Weirdest microstates possible?

[SpudNutimus]

What is the most utterly fucking weird justification for the existence of a random microstate you can possibly think of? Something so completely out of left field or strangely legalistic in nature that you just laugh at it out of pity. To be clear I mean actually recognized microstates, things like Vatican City and such, not just random crazies on an oil rig or something like Sealand. I want to see what blursed national entities you people can think of. I'll go first, with something that I could unfortunately actually see happening in the future and have used in other scenarios before:

- The Marshall Islands, after their land is entirely swallowed by the ocean due to climate change, fully retain their status as a state under international law and their seats at institutions such as the UN in exile. Their government operates out of their embassy in Washington, D.C. and their population is relocated to the United States via their legal freedom of movement under the Compact of Free Association. The U.S. subsequently passes legislation allowing for any Marshall Islanders who legally apply (or are born in the United States) to hold American dual citizenship, while the exiled government of the Marshall Islands passes legislation providing for any future descendants of current citizens of the Marshall Islands, along with their descendants, to automatically hold citizenship regardless of location. So now the Marshall Islands just indefinitely exist as an international legal entity which controls no territory, but its citizenry, who also happen to nearly all hold American dual citizenship, still exist and vote for/operate/pay taxes to its national government operating out of the D.C. embassy. Its only real purposes in the modern day are effectively to serve as a legal and financial support network for the exiled Marshall Islanders, as well as to pass laws which regulate fishing and such in their old national waters, which still legally exist.

 

[SpanishSpy]

Some weirdo squats on a derelict anti-air platform in the North Sea and calls it his own country. The government of Germany arguably extends diplomatic recognition thereto.

 

[Indicus]

The Knights Hospitaller might be a good bet for this. If they kept Malta it might “just” end up being a state under a bizarre oligarchy, but during the Greek War of Independence there was a rather bizarre attempt to restore Knights Hospitaller rule over the island of Rhodes with support from Western European aristocrats cosplaying as them. And I have no idea how that would have turned out.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Knights Hospitaller might be a good bet for this. If they kept Malta it might “just” end up being a state under a bizarre oligarchy, but during the Greek War of Independence there was a rather bizarre attempt to restore Knights Hospitaller rule over the island of Rhodes with support from Western European aristocrats cosplaying as them. And I have no idea how that would have turned out.

One thoroughly ASB idea I've had is a SMOM post-World War II with access to nuclear weapons as a way of deterring great power conflict.

 

[Ricardolindo]

The Knights Hospitaller might be a good bet for this. If they kept Malta it might “just” end up being a state under a bizarre oligarchy, but during the Greek War of Independence there was a rather bizarre attempt to restore Knights Hospitaller rule over the island of Rhodes with support from Western European aristocrats cosplaying as them. And I have no idea how that would have turned out.

I doubt the Knights could keep Malta in the long run. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies may eventually establish direct rule. If not, I find it likely that if Italy still formed, it would annex the island.

 

[SpudNutimus]

The Knights Hospitaller might be a good bet for this. If they kept Malta it might “just” end up being a state under a bizarre oligarchy, but during the Greek War of Independence there was a rather bizarre attempt to restore Knights Hospitaller rule over the island of Rhodes with support from Western European aristocrats cosplaying as them. And I have no idea how that would have turned out.

I considered them actually, my main idea for that was for them to not sell their Caribbean possessions back to the French, then still lose Malta and just end up as a weird independent group of Caribbean islands. The Swedish also offered them permanent sovereignty over Gotland following their loss of Malta strangely enough, but they declined because it would mean completely giving up their claim to Malta (womp womp).

 

[Arthur_Phuxache]

Knights Templars keep their Baltic redoubt at Bornholm, just to piss off the Papacy.

 

[Beata Beatrix]

A Neutral Moresnet that somehow survives as an Esperantist hub and is renamed Amikejo feels like a good shout for this one.

 

[Coiler]

Not an independent country, but there's the POD where the Unionist "Republic of Winston" gets turned into a US state that gets carved out postwar to give the GOP a pair of extra Senate seats.

 

[Indicus]

I considered them actually, my main idea for that was for them to not sell their Caribbean possessions back to the French, then still lose Malta and just end up as a weird independent group of Caribbean islands. The Swedish also offered them permanent sovereignty over Gotland following their loss of Malta strangely enough, but they declined because it would mean completely giving up their claim to Malta (womp womp).

The Knights Hospitaller being sovereign over Gotland would be particularly weird, since Gotland was almost entirely Lutheran and the Knights, of course, are a Catholic order.

 

[OHC]

How about the Phoenix Foundation's filibusters?

 

[Elektronaut]

In a no Napoleon world there's probably quite a lot of potential Liechtensteins extending into the modern day with ample potential for equally dodgy rulers.

I feel like 'internationalised' Jerusalems and Istanbuls would have, uh, interesting politics.

 

[Coiler]

How about the Phoenix Foundation's filibusters?

Those sound like the villains in a Jon Land novel.

 

[SpudNutimus]

One thoroughly ASB idea I've had is a SMOM post-World War II with access to nuclear weapons as a way of deterring great power conflict.

This feels like it could work (albeit as a major, major stretch) for a "Mussolini remains neutral" timeline in which he doesn't get involved in WW2 and stays in power post-war, develops nukes as a deterrent in the late '50s to early '60s, then finally gets overthrown and exiled in a revolution, at which point he says "fuck it, do the thing we did with our air force before and give it to the knights, better than letting those goddamn commies have it".

 

[Talwar]

Could be a fun topic for the vignette challenge some time.

Offhand - Any of hundreds of small Indigenous nations in North America, but in particular those on a coast or adjacent to the Canadian/American border. Alternately, perhaps a large estate originally owned by a government-in-exile and later "recognized" by the host for diplomatic shenanigans?

 

[SpudNutimus]

The Knights Hospitaller might be a good bet for this. If they kept Malta it might “just” end up being a state under a bizarre oligarchy, but during the Greek War of Independence there was a rather bizarre attempt to restore Knights Hospitaller rule over the island of Rhodes with support from Western European aristocrats cosplaying as them. And I have no idea how that would have turned out.

I considered them actually, my main idea for that was for them to not sell their Caribbean possessions back to the French, then still lose Malta and just end up as a weird independent group of Caribbean islands. The Swedish also offered them permanent sovereignty over Gotland following their loss of Malta strangely enough, but they declined because it would mean completely giving up their claim to Malta (womp womp).

What's this? A rough draft you say?

​

 

[Charles EP M.]

Not the weirdest, but if you disrupted the British government - revolt, brief occupation etc - could it possible Guernsey, Jersey, and Isle of Man stop being dependencies & end up independent because the resulting/new government doesn't care to continue that? Then they'd end up independent by default

 

[Coiler]

Not the weirdest, but if you disrupted the British government - revolt, brief occupation etc - could it possible Guernsey, Jersey, and Isle of Man stop being dependencies & end up independent because the resulting/new government doesn't care to continue that? Then they'd end up independent by default

Slightly related is the postwar part of Anglo American Nazi War having the parts of France bordering the Channel becoming British Crown Dependencies ie those OTL islands, and the US annexing the eastern part of Siberia and making it a full state.

 

[Time Enough]

Not the weirdest, but if you disrupted the British government - revolt, brief occupation etc - could it possible Guernsey, Jersey, and Isle of Man stop being dependencies & end up independent because the resulting/new government doesn't care to continue that? Then they'd end up independent by default

You could have something like Communist uprising in an extend WW2 lead to Jersey and Guernsey becoming Democratic Socialist states which declared independence from Britain or something.

 

[George Kearton]

Orkney and the Shetlands appropriate in this context?