal.

Röviens La Follette was a dominant personality in Talossa's provincial politics, and surprisingly enough got on well with the Queen who was known for having reformist sentiments. La Follette, as noted before, was from the moderate half of the Socialists, those that saw the party as merely a party of advocacy for workers' interests, not a revolutionary socialist movement. Even as Berger wrote many articles in the Milvoc'ht Daily Worker acidily condemning the "bourgeois liberalism" of La Follette, the Social-Liberal Pact acquired a lot of achievements to its name, and many with the Queen's silent approval. Expansion of Talossa's primitive welfare state, a tax reform policy were two things he achieved, but the greatest feather in his cap was that of universal suffrage, expanding Talossa's democratic franchise to every man and woman above the age of 21.

The First World War's coming would test La Follette's Social-Liberals as Berger saw this opportunity to emphasise the Socialist Party's traditional pacifism and rejection of war as a "bourgeois trick" to turn workers against each other. In the end, La Follette turned out to be a man of his principles, and concurred with Berger that the Socialists should oppose war. This led to the Conservatives returning to power in 1915 on a backlash to the "pro-Central Powers" La Follette, and the Socialist Party on a Canadian level split, not on Berger vs. La Follette lines, but on war lines.

Prince Fernaodo, first child of the Queen and heir to the Talossan throne, would prove himself a strong pro-war agitator, actively getting involved in politics in favour of the war, which tested the monarchy's popularity with those that were more sceptical of the war. This concerned the Queen, but Fernaodo was always one to play his own trumpet and ignore any advice. As the war concluded with a messy and unsatisfying outcome, many unhappy Talossan veterans returned home, remembered who opposed the war in the first place, and gave the Socialist Party an outright majority.

And La Follette, now free from the Liberals and with more of a distrust of the Royal Family thanks to Prince Fernaodo, would insist on his last term's grand project being that of restricting the influence of royalty in politics. All María Eleonora could do was sigh and give her assent to the bill that reduced the monarch's power further. Fernaodo took it as a personal insult to the House of Bragança-Moritz and regularly gave shouting rows at his mother over her giving assent. María Eleonora felt more and more tired by the day. And in 1923, she just never woke up.

Fernaodo (Bragança-Moritz) 1923-1930
"A Brief and Unpleasant Experience"
The death of María Eleonora was both expected and unexpected. She was by 1923 the oldest ruling monarch of Talossa [albeit that's not an achievement] and in her 80s, and in retrospect, it wasn't that surprising she would die around this time due to the events, but she was ruler of Talossa in one of its most transformative periods from a slightly backwoods domain to a multicultural realm and many only knew her as their ruler, nobody else. It was truly the end of an era. As Seneschal La Follette (himself at death's door) gave his moving eulogy to "the truest servant of the people Talossa ever had", the new King was set to assert his influence.

Fernaodo, according to many people, inherited too little of his mother and too much of his grandfather Stefan. He had Stefan's swagger and a self-righteous vision of himself as the "true" leader of Talossa. While it barely passed muster in the mid-19th century when the government was theoretically at the pleasure of the King, it was outright unacceptable in the 1920s. With the Socialist government handling the sudden death of La Follette less than a year after the Queen, the new Seneschal Emagnhel "Emil" Seidel was of the more "Bergerite" tendency, even if not a full-blown revolutionary. The stage was set for a clash between the Socialists and the King. Then the Socialists lost their majority.

The 1924 election saw the resurgence of the Liberals by riding on agrarian discontent and allying with the wider Canadian Progressive movement as the "Liberal and Progressive Union". With the Socialists under Seidel shifting to the left, the resulting Senate was one of no majority, and the LPU [the kingmaker] chose to coalition with the Conservatives to form a new government of the centre-right in exchange for generous agrarian subsidies. King Fernaodo, if he was a more adroit man, could have supported the new government and established a new centrist consensus away from the Bergerite radicalism the Socialist Party was increasingly under the sway of. He never was that sort of man.

The Crisis of the 1920s in which the plains provinces of Canada successfully seceded as the radical-socialist Union of Agrarian and Industrial Communes only made things worsen in Talossa as Fernaodo increasingly believed that only his firm guard could protect Talossa from socialism, which in his deeply-paranoid mind included anything that smelled of concessions to the poor. As the Roaring Twenties went on, the Conservatives and Liberal-Progressives found that even if they passed bills, the King would find ways to use his reduced powers to fight those he disliked. And his popularity decreased. In the glitzy ballrooms of Milvoc'ht, republicanism was the whisper of the day as it was in the trade union halls and the busy streets. Fernaodo was seemingly making the monarchy's days numbered as people could unite in their utter dislike of him.

The Socialist Party, still under Seidel, won a majority in 1929 just before the Great Depression hit. One of their manifesto plans was to hold a consultation on the monarchy's future. Fernaodo and Emil Seidel never got on at all. And once the economy collapsed, people became more radical and vocal republican marches were happening. In 1930, Fernaodo finally decided that if the monarch's survival was under threat because of him, he would abdicate. He had no children, so it went to his brother, who received the most unfortunate of circumstances to inherit a throne...

Tratxan I (Bragança-Moritz) 1930-1943
"The Nation's Humblest Servant"
Never confident in public speaking, always in his brother's shadow, the graying figure of Tratxan Bragança-Moritz ascending to the throne seemed to many to be the final whimper of the collapsing monarchy in favour of a new republic. But what he lacked in the public touch, he more than made up for it in private conversations. The public may see him as a cold, distant aristocrat at first, but when even the committed republican Emil Seidel could remark that "if the public could see the man I converse with, they would elect him", that turns around the hardline abolitionists into softer forces.

Also helping Tratxan is his family, including his charismatic wife Queen Ivana, who successfully portrayed herself as someone who cares for all people and oversaw the royal family's financial and public support of soup kitchens to feed the poor. It was in those soup kitchens that the royal family slowly and painstakingly rebuilt their popular support with the people of Talossa. And to be honest when you boil down the matter, it was too soon after María Eleonora's death for the people to go full-blown republican. They were open to saying the thoughts when the King was someone they actively disliked, but when it was Tratxan, a person many of them didn't know, they defaulted to their normal stance, that of ambivalent support.

Tratxan's reign would oversee Canada (including Talossa) increasingly get dragged into European matters. Unlike the last war, the royal family this time was studiously neutral, with the heir to the throne Prince Tratxan refusing to comment beyond safe platitudes. They learnt well from the experiences with Fernaodo. Once the war started in 1939, the Royal Family was cautious to comment further, which irked half of the Socialist government and pleased the other half. Tratxan was an aging man when he assumed the throne, and after thirteen years, his heart gave out.

Tratxan II (Bragança-Moritz) 1943-1985
"Atomic Wonder"
Tratxan II was a dynamic individual who clearly inherited his mother's talents rather than his father's. He could play the most aristocratic of lords at a formal gathering and greet labourers with a firm handshake and a cheeky smile a few hours later without any blinking. A man comfortable with the people, he proved an ideal unifying figure, even before his father's death. The coronation was postponed for after the war was finished [against Germany, no wait, Russia] as an ideal ceremony to unite the province. By the time Tratxan II became King, Seidel was out and was replaced by Dante Hoan, who was seen as more of a conciliatory figure for the Socialist Party's internal factions, and republican sentiment was at a record low since the 1920s.

The war with Russia, after the war with Germany finished, would conclude in 1947, and the coronation of Tratxan II take place the next year. It was one widely broadcast to all Talossans and according to some would lead to a Conservative victory in the 1949 election as a wave of patriotic sentiment shifted the province rightwards against Hoan's government. But that's debatable, they were after all, in power for 20 years by that point.

Tratxan II would oversee the royal family accept its new role as figureheads of the state, the heady conservatism of the 1950s, the Socialists get back in 1959 under Frans Zeidler and overall rule over a very changeable age for Talossa. He is widely associated with the post-war consensus which mostly aligns with his reign. His death at the age of 87, as the last of the Talossan monarchs born in the 19th century, marked the end of an era.

María III Mitxa (Bragança-Moritz) 1985-2013
"The Philosopher-Queen"
Heir to the throne for most of her life, her ascension to the throne when she was in her early 50s was widely expected. Unlike past Marías, she was extensively prepared for the throne from an early age and as a consequence of that felt very much the burden of responsibility and expectations. To cope with it, she delved into philosophy to find moral explanations to her position. Quite a few Seneschals during Tratxan II's reign can remember when they came early, as expected, and spent time discussing philosophical questions and debates with the heir before having the audience with the King.

Her ascension was after the funeral of her extremely popular father, and while people really liked the father, they were ambivalent about his rather introverted daughter. But María Mitxa would try her best to raise to the situation. After all, she was prepared for it, and could give a respectable speech. The speech she gave may have delved a bit too much into high-level concepts, but it did manage to communicate her view of her position well, that she knew it was a great responsibility but that she would proudly carry it for the people of Talossa.

The Seneschal who was serving at the time of Tratxan's death and María Mitxa's ascension was known to remark that the advice Tratxan gave him was simple and straight-forward, but ultimately useless in practise, while María Mitxa's advice was heavily philosophical and seemed useless, but if you gave the effort to think into it, it would pay off dividends in the long run. He never commented on which style he preferred.

The "Philosopher-Queen" of Talossa would face a major issue with her first child and her heir, Prince Lorentz. Lorentz was always a bit of a play-boy and rather too eager to turn to alcohol, leading to his face being plastered on tabloids even before he became the heir. This was an issue for the "modern monarchy" to have the heir to the throne be a drunkard playboy with a trashed reputation. So the Queen as representative of "The Firm" offered Lorentz a deal, he would either go to rehab and keep his royal funding, or don't and be cut off without a dollar. Lorentz after a while, and one last late night with the bottle, agreed to the first one. As part of this, he would be understood to keep a low profile and focus on his new family.

This paid off, as Lorentz managed to turn his image around slightly and by the time he became King, he was mainly known as "the guy who was a heavy drunkard, but now is sober", which worked wonders with social conservatives. María Mitxa finally died in 2013, at the age of 81.

Lorentz (Bragança-Moritz) 2013-2025
"The Struggle"
Technically he's patrilineally of the House of Aureia, but following the Stefan precedent, he chose to continue the House of Bragança-Moritz [despite the Braganzas refusing to recognise him as the head of a valid cadet branch following their precedent of male-line only]. Anyway, he was in his fifties when he inherited, continuing a bit of a pattern in Talossan monarchs. His time as monarch was honestly, forgettable. Nothing much of note happened in his time on the throne, and his sudden early death was ultimately found to be because of repeated alcohol usage destroying his body.

Turns out he just kept on drinking but extremely private and the stresses of being monarch led to it getting worse. That's pretty bad, image-wise.

María IV Aivlina (Bragança-Moritz) 2025-2028
"Me, Talossa and the Dying Queen"
With the scandal of King Lorentz continuing to drink heavily and it leading to his death, his twenty-six-year-old daughter would be forced to deal with it now as Queen. María Aivlina was the epitome of the ideal young monarch. Time at university clean and uncontroversial. Known to support charities that did public good without getting into divisive issues. Even going steady with a nice young middle-class man from a safe background.

If that's not the perfect monarch for a figurehead role, who is? Well, there's the matter of her chronic ill-health, yes yes. There are a lot of things even cyberpunk medicine can't fix. Her body is slowly dying, and there's really nothing anyone can do. What she is really determined for, is to have a child before she dies, so the child can be the heir. Her new husband is very supportive of her, if nothing else.

In late 2027, she finally has her child she so desired for, and named her María Luïça. Her body starts to fall apart rapidly afterwards, with her losing consciousness in February 2028 and deemed dead shortly afterwards. And Talossa enters its second Regency Era.

María V Luïça (Bragança-Moritz) 2028-present
"The Quiet One"
If you meet María Luïça in 2040, you meet a quiet twelve-year-old girl with the deepest stares from her wide round sapphire eyes. Like she could see through your very soul. She has few friends, but what friends she has, she is fiercely loyal to. She is acutely aware that she was basically born on the throne, and has expectations on her that surpasses even that of her great-grandmother. She is possibly the most introverted of any of Talossa's monarchs, saying extremely few words, so few that some even thinks she's mute. She can be quite disorienting to meet, to be honest.

And yet she's probably going to be Talossa's longest-reigning monarch. Her father, as head of the Regency Council, tries his best to let her have a normal childhood, but his private worries is that he has failed at that and his beloved daughter, his dear departed wife's desired legacy, is deeply affected.


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This is a homage to a micronation, Talossa, that I found on the Internet and found interesting. In TABE, it basically replaces Wisconsin.
 
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The Dominion of Cadiz and the Rif is a long story tangled up in Britain's European and African imperialism. As part of the "Turn to Mecca" of the early Renaissance, the once-aloof Kingdom of Britain got really interested in defending the Muslims of Europe, no matter if they were ahl al-istiqama, the people of straightness (Ibadis) or ahl al-khilaf, the people of opposition (non-Ibadis). Unluckily for Castile's vision of Reconquista, this included the Granadans. When Castile planned to finalise the seizure of the Emirate of Granada's lands, Britain leapt into the fray, and after thirteen years of fighting during a period of religious strife all across Europe that meant the Pope couldn't rally Catholics to Castile's defense, Castile capitulated.

Granada's future was ascertained, and it became more or less the very first of Britain's protectorates. And the King of Britain demanded the lands of Cadiz as a direct hold of Britain, acutely aware of its strategic potential. This was begrudgingly ceded to Britain. And so Cadiz fell into Britain's hands.

Despite repeated Castilian attempts, they never quite destroyed Granada nor recaptured Cadiz, and as Britain became more a superpower, it became more and more impossible. As part of Britain's whole "any part of the realm proper [as in not explicit dominions] get seats", Cadiz would receive one constituency to the Senate in 1501, which they would enjoy [this would ultimately end up with sixteen seats by the end] for centuries.

Now, what about the other half of the present Dominion, the region of the Rif? That is a more modern acquisition, one that would be primarily because of Tangier. The Portuguese acquired it as part of their ambition to start an empire of their own, but as a consequence of being forced to renew their alliance with Britain after being otherwise isolated by French diplomacy, they were required to cede Tangier to Britain. It was naturally folded into the Cadiz province for administration purposes and constituency allocation.

The Moroccans were not happy about this, and under prominent leaders tried to retake Tangier. The British, Granadans and Portuguese managed to fight them off, and after repeated attempts by Moroccan leaders based from the Rif region, in 1753 Britain under new Tosaig Gwilim Pedid the Elder decided to end the Moroccan "irritant" for once and all, and sent troops to seize the entire Rif region and according to Pedid's diary "make Morocco our newest realm". The Seven Years' War paid an end to Pedid's ludicrous dreams and forced them to basically settle for cutting a big slice off northwest Morocco, which was defined as "Greater Tangier" [the British were not creative with names at all] and finally made its own administration zone with two seats allocated to it in the Senate. It would not be as, ah, cooperative as Cadiz was, and would be known for electing Moroccan nationalists that would insist on speaking only in Arabic in the British Senate which irked many of the others but was legal.

The acquisition of the wider Rif hinterland would be a primarily 19th century thing as part of the Scramble for Africa. Morocco was by then looked at greedily by France, who already held Algeria, and Britain came to a deal with France to divide up Morocco, in which Britain would expand its hold on Moroccan lands to the wider Rif region and France would take the rest under its sway as a protectorate. This would be a feather in Britain's cap, but the number of Moroccan nationalists increased in the Senate from two to fourteen and they became more loud in their bitter condemnations of British imperialism. Indeed, one of the first three Labour Party senators was a Moroccan democratic-socialist elected from Al-Hoceima who held firm views of the Rif and Greater Tangier being returned to Morocco, which would naturally turn to a socialist republic. Eventually.

In the end, after the First World War exhausted a lot of Britain's finances and it started to look weak for the first time in centuries. Abdelilah Benjelloun, the prementioned Moroccan democratic-socialist decided to start a revolution in the Rif, declaring the Confederal Republic of the Peoples of the Rif (or the Rif People's Republic for short) in 1920. The resulting war, along with literally everything else, led Britain to give up on direct control of the Straits. Selling Cadiz to Castile was briefly considered, as well as a longer period of considering ceding it to Granada, but in the end, the lands defined by Britain as "Cadiz", "Greater Tangier" and "The Rif" was lumped into one which was named the Dominion of Cadiz and the Rif.

Abdelilah Benjelloun, as part of the peace deal, would abandon his attempts at Moroccan reunification. He never gave up his republican beliefs and indeed the flag of the Dominion is very much in the shades of the old flag of his Rif People's Republic. Even now, the Dominion is one of the most small-r republican in its beliefs, even if barely tolerating the monarchy those days, and the avowedly-Marxist and republican "People's Democratic Labour Party" is still one of the major parties of the Dominion. However, dreams of restoring the Rif People's Republic as the "Straits People's Republic" or even dreams of Moroccan reunification are more or less dead by 2040. But never say never.

After all, in 1910, the idea that the Rif would be part of a self-governing land was laughable. It turned true less than twenty years later.
 
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Guild constituencies were a surprising late development in medieval British democracy. While the guilds did have considerable power in medieval British society, it was only with the rise of the first capitalists that guilds made their move to entrench their influence in the Senate. While this did lead to the Senate getting around fifty new members from new guild constituencies elected by members of the guilds, it merely hastened their decline as an independent force. The rising capitalists saw guilds as an obstacle to their profit and ambitions, and it can be argued that the move to entrench guild influence weakened Britain in the early Renaissance. However as time went by, the guilds one by one weakened under relentless capitalist onslaught in a firm determination to bend the old ways to the new, and of course bend the guild constituencies to benefit them. The Allied Guilds of Merchants of Britain was the first to fall, predictably enough, and by the mid-16th century, its Senators were of the "New Men".

By 1603, when the Second Senatorial Act happened, guild constituencies were widely seen as archaic, with the guilds increasingly hollowed out and turned into basically "special interests" clubs based around the most influential of their trade, which increasingly tended to be of the "New Men". There was a widespread political sentiment that they should be reduced, and in 1603, the Second Reform Act did that, slashing their seats from the fifties to a mere twenty-six and setting out rules for how the "electoral guilds", as they were now branded as, would function. The Second Reform Act essentially turned the guilds into a new part of British democracy, robbing them of their once-independent nature. They would essentially function like the English "rotten boroughs", except the membership would be decided by many of a select elite, not just one wealthy man.

The university constituencies were once guild constituencies (of members of the Guilds of Students) up until the Second Reform Act happened, where they were reformed into their own thing representing students and graduates of the universities, which still persists today.

By 1786, the spirit of Reform was in the air. The Tosaig at the time, one Gwilim Pedid the Younger, may be remembered today as a Conservative, but in his day he regarded himself as a firm Independent Reformist, and supported the broad concept of the "Efficient State", a heady idea by Pedid and his fellow Bright Young Things. Pedid was known to loathe the guild constituencies, branding them as "seats for hire" and the Senators, he privately described as "willing to bend over for the right price". His "Grand Reform Act" reduced them further from twenty-five to a mere eleven, and also his own seat which was part of his volley at hereditary seats. Notably, most Senators representing guild constituencies voted for it, due to Pedid bribing them, which proved his assertions of them correct in the long run. Ironically, he would end up returning to the Senate as member of a former guild seat, the Castreleon University constituency [formerly the "Guild of Students of Castreleon University" constituency].

The industrialisation of Britain and the rise of unions would see the final fall of the guild constituencies as the ascendant working-class distrusted the idea of the elite-dominated guild constituencies having a presence in the Senate. It was indeed Labour Party official policy [due to Abdelilah Benjelloun writing it into the first manifesto] to abolish guild constituencies [as well as sometimes floating the idea of "union constituencies" or "trade constituencies"] from their founding to the 1921 Reform Act. By the wake of the 1920s, Britain's economy was stretched thin, the rebellion in the Rif was taking up money to corral, and unions decided to press their advantage on this, both through the Labour Party in the Senate and via threats of strikes in the streets. The Labour Party leader at the time, the relatively-moderate Emreis Amblar knew that Labour needed to thread this needle if they wanted to achieve government. And Amblar came up with a solution that proved the ideal one for the unions and for the Senate.

Namely, it was a revolutionary one. Britain had, since the dawn of the Senate, ran on unicameral lines. Hence why all those confusing variants of franchises. University constituencies, guild constituencies, hereditary constituencies (there was still some by 1920s), all in the same chamber as the perceived 'normal' geographical. Amblar proposed a new upper chamber, the Council, which would contain those "special constituencies" as he described them and let the Senate be purely be that of the people in geographical constituencies. It was popular. But was it implemented consistently?

No. It wasn't. There would still be "special constituencies" in the Senate up until the 1970s. But it was a huge leap forwards for Britain, and made Amblar hailed as a great figure and eventually Tosaig in the 1924 election as Labour surged to first. The Allied Guilds of Merchants constituency was abolished in the 1921 Reform Act and replaced with the Mercantile constituency in the Council, which would represent all of that trade, not just the guilds. The actual "Allied Guilds of Merchants" finally took its last breath in 1929 as the Great Depression more or less shattered the final mercantile guilds.
 
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The Plurinational Republic of Texas, most often referred to as the Republic of Texas or just Texas, is a multilingual country that was originally founded by a gaggle of English and French settlers in what was then the Mexican province of New Philippines. Mexico by the 1840s was falling apart. The Empire was gone, California was growing more distant, Central America was getting more rowdy, the economy was collapsing and the clash between liberals and conservatives was getting acute. Texas was settled by particularly-republican people who thought the colonial states of the east coast and the ancien regime of Louisiana was deplorable. So they more or less struck in 1839 and declared the First Republic of Texas.

The European Monarchies loathed it since it welcomed refugees that were wanted for treason against the Crowns in their lands, so once Mexico became the Second Empire, they backed the reconquest of Texas with funding that ended up bolstering support for the Empire when before it was hesistant. Samuel Houston, the President of the First Republic, was executed in Mexico City and Texas annexed back into the Province of the New Philippines. It was even a crime for a few years [although barely enforced] to refer to the place as Tejas and not Nuevas Filipinas.

The Texan Nationalist Party set up business in the late 1860s and to avoid any banning, it branded itself as the Lone Star Party. Knowing the ethnic divisions of Texas, it emphasised one thing above all, plurinationalism. Texas was made out of the French, the Anglos, some Britanicos and indeed, some Spanish. The TNP tried to distance itself from the more ethnic-nationalist element floating around, to mixed success. In the 1890s, a prominent figure rose in the Texan Nationalist Party and was on the party's left, Eugène Debs. Born to Alsatian immigrants, he was a middle-class nationalist who dallied with the more revolutionary kind until his arrest by Mexican forces and imprisonment led to his exposure to more radical thoughts, especially the ideas of Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels.

Fusion of Marxism with nationalism was not unique. Indeed, over in the Rif Abdelilah Benjelloun would espouse such a thought a decade or two later. But Debs' thinking was heavily influenced by the plurinational tendency in the TNP. His emphasis of Texas being an "oppressed nation" and the proletariat "groaning under Mexican imperialist boots" were expected, but his emphasis that ethnic divisions were created primarily by the bourgeoisie to keep the many Texan peoples down was. "Social Plurinationalism" and the emphasis of a non-ethnic "Texan" identity was key to his rhetoric.

Repeated arrests by Mexican forces, and a decade hiding from their search, failed to prevent his rise to de facto leadership of the Texan nationalists and their shift to the left. In 1907, the Mexican Congress, now under a firmly right-wing leadership, declared the Lone Star Party a "revolutionary party" that fundamentally went against Mexico. Debs declared that "if Mexico wants a revolutionary party, let them have a revolutionary party!" and declared the Second Republic of Texas, which turned out to have extensive support with Texans sick of onerous and authoritarian Mexican policies. Debs would end up declaring victory in 1911 as Mexico finally signed the Treaty of El Paso recognising the independence of Texas.

Debs would lead the Second Republic as "Supreme President" until his death in 1935. Under his rule Texas explicitly aligned with the left and the Global Socialist Union, even if he never implemented a socialist constitution, judging it unneeded. He entrenched the "Four National Languages" of Texas - English, British, French and Spanish, in law. On his death, the TNP [by then really, really fractured up to the point of candidates openly running against each other], fractured. There was several forgettable Supreme Presidents up until 1946, when Oscar Holcombe seized control.

Holcombe was of the right-wing Texan Sovereignty League, and while he paid lip-service to Debs' plurinationalism, he was an Anglo-supremacist who deplored the "Four National Languages" Bill, privately seeing Texas' true nature as an "bastion of English civilisation surrounded by barbarianism". He was an expansionist who regularly invoked the old claimed borders of the First Republic of Texas to rally nationalist support. Mexico looked at this more belligerent Texas with a concerned eye. With Debs, they knew that at least he was more concerned with concentrating power and implementing leftism than any real threats. With the unknown Holcombe, who sprang out of nowhere to supreme power, they had nothing to go on.

When Texas left the GSU due to Holcombe claiming the GSU was "shortchanging" Texas in 1957, Mexico struck. The GSU was happy enough to wash their hands of Texas, which proved a nuisance. However, Holcombe had a trick up his sleeve. As part of his emphasis on "National Defense", he trained every possible man and woman in the militia, and in his eleven years of hardline nationalist rhetoric, he managed to sway Texas to his message.

Let just say that in Mexican slang today, "to ride into Texas" is to do a futile and damaging task. Holcombe went into hiding as Mexico tried, futilely to keep Texas down. In 1965 after dealing with numerous guerrilla attacks and repeated losses of soldiers, the National Congress declared the war "unwinnable" and came to a deal with Holcombe and Texas. Texas would be independent again, but Holcombe would not be Supreme President.

The close-to-death's-door Holcombe gave his assent to this. The "Third" Republic of Texas [actually just the Second restored, but convention calls it the Third] was created, and as part of a series of constitutional reforms, the Supreme President was abolished and Texas moved away from presidentialism to a parliamentary system. Politics rapidly became that of a two-party system between the party that claimed Debs' legacy, the Socialist Labour Party and the party of Holcombe's legacy [albeit not openly claiming so], the National League. While both had extreme pasts [the SLP in Holcombe's regime was an underground socialist resistance and the Nationals have a fascist past], by 2040 the policies of both are more or less interchangeable.

The Fourth Republic of Texas was created in the 1990s as Louisiana-born billionaire Henri Perot and his Texan Way party surged to power due to high ethnic discontent at the dominance of the Anglos and the French. Perot may have been French, but he was a vocal federalist and plurinationalist who deemed that Texas needed to reform itself to survive. He set up Texas' second chamber, the "House of Listeners" which was to be elected on a language-based functional constituency system, taking notes from Deseret's House of Elders a few countries over. Under the Fourth Republic, the official name of Texas was changed to the Plurinational Republic of Texas, emphasising its many languages and nations.

Natives of Texas are often ignored, of course. Texans just seem to not have enough time to care about them, and they are still ignored and often despised by most parties to an extent, albeit it does vary from patronising paternalism [Socialists] to outright dismissal [Nationals].

Houston [named after the executed first President], since the Third Republic, has been designated the "National Capital Territory" and holds great sway on the rest of Texas, often being compared to Castreleon in Britain, London in England or Miami in the Floridian Confederation.
 
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The Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt and Nubia, often known as just Egypt, is a very odd place. Known as the "Realm of Thousands of Years", the ancient glory of Egypt is known all over the world. The story of Queen Cleopatra is widely told as the story of "Egypt's last ancient Pharaoh".

But in 2040 there's a Cleopatra Ptolemy sitting on the throne of Egypt. What gives? Well, to tell that story, is to tell the story of Egypt's shifting identity and the sheer persistence of the royal house that can claim true descent from Julius Caesar himself, the most ancient royal dynasty confirmed by contemporary historical records. To fully understand Egypt's present state, we need to go, not to the famous Cleopatra herself, but to her ancestor Ptolemy I Soter. Before the Alexandrian conquest, Egypt was under various dynasties, many native, but some foreign. Ptolemy took great pains to present himself as a legitimate successor to the old Egyptian pharaohs, but his foreign ambitions were that of a Hellenic leader and he staked Egypt as at the heart of the Hellenic world. Under his successors, Hellenic culture thrived in the Delta Region.

This blend of acknowledging Egypt's ancient heritage while accepting cultural tides would persist. Egypt fell to Roman forces in 30 BC and the vanished Ptolemy XV Caesarion, Cleopatra and Julius Caesar's son, was believed to have been smuggled to the Parthian Empire, leading to successive Roman Emperors' attempts at attacking the lands of Persia to extinguish a potential threat to their legitimacy. In this, they never succeeded.

Caesarion had children, and those children had children and so on. When the Eastern Roman Empire finally lost control of Egypt to the Sassanid Persians in the 610s, the Sassanids installed the (by then quite Persianised) Ptolemys on a restored throne. The young Ptolemy XVI Amad was a stranger in a strange land. He was the legitimate heir to Caesarion, many records proved that. But was he Egyptian? Many Egyptians didn't believe that. He didn't even believe their religion [which then was Eastern Christianity] nor understood their speaking. After ten years, a Sassanid general worked out a deal with the Byzantines in which Egypt would be ceded back to Byzantine rule in exchange for them backing his seizure of power in Persia. Ptolemy XVI Amad was told all his life that his sole reason for existence was to rule a faraway land. With the Byzantines putting him in chains, his feelings were that of a turbulent betrayal from the people he believed to be his allies, the Sassanids. So he appealed to Emperor Heraclius.

Promising to renounce any claim he had to the Roman Empire as Julius Caesar's legitimate heir, to convert to Christianity and to vow everlasting fealty to the Byzantines "for his heirs and his heirs' heirs", he managed to preserve his dynasty, even if not their power as Heraclius refused to cede back Egypt. He nevertheless set up his nascent family at court in Constantinople and while Egypt fell to the Arabic conquest, the Ptolemys were re-Hellenicised. The next Ptolemy to rule Egypt would be in the heady days of the Crusades, as the "Kingdom of Egypt" was set up by the Crusaders in 1124.

While many in the West saw Berenice V Spathi as borderline-pagan due to her family, she was a devout Christian who wished to make Egypt turn to Christianity. Her Christianity was not that of the Copts, and she never was popular with Egypt's Muslim majority. She was however an adroit diplomat who managed to defuse almost all potential threats to her reign. She managed to hold power in Egypt longer than the first Kingdom of Jerusalem's existence due to essentially taking Ptolemy I's rulebook and updating it for a new Egypt. She balanced her presentation as a "native" ruler of Egypt with keeping the peace between Copts, Arabs and her Byzantine overlords. Upon her death her son Ptolemy XVII Thauma took over.

As one of a few monarchs at the time with natural magical ability [hence his epithet Thauma], Ptolemy XVII was never going to be popular with well, anyone, and after five years of collapsing popularity the traditionally-Christian but by this time primarily Muslim mamluk caste that Berenice V Spathi built her successful regime on, decided to seize power for themselves and declared the Mamluk Sultanate. Ptolemy XVII was more or less exiled to Constantinople as the new regime asserted control. Berenice V managed to craft a status for Egypt that would last until the modern day with interruptions, that of Copts and Egyptian Arabs united in a common Egyptian identity, despite her Crusader origins and zealous faith. Hence the Mamluks would primarily target the widely-distrusted Greek immigrants to Egypt (primarily in the Delta), as they were perceived as foreign and easily scapegoated. The Mamluk Sultanate would last until 1517, when it fell under Ottoman rule.

There is another Egyptian dynasty that holds considerable sway and respect with ordinary Egyptians apart from the Ptolemys. That is the Muhammad Ali dynasty. Founded by an Albanian who served in the Ottoman court, he was sent to assert control over Ottoman-held Egypt as it was by then under a serious rebellion as Mamluks [later on found out to be funded by Faucherists] tried to reassert control. His purge of them led to him being granted hereditary rule of Egypt. His rapid modernisation of Egypt, his civil service reform and support of industry, led Egypt to be increasingly seen as modern and worthy of regard, even if it was all oriented towards the military. The British ended up occupying Egypt in the 1880s due to the British-Egyptian War over Egyptian failure to pay the debts it owed to the British.

The British was never comfortable with the "Egyptian Question", let that be clear. The Byzantines wanted the Ptolemys back on the throne so that Egypt could be easily controlled once more. But by the 1880s, Britain did not jump at the Byzantines' call, and Muhammad Ali's dynasty enjoyed great popularity with the average Egyptian and despite defaulting on its debts it was still seen as a dynasty that Britain could do business with. Ultimately, this split British society as its Romanitas clashed with its Muslim faith, brought down four governments, sparked a crisis that lingered for decades, and was labelled by people at the time as the "Dog Days", since it created a hot, uncomfortable civic society for Britons.

Its administration of Egypt as a result was confused, lethargic and utterly inefficient, leading them to lose control in 1894. It was a bad omen for what would happen twenty years later in World War One. The resulting government would be primarily inspired by nationalist lines, with 1894 being branded an "Egyptian Revolution". With the Muhammad Ali dynasty being popular, many would expect them to be first in line at the throne. But to understand why they didn't get it, you have to understand the mindset and achievement of the latest Ptolemy.

Ptolemy Alexander Leonidas Ptolemy was a dedicated Egyptian. He saw his family's ultimate loyalty as to Egypt, not to any other country. He was the first Ptolemy to reside in Egypt since his ancestor fled the Mamluks, and gladly served in several governments of Egypt under the Muhammad Ali dynasty. He never explicitly claimed the Egyptian throne, seeing the chances as utterly low and would destabilise Egypt if he tried to claim it. He insisted on teaching his children to learn Modern Egyptian [Coptic] as a first language and having them all be familiar with Egyptian Arabic as well.

That was his mindset. His achievement was becoming the de facto leader of the Egyptian Revolution of 1894. A member of the liberal and nationalist Wafd Party, he was noted by many as an intense and educated man who helped codify the party's principles, elevating it to its present thinking of a civic nationalism rooted in Egypt's long past and the need for constitutional democratic government. Some noted that when he was queried about him possibly becoming Pharaoh, he denied any ambition, insisting that Egypt needed to be ruled by Egyptians, and not Greeks.

By the Revolution's end, Ptolemy was widely respected as the "Father of the Revolution", and as Egypt's constitutional system was set up, the question floated around, should he be Pharaoh? The Muhammad Ali dynasty, as popular as they were, they did lead Egypt into a debt crisis and Ptolemy led the revolution. The Wafd Party was split on this, even as Ptolemy himself expressed disinterest in the throne. In the end, they declared the Egyptian Republic as a way of avoiding this debate [British: "Why didn't we think of that?"].

Ptolemy won the first presidential election in a landslide after being drafted by Wafd supporters, and was inaugurated as Egypt's first democratically-elected head of state. He stood down after two terms. In the aftermath of World War One, Ptolemy's son Ramesses Alexander Ptolemy, known as a moderate conservative [unlike his more liberal father], was elected President on an explicit monarchist platform and in a referendum buoyed by populist and nationalist sentiment against the status quo restored the Ptolemys to the throne, with himself as Ramesses XII Dimokratis.

The present state dates back to the 1921 referendum and Ramesses XII ascending to power. Ramesses XII's son Ptolemy XIX Akroatis numbered himself the 19th Ptolemy, deeming that his grandfather was Pharaoh in all but name [The grave of the Ptolemy in question was reported to have noises emerge out of it, as if the body was turning, at the moment this happened]. Ptolemy XIX died without children, so it went to his sister Cleopatra VIII Propyrgio and ultimately to her heirs, including the present Pharaoh.

The present Pharaoh of Egypt and Nubia, Cleopatra IX Kolymuitis, is like the rest of her family acutely aware of the delicate balance Egypt is in. Thankfully for them the Muhammad Ali dynasty seems to have more or less accepted their new role as 'influential ex-dynasty that often has wide political sway' and abandoned any ideas of reclaiming the throne, especially after they were buttered up with a honorary but meaningless title. Egypt may be swayed at times by Arab nationalism or by Islamism, but they seem to be brief as the "Pharaonic Consensus" of Egyptian nationalism holds.

This consensus is heavily tied to constitutional democracy and the rule of law. While there has been Arab nationalist and Islamist governments of Egypt, the Ptolemy Dynasty has managed to outlast any potential threats to their rule yet again proving just how persistent they are at surviving. Being Orthodox Greeks ruling over a primarily-Muslim country is a balancing act, but helping them is that they have became the "bastion of stability" in an ever-changing age. As Egyptians grow more concerned about the growing influence of corporations, the never-ceasing tide of technology and fears that the world may be shifting into a more "post-national" age, they turn to the Ptolemys more and more for assertion that at least one thing will stay the same, that no matter what, something can be relied on.

And the Ptolemys can certainly deliver on that, as they always have.
 
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The next country in my list of "things to do a write-up" for is Nigeria. However, I'm a bit tired today due to polishing up the map and filling in a lot of stuff I really needed to get fixed, so I decided that for today, the contribution is the 1898 Talossan parliamentary election infobox.

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As you can see, the Soc-Libs basically won a big victory by combining forces against the Tories. La Follette, despite being a Socialist, was widely respected enough by both sides so to be the compromise candidate. Hence why he was the leader for the Social-Liberal Pact.

Since the Liberals and Socialists more or less divided up seats, the actual breakdown in the PV is irrelevant, but I calculated it anyway.

Liberals: 36.74% (+4.27%)
Socialists: 15.98% (+3.03%)

For added authenticity, I decided to only use Wikipedia pictures. The face of Albrec'ht Lidiart is Johan Pitka, OTL commander of the Estonian Navy.
 
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The Nigerian Federation, or just simply Nigeria, is a mostly-developed country that is widely perceived as a "superpower-in-waiting" if not that already. The fall of the West in the 2030s has led to many capital moving to more stable places such as Nigeria, and this has furthered the bolstering of its economic prestige. Nigeria is a federation made out of 74 states, which are organised into thirteen "realms". The states can choose which realm they are part of, and this tends to break on ethnic lines, even if not always [see the Adamawa Realm in the centre-east for a not-ethnic-lines one].

Nigeria is possibly the world's most powerful republic at present, even if it has monarchies and theocracies inside it [a classic example is the Sokoto Caliphate in the northwest], and it is determined to advocate what it calls "humanistic principles" over the world, rejecting the old imperialism of the old powers in favour of what it claims to be genuine advocation of "national self-determination". Lofty rhetoric indeed, and in some aspects it has indeed backed this up, including the recent recognition of the embryonic Baltic states of Courland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Livonia and Vorumia.

However, the circumstances of how Nigeria absorbed Cameroun and Río Muni in the 2000s still are murky and the referendums supposedly backing this are dubious in democratic legitimacy. This has led some to call Nigeria merely yet another imperialist power, just one that cloaks it in liberal rhetoric. Nigerian governments have consistently dismissed this as merely just people desperate to find anything to criticise Nigeria.

Many of the soaring skyscrapers of Lagos, the capital, are barely forty years old. Many buildings in aspirant metropolises are barely twenty years old if that. Nigeria is a country brimming with potential and enjoying an unprecedented golden age. Nigerian films are widely watched on the FlixTube and the country has more cultural capital than ever before. "The 21st Century is the Nigerian Age" many news articles have declared.

The era of Nigeria since its independence can be described as "blessed luck". While it has faced crisises, it has mostly been able to move beyond those and continue the aim every president has declared since 1957, that of continuing the rapid development of the economy and continuing building up Nigeria into a modern society. Ethnic divisions are still around, and the most serious crisis Nigeria ever faced, the "Biafra Crisis" that came in the wake of an military coup d'etat, was due to this as the Igbo people felt persecuted by the new regime. The resulting peace led to the restoration of Nigerian democracy (including the return to power of the former ousted Igbo president) and the constitutional reform of 1970 that established the principle of voluntary state associations, what is known presently as the "realms". The "realms" are presently pointed to by Nigerian nationalists as a shining example of how Nigeria, even within its borders, holds up "national self-determination". Nevermind that it was a pragmatic decision to keep the country united and avoid any further sparks, that's not important to the rhetoric.

It was a popular rhetoric back in the 1990s or so that the growing ascendancy of Nigeria was primarily due to Britain funding their development. The reality is more nuanced and more that capitalist forces primarily based in Britain or Britain-aligned countries finding Nigeria a good investment since it had a rapidly-growing economy and was widely seen as a country that would have wide influence in the future. Even now, there are still considerable economic influence from British corporations and zaibatsu, but that is waning in favour of native Nigerian companies by 2040. British economic influence has bent Nigerian economic development in a way that benefited the West and not Nigeria, slowing down development for a fair few decades and leading to a popular backlash to that which fuelled the rise of native Nigerian companies due to a "Buy Nigerian!" movement. Another element in the rise of Nigerian economic independence was the formalisation of local trading clan brotherhoods into an united internal transportation union in 2010, which over the following decades pushed out foreign competition and managed to ensure that Nigerian transit inside the country's borders were almost always determined by people who hail from it. This model was used by other sectors to further Nigerian control of their own economy from what was perceived as "neo-colonialist" influence from the West and especially from Britain.

The "official languages" of Nigeria is English, British, French, Spanish and Portuguese, reflecting the linguas franca of present Nigeria due to colonisation from European powers. The recognised national languages on the other hand, are Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Fon, Bariba, Fula, Kamtok, Ewondo, Fang, Bube and Combe. As you can see, Nigeria is definitely a multilingual country. This has led to some issues, but since the states and realms can set their "preferred official language", it's much more simpler. Mostly. Kind of. Well, more than before.

In 2040, Nigeria stands tall. Its economy is in its own hands, prosperity continues, ethnic tensions are... manageable and optimism is high in this newborn superpower just starting to flex its muscles on the global stage. Who knows what's next for this country.
 
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The Most Exalted Republic of Boise has a lot in common with its southern neighbour, Deseret. Both are Mormon-majority and Anglophone, and with a free trade and movement agreement, there has been a lot of cultural exchange. But there are differences. To understand how Boise diverged from Deseret, we have to understand the history of Boise.

When Mormons were settling in Salt Lake City and the nascent Deseret, they did not only claim the lands south of the city, but also the north, what they called the "Northern Stakes". That area was loosely claimed at the time, and when Mormons moved up north, they were the main settlers [apart from some scattered Franco-Canadian settlers which gave a city and ultimately the republic its name of Boise]. The British, as part of the Treaty of Vancouver with the Russians and Mexicans in 1853, split up the Pacific North-West, ceding the far north to Russian Alaska and claiming the rest as the "Land of Oregon", defining the border with Mexico being at the 42nd parallel north west until Goose Lake, then it would follow the Pedid River southwards. This split the Mormon colonies into those that were under Mexico and those under Britain.

Alonzo Philemon Overton is widely recognised as the "Father of Boise". A devout Mormon, he was also a pragmatist who disagreed with those who believed that the division was fundamentally illegitimate and so resistance must be made. He argued that people made a conscious decision to settle in the Northern Stakes when they knew it was the area furthest from Mexican control and thus most likely to be divided from the rest of Deseret. His loyalty would be to his faith above all, of course, but his loyalty would be also to his fellow Boiseans, and he argued that the best way to defend their interests would be to mobilise their cause in the area where it would be most potent, namely the British Senate.

After a while overcoming what he labelled as "futilists" for their support of what he called "futile resistance", A. P. Overton managed to get enough voters in the second British election including Oregon as constituencies, becoming Britain's first Mormon senator. His handling of British was poor, him being mostly a solely English speaking man, but he managed to advocate passionately through a language unfamiliar to him, the cause of his people. He managed to ally with other Oregonians [Vancouverians, Columbians, Willamettes, Shastans, even some Russian immigrants] to form the "Oregon Self-Government League" that would end up dominating Oregon's politics for most of the 19th century.

As part of a deal with the Conservatives in 1863, Oregon would receive a limited parliament, which would be mostly dominated by coastal Self-Government people, much to the Boiseans' annoyance. As Oregon got more populated, calls for a dominion like the Canadians and Southrons increased, and the Self-Government League got more loud. Opportunity would come in the 'Dog Days' of the waning decades of the 19th century. With British society at war with itself over a severe identity crisis, the minor ethnic parties of the colonial seats acquired more political influence. As governments fell rapidly, both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were desperate for support. In 1894, the Liberal Democrats narrowly passed a bill with Self-Government support to make Oregon finally a Dominion. Overton was dead two decades past, but the Self-Government League declared it his "finest achievement". The Dominion Bill would end up bringing down the Liberal Democratic government as "National Democrats" split and joined the Conservatives in voting for a new election, this time without Oregon's seats.

The Pacific Dominion of Oregon, Britain's sole non-dual dominion, was rife with sectarian tensions that would ultimately bring it down barely after its hundredth anniversary. We could go on about how it lingered for that long, but that's not important to Boise's story. All you need to know is that in 1903, Oregon was officially federated into the provinces of Vancouver Island, British Columbia [as contrast to Russian], Cascades [primarily dominated by natives due to the Treaty of Nez Perce signed by Britain in 1879], Salish, Willamette, Shasta and of course, Boise. The divisions were mainly done on ethnic, linguistic and religious lines in a way to "assuage" the many peoples of Oregon. It sounded like a good idea at the time...

While Oregon did manage to keep together for most of the 20th century, by the 70s the cracks were starting to show. One thing not acknowledged in the 1903 federalisation was that British Columbia, Willamette, Salish and Vancouver Island had most of the population and tended Christian, while the rest tended Muslim [Shasta], had their claimed Christianity be disputed [Boise] or mostly followed indigenous religions [Cascades]. So as religious tensions increased, Oregonian Christianity radicalised. At that time, the Christian Democrats, mostly a regional socially conservative party, was taken over by a radical force calling itself the "Swordbearer Legion" and started surging in popularity, finally achieving government in late 1987.

Now, while Boise did consider itself Christian, like Mormons tend to do, it knew exactly what the Christian Democrats and Swordbearer Legion thought of them, and made sure to reject them firmly in favour of more secular forces. And as the Christian Democrats set around turning the Pacific Dominion into their warped "Christian Republic", Boise finally declared independence in 1996, firing more volleys in what would turn out to be a bloody civil war that would brand Oregon forever in the world's memory as the land of shattered unity and bitter sectarian conflicts.

The civil war defined Boisean society. While Deseret was very comfortable with merging church and state, Boise associated it with the Christian Democrats and their extremist, exclusionist policies, and was determined to create a secular republic. They succeeded. While Boiseans are by many accounts very zealous in their Mormonism, they reject the theories of theodemocracy. It was this major split between Boiseans and Deseretans that torpedoed the attempt at reunifying the two Mormon countries as Boise fundamentally rejected the validity of the "House of Elders".

Of course, if you look beyond the Mormonism, you'll notice that the minority influence is way different in Boise than in Deseret. Even in Salt Lake City itself, the second most used language is Castillian and the second-most popular denomination is Catholic Christianity. But go north to Boise, and it changes. As much as Mormon unificationists wish otherwise, the "accursed" 42nd parallel has made itself felt. In Boise, you are way more likely to encounter a Muslim, most likely a British-speaking one with origins in Shasta, than Castillian-speaking Catholics.

Currently while Boise enjoys strong cultural exchange with Deseret, thoughts of unification are absent as Boise has its own culture and identity now, one very much distinct from Deseret, and many would not want to be subsumed into Deseret for any reason.
 
'Rishicracy' is a term used to refer to the 21 years of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, playing on an old term for previously-longest serving Prime Minister Robert Walpole's 20 years, the 'Robinocracy'. Sunak led his Conservative and Unionist Party out of the National Governments formed to deal with coronavirus, into a period of political dominance marked by economic interventionism, Neo-Keynesianism, a period of 'crafted affluence' and the record weakness of the opposition as Labour dwindled to its hardline London and Manchester bases, never to become a major force again in Britain.
 
After a while overcoming what he labelled as "futilists" for their support of what he called "futile resistance", A. P. Overton managed to get enough voters in the second British election including Oregon as constituencies, becoming Britain's first Mormon senator. His handling of British was poor, him being mostly a solely English speaking man, but he managed to advocate passionately through a language unfamiliar to him, the cause of his people. He managed to ally with other Oregonians [Vancouverians, Columbians, Willamettes, Shastans, even some Russian immigrants] to form the "Oregon Self-Government League" that would end up dominating Oregon's politics for most of the 19th century.
So one might say he managed to shift the Overton Window?

As a Texan, I quite like the Plurinational Republic of Texas.
 
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By the Grace of God, We Nicholas the Third of Our Name, Emperor and Autocrat of Russia in America; Tsar of Alaska, Tsar of Yukon, Tsar of Kaska Dena, Tsar of the Kutchin, Tsar of the Inuit; Lord of New Archangel, and Grand Prince of Moscow on the Matanuska, the Aleut Islands and the Alaska Valleys; Prince of Kodiak, Bering, Baranov, Fort Elisabeth, Anastasiagrad and others; Sovereign and Grand Prince of New Novgorod, St. Paul, New Russia, Omsk in Alaska, and Ruler of all the Lands Beneath the Denali; Sovereign and Lord of the Yupik, the Iñupiat and the Tsimshan: hereditary Head of the House of Romanov via the Archangel Line; Duke of Victory, Heir to the Russian Empire and all its Possessions, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth.

Nikolai Petrovich is a distinguished man. His almost-bald head hides a calculating mind. His well-built body shows his dedication to perfection. His Prime Ministers all describe him as an exacting figure, one who does not suffer fools gladly. He is a man who dominates the room. His emotions are often in check, with the most anyone can get from him is an approving nod or a smouldering glare. His three children find him difficult to deal with.

And he finds them difficult as well. The Emperor's first-born, Grand Duchess Anastasia, is ironically the one most like him. She's an intellectual who likes everything to be under her control. Not well-liked by the people, but respected with the politicians, she is often the one Nikolai picks to take over his duties in the rare cases he cannot serve them. He may find her irritating and often clashing with him, but he respects her intelligence and talent at administration. Sometimes he thinks it's a pity she will likely never wear the Crown because of her gender. Sometimes.

The second-born, the only son and therefore the heir, Tsarevich Alexander, is as nonconformist as his father is traditionalist. Openly gay [which is still notable in 2040 Alaska], his coming out led to a permanent cooling in relations between the Emperor and the Tsarevich. Known to be very liberal, he has tested the royal family's traditional aloofness from certain issues by speaking out about them, leading to what the third-born has described as "cold arguments" in which the Emperor and Tsarevich exchange words, seemingly calm but brimming with fury, about the Tsarevich's behaviour. Alexander is married [same-sex marriage was passed in 2028 over the Tsar's objections] and has two adopted sons - Tomas and Damir. The current dispute in Alaskan politics is over if the eldest, Tomas, should be allowed to inherit after Alexander dies, or if the Russian succession law is binding.

Nikolai is firmly in favour of the continued strict application of the Pauline Laws, so if he and Alexander deceases, the throne goes to his brother Prince Peter, who would rule as Peter V, or to his heirs. His argument in this case is that if it was reformed, the House of Romanov-Arkhangelsk loses any claim to Russia proper or to being the true House of Romanov. The reformists call for a more 'sensible' succession law. Yet they're split between the moderates who just want to allow adopted children to inherit and the more radical ones who call for absolute primogeniture and allowing Anastasia to inherit first. Because of Anastasia's slight unpopularity and the issue being caused by Alexander's children, the moderates have the upper hand for now.

Out of his three children, the Tsar's third child, Grand Duchess Selinka, is the most popular with the people. Indeed, it is by now an universal assumption that if the people had a vote in which of the three children would get the throne after Nikolai, Selinka would win handily. Selinka is very much a woman of the outdoors, regularly hiking and camping with her friends and bodyguards, which has captivated a populace eager for royal news. She has released a few books about cooking outdoors, and is very much the darling of the rural regions [at least those still in the Empire].

The Emperor disapproves of this, of course. But at this point, he can't do anything, which only makes him more frustrated. He is a man who idealises perfection and control in all things, yet his three children are out of his reach and causing trouble for him. It makes him consider drinking vodka again.
 
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The Ukrainian National State, also known as "West Ukraine", and the Malarus Independent Socialist Republic, also sometimes known as "East Ukraine", both consider themselves the rightful "Ukraine" and the other illegitimate. The east considers itself also "Malarus" [not Malorussia, pls], which was a primarily Narodnik label designed by the Chairman at the time to fracture the Ukrainian identity to weaken a rival's support base.

The lands of the Ukraine currently bears a lot of scars from Narodnik "meddling" from the 1920s to the 1990s. The vast lands claimed by the Hetman Pavlo III and I Skoropadsky in the short-lived Ukrainian Hetmanate of 1918-1919 was culturally diverse, but he could make a reasonable claim that all of those lands were touched by Ukrainian people and were inhabitated by them. He even styled himself "Lawspeaker of the Restored Commonwealth of New England" in an attempt to stir the New English to rise up against the Reds. In this, he received very mixed success.

The Hetman was of Cossack heritage. The Cossacks were essentially a kind of culture made out of many different ethnicities, and historically they dominated states in both the Ukraine and the upper Caucasus. A key part of how the Narodniks defeated the Hetmanate was the existence of the "Red" Cossacks, namely Cossacks that supported the shaky Red side in the civil war. They were always a minority, with most Cossacks backing the White cause. But they were notable enough for the Narodniks to take note. In the shaky multi-party state Russia was in the 1920s, the Autonomists often had great sway if they worked together as one bloc. Key to this was the Cossack Popular Legion and their firm whip. They treated politics like the battlefield. They wished greater autonomy for their traditional societies, even if acknowledging the new socialist realities.

In the end, compromises were made in 1928 and the "Don Cossack" and "Siverian Cossack" Autonomous Socialist Republics were formed. Those republics were in practise non-existent as the traditional host system was de facto the governments in those areas. This led to criticism from the Left-Socialists and especially rising leader Maria Spiridonova who argued for a more "strict" autonomy that would maintain socialist principles.

As the Left-Socialists seized a majority in the 1932 election and increasingly turned Russia authoritarian, the Cossacks became antsy. When Spiridonova announced in the Duma that constitutional reforms would be made to the autonomies, some panicked and a secret plot was made to assassinate Spiridonova. The plot, how shambolic it was, and how it utterly compromised the Cossack argument while bolstering Spiridonova's argument that the Cossack Autonomies were just "reactionary safe-spaces", was not their finest hour. Some on the left of the already-left party [the "Near-Bolsheviks" as some on the party's Right would label them] would argue for systematically destroying Cossack culture via "de-Cossackisation".

Spiridonova instead went for a slightly different alternative. The Cossack Autonomies were set up for the Don and Siverian Cossacks, so she argued, the other Cossacks west of Siberia should move to those areas or be expected to conform with "socialist living". The Don and Siverian Cossacks were thrown in social upheaval at the result of having to incorporate many former hosts, which was exactly to Spiridonova's plan as she managed to take advantage of their record weakness to force through restrictions to their autonomy.

The rest of the Ukraine was administrated as various okrugs apart from Crimea, which was split off in the late 1930s as the Tauridan Autonomous Socialist Republic. Spiridonova was fundamentally distrustful of an unified Ukrainian organisation, fearing it would lead to a restored Hetmanate. In the 1940s, bowing to military organisational necessities in the war against Germany, she established an Ukrainian ASR, which would later become the main power-base of Nikita Khrushchev as he rose in Narodnik politics. Khrushchev was a proud Ukrainian, which led some opponents to mutter about "Spiridonova's biggest mistake". One of those was Viktor Merzhanov, a hardliner who opposed Khrushchev's Thaw.

Merzhanov knew that Khrushchev's Ukrainian bloc was a threat to his power, so he moved to divide it into an independent west Ukraine under Lysenko and an east Ukraine that would be placed under heavy attempts to "Russianify" its culture, including renaming the place to "Malarus". This assimilation effort was the aspect most opposed to by Merzhanov's successor the returned Mravinsky, as he ceased the efforts, deeming the "Malarussians" Russian enough. Mravinsky was perhaps the most popular Narodnik in Cossack lands, as he returned their autonomy to them, enabling them to govern themselves as once more the host system rather than under the facade of socialist republicanism.

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As Russia fell apart, the Cossack Hosts predictably declared independence. The Siverian Cossacks formed the Siverian Host and worked closely with West Ukraine and its fellow Cossacks on the Don against the still firmly Narodnik Malarus. In the mid-1990s, the Ukrainian War broke out, and it ended up a bloody one that would stain the steppes. But it would be the making of a new Hetman. The Siverian Host from its independence to 1996 was mainly ran by the otaman, an appointed leader elected by the Host Council and widely seen as primarily an administrator or a prime minister. Hardly a leader. The Skoropadsky family, led by a new Pavlo, would enter the military and mark themselves in distinction against the Malarus forces, with Pavlo's charge just outside Poltava being noted as one that was widely conversed around.

After the war ended with a status quo ante bellum, the Host Council got together and agreed to recognise Pavlo as the new Hetman, recognising him as Pavlo IV [numbering was not a traditional Cossack thing, but it was expected by the 21st century, and Pavlo chose to include the old Cossack Hetmanate in the counting]. The Ukraine too held him in high regard, and after an upsurge in nationalist sentiments due to the war [as well as a very popular yet historically dubious documentary about the 1918 Hetmanate], a referendum was held that was a clear victory for restoring the Ukrainian Hetmanate with Pavlo in charge as Pavlo II [counting from the 1918 Hetmanate only]. The Don Cossacks, with their capital city of Novocherkassk almost burnt but saved due to Malarus having to redirect forces to fight off Pavlo's forces, recognised him as the overall Hetman of the Cossacks. Pavlo IV and II would take as his full title "Hetman of the Cossacks and the Ukraine", choosing to not make any distinctions between the Siverian and Don Cossacks, a notable move that would encourage Cossack solidarity even if not political unity.

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Meanwhile, in the Tauridan Autonomous Socialist Republic, hastily renamed to the Crimean People's State, there were ethnic tensions brewing between the Crimean Tatars and Crimean Goths, particularly over political power. In the end an old solution was made for the head of state. Namely, it would be a life-long office, but it would be selected by an ethnically-balanced committee and consider only those considered trustworthy for the role. Since it was essentially resurrecting the old role of Khan, it was decided to use that as the accepted foreign translation and Tatar term.

If you look at the constitution of the People's State, it'll say clear that Crimea is a democratic socialist republic. Indeed, many wordings in the Crimean constitution has been untouched since the Tauridan ASR was formed. Yet with the Khan a de facto monarch and the ethnically-balanced committee mostly stocked by his family's loyalists [and a majority are on record as saying they would vote for the Khan's son to succeed him], the declaration that Crimea is a republic is frankly laughable. Tensions are still there, but since the ethnic federalism in the 1990s [ironically inspired by both Yugoslavia and the Oregon Country] it has simmered down to a slight boil as Goths retreat to Gothia, Tatars to Tataria and the rest to Sevastopol.

Overall, the lands of the Ukrainian steppes is a very divided land, with a long history and with Narodnik fingerprints everywhere. Can it be hoped that it will stay safe and stable even with Malarus still stirring up tensions? Perhaps, who knows. After all, Malarus has rebels in its own borders that declare the Narodnik regime is insufficiently socialist and invoke the Makhnovists' legacy, so the chances of a second Ukrainian War is low at present.
 
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Turn Around, Bright Eyes: Index
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Turn Around, Bright Eyes Index [in lieu of threadmarks]

The Dustbin of History [obsolete]

- Annotated Map of the West Coast (3 June 2019) [Note: Old map, some stuff in it is still canon]
- Annotated Map of Scandinavia (4 June 2019) [Note: Old map, some stuff in it is still canon]
- Annotated Map of Great Britain (4 June 2019) [Note: Old map, a new one has been done that is canon]
- Final Decision on the Tsalal (6 June 2019) [Note: Mostly valid, it's just inaccurate on alien stuff]
- List of First Commissioners of the People's Socialist Republic of Manitoba (7 June 2019) [Note: Canon still not set in stone]
- Labelled Map of "Nordic" Countries (12 June 2019) [Note: Probably mostly canon, I just decided to put here for safety]
- The Unbearable Lightness of Catren Molineir Cover (27 November 2019) [Note: Chosen a different picture after this]
- Party Run-downs of the Scandinavian Countries [and Suomi and Karelia!] (18 November 2019) [Finland was redone completely]


So Far from God, Not Far Enough from Britain (Latin America [+Basically all places Mexico ever had])
- List of Presidents of the Californian Union (3 June 2019) [Note: old map]
- Map of Central America (8 January 2020)
- Mexican Heads of State 1821-1841 (30 January 2020)
- Holy State of Deseret (13 February 2020)
- Plurinational Republic of Texas (7 March 2020)
- Mexican Empire (5 May 2020)
- Democratic Republic of Cumaná (9 May 2020)
- Amazon Indigenous Biome (17 June 2020)
- Kingdom of Welserland/Zulian Realm (13 July 2020)
- Reichspräsidenten of Welserland/Zulia (13 July 2020)
- Principality of Media California (31 March 2021)
- Infobox of King José Antonio of the Castilian Dominions (29 April 2021)


Ninety-Nine Luftballons [Germany + "Protectorates"]
- Lists of Imperial Commissioners of the East Sea League (11 June 2019)
- Internal Map of the German Empire (19 June 2019) [Note: Does not include Loter, which was added later]
- Heads of Governments of Germany (19 June 2019)
- Digipedia: 1947 German federal election (5 February 2020)
- Chairmen of the Council of Ministers of Regency-Era Lithuania (11 February 2020)
- 2039 Alsatian Marktag election (5 May 2021)
- Summary of the factions in the German Civil War (5 May 2021)


The Sceptred Isle [Atlantic Archipelago]
- Presidents of the English Folkmoot (2 October 2019)
- Commented Map of the Atlantic Archipelago (16 November 2019)
- Linguistic Map of the Atlantic Archipelago (17 November 2019)
- The Unbearable Lightness of Catren Molineir (26 November 2019)
- Kings and Queens of England before the Revolution (28 November 2019)
- Infobox of Catren Molineir (6 December 2019)
- Catren Molineir's Solstice Comments (25 December 2019)
- The Essentials of British Islam (18 January 2020)
- Infobox of Costenhin XIV of Britain (30 January 2020)
- How to tell if you're British... (3 February 2020)
- British-Language Counting (3 February 2020)
- British 2040 Census: Religious Statistics (8 February 2020)
- British Honours Levels (27 February 2020)
- Guild Constituencies (5 March 2020)
- The Most August House of Rhufein (20 March 2020)
- The High Principality of Venedotia (29 March 2020)
- The Duchy of Shetland (8 June 2020)
- Sacwral, Cherry Blossom Society (11 June 2020)
- 1895 British Senate election (14 June 2020)
- Stellar Wars (25 June 2020)
- British 2040 Census: Complete (30 June 2020)
- British Political Quiz (9 July 2020)
- British Succession Law (22 February 2021)


In The Shadow of the Blood Eagle [Norse Countries]
- A Very Biased View of the Scanian Language Continuum (9 October 2019)
- Kingdom of Finland (16 February 2021)
- Kingdom of Arendelle (26 February 2021)


Our Homes and Our Rights [Atlantic Dominions]
- List of Prime Ministers of Canada (13 November 2019) [Note: Has not been edited to reflect an earlier foundation or Talossa]
- List of Premiers of the South (29 November 2019)
- Tenisi (British Senate constituency) (14 January 2020)
- Boundless (9 February 2020)
- Monarchs of Talossa (29 February 2020)
- Infobox of the 1898 Talossan parliamentary election (11 March 2020)
- "Five Things You Never Knew About H. P. Lovecraft" (16 June 2020)
- 1937 Dominion of Southern America House of Burgesses election (19 March 2021)
- People's Kingdom of Louisiana (8 May 2021)
- Political parties of the People's Kingdom of Louisiana (9 May 2021)


My Hunter of Dragonflies [Japan and the Far-East]
- Map of the Four Japans (22 November 2019)
- Map of Manchuria (30 December 2019)
- Korean Peninsula, Republic of Korea, Empire of Korea, Taebong Shared Provinces (16 July 2020)


The Peacock In All Its Splendour [Bartanvi Raj]
- Map of the Bartanvi Raj (25 November 2019)
- 2039 Janata Parishad Elections (25 November 2019)
- Bartanvi Raj's Party Rundown (26 November 2019)
- Five Ways To Divide the Raj (26 November 2019)
- Map of Right-Wing Strength (29 November 2019)


Walking to the Free World [Eastern Europe]
- Heads of State and Government of Ruthenia (10 December 2019)
- Princess Yana Romanetsa of Ruthenia (11 December 2019)
- List of Face-Claims for Ruthenian Election Infoboxes (24 December 2019)
- 1993 Ruthenian National Soviet elections (24 December 2019)
- Romanian United Principalities (31 December 2019)
- Map of the Danubian Alignment (15 January 2020)
- Map of the Federated Kingdom of Yugoslavia (27 January 2020)
- Heads of state of Serbia and Yugoslavia (27 January 2020)
- Ukrainian National State, Malarus Independent Socialist Republic, Siverian Host, Crimean People's State (17 March 2020)


Beneath the Sun of June [Southern Africa]
- Lemur Musings (17 December 2019)
- Completed Base-Map of East African Islands (17 December 2019)
- Map of the East African Island Nations (18 December 2019)


The Matters of the Aesthetic [GDI, Meta-Reality and International Stuff]
- An Introduction (26 December 2019)
- Earth-Zero, GDI's True Purpose, Theta-Prime, The Creator (26 December 2019)
- The Narrator (3 January 2020) [Note: Also known as Lime Baudelaire]
- The Shroud of Brasil (9 January 2020)
- The Prime Minister (21 January 2020) [Note: Referring to Catren Molineir]
- The Department of Mortality (4 February 2020)
- The Sublime (6 February 2020)
- Gender in Cyberpunk Society (9 February 2020)
- Dénouement Services (26 June 2020)
- Taxonomy (23 August 2020)


The Shattered Bear (Post-Russia [And the Caucasus])
- Republic of Ingria (12 January 2020)
- Nordic Opinions of Ingria (12 January 2020)
- Kazakh and Kushine States (20 January 2020)
- Evolution of Kushine Flags (20 January 2020)
- Periods of 20th Century Russian History (2 February 2020)
- Commonwealth of New England (2 February 2020)
- Kartvelian People's Kingdom (24 February 2020)


The Heritage of My Ancestors (North Africa)
- Dominion of Cadiz and the Rif (1 March 2020)
- Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt and Nubia (9 March 2020)


Great Lofty Heights Attain (West Africa)
- Nigerian Federation (11 March 2020)


That Summer Breeze (Alaska and the Oregon Country)
- Most Exalted Republic of Boise (13 March 2020)
- Infobox of Emperor Nicholas III of Alaska (15 March 2020)
- Prime Ministers of the Dominion of Oregon (9 March 2021)


Is There No Balm in Gilead? (Middle East, Anatolia, Cyprus)
- Cyprus (22 May 2020)
- United Arab Emirates (19 January 2021)
- Assessment of Arabian states (15 May 2021)


The Swords Are Feeble Reeds (Italy)
- Province of Gargano (25 August 2020)
- Heads of State of Corsica (18 February 2021)
- Kingdom of Corsica (19 February 2021)
- Celtic Republic of Sardinia (6 March 2021)
- Italian Convention (5 April 2021)
- Local Map of the Italian Peninsula (23 April 2021)


A Sunburnt Continent (Australia)

- Dominion of Arnhem, People's Democratic State of Tiwi (31 January 2021)
- Delicate State of Kimberley (1 February 2021)
- Tasmanian Republic (6 March 2021)
- 1903 Tasmanian Landtag election (1 April 2021)
- Eendracht Republic (7 April 2021)
- Republic of Auralia (13 April 2021)


Underneath the Rainbow Sky (Antarctica)
- British Antarctic Territory (27 February 2021)
- List of heads of state of Antarctica (2 May 2021)
- Penguin Socialist Republic (5 June 2021)

Salute the Sun [Iberian Peninsula]
- United Republics of Castile, Leon and Murcia (10 April 2021)

From Shore to Shore [Pacific]
- Tiefling Republic (10 May 2021)
- Calamari Realm (17 August 2021)

Flourish May Its Soul [Nusantara]
- Kingdom of Sarawak [TBD]


Dramatis Personae [Index of Characters]

Summary [A Run-Down]

Full Styles of Monarchs

A Series of Unopportune Events [Lime Baudelaire's Snippets]

Random Factoids of No Order

New Logo And Rebranding (13 January 2020)
 
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The Most August House of Rhufein
House Succession Law: Male-Preference Primogeniture, Family Name Dominant.

Philip of Little Rome, 1st Lord of Their Manor (1103-1157)
- Alleged illegitimate son of Prince Costenhin VI, granted a "Lordship of Their Manor" of the little town known as "Little Rome" for its Catholicism.

Philip of Little Rome, 2nd Lord of Their Manor (1157-1194)

- Son of the 1st Lord of Their Manor, known to be a shrewd financier who became the Steward of the Treasury in three Kings' courts.

Awstin of Little Rome, 1st Minor Lord, 3rd Lord of Their Manor (1194-1214)
- Brother of the 2nd Lord of Their Manor, inherited it as Philip died childless, was made a Minor Lord to pay off debts the royal court had to his family.

Awstin Philip of Little Rome, 2nd Minor Lord, 4th Lord of Their Manor (1214-1227)
- Son of the 1st Minor Lord, his death in the failed Fifth Crusade [which Britain only went on despite their Muslim faith because the Byzantine Emperor promised great riches and invoked their feudal obligations] to topple the Mamluks and restore Ptolemaic rule without any sons led to...

Buddeg of Little Rome, 3rd Minor Lady, 5th Lady of Their Manor (1227-1270)
- Sole daughter of the 2nd Minor Lord. As part of the 1st Lord of Their Manor's contract with the court, all titles they receive would be male-preference primogeniture, not male-only. This was mainly because Philip despised his origin and would not want the title to fold back in the royal family. Buddeg was known as someone who was alleged to sleep with men to get power, but historians mostly consider that just sexist responses to an influential woman.

Drystin Rhufein, 1st Lord Parliamentary of Little Rome, 4th Minor Lord, 6th Lord of Their Manor (1270-1291)
- Son of the 3rd Minor Lady. Granted the hereditary seat of Little Rome in 1279, he started referring to his family as the "Muison di Rhufein" at this time. He was the last one to count the Lord of Their Manor separate. Later generations would consider it and the "head of the house" the same.

Awstin Rhufein, 2nd Lord Parliamentary of Little Rome, 5th Minor Lord (1291-1327)
- Son of the 1st Lord Parliamentary. Known to be a gambler and a drunkard, he almost sold the Lordship of Their Manor before sobering up. His debts would sink the House of Rhufein for decades. His death was of a heart attack, leaving no children.

Philip Rhufein, 3rd Lord Parliamentary of Little Rome, 6th Minor Lord (1327-1342)
- Brother of the 2nd Lord Parliamentary. Known as the "Lord for Hire" for him using his hereditary seat to sell votes. Many a bill have fallen or passed thanks to bribes. By his death, the debt was reduced to nothing, but he lamented "soiling the family name".

Philip Rhufein, Lord of Distinction, 4th Lord Parliamentary of Little Rome and 1st of Clontarf, 7th Minor Lord (1342-1360)
- Son of the 3rd Lord Parliamentary. Known as "Philip the Gallant", he made a name for himself in the British-Irish Wars as a successful commander and was granted another hereditary seat (despite the King's hesistance due to his father's reputation), that of Clontarf in the new Irish Pale.

Emreis Rhufain, 5th Lord Parliamentary of Little Rome and 2nd of Clontarf, 8th Minor Lord (1360-1389)
- Son of the 4th and 1st Lord Parliamentary. After his father was granted Clontarf, he was charged with building a castle in it to maintain his family's hold over their new lands while his father managed affairs in Little Rome, up to being permitted to vote in the Senate for Clontarf, one of the first examples of a "writ in acceleration" being used. Clontarf would be widely accepted as a supplementary title for the House of Rhufein.

Philip Rhufein, 6th Lord Parliamentary of Little Rome and 3rd of Clontarf, 9th Minor Lord (1389-1411)
- Son of the 5th and 2nd Lord Parliamentary. One of the first people considered to be "Prime Ministers", he was widely referred to as "Philip the Good" for his advocation of efficient fiscal management. Even in his aging state, he was a prime opponent of the guilds, seeing them as "relics of a has-been age". The passage of the bill enabling the guild constituencies proved too much and he died in his sleep shortly after.

Philip Rhufein, 7th Lord Parliamentary of Little Rome and 4th of Clontarf, 10th Minor Lord (1411-1434)
- Son of the 6th and 3rd Lord Parliamentary. Unlike his father, this Philip was wholly uninterested in politics, preferring to focus on managing his castles as well as living well on food. The King was known to consider him a favourite merely for his generous feasts.

Philip Rhufein, 8th Lord Parliamentary of Little Rome and 5th of Clontarf, 11th Minor Lord (1434-1460)
- Son of the 7th and 4th Lord Parliamentary. Known to be rather serious about his theology, he was one of the champions of the "Orthodox Movement" to turn Ibadi Islam in Britain towards what he perceived as the "correct way" and often spoke on this matter.

Aleisandr Rhufein, 1st Marquis of Cadiz, 9th Lord Parliamentary of Little Rome and 6th of Clontarf, 12th Minor Lord (1460-1511)
- Son of the 8th and 5th Lord Parliamentary. Widely known in British history lessons as the "Hero of Granada" for his leading martial success there. Known for being a firm theologian like his father, his perception of the fight against Castile as a jihad would colour British-Castilian relations for centuries. Granted a Marquisate by a King desiring to reward him. He died without living issue, so the Marquisate died with him.

Awstin Rhufein, 10th Lord Parliamentary of Little Rome and 7th of Clontarf, 13th Minor Lord (1511-1518)
- Younger twin brother of the 1st Marquis. Known to be a recluse deeply jealous of his twin brother, he never attended parliamentary business, and died without issue, the second of two children of Philip to do so. This was concerning for the House.

Elisabeth Rhufein, 11th Lady Parliamentary of Little Rome and 8th of Clontarf, 14th Minor Lady (1518-1521)
- Sister of the 10th and 7th Lord Parliamentary. By the time her brother died, she was more or less in the twilight years of her life. Known in her younger days as a keen numbers woman, she was often trusted by her brother the eventual-Marquis with account management. Her time as Lady was unnotable.

Awstin Aleisandr Rhufein, 12th Lord Parliamentary of Little Rome and 9th of Clontarf, 15th Minor Lord (1521-1538)
- Son of the 11th and 8th Lady Parliamentary. Awstin Aleisandr was always ambitious, perhaps too ambitious. Known as someone who was a chronic schemer, his plans eventually collapsed all at once as he was tried for high treason against the Crown and executed.

Philip Rhufein, 16th Minor Lord (1538-1579)
- Son of the 12th and 9th Lord Parliamentary. Did not inherit the hereditary seats of Little Rome or Clontarf as both were declared forfeit and abolished. Known to be an extremely loyal servant to the King, he was however never trusted due to his father's actions.

Emreis Rhufein, 2nd Marquis of Cadiz, Lord of Distinction, 1st Lord Parliamentary of Talent Island, 17th Minor Lord (1579-1600)
- Son of the 16th Minor Lord. Known to have his grandfather's ambition, he was nevertheless as honourable as his father. The one who established Permont and bought the Spanish Puerto Rico into British hands, where it was renamed to Ysl Dalent, namely Talent Island. While this would not last [indeed, it was lost back to the Spanish in one of the minor colonial wars in the 17th century], the hereditary seat would stick. He would also receive the Marquisate of Cadiz, deemed "restored" due to his achievements [and quietly also that of his father] in redeeming the family's name.

Emreis Pawl Rhufein, 3rd Marquis of Cadiz, 2nd Lord Parliamentary of Talent Island, 18th Minor Lord (1600-1613)
- Son of the 2nd Marquis. The second Rhufein to be Prime Minister, he achieved the position before he inherited the Marquisate thanks to his father consenting to a writ in acceleration on Talent Island. His ministry was known as the "Talented Ministry" in a play on his title and on its perceived success in increasing revenue and asserting British influence, and it was remembered in cultural memory so fondly that Pedid the Younger would invoke it in his description of his ministry as one of "all the talents". His inheritance came in the middle of it and he stepped down in 1607.

Emreis Philip Pawl Rhufein, 4th Marquis of Cadiz, 3rd Lord Parliamentary of Talent Island, 19th Minor Lord (1613-1648)
- Son of the 3rd Marquis. The last one to hold the hereditary seat of Talent Island before it became just a fiction as the British Ysl Dalent became the Spanish Puerto Rico once again. Known to be a socialiser who mostly used his seat as an excuse to meet up with fellow upper-class people in the Senate, he is actually the one for which the parliamentary speakeasy is named after, not his more famous father, as he was its first patron.

Aleisandra Elen Rhufein, 5th Marquise of Cadiz, 4th Lady Parliamentary of Talent Island, 20th Minor Lady (1648-1683)
- Daughter of the 4th Marquis. As sociable as the 4th Marquis was, he never quite had a son, instead having only five daughters. Before Aleisandra, it was basically accepted that ladies parliamentary would appoint a man who would represent them on their behalf, most often their husbands. The 5th Marquise was an independent thinker who considered her seat her own privilege and would sit in the Senate in her own right. It created a hullabaloo and ultimately a law in which it made explicit that only men could be allowed to sit in the Senate, and that ladies parliamentary must appoint a man to represent them. Aleisandra appointed her fifteen year old son and basically told him exactly which way to vote up until she died.

Emreis Girallt Rhufein, 6th Marquis of Cadiz, 5th Lord Parliamentary of Talent Island, 21st Minor Lord (1683-1701)
- Son of the 5th Marquise. A weak-willed man heavily dependent on first his mother then his wife to tell him what to do, his one sole independent action seems to have been a speech in which he argued in favour of slavery due to the fact he benefited from plantations in Tenisi.

Aleisandr Emreis Rhufein, 7th Marquis of Cadiz, 6th Lord Parliamentary of Talent Island, 22nd Minor Lord (1701-1743)
- Son of the 6th Marquis. A sportsman who considered cricket the peak human art, satirists at the time lampooned him as "our present-day Hero of Granada, the Hero of the Granada Cricket Fields", due to the fact he preferred to play in what was known as the "Granada Fields" near Castreleon.

Pawl Emreis Philip Aleisandr Rhufein, 8th Marquis of Cadiz, 7th Lord Parliamentary of Talent Island, 23rd Minor Lord (1743-1750)
- Son of the 7th Marquis. A "man of learning", a keen amateur scientist and someone who was keen on discovering new animals. Even when he was only in the Senate via a writ of acceleration, he was one of the patrons of the "Natural Philosophy Caucus". Accidentally poisoned himself in 1750.

Maelcun Pawl Emreis Rhufein, 9th Marquis of Cadiz, 8th Lord Parliamentary of Talent Island, 24th Minor Lord (1750-1783)
- Brother of the 8th Marquis. Known as a sombre man, his height and his dark clothes led many to call him "the Black Giant". Known as an arch-conservative, his speeches regarding the young Pedid were heavily laced with praise so faint nobody could even consider it that. His witty responses to Pedid led him to be considered the de facto opposition and if he had lived longer, he would doubtlessly have been appointed Prime Minister at one point.

Aleisandr Lluid Rhufein, 10th Marquis of Cadiz, 9th Lord Parliamentary of Talent Island, 25th Minor Lord (1783-1814)
- Son of the 9th Marquis. The last one to sit in the Senate representing the seat of Talent Island before it along with any "non-landed" hereditary seats were deemed to no longer qualify for representation. "Alec" however, was unlike his father and worked with Pedid enough that Pedid bothered to get him an unopposed seat in Cadiz after his hereditary seat was abolished, which for all purposes was basically a hereditary seat in all but name.

Aleisandr Lluid Rhufein, 11th Marquis of Cadiz, 10th Lord Parliamentary of Talent Island, 26th Minor Lord (1814-1853)
- Son of the 10th Marquis. When his father passed away when "Little Alec" was barely in his 20s, he stood and won his father's seat in Cadiz unopposed. Acutely keen in local matters, he was known as someone who funded building of roads and cultural festivals. Even when he got genuine opposition from the Liberal Democrats as he became known as a Conservative, he still enjoyed landslide wins. Was Minister at War in two Conservative governments. His death in 1853 was sudden as he was widely considered one of the healthiest men in the cabinet.

Pawl Aleisandr Rhufein, 12th Marquis of Cadiz, 11th Lord Parliamentary of Talent Island, 27th Minor Lord (1853-1890)
- Son of the 11th Marquis. A keen family historian and social reformer, he is remembered mostly as the one who shepherded the bill repealing the one that barred his ancestor the 5th Marquise from the Senate. Regarding social reform, he was a champion of advocating temperance. While Muslims do not drink alcohol, the British temperance movement tended to focus more on tobacco, which he considered unhealthy. This did not make him a popular person in the parliamentary speakeasy, as he often droned on about the "evils" of cigars. He also was one of the "Cherry Blossom Society" that sought to "beautify" Britain via... planting a lot of Japanese cherry blossom trees to replace "unhealthy" native British trees. Yes.

Lluid Emreis Rhufein, 13th Marquis of Cadiz, 12th Lord Parliamentary of Talent Island, 28th Minor Lord (1890-1915)
- Son of the 12th Marquis. The first one born in Cadiz, he was a keen believer in Cadiz autonomy, and was one of the few Conservatives that defected to the Liberal Democrats when the Conservatives turned hardline anti-autonomist. Basically all but collapsed when he heard his son and heir, Aleisandr, was killed in World War One. Died barely six months after hearing the news, never really comprehending what happened.

Elisabeth Anna Rhufein, 14th Marquise of Cadiz, 13th Lady Parliamentary of Talent Island, 29th Minor Lady (1915-1962)
- Daughter of the 13th Marquis. An vocal intellectual who managed to be one of the first four women elected to the Senate and was one of the last Senators elected for Cadiz, as well as the only Liberal Democrat. A keen critic of Abdelilah Benjelloun, she opposed Cadiz being lumped in with the Rif, and tried futilely to have it be split off as a separate Dominion. Known as a patron of the Dominion Liberal Party, which unsurprisingly does well in Cadiz.

Lluid Aleisandr Rhufein, 15th Marquis of Cadiz, 14th Lord Parliamentary of Talent Island, 30th Minor Lord (1962-2005)
- Son of the 14th Marquise. A quiet-mannered man, he nevertheless was a keen anti-socialist and tried to cultivate a "compassionate liberalism" in the Dominion Liberal Party, he nevertheless was not his mother, and over time retreated from politics in favour of his hobby, namely gardening. He could easily be found in his garden, tending to his flowers. His son died before him, so after his death it went to his young granddaughter.

Catren Elisabeth Rhufein, 16th Marquise of Cadiz, 15th Lady Parliamentary of Talent Island, 31st Minor Lady (2005-present)
- Granddaughter of the 15th Marquis. Prefers to go simply by "Cadi Rhufein", she is known mainly as a race-driver who won quite a few cups. Despite playing down her peerages, she is known to be eager at bringing the expansive Muison di Rhufein together once again, including her distant relative from the Permont branch of the family who is the democratic-socialist Premier of Evelina. The two seem to get on well.
 
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