Indicus's maps, wikiboxes, &c thread

[Thande]

The 80s Apple aesthetic is a lot more intentional on my part - on post 192 here on this thread I did try to replicate that, with partial success. Something I’ve been trying to do is use that aesthetic to make my personal site, using React, and I suppose both these things are tangents from that. The wikibox being a collection of dropdowns comes from Latin Wikipedia, like here (the dropdowns don’t work on phones). Combining the two with design cues in my head - well, I was struck with what I made.

Yes, I can see that. It also slightly resembles the early Acorn RISC OS I used at school to my mind, though that's more because Acorn was influenced by Apple I assume. It was never completely black and white (unless you only had a monochrome monitor) but they loved their greys.

 

[Indicus]

Thanks to @Time Enough for reminding me of this guy's existence.



Feargus O'Connor came from a fairly illustrious parentage. His father Roger, and uncle Arthur, were Anglo-Irish gentry; despite this, they were radical reformers and members of the Society of United Irishmen, which sought the end of distinctions between Anglican, Dissenter, or Catholic and their unity under a common Irish identity in a spirit of civil and religious liberty. Exasperation at the un-reformable institutions of the old Kingdom of Ireland, dominated by an Anglican aristocratic oligarchy, had turned their Whiggism into republicanism and a devotion to the principles of the French Revolution. Shortly after Feargus' birth, the French general Lazare Hoche led an army to invade Ireland in the name of an independent Irish republic, and promptly the United Irishmen established a republican government. Arthur O'Connor joined the Executive Commission (under its president Wolfe Tone) which sat at the top of the declared Irish republic, and it was in this context, of a new republic in arms against the powerful British monarchy, that Feargus lived his first few years. But alas, in the end, this revolution was defeated. In 1799, Hoche died on the field, and soon afterwards the Irish Republic fell into freefall. Though it took years for the British, the Tories, and the Orange forces to defeat the last of the Croppies, the Irish Republic effectively ceased to exist, and in 1800 Feargus fled with his family to France.

Though the United Irish diaspora is more commonly associated with the United States, where it helped set the religious ecumenism and antislavery tenor of the Irish diaspora there, France also held part of it, following the generations who fled there for the opposite politics of republican religious unity. Feargus' uncle Arthur was perhaps the foremost leader of this Irish community, and he even maintained some semblance of a government in exile. And thus it was that Feargus O'Connor grew up and naturalized in France, speaking French, but in an Irish neighborhood and on horror stories of Tory and Orange outrages against the Irish people; thus, he maintained a proud Irish identity even though he could remember his homeland little. With an undoubted elite position, and with anti-Irish sentiments at a low point in the era thanks to the French Celtomania kicked off by Hoche's invasion, he became an advocate in the court, and despite his intensely abrasive personality he performed well in this role. Known to be an opponent of the oligarchical Sieyesian regime, his name swiftly got elected onto the list of national notables, and from there the College of Conservators selected him for the Tribunate - that is, the designated opposition.

Here, he was well to the left of the First Tribune Benjamin Constant and advocated a restoration of fully democratic government, and this made his name well-known across the country. With France mired in a new war since 1821 against the British, O'Connor also made himself known as a strong supporter of the effort, and he openly advocated an invasion of Ireland. With the outbreak of the Parthenopean Revolution, the expansion of the war into something which encompassed all Europe, and the ensuing Paris Riots of 1824, Grand Elector Roederer and the remainder of the Sieyesian regime saw its downfall, and O'Connor was selected as part of Chauvelin's new Council of State. In this role, he was essentially a backbencher, as he advocated still more democratic reforms than those implemented, and his intensely abrasive personality did not help him make new allies or push his views very much. But nevertheless, his commitment to the war effort, which only grew more intense when he witnessed the Irish Famine of the 1820s and the British regime and Anglo-Irish regime do nothing about it. His hopes that it might at least inspire a revolution came to naught, for the people were too weak, too hungry, to put up a fight, and they maintained their support of the pacifist ideals of Daniel O'Connell even as he was taken to jail and peaceful protestors rotted in the ground at Clontarf.

With the Popular Revolution and the overthrow of the British order in 1827, O'Connor at first hoped that France would invade Ireland when the British regime could not defend it; when it instead sought for peace, he resigned his position. O'Connor's disgust would only cool when, in the halls of the Convention Parliament, Daniel O'Connell and the remainder of the Irish contingent held the revolution hostage by forcing the Convention to grant the Irish people aid, without work requirements, through free soup kitchens across the island. With his French career in a dead end, and the new British government consisting of people the Irish could work with, O'Connor moved to London and took an excited look at the Convention Parliament and its framing of a new order. Indeed, as a natural-born British subject whose father had not been included on an act of attainder, he was eligible to become a Member of Parliament. And so, despite him being raised a Frenchman, and despite him speaking with a French accent only lightly leavened with an Irish brogue, he ran for the Grand Division which most closely resembled his uncle's old constituency and got enough United Irishmen votes to win.

With many deeply unnerved at the violence of the Popular Revolution and unnerved at the possibility of a British Reign of Terror, this Frenchman speaking in a French accent devoted to absolute republican principles and the nephew of a high ranking Irish revolutionary sitting in the new House of Commons did not help things. A popular Guelphite cartoon in 1831 portrayed him standing aft as the new Robespierre of the new British Republic at the top of a Franco-Irish conspiracy, with the title Fearguise Eau-Conneaux[1]; or London Turned to Pandemonium. That many of his proposed reforms were very, very French in nature - for instance, he advocated forced testation - did not really help things. These accusations reached their very peak when, during the Orange Riots of 1834, the Orange mob that burned and looted Parliament cried out "Death to Feargus" - O'Connor himself was undeterred, however, and he regarded them as simply the modern iteration of the Orangists and Tories his father and uncle fought against.

And though O'Connor initially very much admired Daniel O'Connell for his role in forcing the British government to grant aid, which no doubt limited the death toll of the Famine to 250,000, he increasingly regarded his unshakeable pacifism and closeness to the Radical government of Samuel Whitbread - far too moderate to O'Connor's liking - as the act of a sellout. Furthermore, O'Connor was raised in the United Irishmen tradition. He believed that all religious identities - Anglican, Dissenter, and Catholic - should be abandoned in the name of the common identity of Irishmen, and he regarded O'Connell's wearing of Catholicism on his sleeve as mere sectarianism, and it reminded him of the French clerical establishment - that O'Connell was a firm believer in separation of church and state and advocated Dissenter rights as eagerly as those of Catholics did not really change that for him. In one instant, he jeered O'Connell as a "Jesuit". This caused widespread accusations of religious bigotry, but O'Connor denied this. He stated he was a proud advocate of religious unity as per the ideals of the United Irishmen, and that he despised not Catholicism but the presence of religion in politics. It did not help among a vote base which regarded O'Connell as a near-god, and O'Connor did not win re-election.

Out of office, O'Connor instead wedded himself to the land reform movement. His advocacy of French-style forced testation, going beyond the abolition of primogeniture, had already made himself known among it. With Crown and many Church lands being sold off, a land boom had been formed, and O'Connor swiftly sought to make use of it by creating a National Land Company with himself as one of its directors. Its plan was to buy up Crown and Church lands and establish homesteads for the people, to be given to shareholders through lottery - that such homesteads would make people so enlisted eligible for the ballot certainly fueled it. For a while, this plan was successful. Though the influential Associationist thinker James Bronterre O'Brien opposed this plan of small homesteads out of a belief in land nationalization, it was wildly successful.

O'Connor's political career saw a revival during the repeal wave of 1843. With the Radicals out of power, Daniel O'Connell lost his influence in government, and he was instead forced to return to his tactics of mass protest, in part because the Young Ireland movement - dominated by people who found him too moderate - saw growing steam. Amid this, O'Connor won election from Cork City, defeating an O'Connellite. In power, O'Connor called for immediate repeal - through peaceful means, or otherwise - and he promoted his National Land Company. Eventually, in the 1846 election, the Radicals came to power, and O'Connell was able to achieve the concession of the re-establishment of an Irish Legislature with limited power - which he regarded as the first "instalment" to full repeal. In reaction, O'Connor furiously denounced this as a betrayal, as the act of a sellout taking the scraps of the English. In the 1847 election, kicked off by the Lords' veto, Young Ireland won seats at the expense of O'Connellites - but in the end, O'Connell achieved broad-reaching autonomy for Ireland, and as the Irish legislature met at the old seat of Grattan's Parliament he won the praises across the board. O'Connor swiftly got elected to the new Irish Legislative Assembly, to bully the British and O'Connell into making this the first step to full repeal - however, he found himself in a minority in the ensuing elections. Instead, O'Connell saw his very apotheosis, sworn in as an MLA - and then died. The resulting outpour of grief, overpowering in Ireland and strong even in Britain (strong enough he lay in state in the reconstituted Westminster Hall) was enough that, with great reluctance, O'Connor praised Daniel O'Connell.

O'Connor remained an Irish MLA amid a collapsing O'Connellite movement that became entirely subsumed into the British Radical movement, and he kept with his efforts in the National Land Company. However, eventually, the land boom came crashing down. By the 1850s, the best Crown lands had been sold off, or endowed to land-grant universities, and the Church of England was selling much less land similarly. And so, by 1854, the Company collapsed and died. With his wealth destroyed and reputation in tatters, O'Connor instead retired to France. Here, he got elected purely as an honor as a National Notable - in the context of the considerably more democratic France he had returned to, this gave him direct admission into the halls of government - or rather, as a diehard opponent of Consul Menabrea, he became an opposition Tribune and became a figure of much amusement before retiring shortly before his death. His funeral saw a grand crowd from both France and the British Isles, and his resting place in Paris with a Celtic cross atop his tombstone gave him, at last, a glorious moment in his bizarre life, no doubt greatly hemmed by his tendency towards sheer abrasiveness



[1] Thanks to @Walpurgisnacht for this bit.

 

[Indicus]

The Senate-House, often known as the Houses of Parliament, is the seat of the Parliament of the British Isles, located in its capital of London. While this site has been used for various Parliaments for eight hundred years, it was held in the old Palace of Westminster until its destruction in the Orange Riots of 1834; the Senate-House was constructed from 1838 to 1853 on its ruins, and only one of its rooms, Westminster Hall, is a continuation of the old Palace of Westminster. Constructed in an austere neoclassicalism evocative of the Roman Republic that the British Isles has, since even before the Popular Revolution, sought to evoke, the Senate-House and its iconic octagonal dome is today a great British landmark.

Westminster Hall​

The first Westminster Hall was constructed in 1097 by King William Rufus, son and successor of the infamous William the Conqueror. On the model of the contemporary trend of great halls for royal banquets, it was far larger than any of them, and in practice kings used side-halls for that purpose. Instead, the Hall was used to host judicial inquiries. It got its iconic hammerbeam roof in 1393, and over the following centuries Westminster Hall was used for meetings, petitions, inaugurations of Parliament, impeachments, and one royal execution. The last grand event held in this old Westminster Hall was immediately after the Popular Revolution, with the 1829 promulgation of the Charter and Frame into law by Chief Magistrate Lord Holland.

This Westminster Hall no longer exists, however. In 1834 in the wake of the Municipal Reform Act which tore to shreds traditional municipal government, an Orange Order mob gathered in the yard just outside Westminster Hall. To book their hatred of the post-revolutionary regime and loyalty to the Guelphs, this mob sought to storm Westminster Hall - and they did, by ripping apart its doors. Armed with torches - and a few with gunpowder bombs, it did not take long for the mob to ignite Westminster Hall's wood roof. This swiftly forced them to hastily flee - many by punching holes in the Hall - and most of them fled the premises. The fire this ignited proved to be total - the fire department too busy putting out fires ignited by Orange mobs across the city, and an Orange mob just outside the fire was intent on seeing the palace burn to the ground - hopefully with the republican traitors of Parliament inside. By the time Lord Holland had gathered Parliament at Exeter Hall and secured its approval to use the army against the Orange mobs, Parliament had been almost entirely burned to the ground. Westminster Hall in particular had its roof collapse in on itself, leaving it a hollow husk of broken walls.

In truth, Parliament had planned on leaving this site. An 1833 resolution on the subject saw overwhelming approval for relocating Parliament for new premises in Green Park and leaving only the courts to the old, decaying Palace of Westminster. But after this fire, it was unthinkable. The old, Gothic palace had burned down, and the site had now become national honor; to relocate would be to surrender to the Orange mob. And the vacated space offered room for a new, modern senate-house befitting the revolutionary order. But while Parliament had little nostalgia for the old palace, Westminster Hall was too august a place to leave behind in the past. And so, the contest for new parliament buildings had only one parliament - there needed to be a reconstructed Westminster Hall. The approved plan saw, on the outside, Westminster Hall made of marble, and it was given a copper roof. But though the pointed roof was somewhat lower, on the inside the Hall was a near replica of the old one, including its Gothic hammerbeam ceiling. However, a neoclassical facade was added to its entrance, and its window was replaced with a painting depicting the ratification of the Charter of Liberty and Security and Frame of Government, to represent the new constitutional order. In 1847, Westminster Hall saw it go back to usual business with the lying of state of the great Daniel O'Connell.

Additionally, Westminster Hall became a memorial hall - in honor of the British tradition of liberty. On the walls, beneath the ribs of the roof, were installed statues of various icons of British liberty:
1. Robert Fitzwalter, leader of the baronial opposition to King John and whose victory secured the Magna Carta
2. Simon de Montfort, baron who convened a parliament which included, for the first time, full representatives of the Commons
3. William Wallace, Scottish knight who fought an English invasion that sought to incorporate it without its consent
4. John Fortescue, statesman during the War of the Two Roses who recognized the supremacy of Parliament in the Constitution
5. Edward Coke, judge and politician who opposed Charles I's absolutism, challenged the Star Chamber's tyranny, and was the moving force of the Petition of Right
6. John Hampden, who opposed Charles I's unconstitutional levy of Ship Money, resisted arrest as one of the Five Members, and died in battle in the early stage of the Puritan Revolution
7. John Pym, who defeated Stuart schemes through parliamentary procedure, resisted arrest as one of the Five Members, and organized the war effort of the early Puritan Revolution
8. Harry Vane, who opposed both Stuart and Cromwell, fought for religious liberty, and suffered executed following the Restoration
9. William, Lord Russell, Whig politician who opposed the Stuarts during the Restoration and martyred for it
10. Algernon Sidney, theorist of republicanism who opposed both Stuart and Cromwell, and executed for opposing the Stuart king Charles II
11. John Somers, Baron Somers, who opposed the Stuart king James II, was a moving force in the Glorious Revolution, and framed the Bill of Rights
12. John Locke, Whig theorist and philosopher whose ideas lie at the heart of classical radicalism and republicanism
13. Isaac Newton, mathematician and physicist who first developed calculus and formulated Newtonian classical mechanics and optics
14. Benjamin Franklin, American scientist and revolutionary who discovered the principles of electricity and the nature of lightning and became a moving force of the American revolutionary movement
15. George Washington, who defeated the forces of the Guelph king George III in the American Revolution and became the first President of the United States
16. Charles Pratt, Earl Camden, judge and politician who upheld habeas corpus, supported the American Revolution, and protected the rights of juries
17. Richard Price, Welsh mathematician and radical reformer who condemned religious disabilities and daringly praised the French Revolution as a heroic product of the great British tradition of liberty
18. Thomas Muir, Scottish radical reformer who suffered deportation for his political beliefs and returned to die in a republican rebellion
19. Edmund Burke, founder of moderatism who praised the American Revolution, advocated Catholic emancipation, opposed British atrocities in India, and attacked the French Revolution
20. Mary Wollstonecraft, philosopher, author, and founder of the women's rights movement
21. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Irish revolutionary republican who served as Executive Councillor for the Interior for the declared Irish Republic during the Great Irish Rebellion (1796-9) in the name of religious unity
22. Charles James Fox, who supported the American and French Revolutions, opposed the power of the Crown, pushed parliamentary reform, and whose values saw vindication in the Popular Revolution
23. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, famed Irish playwright and politician who led the Foxite party after the death of Charles James Fox
24. Samuel Whitbread, radical Foxite, imprisoned in the Tower of London and freed by the mob in the Popular Revolution, and became the first Radical prime minister and faced the Orange Riots
25. Daniel O'Connell, who fought for civil and religious liberty through peaceful protest and secured the formation of the Irish Legislature
26. Henry Brougham, who in the wake of the Popular Revolution reformed and codified criminal, commercial, prodecural, and civil law

This has been for the most part consistent with one exception - a statue of Oliver Cromwell was replaced with Wollstonecraft in 1959.

Additionally, between the statues, were installed paintings of:
1. Boadicea addressing her troops before her tragic defeat (61 AD)
2. Alfred and the Witenagemot instituting trial by jury (878 AD)
3. King John reluctantly signing the Magna Carta (1215)
4. Simon de Montfort summoning a Parliament including the Commons (1265)
5. Peter de la Mare presiding as the Commons' first speaker (1376)
6. Peter Wentworth in the Tower of London for exercising freedom of speech in the Commons (1576)
7. Edward Coke confirming the supremacy of Parliament through the Case of Proclamations (1611)
8. Charles I forced to give assent to the Petition of Right (1628)
9. William Lenthall refusing to tell Charles I the location of the Five Members (1642)
10. John Hampden's martyrdom for the Parliamentary cause at Chalgrove Field (1643)
11. Algernon Sidney writing his Apology in the Day of his Death awaiting execution (1683)
12. William III accepting the Declaration of Right (1688)
13. Signing of the American Declaration of Independence (1776)
14. The vote of no confidence against Lord North's ministry (1782)
15. Edmund Burke's opening of the impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788)
16. Charles James Fox toasting to the sovereignty of the people (1798)
17. Charles James Fox's release from the Tower of London (1801)
18. Daniel O'Connell advocating against the Dissenting Ministers Act (1813)
19. Protests immediately before the Manchester Massacre (1819)
20. Samuel Whitbread toasting to the Majesty of the People (1825)
21. Protests immediately before the Clontarf Massacre (1826)
22. The Rump Privy Council convening a Convention Parliament (1827)
23. Parliament meeting at Exeter Hall despite Orange Order violence (1834)
24. Henry Brougham presenting his Civil Code to Parliament (1843)

Westminster Hall is today used for various purposes beyond being a memorial hall. It is used for openings of Parliament, convenings of the High Court for the Trial of Impeachment, meetings and presenting of petitions, and times when Parliament meets as a Senate for the election of a Chief Magistrate and resolution of Peers-Commons disputes.

Central Hall​

The main entrance to Westminster Hall, Central Porch opens to Central Hall, a grand hall which contains entrances to Westminster Hall, the main corridor of the Judicial Quarter, stairs to the second floor, and a corridor to the rooms below the Commons Chamber. Contained with it are four statues, female allegories of liberty, justice, wisdom, and victory.

Judicial Quarter​

For the purpose of symmetry, and for the housing of the Supreme Court of Judicature, the new plans saw plans for the creation of a Judicial Quarter on the other side of Westminster Hall. It chiefly consists of a Judicature Chamber and a number of other offices for its various judges and the Justice Minister.

The Judicature Chamber was constructed with a curved ceiling evocative of the Pantheon. In naves behind the, it contains statues of
1. Alfred the Great, Saxon king of England celebrated as a lawgiver
2. Henry de Bracton, English jurist who expounded the principles of old Common Law
3. John Fortescue, English chief justice who recognized the civil liberties of freeborn Britons
4. Edward Coke, English jurist who challenged the brutality of the Star Chamber
5. Oliver Ellsworth, American jurist who co-drafted the American constitution and established its judiciary
6. John Philpot Curran, Irish lawyer who defended the people and suffered execution for his support of the United Irishmen
7. John Erskine, English lawyer who defended radicals and reformers amidst Pitt's Terror

Occasional calls to relocate the Supreme Court of Judicature to a purpose-built building have failed, because it is generally considered that it being located in the same building as Parliament gives it a certain centrality to the nation.

Commons Chamber​

While the old Palace of Westminster stored the Commons in a drastically-undersized chamber, the Senate-House instead gave it the central position within its great octagonal dome. To ensure sessions get enough sunlight, the Commons Chamber is located on the second floor, and its dome is high enough it lets in plentiful sunlight in the day through its windows.

The chamber itself consists of levelled benches in a horseshoe layout, a layout intended as a compromise between the opposing benches of the old House and the hemicycle layout of antiquity; both designs could be called scientific from a certain perspective, the former emphasizing intensity of debate, and the latter the unity of the nation. The benches are laid out so they have room for full capacity; in practice, as only a fraction of this meets regularly, the top benches are left empty. Additionally, it contains a special Ministers' Bench for ministers, given a permanent invitation to sit as non-voting MPs; formerly, ministers could be (and were) elected as ordinary MPs, but following the Popular Revolution, to remove the Crown's and Lords' improper influence in the Commons, this was abolished, but to hold them accountable they were incorporated as non-voting MPs. In contrast to the green leather of the rest of the Commons seat, the color of the people, the Ministers' Bench has red leather, the color of the executive, to ensure they cannot blend into the people. Furthermore, the Speaker is an officer of the Commons elected outside its number; in practice, a retired statesman or civil servant is elected to this position, and the Speaker is seated in a chair in the far end, at the center, of the horseshoe. Below the speaker is the Table of the House of Commons, and here sits a Clerk and Legislation Minister to provide aid and advice to the general House. Furthermore, to bring the House into session, the Serjeant-at-Arms, who heads security in the Commons and remainder of the Senate-House.

Behind the Speakers' Chair is an office where the Legislation Minister sits in off-hours. The job of the Legislation Minister is to review bills and propose amendments of style to harmonize them with existing laws and suggest improvements, and to present laws proposed by members of judiciary; additionally, they organizes laws into a law code to be published by the National Gazette, and they try to make sure all laws are consistent with one another. On the upper part, the Chamber contains viewing galleries, with one reserved for reporters for the purpose of public opinion. More recently, phones and cameras have been added to the Reporters' Gallery for the purpose of broadcasting on the phote and the scope.

Above the Speaker's Chair is a standard with the traditional flags of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland added at quarters, and above that is a painting of Britannia with Roman armor and holding a shield and pole with a Phrygian cap. Additionally, in naves to the left and right of the painting, are statues of outstanding MPs, namely, John Hampden and Charles James Fox. Additionally, the Chamber is topped with an octagonal dome, and at the top of this dome is a marble statue of Britannia, with a depiction much the same as that above the Speaker's Chair. The Commons Hall, or the entrance to and from the Commons, contains additional statues of two outstanding speakers, namely Peter de la Mare and William Lenthall.

Peers Chamber​

The Chamber contains the House of Peers, to the side of the Commons Chamber. Historically, the House of Lords was in a grander chamber than the Commons; in the new Senate-House, it was given a considerably less grand chamber. This was often justified on the basis of it being considerably smaller than the Commons, but has much to do with the considerable anti-Lords sentiment following the Popular Revolution as well as the supremacy of the Commons codified in the new Frame of Government. The Peers Chamber was built with traditional three-way seating, within a long and tall room, and a chair where the Lord Chancellor, who presides over the Peers, sits; formerly, the Lord Chancellor sat on a sack of wool, a legacy of a medieval attempt to promote the wool industry, an absurd thing which got unceremoniously abolished following the destruction of the Palace of Westminster.

It also contains, above the Lord Chancellor's chair, a chair to the Chief Magistrate; once upon a time, the kings who preceded the chief magistrates sat here regularly, but since the House of Lords ceased to be a mere coterie of descendants of the friends of dead kings and became a truly independent body under the republic, it is now vacant except when the Chief Magistrate addresses both houses of Parliament during Annual Speeches to Parliament. Additionally, this chair sits in a semicircular apse, and in this apse, in columns, sits statues of outstanding Peers of old, namely William Murray, Earl of Mansfield; Thomas Erskine, Baron Erskine; and Henry Vassall-Fox, Baron Holland.


Historically, the pre-revolutionary Peers Chamber was decorated with the Armada Tapestries representing the great victory against the Armada Tapestries; these were removed in 1823 by the pre-revolutionary regime to place them in display across the nation, before they got placed into storage following the Revolution and placed in a separate place of honor in the new chamber. Instead, the Peers, packed with good Radicals by that point, commissioned in 1855 tapestries commemorating the triumph of Parliament over the Orange Riots, hanging on the walls of the chamber below the galleries. They consist of:
1. Signing of the Municipal Reform Act
2. Orange Order attacking Parliament
3. Evacuation of the Houses of Parliament
4. Parliament assembled at Exeter Hall in defiance of the mob

​

Armada Gallery​

In 1591, the Lord High Admiral of the English navy commissioned ten tapestries in honor of the great victory over the Spanish Armada. In 1651, the First Commonwealth draped the tapestries in the vacated House of Lords; by the time Charles II took over the British Isles in 1660 and reinstated the House of Lords, this was kept there, symbolic of British power. In 1823, the Guelph government took these tapestries off these walls to tour them across the nation in resistance to a French invasion. By the time the Popular Revolution broke down, an administrator stored them into Windsor Palace for safekeeping, and after the revolution the new government did not have any desire to put them back up on its walls, for the Lords had many loyal to the Guelphs. This, fortuitously, meant the tapestries escaped the Orange Riots and the fire. With the Lords having hardly helped things by the veto of the Municipal Reform Act, blamed for kicking off the Riots in the first place, the new Senate-House contained a special gallery area for displaying the Armada Tapestries. Today, they are placed within glass frames, and they exit to a staircase to the Commons Chamber.

Library of Parliament​

The need to create this Library occurred for two reasons. First, the burning of parliamentary records, going back to the thirteenth century, in the fire kicked off by the Orange Riots was widely mourned, and it demonstrated the need for a modern hall of records. Second, the King's Library of George III, a truly colossal library evocative of the Age of Reason stored by later kings, was nationalized following the Popular Revolution, and an oft-stated idea of what to do with it was to make it accessible to Parliament. Following the Orange Riots, plans for a new parliamentary building included room for a library of parliament, and the approved plans included a semi-separated Library of Parliament building, iron-framed for fireproofing, to store both the King's Library and parliamentary records.

The Library of Parliament is today run nominally by the Legislation Minister. It has since grown in such scale that it has an additional building, the Henry Brougham Building, off the premises of Parliament, and it has become the second largest library in the world (second only to the Bibliothèque Nationale). The Old Building contains a massive number of books, however, as well as a repository of records. The Library also contains an additional entrance on the riverside. At the center of the Library is a colossal statue of John Milton, republican hero and the famed author of Paradise Lost, and on its entrance is statues of great authors of British history:
1. William Shakespeare
2. John Dryden
3. Henry Fielding
4. Jonathan Swift
5. Alexander Pope
6. Robert Burns
7. Richard Brinsley Sheridan
8. Walter Scott

​

Library Galleries​

The plans for the new Senate-House also included galleries for displaying documents of liberty. Lavishly decorated with paintings and friezes, it stores documents of the:
1. Magna Carta
2. Petition of Right
3. Grand Remonstrance
4. Act of Habeas Corpus
5. Bill of Rights
6. Toleration Act
7. American Declaration of Independence
8. Charter of Liberty and Security

Notably, the American Declaration of Independence, stores a copy given to the American Revolution-supporting Duke of Richmond and was donated to Parliament by his grandson.

Other Rooms​

The Senate-House contains a number of rooms for officers of both Houses of Parliament, including the National Election Office which manages elections to both Houses of Parliament, and the Parliamentary Guard Office which headquarters the Parliamentary Guard which guards the Senate-House, the Henry Brougham Buildings, the Tower of London, and other buildings under the control of Parliament. It also contains a great number of committee rooms. It also contains a sumptuously-decorated Grand Reception Chamber, symmetrical to the upper part of the Peers Chamber, used for purposes such as hosting grand committees and receiving foreign heads of state.

 

[Walpurgisnacht]

Interesting how this more democratic Parliament sees itself as having far more continuity with the not-very-democratic mediaeval Parliaments--most popular history OTL seems to believe the House of Commons sprang from the soil just in time for the Gunpowder Plot, and only got filled with people during Charles I's coronation. Suppose that's the natural result of leaving things up to extremely history-conscious 17th century radicals.

As a resident of Lewes who's also Jewish, this is giving me complicated feelings.

 

[Indicus]

Interesting how this more democratic Parliament sees itself as having far more continuity with the not-very-democratic mediaeval Parliaments--most popular history OTL seems to believe the House of Commons sprang from the soil just in time for the Gunpowder Plot, and only got filled with people during Charles I's coronation. Suppose that's the natural result of leaving things up to extremely history-conscious 17th century radicals.

As a resident of Lewes who's also Jewish, this is giving me complicated feelings.

Well not quite - it’s the result of leaving things up to extremely history conscious 19th century radicals. A legitimate attitude in this era was that Parliament began from even before the Anglo-Saxon invasion but I thought that would be a bit much. As I hope is clear, the revolutionaries that made this new constitutional order see themselves as the inheritors of the legacy of the Roundheads and the Glorious revolutionaries back to the old Anglo-Saxons, and this new parliament building is as much about seizing the history of Parliament for itself and denying it to Orangemen as it is about a building for parliamentary business. And stressing that history is also about not seeming like Jacobins, in an era in which the new constitutional order has dubious legitimacy.

Idealization of Simon de Montfort seeing a place in this building - the result, again, of a legitimacy crisis - is something I imagine there’d be a modern controversy for here, though not enough to get it taken down. As I hope is clear, the memorialization in Westminster Hall here is intentionally incoherent.

 

[Indicus]

Buenaventura's flag originates from a number of sources. The purple comes from the Comunero Revolt (1520-1521), a municipal rebellion in Castille against the imposition of Flemish administrators, which took on radical anti-feudal dimensions. For their flag, the Comuneros flew a yellow castle on a strikingly purple background, and the color purple became associated with the Comuneros in Spanish memory. And though for the next several centuries the Comuneros were remembered as enemies of Spanish monarchy, and authorities regularly referred to rebels across the Spanish Empire as Comuneros to disparage them. This only began to change over the course of the nineteenth century; with the emergence of radical, constitutionalist, and republican secret societies across the Spanish Empire, many of them called themselves Comuneros and clothed themselves in banners and cloaks of purple (now easily-produced with the rise of artificial dye).

The saltire comes from the Cross of Burgundy. A red saltire with a distinct jagged pattern to resemble pruned branches, it emerged as a symbol of Burgundy. When the Habsburgs inherited control of the Burgundian territories in 1477, they inherited the Cross of Burgundy, and when they inherited Spain in 1506, the Cross of Burgundy became a symbol of the Spanish Empire. As the Spanish spread across the world and conquered and despoiled millions in the name of wealth, they took it with them. With the ascent of the Bourbons to the Spanish throne in 1700, they inherited the right to fly the Cross along with other Spanish symbols. To bring profits up, the Bourbons engaged in a series of centralizing reforms across the colonies to increase profits. Though these reforms succeeded, long-term it ultimately alienated old colonial elites. With the establishment of a new Spanish flag in 1785, the Cross of Burgundy became a symbol of an older era of Spanish imperialism, of decentral rule which treated colonies like coeval kingdoms more than as colonies, and as such it was frequently flown by colonial revolts aimed not at deposing Spanish imperialism but at making it more amenable to colonial interests.

Additionally, the sun comes from the use of the Sun of Inti, an Inca religious symbol, as a symbol of Spanish American independentist movements. As a tall civilization undeniably distinct from the Spanish, it was obvious to harken back to its symbols. The Sun of Inti was on the flags flown by the First, Second, and Third Platinean Wars of Independence, and from there it spread across the Spanish Empire through various secret societies as a symbol of independence. Though in practice the symbol got flattened to a simple sun, it quickly became part of the radical and constitutionalist repertoire.

The territory of modern-day Buenaventura became settled, first from settlements emerging from Mexico, and then from nineteenth-century settlement around the Rio Grande by Cubans as well as by various European Catholic immigrants imported to serve as a shield against American settlement, and then the California Gold Rush (1854), creating a large diverse population speaking alternatively Spanish and English. This growth resulted in trade routes that spanned from San Francisco to San Diego to Culiacan to El Paso to Monterrey to Tampico - trade routes that became silken threads, weaving together the nation of Buenaventura. The lackadaisical Sacramento Rebellion demonstrated that some solely-Anglophone revolt would be bound to fail, and so Anglo conspirators needed to cross the language line and join with Hispanic schemers to formulate a joint revolt. From the Hispanics in general came Comunero purple and the Cross of Burgundy, and from Chilean miners came the Sun of Inti. That using such symbols, within the safety of oath-bound secret societies, had the added benefit of differentiating the Buenaventuran movement from American annexationists that could alienate Hispanics.

With the Cry of Telegraph Hill on the fateful day of the fifth of May, 1864, and the subsequent outbreak of the Buenaventuran War of Independence, the Comunero armies that emerged across the country flew a great many standards. When the great Broderick made the Cry, he flew a simple purple flag defaced, in the style of common marine flags, with a thin saltire and a lozenge with a C in the center. That this flag (albeit with differentiating blue) is today the flag of the Province of North California demonstrates its impact. This flag would be not only flown by the San Francisco Militia he led, but by Comunero rebels across the Californias, although a frequently-used alternative flag featured a sun rather than a C. Further west, in Texas, New Leon, and New Santander, rebels flew simple purple banners, or Crosses of Burgundy, or else some garish combination thereof. Less commonly, they flew banners that resembled the Pan-Spanish colors of Venezuela. Use of Crosses of Burgundy represented the rebellion's initial attempt to establish not an independent state, but rather far-reaching autonomy within the Spanish Empire, but continued even as such hopes became obviously dashed. Famously, the great Garibaldi flew a saltire much like the modern Buenaventuran flag, albeit with the national colors of his Italy and a Phrygian Cap; he continued to fly this banner when he crossed borders to fight in the American Civil War, and when he was finally buried in Caprera, this regimental flag came along with the flags of Italy, Greece, Buenaventura, and the United States into his tomb.

The flag of Buenaventura would only be decided definitively with the end of the War of Independence in 1867; the ensuing Constitutional Convention discussed the flag along with the constitution. Purple having become a national color, was a no-brainer to feature on the flag. Whether Garibaldi's regimental flag influenced the flag, or whether it was achieved independently to make a distinct-looking flag to evoke the Cross of Burgundy, remains a topic of some dispute; while Garibaldi was a Convention delegate, he spoke little and when he did, he sought to protect general republican values. It is known that the Sun of Inti came from a desire to have a distinctive symbol that could distinguish the nation from the United States and the Spanish, however. The number of rays were, like the United States' flag stars, to represent how many provinces the nation had. At the time, this was a mere 8; today, with provincial divisions and admissions of territories, this has grown to 13.

Today, the flag of Buenaventura is a beloved symbol. Distinctive yet simple, it is commonplace across Buenaventura. Every Fifth of May, Buenaventurans gather with flags in hand to watch the world-famous fireworks show of San Francisco, or the less famous but still magnificent shows of San Diego, Ciudad Broderick, Monterrey, and Matamoros. And of course, it is flown by American college students, only too happy to celebrate the independence of their western neighbor by drinking themselves into a stupor with authentic bacanora, to cries of "Drinko de Mayo!".

 

[Indicus]

While antecedents to China's Russian minority may be found with Russia's great colonial expansion into Siberia, it was truly with the downfall of the Qing Empire and the rise of the Bai (1854-63) that the groundwork for a large minority emerged. With the Qing fleeing up north to Manchuria and Mongolia, and with the West's superiority over China already demonstrated in the Sino-Portuguese War, they sought to prevent being cracked open by the Bai advance by becoming a Russian protectorate. Russia immediately sought to exploit this new land, and to this end it established new trade links with its new lands. New supplies of grain and other crops flowed westwards, and Russian settlement proceeded - very slowly, just enough to ensure trade, due to the difficulty of communication.

In the 1860s, Russia established great telegraph lines across its territory, including its newly-obtained Chinese ones; ships from Vladivostok then took telegraph records to Mednovtsy [Anchorage], where lines connected it to North American lines. With the construction of a Vladivostok-Mednovtsy submarine line in 1872, near-instantaneous communication from Europe to the Americas became a reality. This increased the flow of settlement eastwards, to man all of these new telegraph stops. This was but a prelude of the coming barrage of modernity that came with the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad in the 1870s. With its completion, this allowed for a great, massive wave of settlement. With a great deal of Siberia being too cold to settle, most of this settlement happened to be in China. The Russian government bought up land from Qing Chinese landlords; promptly, it kicked off peasants to make room for Russian serfs. Most of them came from the Malorussia region, to such an extent that often Manchuria would be referred in this era as the "Green Ukraine" ("Ukraine" being an archaic name for the Malorussia region); additionally, a modest number of these settlers were Jewish, Constantine II being so intent on settling his far eastern domains that he was willing to send a minority that he despised there.

This attempt to transplant the Russia of the east, with plantations populated by serfs who knew their place, inadvertently created a new society. Some of those serfs happened to be Chinese converts to Orthodoxy, the Tungcheng. Additionally, serfs could easily flee their plantations, and this created a small Russian population in Bai China - although practically-speaking racial and religious bigotry meant few of them did. This meant, by necessity, these serfs could not be treated as badly as serfs further east. Furthermore, intermarriage between far eastern Russians and the Tungcheng was not rare (though it remained unusual). New railroads allowed for increasing levels of settlement, and Russia successfully secured a grip over Korean soil, using this as a link to this end.

In the end, this order came crashing down. In 1893, Japan invaded Korea - and its only semi-modernized army got swiftly defeated by the Russians; to many in Bai China, this was a useful cassus belli to incite a war. Among them was Marshal Lee, who without waiting for word from the Bai government attacked Manchuria. This turned into the massive Russo-Chinese War (1893-9). Bai Chinese troops ventured northwards - and with their advance, Russians fled, either eastwards - Vartanyansk (then Krasnoyarsk) swelled with refugees - or more famously, westwards towards the Pacific. Almost overnight, large Russian diasporas emerged in Alaska, Columbia, Buenaventura, the United States, Australia, and Maoriland. The brutal fighting of the Siege of Mukden and the bloody battles between Russian serf conscripts and Bai Chinese volunteers came to an end with the capture of Lake Baikal, and Marshal Lee flew the bagua over Vladivostok. With this final defeat, another batch of Russians fled, over real and imagined reprisals.

Having attained such extreme and high levels of popularity with his victories, it did not take long for Marshal Lee to march on Nanjing and declare himself Supreme President of the United Provinces of China. In power, he made himself the icon of reconciliation. Against the flight of Russians, he declared he would grant to all Russians who swore an oath of allegiance citizenship and ownership of the land they worked on. Such measures did little to stop the hysterical Yellow Peril race panics that popped up across the West, but it did stem the flight for the time being. As it turned out, the end of serfdom in this territory would not be the clean reform many may have thought - serfs were not given co-ownership of their mirs, but instead individuated ownership of small patches of land - but it was a great difference to serfdom in Russia, which reached its breaking point in this era (and broke into the Young Russian Revolution). And though President Lee swiftly organized Eastern Orthodoxy in Russia into the Chinese Orthodox Church, with Russians represented in its Most Holy Synod, and though he even praised Orthodox Christianity along the same lines of the Hongwu Emperor's much praised Hundred Word Eulogy of Islam, it did not stop the insecurity.

The breakup of mirs into small patches of land, much of which was arid (the best given to Chinese ex-peasants) resulted in many of these ex-serfs selling off their land and moving to the city for opportunity. Haishenwei (formerly Vladivostok) became what it remains today, a center of Russian culture in China. Many would become prosperous - if you've had some Haishenwei beer, know that you've had some beer from a Russian Chinese brand - but most ended up working in factories. Russian workers had quite a reputation for labor organization in this era - having been freed from serfdom, they did not take industrial mistreatment well - and they quickly became part of the Chinese nation. It should also be noted that the example of China breaking up the mirs meant that, when Russia had its own revolution which ended serfdom (along with the lives of many, many aristocrats), Chief High Administrator Vartanyan decided to cooperativize Russia's mirs rather than split them up.

With the rise of their urbanization, however, Russian culture in China began to dissipate. Many grew to speak Mandarin, and over time a majority of Russians in China now speak Mandarin as their mothertongue. More recently, intermarriage rates with the Tungcheng - Chinese Orthodox Christians - have spiked upwards. Even in Haishenwei, though Russian script on signage remains prominent in its Russian neighborhoods it is more symbolic than anything. Russian is increasingly reserved for the halls of the Church, and for the few Russians which have remained farmers. Despite it, the Russians have made their mark on Chinese society and they have become - securely - a part of it.

 

[Time Enough]

Qing Empire and the rise of the Bai (1854-63)

Ooh, what’s happening, I’ve usually seen the Qing collapse in this period to you know the Taiping Rebellion, so the Bai people becoming successful here is interesting.

Constantine II

Guess Konstain isn’t pushed aside due to his relationship with a mistress then?

Marshal Lee to march on Nanjing and declare himself Supreme President of the United Provinces of China

I love this, a Chinese United States created from a Military Dictatorship in the 1890s is a fascinating piece here.

Despite it, the Russians have made their mark on Chinese society and they have become - securely - a part of it.

A fascinating alternate culture here and particularly how having most of them being the descendants of Serfs informs there ideals and all that is very interesting.

 

[Indicus]

Ooh, what’s happening, I’ve usually seen the Qing collapse in this period to you know the Taiping Rebellion, so the Bai people becoming successful here is interesting.

Broadly, due to various butterflies there’s been somewhat less Christian penetration in China. When a rebellion hits, this means it’s, for lack of a better term, more normal. The rebellion is still a weird religious one, to be sure, but it’s centered around the White Lotus movement and its millenarian idea of the Eternal Mother sending the Maitreya Buddha to Earth to restore the Ming - yeah, it’s really weird, but those are ideas which existed. But it succeeds, takes Beijing, and forces the Qing to retreat to Manchuria, leading to the above. Also it successfully modernizes.

Guess Konstain isn’t pushed aside due to his relationship with a mistress then?

His first wife is never able to run away and is instead under virtual house arrest until her death - yeah it’s really dark. As a result, Constantine never gets pushed aside because there’s no real reason for him to.

 

[Time Enough]

Broadly, due to various butterflies there’s been somewhat less Christian penetration in China. When a rebellion hits, this means it’s, for lack of a better term, more normal. The rebellion is still a weird religious one, to be sure, but it’s centered around the White Lotus movement and its millenarian idea of the Eternal Mother sending the Maitreya Buddha to Earth to restore the Ming - yeah, it’s really weird, but those are ideas which existed. But it succeeds, takes Beijing, and forces the Qing to retreat to Manchuria, leading to the above. Also it successfully modernizes.

Huh, I hadn’t heard of the White Lotus until you mentioned it here, so I looked them up and they seemed to be a like surprisingly prevalent religious/syncretic organisation which I can see managing to become a major player in world where Christianity is a minor thing mainly consigned to the occasional port city.

Quick question, is Marshal Lee based on anyone real at all?

Edit- Also never knew that about Constantine, that’s incredibly rough for his wife there. Also a longer lasting Serfdom is certainly underutilised to say the least.

 

[Indicus]

Huh, I hadn’t heard of the White Lotus until you mentioned it here, so I looked them up and they seemed to be a like surprisingly prevalent religious/syncretic organisation which I can see managing to become a major player in world where Christianity is a minor thing mainly consigned to the occasional port city.

Quick question, is Marshal Lee based on anyone real at all?

Edit- Also never knew that about Constantine, that’s incredibly rough for his wife there. Also a longer lasting Serfdom is certainly underutilised to say the least.

It should be noted that “White Lotus” meant different things over time - it seems to have originated as some Manichean-ish movement and then, after the Ming rode it to power and then turned on them, turned into some weird fusion of Chinese traditional religion and apocalyptic Buddhism and ironically linked with Ming restorationism. But yeah its highly unorthodox Buddhism is definitely interesting.

Marshal Lee (full name Lee Cheng-chang) isn’t based on anyone specific but rather the archetype of the military man who overthrows their country’s old regime and establishes a modernizing autocracy. There are a lot of examples of that in history of course, most obviously Kemal, and like them the Lee regime’s wheels begin to fall off and it collapses entirely not so long after his death. Also, I named him “Lee” based on a really old, really lame joke of mine about “Robert E. Lee” sounding like a Chinese name. He’s a marshal here because him being a general would just be too obvious.

Yeah definitely really shit for Constantine’s wife, I definitely felt bad for the butterflies there. How a revolution in a Russia with serfdom goes is still something I’m working on - but know that it’s really really bloody.

 

[Makemakean]

Snip.

Good Lord! What an immense amount of effort! Bravo!

 

[Indicus]

Good Lord! What an immense amount of effort! Bravo!

I made a bunch of random jot notes based on random ideas I had, then I decided to make a floor plan just to help me organize those notes, and then it got a little out of hand, until....

 

[Indicus]

Built this with @Makemakean for his Swedish Strangerverse project:

And the writeup we co-wrote, from his quite great worldbuilding thread:

The Palace of the Unionsdag was something planned almost immediately after the final negotiation of Nordic unification at Kalmar in 1867, to get the new Unionsdag outside of its provisional headquarters, made of wood in a park, and it was as such created to frame the new nation in a way stronger than a mere legal union. Constructed in the Baroque Revival style so popular at this time, its architecture is immediately extravagant and imposing to the public eye, as magnificent as representative government itself.

The basement is, for the most part, a room for the, let us say, less glamorous functioning of the Palace. It contains offices for custodians, as well as the boiler room heating up the whole palace. Yet, it is amidst this that it contains several important features. It contains the Metro and Parking Tunnels, connecting the Palace to both a secure underground metro link, and to a parking spot to put bicycles and automobiles. Additionally, it also contains the underside of the functioning of the Library of the Unionsdag Office, and the main functioning of this underside, as such, is to manage orders from above. This underside is connected directly to the Library itself through the Library Tunnel; this tunnel itself also contains a pneumatic railroad, where books ordered from, and returned to, the Library Office above may be taken or returned to it. Additionally, the Library underside contains a reference cache, where commonly-ordered books, or books on loan, are retrieved.

But the most famous, and perhaps most glamorous, part of the basement level is the Chamber of the Committee of Secrets. This committee, as the name, implies, deals directly with state secrets and holds the government of the day accountable for it; as such, it is kept securely in the basement chamber. Its one entrance and exit, aside from emergency exits, is strictly from a staircase from above, through heavy wrought iron doors kept locked most of the time; it is only past another set of usually locked iron doors, from the bottom of the staircase, that one can enter. The Chamber itself is a somewhat gloomy hall to frame the somber nature of its secrecy, with gray walls, dark mahogany desks; it also contains, behind the chairman, (1) a painting of Odin's raven spies, Huginn and Muninn, holding scrolls of information on their claws. On the other end, it has a witness stand for anyone the Committee may ask for information, and behind it a fireplace. This means any witness feels the heat not only of the Committee but also of the fireplace. The effect of this is doubly strong if the accused is a hostile witness in metal chains that necessarily turn hot - just ask Keijo Iivari! Additionally, behind the Chamber is the Brig, where those accused of contempt of the Committee, or for that matter of either house of the Unionsdag, are detained.

This floor also contains one of the most famous (or notorious) parts of the Palace, a Grand Sauna and several smaller saunas. This was added on the instance of the Finns, who regarded it as being a tangible Finnish mark on the whole palace, representing its status not as Sweden's junior, but as an equal to all the rest. The Grand Sauna is usually empty, only booked as a major treat for visiting dignitaries who, after all, find it easier to negotiate with only a towel separating them from one another. Beyond this, there are also smaller saunas for members to use, and a sauna office for keeping everything organized.

On floor 1 is the more glamorous parts of the functioning of the Palace, as well as the main entrances and exits. The main entrance juts onto the Reception Hall. This hall, with its grandeur, was deliberately constructed to evoke such great parliament halls as Westminster Hall and the Ridderzaal; as such, it is grand and sweeping. Reception Hall contains several grand statues of outstanding Nordic figures, namely Erik the Red, Margaret, Gustavus Adolphus, Kalev, and Harald Fairhair. That several of these figures, in fact, despised one another, demonstrates the other purpose of this hall - to physically represent the unification of the nation. Additionally, Reception Hall contains several paintings of great moments in the Nordic history of liberty - (1) the Swedish Freedom of the Press Act, 1766; (2) the Danish Agrarian Reform, 1784; and (3) Harald Fairhair marrying Gyda Eiriksdatter upon unifying Norway, 872.

At the bottom of the rotunda on this floor is the Library Office. This is the main, out-facing section of Library of the Unionsdag within the Unionsdag itself - most of it is actually contained off-premises. Here, any members, or persons so specially qualified, may take out books or documents - or if the Library does not have it, well its librarians will be sure to travel to wherever that book or document may exist and retrieve or, if not possible, at least copy it - even if it shall take a librarian to, say, Jakarta. The Library Office represents the main endpoint where this world-famous service may be accessed. Additionally, the Office's entrance is lined up by two statues of outstanding figures of Nordic literature (and systematic falsifiers of her history) - (1) Snorri Sturlusson, and (2) Johannes Magnus. And there is also the Post and Domestic Times Office, the office of the national gazette, which receives and publishes new laws and debates.

Additionally beyond the various offices for officers of the Unionsdag, there is the other grand entrance to the Palace, designated for the Emperor and his servants to enter. The Emperor's Entrance is grand, if somewhat less so than the main one, but most famously it contains a depiction of the power couple of the First Kalmar Union, (1) Margaret and (2) Haakon Magnusson, staring lovingly at one another. The framing of this love story at such a prominent spot is meant to be an allegorical representation of the marriage of the Nordic nations. This framing derives ultimately in Axel Persson's famous novel Kalmar (1860), which written in the explosion of Nordic nationalism that came after the Great Baltic War, turned their marriage into an epic love story for the ages. The Entrance juts immediately on the Imperial Hall, a shrunken mirror image of the Reception Hall. It contains (1) a painting of Margaret convening the first Union Council of all the Nordic realms, an event which did not actually happen, but which is hung dramatically onto the main spot nonetheless.

On the second floor, there are several chambers for standing committees. These are for the (a) Committee of the Constitution, (b) Committee of Banks, (c) Committee of Ways and Means, (d) Committee of Laws, (e) Committee of State, (f) Committee of Appropriations, (g) Committee of the Union, (h) Committee of Mountains, (i) Committee of the Army, and (j) Committee of the Navy. Within these chambers are several paintings, of (1) Queen Margaret and King Haakon Magnusson marrying and bringing into being the Kalmar Union constitution, 1363; (2) Émile de Geer recoining the Swedish riksdaler, 1804; (3) Swedish and Danish ships fighting together in the War of the Copenhagen Interpretation; (4) Declaration of victory in the Baltic War, 1859; (5) Painted depiction of the iconic picture of the captured Tsar "Babushka" Constantine II with Henrik Johan Palmstierna and the XIth Hakkapeliitta Corps, 1859; and (6) Admiralissimo John Christmas flying the Danish flag at Visby victorious, 1859. Additionally, there are several smaller, more temporary committees known as deputations, but these have temporary rooms.

On floor two is also the two houses of the Unionsdag proper. Beyond the grand institutions controlled by them, the Ombudsman's Office and the Auditor's Office, and the Translator's Office (which receives messages by wire of parliamentary debated from the official reporters from the galleries, which it translates and transmits to the dispatch boxes in the houses), there are also the two houses themselves. The upper house, the House of Knights, is richly decorated in a lot of blue, directly inherited from Swedish parliamentary traditions. It is also decorated with several frescoes, of (1) Thorgny the Lawspeaker chastising Olof Skötkonung; (2) Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson calling the First Swedish Riksdag; (3) Eric Pennyclipper accepting a Håndfæstning for the Danehof to rule in 1282; (4) Christian VII opening the new Danehof in 1835; (5) Queen Margaret presiding over the signing of the Letter of Union; (6) Magnus the Lawmender consolidating the Norwegian regional assemblies into one big assembly; (7) the Norwegian Constituent Assembly at Eidsvoll in 1815; (8) the pronouncement of the first Icelandic Althing at the Thingvellir; and (9) the first Finnish States session at Helsinki in 1616. Additionally, it contains two paintings on the door side, (10) Gustavus Adolphus getting crowned; and (11) empty space, pending the decision of the Finnish Decoration Committee.

Within the Folketing, there are several decorations, coming in the form of banners. There is (1) a big banner of Kalmar Union flag, turning into constituent flags of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland as it juts down to the Speaker's seat in a swallowtail; (2) a banner of the Golden Dragon of the Wends; (3) a banner of the Three Blue Lions of Denmark; (4) a banner of the Crowned Lion of Norway; (5) a banner of the Three Crowns of Sweden; (6) a banner of the Crowned Lion of Finland; and (7) a banner of the Coat of Arms of Slesvig-Holsten.

Within these several designs, there are some wrinkles. In his painting, made by the famous Carl Ahlström, Gustavus Adolphus is not getting crowned King of Sweden, but rather his crown looks suspiciously like the Crown of the Holy Roman Empire. And while the banner of the Wends nominally represents that both the Swedish and Danish kings claimed the title of King of the Wends since the twelfth century, they never ruled over any Wendish lands - and for that matter, the Wends did not actually exist as a people by that point. These wrinkles exist because, in fact, these works of art conceal secret passageways to spiral staircases, the Thirteenth Day Passageways, direct to the Library Tunnel, so that in case, god forbid, some mob may storm the Palace, every member may be evacuated. And to prevent any such mob from targetting the staircases, they were in fact entirely secret, away from any officially-published plans of the Palace. The roof on the rotunda above was attached first - and the government deliberately hired masons separate from the ones conducting the rest of the construction project to construct the spiral staircases. This secrecy only broke down in the 1970s due to massive declassification initiative of the Lammikko Ministry, making its existence known.

Separating the two houses of the Unionsdag, beneath the grand dome, is Yggdrasil Hall. Here you'll find the national personifications of the "Four Founding Realms" represented in statue form: the Valkyrie-like Mother Svea for Sweden, the sturdy warrior Holger Danske for Denmark, the fair maiden Kari Nordmann for Norway, and the errant wizard Väinämöinen for Finland. But though their craftsmanship is superb, the object that will command the sight of most visitors is the great tree Yggdrasil, forged with a stem of solid iron and with countless leaves of fiery-red copper, treated so that they do not corrode. More than ten Swedish ells tall and its branches stretching out as wide, every day at sunset, the staff of the Unionsdag hang lanterns among the leaves, making for a splendid sight. It is only to be understood that after his retirement, the Marquis of Mandal could often be found seated here, ready to regale foreign visitors with colourful tales. It is also only to be understood that the Unionsdag has made Yggdrasil its official seal and symbol.

Additionally, above the Imperial Hall, there is the Union Council Chamber. This room is for what the title implies, holdings of sessions of the Union Council within the Palace. Additionally, it is flanked to the left and right by several ministerial offices. In practice, this chamber is only occasionally used because most ministers have their permanent premises elsewhere - but despite it, it is pretty grand. It also contains a painting of (1) a session of the Kalmar Conferences, though it is noted that never once were all the figures depicted in the painting (among them Nicolas Andersen, Absjørn Abraham Sønderheim, Henrik Johan Palmstiera, and Hugo Hubert Ribbing) ever present on the same day.

And on the third floor, there is the grand Chancery President's Office, separate from the one he has over at the Chancery in downtown Gothenburg. This is undoubtedly grand and filled with light, and it contains paintings of great figures in Scandinavian history (1) Konrad von Pyhy, (2) Johann Friedrich Struensee, (3) Georg Heinrich von Görtz, (4) Absalon, Bishop of Roskilde and Archbishop of Lund, (5) Axel Oxenstierna, Realm Chancellor of Sweden, (6) Arvid Horn, Chancery President of Sweden, and (7) Per Brahe the Younger, Governor-General of Finland. Not shown on the map is the notorious portrait of Oliver Cromwell wearing the medallion of Queen Christina, originally gifted to the Unionsdag by the 6th Duke of Grafton in 1883, which has moved around throughout the building ever since it was first acquired and likely will never stop doing so.

In short, let us remark that with its situation slightly north of the imperial capital of Gothenburg, the palace is situated so that the main entrance is to the south, to allow for a straight path from the urban centre. This does mean that whenever the monarch arrives for a state opening, they must circle around to enter. This might strike some as a tad awkward, but it is in fact entirely deliberate, being suggested by the first Chancery President Nicolas Andersen himself who played an active and passionate role in the planning committee: when the Emperor across the North comes to meet his people, it is only right that he should arrive from the North.