Alternate Wikibox Thread

[Turquoise Blue]

Perhaps under a man who was once Trotskyite than once Director of Public Prosecutions could such a hash of a compromise happen. After one too much scandal of the King still continuing his old interfering ways, and with a press less likely to be charitable to someone who attracted far less love than his dearly departed mother, the Firm entered what the old mater would have described as an 'annus horribilis'. Republic became less of a fringe concept, but the idea of Charles being pressured into abdication, or the Parliament just outright doing a "we have revoked the crown" move, was far more considered.

The Prime Minister was forced in mid 2025 to move to deal with this growing crisis, and he did so through a very unorthodox concept. He knew the King had undue influence in matters, but was loath to turn Britain republican (such a thought was in his head associated with the more and more fringe SCG). With a comfortable Labour majority, he had freedom to shape the Parliament's response, and his idea was to divide the traditional role of monarch into two. A King who would be the symbolic head, and a new office, a President perhaps, who would take on the actual roles. The King would do the symbolic acts, but the President would take on the remaining ones of substance, while the Commons would be explicitly empowered to choose the government.

The Presidency Bill of 2025 became the Presidency Act 2026, with the King signing it resignedly, creating a new office and a new status quo. The President, the PM determined, would have to be someone of wide respect and with a strong streak of working with all parties. On the 17th of March, the Prime Minister announced his choice was confirmed by the King (as per the Presidency Act) and that it was the Lord Patten, now the President Patten.

Later on, when the Prime Minister met with the President of the USA at a diplomatic conference, this exchange could be heard.

"So, Mr. Prime Minister, who is the head of state? Is Britain now a republic?"
"Well, President Harris, yes... and no."
Harris blinks
"You see, the King is the head of state. And the President is the head of state. They both have different responsibilities."
"And how does this work, Mr. Prime Minister?"
"Beats me. I wrote the Act myself one night, and not even I know how it works."

[Credit to Lord Roem who once used "Christopher, President Patten" in a post which got my head spinning]

 

[Vidal]

1980 Democratic primaries - Gerald Ford's victory in the 1976 presidential election embittered Democrats everywhere who felt that Jimmy Carter had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. His disastrous Playboy interview and the masterful work of the Ford campaign in the final days gave the president what he needed to win a term of his own. Ford likely came to wish that it had been Carter who had won the 1976 campaign. The president was forced to fight his own party in trying to pass the Panama Canal treaties. The issue tore his party apart, and a weak economy haunted his four years in office.

At the outset of the Democratic primaries, speculation again surrounded Ted Kennedy, who decided not to run. Arizona Congressman Mo Udall also declined to enter the race, citing a recent Parkinson's diagnosis. Most anticipated a three-way race between New York Governor Hugh Carey, Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale, and Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, but the dynamics of the race were upended by Senator Gary Hart, an ambitious young politician who focused less on ideology and issues and more on a vague promise of "New Ideas for a New Decade." While opponents criticized him for not being specific about what he'd do as president, Hart promised investments in new technology and touted his foreign policy experience in comparison with Carey's.

Hart's victory in the Iowa Caucuses launched him onto the national scene, and Mondale's fourth place finish pushed him out of the race. He endorsed Carey's campaign. Then came New Hampshire, where Carey came back with an impressive victory. On it went until, finally, Hart clinched the nomination.

In a nod to the establishment, Hart chose Ed Muskie as his running mate. The Hart/Muskie ticket went on to defeat the Reagan/Lugar ticket.

 

[TheNixonator]

From my planned Pacific Republic TL:

SJ = San Joaquin
SO = Sonora
NA = New Albion
JA = Jackson
CO = Colorado

 

[Stuyvesant]

The Littlewood-Zarthmann Expedition was the first successful expedition to the Under-Earth and was the beginning of the Age of Subterranean Discovery. It is regarded as one of the greatest moments in the History of Exploration, alongside Columbus, Magellan, Amundsen, and Shackleton. Many schoolchildren know the exploits of Captain Littlewood, either through knowledge of history or through the countless adaptations of his life’s story.

The Littlewood-Zarthmann Expedition was far from the daring expedition to prove the truth of the captain’s theories but was in fact approved because the Admiralty was sure this expedition would prove Littlewood nothing but a crackpot. Of course, the Admiralty would have egg on their face when the expedition they sent to Iceland appeared in Naples Harbor with a “Sing Rock Creature” seeking to pursue relations with the United Kingdom on behalf of its Empire.

Otis Littlewood would go on to be an overnight celebrity, and after his retirement from the Royal Navy embarked on a diplomatic career in the Empire he discovered for the Crown. He was in this position when he mediated what almost led to a War between Krrtania and Denmark following a murder of a Krrtanian Prince in Reykjavik.

 

[SpudNutimus]

First teaser for what's soon going to become a full in-universe wiki article about this utter abomination. The general idea is "what if Newfoundland voted to remain British in 1948, then later once Blair came along the government "fixed" the slightly more prominent issue of representation for the overseas dependencies by just shoving all of them (with small exceptions) together into a fifth constituent country of the UK?"

If God is truly merciful, why is he allowing me to create this?

​

 

[SpudNutimus]

First teaser for what's soon going to become a full in-universe wiki article about this utter abomination. The general idea is "what if Newfoundland voted to remain British in 1948, then later once Blair came along the government "fixed" the slightly more prominent issue of representation for the overseas dependencies by just shoving all of them (with small exceptions) together into a fifth constituent country of the UK?"

If God is truly merciful, why is he allowing me to create this?

View attachment 50157​

Fucking hell, turns out that gathering consistent demographic data from 14 different overseas territories and lumping it together is pretty tedious, I just spent two afternoons on the ethnicity and religion portions of the infobox alone, haven't even gotten to the actual article yet.

 

[Vidal]

 

[Steve Brinson]

I know this isn’t the case, but right now I’m trying to weave this and the Hart box into one continuity.

 

[theev]

1980 Democratic primaries - Gerald Ford's victory in the 1976 presidential election embittered Democrats everywhere who felt that Jimmy Carter had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. His disastrous Playboy interview and the masterful work of the Ford campaign in the final days gave the president what he needed to win a term of his own. Ford likely came to wish that it had been Carter who had won the 1976 campaign. The president was forced to fight his own party in trying to pass the Panama Canal treaties. The issue tore his party apart, and a weak economy haunted his four years in office.

At the outset of the Democratic primaries, speculation again surrounded Ted Kennedy, who decided not to run. Arizona Congressman Mo Udall also declined to enter the race, citing a recent Parkinson's diagnosis. Most anticipated a three-way race between New York Governor Hugh Carey, Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale, and Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, but the dynamics of the race were upended by Senator Gary Hart, an ambitious young politician who focused less on ideology and issues and more on a vague promise of "New Ideas for a New Decade." While opponents criticized him for not being specific about what he'd do as president, Hart promised investments in new technology and touted his foreign policy experience in comparison with Carey's.

Hart's victory in the Iowa Caucuses launched him onto the national scene, and Mondale's fourth place finish pushed him out of the race. He endorsed Carey's campaign. Then came New Hampshire, where Carey came back with an impressive victory. On it went until, finally, Hart clinched the nomination.

In a nod to the establishment, Hart chose Ed Muskie as his running mate. The Hart/Muskie ticket went on to defeat the Reagan/Lugar ticket.

I know this isn’t the case, but right now I’m trying to weave this and the Hart box into one continuity.

My head canon for all of this is that it actually extends out of a two term McGovern presidency beginning in 1972.

 

[Comrade Izaac]

My head canon for all of this is that it actually extends out of a two term McGovern presidency beginning in 1972.

head cannon proposal:

Kennedy dumps Johnson for Sanford in 64' and loses to Nixon, Nixon is President through the late 60s and 70s and does typically Nixon shit and then a weird McGovern/Humphrey ticket wins in 72'. Humphrey survives cancer, McGovern gets shot, Humphrey defeats the Rep nominee in 80' riding off McGovern McGoodtimes and sympathy for the martyr President after being drafted to take up the Dem nomination despite not initially running when Hart's indiscretions are revealed.

 

[iupius]

guess who's back
back again
mulcair's back
lavalin



Tom Mulcair survives his leadership review in Edmonton - perhaps it takes place elsewhere, or the leadership are more attuned to the risk. Either way, he survives and whilst NDP polling remains bad, it's not nearly as bad as OTL (especially in Quebec, where the party badly trails but does not collapse).

With Mulcair still in post and Quebec a bit more of a free-for-all, Kevin O'Leary takes the plunge and wins the Tory leadership, entering parliament with Peter Van Loan's early retirement. A heady mix of the NDP doing a little better, and the Tories a little worse, pushes Justin Trudeau to play to his worst impulses in a cack-handed attempt to keep Quebec on side - and he goes down hard over a worse SNC-Lavalin.

O'Leary's furious tirades from the opposition frontbench are excellent viewing, but the memory of the last Conservative government looms large and the public doesn't take Mr. Wonderful seriously as a potential prime minister. Mulcair's legal background, however, enables him to forensically skewer a second consecutive prime minister over accusations of corruption. Trudeau's obvious dislike for the member for Outremont results in some misjudged comebacks in the Commons, Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott jump ship to a surging NDP, and by the summer Nick Nanos is publishing polls showing a three horse race.

Ralph Goodale tries to right a sinking ship after a catastrophic ethics report clears house at 24 Sussex, but the NDP takes full advantage of a rare second chance in politics.

 

[Blackentheborg]

​

August, 1962 - Norma Jeane is much smarter than she lets on. Sure, she fluttered her eyelashes like she had nothing in the tank, but that was all show. She was smart enough to know that those cars driving around her neighbourhood weren't rubbernecking paparazzi. She heard the clicks on the other end of her phone conversations. Most importantly, Norma Jeane knew a man she called Momo. It was Momo that got his boys in the Chicago outfit to break into morgues to go looking for a cadaver fitting her description, and shuffled her off to a safe house in Louisiana, too. She's grateful, even tho she knows that he only did it to sleep with her. Every guy does. Norma Jeane is much smarter than she lets on.

October, 1962 - Angela Hidell is fine, thank you for asking. Before she came out to the boonies, in her past life, celebrity pharmacists were quick to diagnose her with things like depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, hysteria, new and scary concepts that would let them see how deep her wallets were. They don't have celebrity pharmacists in the boonies. They have one shop, and they don't even have good coffee, just that stuff that looks and tastes like chewing tobacco. She has more than enough time to think about things. About how she thought she was going to marry the handsome man in the white house, that he'd finally cut poor Jacqueline loose. Then she thought about how he was probably the one that sent the CIA men after her. Then she thought about how it was sick and twisted of him to do such a thing when she loved him something awful. Then she thought if she couldn't have him, Jackie certainly couldn't, and nobody else could either. Angela Hidell is fine, thank you for asking.

November, 1963 - Marilyn Monroe is here in Dallas. You wouldn't think to look for a dead celebrity in a crowd of faces. No, they're too busy looking up the road at the President and his wife. She is wearing pink. Marilyn wore pink once. Not any more. Jackie had taken her pink dresses from her, just like she did John. Poor John. He really felt sorry about what she was going to do as he drove up the plaza, but it had to be done. Momo had been more than happy to help. He'd wanted to get rid of John too, but for his own reasons. He bribed some milksop to be a patsy for her, had his guys up behind a grassy knoll. It was all so perfect. She is staring down a rifle scope. She squeezes a trigger. Jackie no longer has a pink dress. John wears pink now too. She laughs. She cries but she keeps laughing. Marilyn Monroe is here in Dallas.

 

[Meppo]

why do both of them look like mob bosses

 

[Vidal]

I know this isn’t the case, but right now I’m trying to weave this and the Hart box into one continuity.

Ha! I do have a major sex scandal planned for a Democratic member of the Exec. Branch ITTL, but it's not Gary Hart.

head cannon proposal:

Kennedy dumps Johnson for Sanford in 64' and loses to Nixon, Nixon is President through the late 60s and 70s and does typically Nixon shit and then a weird McGovern/Humphrey ticket wins in 72'. Humphrey survives cancer, McGovern gets shot, Humphrey defeats the Rep nominee in 80' riding off McGovern McGoodtimes and sympathy for the martyr President after being drafted to take up the Dem nomination despite not initially running when Hart's indiscretions are revealed.

Honestly, you've done it. My own/less inventive thought process was that a bladderless Humphrey wins in '76

why do both of them look like mob bosses

I would say "Such was the '80s" but I feel like it's more accurate to say "Such were '70s leftover politicians in the '80s"

 

[ZeroFrame]

The 1984 Italian General Election was a surprise to most observers and Italians. On August 10th, 1984, Berlinguer gave a speech responding to the increasing mob violence against unions and left wingers that had claimed hundreds of lives in only seven months. Halfway through the speech he collapsed from a brain aneurysm, killing him instantly. He was airlifted to the nearest hospital, but he was pronounced dead by doctors at the hospital. The seemingly healthy Prime Minister was taken away in just a few seconds. Minister of the Interior Alessandro Natta was quickly designated the new Prime Minister of Italy and faced little opposition except from the Italian Social Movement and Social Democratic Party.

Natta quickly gave a speech praising Berlinguer's time in office at the same time President Cianci and those at the CIA popped open champagne. If Berlinguer pissed them off, then they would come to hate Natta even more. He was more hardline than Berlinguer and more dedicated to furthering Eurocommunism than Berlinguer who was known for his soft and pragmatic approach with the Socialist Party. Him and Vassalli didn't get along and it was only a matter of time before the PCI-PSI coalition collapsed.

First came Berlinguer's funeral. Notable attendants included former Senator Mike Gravel, Pope Nicholas VI, Prime Minister Roy Jenkins, French Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, and the leaders of every major political party in Italy (minus the MSI). Over one hundred thousand people attended the funeral and for three days flags of the PCI outnumbered the Italian flag in Rome and arguably the entirety of Italy.

The next order of business was shuffling the cabinet. Nilde Iotti became the first female Minister of the Interior and Giuliano Vassalli became the new Deputy Prime Minister. Aldo Moro became the Minister of Justice (a position he'd hold until 1986) and Sergio Garavini was made Minister of Labor and Social Policies. Natta, Iotti, and Foreign Minister Achille Occhetto on August 20th discussed the possibility of another election in an attempt to secure a majority. It was a short meeting as all three agreed that a majority would allow them to further implement Berlinguer's policies without relying on the Socialists or the Christian Democrats. The next day Natta called an election.

The campaign itself was brutal for the Christian Democrats. Their leader, Giulio Andreotti was accused of being connected to the Mafia and vast corruption. He rejected the claims as here say but at a time Mafia related violence was exploding the allegations damaged him quite a bit. Furthermore, the PCI ran on continuing Berlinger's legacy and implementing his full proposals instead of compromises with the PSI. The PSI on the other hand ran on how they were the true pro-worker party that managed to water down the proposals and made the bills into reasonable socialist legislation.

The Christian Democrats had a muddled message that attempted to not trash Berlinguer and but promised to reverse his policies. Many on the center-left despised Andreotti's platform due to it being a betrayal of Moro's Historic Compromise causing them to not show up or vote for the PSI or even PCI. The only saving grace was the Christian Democrat's having around 120 safe seats meaning they could spend less on defending seats and more on attempting to take back lost seats. Come election day though things turned out very differently. Andreotti had overestimated how willing Catholics were willing to accept Christian Democratic hegemony. Sick of Mafia violence and those they viewed as corrupt they found refuge in Liberation Theology. After being endorsed as a rational ideology by Pope Nicholas VI earlier that same year the PCI and PSI made sure to secure Liberation Theology's role in the socialist and Eurocommunist movement. The election served as a disaster for Andreotti and the Christian Democrats who fell to 145 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 69 in the Senate. Meanwhile the PCI won a majority and the PSI won what at the time was the second-best result for them. The MSI also managed to increase their vote share to just under 14% of the vote in what would be their best showing as facing scandal and criminal accusations they collapsed in 1987.

 

[SpudNutimus]

First teaser for what's soon going to become a full in-universe wiki article about this utter abomination. The general idea is "what if Newfoundland voted to remain British in 1948, then later once Blair came along the government "fixed" the slightly more prominent issue of representation for the overseas dependencies by just shoving all of them (with small exceptions) together into a fifth constituent country of the UK?"

If God is truly merciful, why is he allowing me to create this?

View attachment 50157​

The infobox itself is done! Now to do the entire rest of the article.

​

 

[Steve Brinson]

The infobox itself is done! Now to do the entire rest of the article.

View attachment 50267​

Kind of surprised that they didn’t have one of those MPs represent them in cabinet, although I guess it’s possible that Cleverly was parachuted into some safe blue seat in Newfoundland or something, or alternatively that the conservatives have no MPs out there.

 

[SpudNutimus]

Kind of surprised that they didn’t have one of those MPs represent them in cabinet, although I guess it’s possible that Cleverly was parachuted into some safe blue seat in Newfoundland or something, or alternatively that the conservatives have no MPs out there.

Yeah, the idea for Newfoundland's party system is effectively that a regional quasi-Labour along the lines of the Scottish Greens in terms of being technically separate absorbs most of the IRL Canadian Liberal vote, while an independent non-Tory small-c conservative party founded during the dependent territory era called the Newfoundland Party takes the center-right niche and effectively does what Newfoundland's Progressive Conservatives do IRL by hugging the center. The three MPs from the rest of the British Overseas Countries all have seats spread across multiple of them due to their small size individually, making for some very weird races and an environment in which regular party politics don't fare well and MP candidates function as independents because their actual parties only exist in their specific country of residence. So the Tories proper have no actual seats in the BOC.

 

[Steve Brinson]

Yeah, the idea for Newfoundland's party system is effectively that a regional quasi-Labour along the lines of the Scottish Greens in terms of being technically separate absorbs most of the IRL Canadian Liberal vote, while an independent non-Tory small-c conservative party founded during the dependent territory era called the Newfoundland Party takes the center-right niche and effectively does what Newfoundland's Progressive Conservatives do IRL by hugging the center. The three MPs from the rest of the British Overseas Countries all have seats spread across multiple of them due to their small size individually, making for some very weird races and an environment in which regular party politics don't fare well and MP candidates function as independents because their actual parties only exist in their specific country of residence. So the Tories proper have no actual seats in the BOC.

You know, I’m no expert, but it feels like the Lib Dems (or something like the NI Alliance in terms of being affiliated but not part of the Lib Dems) could do quite well out there in much the same way they/the Liberal Party did well in the Scottish Highlands. Non-Tory, but also too rural for Labour proper.

 

[Stuyvesant]

Otis Littlewood was born in Southend-on-Sea during the War of the Third Coalition to a family of ancestral fishermen who as Littlewood himself later wrote “…had not traveled more than five miles from coastal Essex since the days of Cromwell.” He had always loved the sea, as a child of fishermen would be expected to be, but after witnessing a Royal Navy action while fishing one day, he enlisted in the Royal Navy as a cabin boy.

Littlewood would eventually work his way up to the rank of Captain, where he quickly hit the wall of intra-service rivalry, with the cantankerous sailor being ill-suited for the interpersonal politicking further advancement would require. This was not helped by his at the time unorthodox scientific theories that he attempted to gain admiralty funding to investigate, who regarded the Captain as an eccentric kook. But eventually, Littlewood succeeded in organizing an expedition to Iceland to explore the rumors of cave networks on the island and in the secret hopes of the Admiralty embarrass the captain by disproving his hollow earth theories. As the expedition was on Danish soil, the expedition was a collaborative one with a Danish naval officer named Zarthmann.

Upon reaching their destination, the volcano Snæfellsjökull, the two men entered much more than a simple cave network, they had entered the labyrinthine and massive place known as the Under-Earth. However, the Under-Earth was like nothing the world had seen to date, an entire biosphere completely alien to surface life, where flesh was instead stone, and glowing crystals decorate the walls of the continent-sized caves.

Now entire volumes could be written on the events of the Expedition, but far and away the most important was the discovery of sentient nonhuman life in the Under-Earth, who Littlewood dubbed “Singing Rock Men” and who we know today as Golems. Littlewood also established contact with the nation now known as the Krrtanic Empire, whose territory extended to encompass much of the Under-Earth beneath the North Atlantic and Western Europe

But the other important discovery of the fact that they were not the first humans to stumble upon the Under-Earth, and various regions of that domain boasted endemic populations of humans, the descendants of past discoverers. Of interest to the expedition was the sizeable Jewish population of Krrtania, the descendants of Sephardis who fled the Inquisition.

The Expedition finally left the Under-Earth in November 1843, emerging from the Italian Volcano Stromboli, where they were rescued by a passing Sicilian ship who brought them to Naples, where a royal navy ship brought them home.

Littlewood returned to Britain an international celebrity and was Knighted by the Queen and granted a promotion to Commodore. He attempted to continue his career in the Navy but even being a national here did not make him better suited for Admiralty politics. Instead in this period, the Commodore turned back to his more scientific pursuits, specifically the conundrum of making a compass that could function in the Under-Earth.

Still, Littlewood longed to return to the Domain that he discovered and remaining in the Navy made journeying to the Under-Earth unlikely given its complete lack of navigable bodies of water. So, he managed to call in his many favors to get him appointed the primary British diplomat to the Krrtanic Empire, having much admiration for the Golemic people. He oversaw the creation of the Anglo-Krrtanic Alliance, which accompanied the beginning of International Trade networks growing to include the Under-Earth.

The major diplomatic incident during his Ambassadorship was the Reykjavik Incident in 1871, where a member of the Krrtanic Imperial Household was assassinated during a trip to Iceland. Krrtania threatened Denmark with war if the perpetrator was not turned over to their custody, and tensions mounted until Littlewood managed to settle the situation without escalation.

His tenure was otherwise uneventful, and Littlewood eventually ended his time as Ambassador following the death of his wife of the Rock Flu. He retired to his home region of Essex, where he built a Manor south of the village of Sawbridgeworth. He was created a member of the House of Lords, and then was elected President of the Royal Geographic Society where he oversaw the creation of the First Map of the Under-Earth.

Lord Sawbridgeworth died at the age of 89, and his funeral was a major event of high society, attended by both the British Royal Family and the Krrtanic Imperial Household. He was buried in a Mausoleum in Iceland, at the foot of the volcano that propelled him into history.