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Tibby's Graphics and Grab-Bag Thread.

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{{Infobox election
| election_name = 1990 Alberta general election
| country = Acadia
| type = parliamentary
| ongoing = no
| party_colour = no
| party_name = no
| previous_election =
| previous_year = [[1949 West German federal election|1919 (Election)]]<br>{{nowrap|← [[1949 East German Constitutional Assembly election|1986 (Allocation)]]}}
| next_election =
| next_year = [[1937 Ontario general election|1995]]
| seats_for_election = 83 seats in the [[i|Alberta Supreme Council]] <br /> 42 seats were needed for a majority
| election_date = 13 August 1990
| image1 = [[File:Stephen Harper by Remy Steinegger Infobox.jpg|x160px]]
| colour1 = ff6e40
| leader1 = [[i|Manuel Gensch]]
| leader_since1 = [[Ontario Liberal Party leadership elections#1930 leadership convention|17 August 1989]]
| party1 = [[i|Farmer-Socialist]]
| leaders_seat1 = [[Elgin (electoral district)|Ost-Kaltergarten]]
| last_election1 = 67 seats
| seats1 = '''35'''
| seat_change1 = {{decrease}}32
| popular_vote1 = '''526,238'''
| percentage1 = '''30.83%'''
| image2 = [[File:Stephen Harper by Remy Steinegger Infobox.jpg|x160px]]
| colour2 = 7986cb
| leader2 = [[George Stewart Henry|Michael Hummel]]
| leader_since2 = [[i|3 January 1990]]
| party2 = [[i|Conservative]]
| leaders_seat2 = [[York East (provincial electoral district)|Pappelhain]]
| last_election2 = ''pre-creation''
| seats2 = 27
| seat_change2 = {{increase}}27
| popular_vote2 = 485,102
| percentage2 = 28.42%
| image3 = [[File:Stephen Harper by Remy Steinegger Infobox.jpg|x160px]]
| colour3 = ffc400
| leader3 = [[i|Angelica Gold]]
| leader_since3 = [[i|14 February 1990]]
| party3 = [[i|Democrats '90]]
| leaders_seat3 = [[i|Zentral-Edmonton]]
| last_election3 = ''pre-creation''
| seats3 = 12
| seat_change3 = {{increase}}12
| popular_vote3 = 339,844
| percentage3 = 19.91%
| image4 = [[File:Stephen Harper by Remy Steinegger Infobox.jpg|x160px]]
| colour4 = 4db6ac
| leader4 = [[i|Anselm Bohn]]
| leader_since4 = [[i|19 April 1988]]
| party4 = [[i|United Farmers]]
| leaders_seat4 = [[i|Medizinkopf]]
| last_election4 = 31 seats
| seats4 = 6
| seat_change4 = {{decrease}}25
| popular_vote4 = 161,985
| percentage4 = 9.49%
| image5 = [[File:Stephen Harper by Remy Steinegger Infobox.jpg|x160px]]
| colour5 = e57373
| leader5 = [[i|Niko Leverenz]]
| leader_since5 = [[i|22 March 1990]]
| party5 = [[i|Liberal Democratic]]
| leaders_seat5 = ''Ran in [[i|Edmonton Matsch]] (lost)''
| last_election5 = ''pre-creation''
| seats5 = 3
| seat_change5 = {{increase}}3
| popular_vote5 = 91,831
| percentage5 = 5.38%
| title = Chairman
| posttitle = Chairman after election
| before_election = [[George Stewart Henry|Manuel Gensch]]
| before_party = [[i|Farmer-Socialist]]
| after_election = [[i|Tobias Faust]]
| after_party = [[i|Farmer-Socialist]]
}}
The only election Alberta had as part of the UAIC [after many decades of having its legislature - the Supreme Council - chosen by a complicated allocation system and before it entered Confederation for the second time] was a fairly contentious one.

Chairman Manuel Gensch, chosen in an abrupt leadership struggle, was known as a hardliner who, out of all the Farmer-Socialist Party's provincial leaders, sincerely believed in this socialism thing, and opposed the government's democratisation process, declaring once that it would lead to the bourgeois east taking over. An old hand and known to be terrible at public speaking, he was often shuffled behind the scenes in favour of some vaguely younger (below 60!) people who could not alienate people through speaking.

His opponent, the Conservative leader Michael Hummel, was in every way a neoliberal. Young, telegenic, willing to sell off his grandmother for a packet of cigarettes. While Gensch fearmongered the idea of unification as bringing doom to Alberta, Hummel embraced it, declaring that the fears were overblown and that as part of Canada once more, Alberta would be great.

In between Gensch's hardline socialism and Himmel's "fuck UAIC actually" neoliberalism, there is of course Democrats '90. A young movement filled of idealistic social democrats, they hoped to make the UAIC a true democracy on the... Eastern(?) model. Parliamentary democracy, workers' rights but not like old socialism, etc. They saw themselves as the "Left of the Future" and the FSP as the "Left of the Past". Their leader Angelica Gold was very much of this vein, calling herself a "Canadian-style social democrat".

The United Farmers Organisation was still around, even if democratisation meant that they wouldn't be afforded their insanely-inflated representation on the old Supreme Council, they still had an unbeatable organisation that could deliver them many rural voters. However, that rural vote was deflated by the increasing weakness of the rural communes and increasing disinterest in supporting UFO.

The Liberal Democratic Party was those who wanted neoliberalism, but not quite to the level of the Conservatives. Their leader was a city councillor who achieved election as an independent as part of the First Democratisation.

Gensch managed to deny Hummel victory and mobilised voters to back the FSP, but in doing so alienated himself from the rest of the parties. The Non-Partisan Labour Organisation ["The O"] completely failing to achieve any seats shocked everyone. The arithmetic was clear. Even with the UFO backing him, he was one seat off a majority. This simple fact called time on the hardliner staying in power.

Tobias Faust, a more "opportunistic" sort, moved to install himself in power with the agreement of moderate FSP people and the silent consent of the Tories and Democrats '90. Gensch, bitter about this, would end up leading the Alberta Communist Party for a brief time in the late 1990s before his death, always condemning many of the decisions as "capitalists exploiting our people".

One of the first things Faust did was change the flag to a less... socialist flag and upon the Grand Circle voting to disband itself, Faust successfully oversaw Alberta entering Confederation for the second time. Reports of him receiving huge bribes for doing so is of course overblown, don't you know?
 
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These Fair Shores: The Locust Years (1938-1946)
The History of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain, Ireland and Hong Kong

==========================
The Locust Years (1938-1946)

British history after the Third Union can be summed up quite succinctly, as in 1889 and All That (the thrilling sequel to 1066 and All That) as “Napoleon and debris”. British history classes love to cover the many Napoleons and how they all affected British foreign policy, culminating in the Continental War.

Like any good movie, they end just as the final victory is gained. Everything that was sacrificed for that victory, the classes tend to cover fairly quickly, as if unwillingly and begrudgingly. But one cannot separate Britain of the 2020s from its past. The doors of the old House of Commons were broken not once, but twice. The first in glory and revolution in 1889, the second in destitution and ruin in 1931.

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King George VI had a high task ahead of him, to declare victory in war while reassuring his people that the peace would be bright.

As the sun rose on a broken kingdom triumphant, the King wished to speak to his people. He was already known for his steely resolve, but his talent in public speaking was still green and untested. The speech would have to one of a victorious leader, but not too arrogant. He still could remember seeing the ruins of Parliament and having to flee Buckingham Palace. He still could remember receiving the news of his father dying. That was an unpleasant surprise, but even more unpleasant was when he was acclaimed King while at Balmoral. He believed that his elder brother could ride out the war. After all, he was young still, and could have had children.

But history was to end Edward IX and make George VI. The abrupt news combined with his stutter meant that the first speech was to put it charitable – average. It was through his actions that the public would be won over. Even though his father and brother perished, he refused to flee. It was his duty to lead his people through their darkest hour. And it was the darkest hour. The clouds always rang of the sound of bombs, France amplified the bombings as the tide of war turned against them.

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The Tempest, as Britain called the on and off French bombings during the Great Continental War, took its toll on many British cities.

He knew his people suffered. He knew they still suffered. Many cities bombed to ruins. He even was appalled to hear that the Bristol Corporation went so far to declare that Bristolians would have to eat insects and other vermin to survive. To have a triumphant and joyful speech was right out. Triumphant yes. But humble. Consulting with the BBC writers and his own gut instinct, he worked out what would go down in history as the “Rex Populi” speech.

It started off matter-of-factly, announcing the end of the war and the acceptance of France’s surrender. Then the speech moved on to a quiet tribute to all soldiers of the Empire and its allies, “both those alive and those taken from us”. Finally, it spoke of the sacrifices made on the Home Front and how “in the time of unbridled war, everyone fought in their own way for this prized moment”, and concluded that “if our United Kingdom and its Empire lasts for thousands of years, men will still say that this war was where we steeled ourselves and fought every day as if it was our last. Truly they will say it was Britain’s finest hour.”

But finest hour or not, it still left gaping scars. Every city had rubbles, some even just were rubbles. The Ministry of All the Talents, the tripartisan coalition of the Tories, Liberals and Labour, refused to disband until the acute crisis was dealt with. First of all, food. The war forced the implementation of rationing, but even rationing had its limits when infrastructure were bombed. Herculean efforts to restore infrastructure and feed people, including feeding them relatively unfamiliar food that were easier to procure, were afoot. The Earl Woolton, pushed to his limits, would force the National Loaf and make the ‘Woolton pie’ a thing. But he would also acquire immense shipments of rice from Britain’s colonies (helmed by British men eager to feed the Old Country) that would be incorporated in many different meals for people to ensure they would get nutrition.

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A 'meal box' would typically be made out of rice, meat (often beef or pork), vegetables and rarely (as seen here) boiled eggs.

The “meal box”, a borrowing from Britain’s increasingly-distant Japanese ally, would find itself accepted in a society struggling to get enough nutrition. Rice, slices of beef, or other heavily-rationed meat, and vegetables like carrot, would be a regular worktime meal for many decades for British people. Rice (traditionally restricted to sweets such as rice pudding) came in its own with Britain at the most dire time in its cuisine, where rationing for years and years strangled many old traditions and the government was willing to try anything to feed its subjects.

In those years, the bald simple fact that Britain long outgrew its natural food output and was an importer country for centuries, was made painfully aware to its inhabitants. The rationing were insufficient even as rice and other foodstuff flowed in as the structure struggled to function with weak infrastructure and high demand, and many turned to the black market. Spivs thrived in the 1930s, and the end of war did not stop them. Everyone, from the Prime Minister to a lowly civilian, participated in illegal activity to acquire food to survive. “In those days, you either were a criminal, or you were dead.” Perhaps this led to the blasé attitude to low-level corruption we see today.

Not all crime was the black market for in the Locust Years, violent crime ran rampant. Most of them were your standard low-level thugs, seeking to profit from a country in crisis. A few were more structured and became gangs that terrorised urban areas as policing struggled. It became almost accepted that certain areas were the domain of certain gangs. Most of those would fade away, collapse to renewed police efforts, or go ‘legitimate’ by the 60s, but there were a few that had… an ideology, a greater purpose.

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Thankfully for Britain, the Red Flag Brigade was merely one of a few ideological militias and not reflective of a wider trend.

The Mosleyite Independent Labour Party (ILP) was loosely associated with Labour and also loosely associated with the ‘Red Flag Brigade’, a bunch of angry and deeply ideological primarily-young people who had read the Communist Manifesto and going off incomplete information about the regime east of Portugal, declared that in this clear crisis of imperialist capitalism, that they should rise up and take over the country and declare a restored Commonwealth on socialist principles. All grand ideas, but the execution was… lacking.

For you see, while young people were angry, they also were resigned, and many had a distrust of the weirdos with dog-eared red books shouting at them. In the end, the Brigade fled to the Pennine Mountains with stolen guns from the Home Guard after getting few people interested, and lasted a few years doing their quixotic ‘resistance’ before inevitably splitting and being cracked down by the Army. The connections to ILP and thus to Labour was a major embarrassment for Prime Minister Malcolm MacDonald who was forced to cease his party’s connection with the ILP to save face.

Never was Britain more in ‘splendid isolation’ than in the Locust Years. The Empire still ran like clockwork, the Prime Minister and King still signed off on foreign treaties especially when it came to finalising the long-sought-after peace, but the government was fundamentally disinterested in foreign affairs when Britain was still bombed. Ireland was for a time the more prosperous part of the Home Isles due to being bombed far less, and the Parliament of Ireland led by Lord Lieutenant William Norton (in one of the rare non-Tory governments) used this to squeeze concessions for Irish industries and interests, and his successor Joseph Martin continued such tactics upon his victory in the 1944 election.

The 1941 election was long overdue, with the last election being held in 1924. There were plenty of calls for the “Longest Parliament” to have an election before 1941, but the Ministry of All the Talents closed ranks and declared that the country was not ready for elections. At any other time, this would have been decried as dictatorial, but outside of Mosleyists and the hard-right nobody seriously opposed the sudden consensus between the country’s three major parties. The country won the war, but it was sickened in the process, and the 1938-1941 period needed to be a period of healing, or so that was the rhetoric. There were reshuffles to reorient focus on internal matters and the beefing up of the Ministries of Fuel and Power, Labour and National Service, National Insurance, and most significantly the position of First Commissioner of Works.

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Even now, the De La Warr Pavilion in the District of East Sussex, along with others, pay tribute to the 'Man Who Rebuilt Britain'.

‘Buck’ De La Warr, the ninth Earl De La Warr, was First Commissioner of Works during the last Ministry of All the Talents (and later on the MacDonald government), and was by far the most powerful First Commissioner yet. Still in his thirties, and with a keen fascination for ‘decorativist’ architecture from his youth, he was given carte blanche to rebuild Britain as ‘a country that rises from the ruins’. At every turn, he prioritised building proposals that in his words, ‘will lead to the growth, prosperity and the greater culture of our nation’, hence modernist and decorativist.

Urban buildings, which he deemed to need the more ‘modern’ appearance, were far more emphasised on ‘decorativism’, and he implemented guidelines that would shape urban Britain’s look. Meanwhile as a country earl he wished for rural Britain to be rebuild in its own way to ‘capture the essence of deep England’, hence arts and crafts enjoyed a second wind in rural areas. This was a deeply quixotic approach in mixing two architecture styles, and more than once he was mocked at Cabinet for it, but his quick wit and charming personality ensured he could complete what he deemed his ‘project’, to make a new Britain from the ruins.

As a committed socialist (but far from the Mosleyists), he pushed hard for social housing, aka housing where the state owns it but people live there on the state’s agreement. This was something the Tories shied away from, preferring to commit to the late Noel Skelton’s ‘property-owning democracy’, and there was significant push-back. Cheap but purchasable housing was the watch-word up until 1941, then MacDonald permitted him to expand on his social housing policy as part of his grand plan to house as much Britons as possible. This would see the Tories push back eventually in reaction under Attlee and Salisbury, but the Earl got his way during 1941-1946, seeing the rapid growth of social housing as a thing in Britain. By the end of the Locust Years (commonly defined as the election of Clement Attlee), social housing was approaching 20% of all households, and despite the Conservatives’ efforts, this would only grow.

Thanks to the untiring efforts of the Earl De La Warr, the government of Prime Minister Malcolm MacDonald could champion that it all but ‘solved’ the housing crisis and rebuilt most of the cities in far less time than anticipated and in a very unique image that was then forever associated with the scarred defiance of post-war Britain and the declaration of a country in modernity, one transgressing old social boundaries to form something new. Before the Tempest, the South of England was widely seen as more prosperous than the North, with the South associated with leafy green and comfortable rural middle-class and the North a more working-class culture. The Tempest changed that, and many people moved north (some would say ‘fled’), and it was a keen emphasis of the Amery and MacDonald governments to build more houses in the South to get people to move back, and this was something Attlee would continue. The South would be shaped by this legacy, with many social housing in leafy grove and some craters if you know where to look.

As a consequence of all this, many of the old stratified class boundaries were shook up and people who came from ‘middle-class’ families and others from ‘working-class’ families would be thrown into the same mix, affected by the non-discriminative destruction of the Tempest and the movements of people north and then south again. The strong class stratification that defined the England that Karl Marx visited was if not obliterated than deeply blurred. The literati of this time period wrote of a ‘new society’ free from the idea of social class, but this new society was not seeping through to politics any time soon. The literati noted however, that eventually it would.

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The 1945 general strike was in many ways the scream of a frustrated Britain, and by far its most impactful labour action.

The Red Flag Brigade was a humiliation to the Prime Minister, but a greater moment would come to the labour movement in 1945. Union membership was soaring, and union leaders were dissatisfied with the ‘moderate’ Labour leader who refused to go after the rich and even worked extensively with the Opposition. After much haggling and negotiation, and growing discontent over insufficient workers’ pay for a standard of living, the unions led by the TUC and their firebrand General Secretary James Maxton declared a general strike. The “Red Summer” it was called, and it was a great test of the reconstructed Britain’s so-called stability. The TUC issued a list of demands including better workers’ pay, but fatally overreached to including appointing union people to the House of Lords.

The workers that struck were less than expected despite the unpleasantly low wages, Maxton knew this, but he persisted. Eventually things would budge and the government would give in. But MacDonald stood up with a steely face in the Commons, and declared that while he was a socialist, he would never give in to “a reign of terror by radical councilists of the likes of Americans and Spaniards”. Standing firm, he declared that Britain have had enough of people who seek to divide the country, and pledged to implement a satisfactory minimum wage if the strike ended. In a sense, this was conceding the original demand without ceding power or ground to Maxton and the ‘councilist threat’. This was aired nation-wide, and was a major blow to the “Red Summer”.

Maxton however, refused to budge, and under great pressure the greater TUC organisation buckled, removing Maxton and replacing him with the more ‘constructive’ Walter Citrine. This major defeat for the labour movement at such an inopportune time led to people increasing moving from the ‘big’ unions to small unions, or to the cooperatives which saw a major boom in the aftermath. MacDonald however, would see the Party mutter about him going against the unions, and Mosley would make hay out of him betraying the workers. In the end, the event defined Malcolm MacDonald and took him from helming an incoherent and weak government with success primarily off great negotiations with the Liberals and Conservatives, to a good Prime Minister. However, the Party was starting to fall apart as a result of this as left and right tore each other apart, and the 1946 election was a foregone conclusion.

Still, the Houses of Parliament were close to completion (done up in the old arts and crafts style over the Earl’s private objections), people were reasonably housed and fed, cities were rebuilt (unrecognisably so) and the Downing Street Complex was finished a month before the election. In the end, the locusts died after eight years of turmoil, and after a handshake with the old Prime Minister and a visit to the King in the rebuilt Buckingham Palace, the new Prime Minister was ready to make changes of his own. The time of Clement Attlee was here.​
 
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Major political parties of the Dominion of Canada

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Progressive Conservative Party of Canada
LEADER: Prime Minister Jaime Magalhães, of Bacalhau

Canada's party for all politics conservative, it advocates a fiscally conservative attitude to the economy, prioritising reducing deficits over anything the left would advocate like fixing social inequalities. On social matters, it has proven to be somewhat of an uncomfortable broad tent, containing everyone from unrepentant urban liberals who just want a tax cut to die-hard western social conservatives who disliked DPP for whatever reason. The current leader is noted to be a moderate in the camp, preferring to unite the party rather than shift too "Red Tory" or "Blue Tory".

It has its roots in the United Loyalists of the late 18th century and their strong defence of loyalty to the monarchies while advocating further colonial cooperation, in reaction to the Patriots. For quite a while, from 1841 to 1910, they had people stand as "Liberal-Conservatives" [hence why on some statistics you have "Conservative & Liberal-Conservative"] due to a fair few Conservatives coming from a more traditionally Liberal background, often when they were not Protestant. The party merged as the Conservative Party in 1910, and rebranded as the Progressive Conservatives in the 40s as a bid to rebuild their appeal against a popular Liberal Prime Minister. After reunification, there were talks of rebranding once more as "Conservative" to take advantage of the sprouting harder-right movements, but this was clamped down and the party survived as PCs.

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Liberal Party of Canada
LEADER: Leader of the Official Opposition Fieke Rademaker, of New Netherland

Canada's so-called 'natural party of government', it combines a vague socially-liberal stance with deliberately-mushy and opportunistic fiscal policies. Often the party allied with the middle-class interests when the Tories sound too 'Red Tory', they also get plenty of working-class voters because of promises of welfare policies. Currently out of power thanks to Magalhães and his cursed ability to appeal to 'core' Liberal voters (they exist?).

It has its roots in the Patriot movement of the late 18th century and their desire for "power in the old country and the new" - i.e. representation in the old world legislatures and establishment of accountable colonial legislatures in the new. This often touched on dangerous republican ideas but never embraced it. As the Conservatives and ex-Patriot defectors [the so-called 'Liberal' Conservatives] seized on the idea of Confederation and took it to an extent the original Founders never intended for, the Liberals became the party of sceptical sorts, and ultimately for the nebulous concept of 'provincial rights'. This would later shift away to a general support for civic liberties as the firebrand Aleisandr Bendith took over in the late 1890s, but until then, the people who voted Liberal very much tended non-Established Protestant, often gathering together Catholics, Muslims and Dissenters.

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Democratic Progressive Party
LEADER: Member of Parliament Klaus-Peter Lenz, of Nebraska

Formerly the Farmer-Socialist Party, it was once the dominant party of the West when it was an independent socialist republic, and with the humiliating end of that, it fell apart with many careerists abandoning it. But some stuck around and as people grow disgruntled of the new status quo, the FSP made gains. Eventually in the early 2010s it merged with a primarily-Quebecois Eastern-based socialist movement (the Workers' Alliance) to form the Democratic Progressive Party. Even now, it is primarily seen as the more socially conservative but economically left-wing party.

The ultimate origin of the Farmer-Socialists, and hence the DPP, is with the older Socialist movement and the 1919 convention which proved... acrimonious. The radicalised rural Western aspect, originally developed from the older Populist movement, pushed to commit the party to "consider all options to end capitalism" while the urban and eastern aspect bitterly opposed such radical thoughts and wished to keep the party 'revisionist'. In the end, the split occurred, and not long after that, the Farmer-Socialists took up arms and the Canadian Civil War started.

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Social Democratic Party
LEADER: Member of Parliament Liselot Penrhys, of New Netherland

The "Conscience of the Nation" as a former (not-SDP) Prime Minister once described them, the SDP is seen as an urban party strongly tied to trade unions and immigrant minorities, the ones who take the Liberals and Tories to account. Often the ones who champion once-fringe social ideas before the Liberals and PCs even consider them, they championed the NHS as an idea [even implementing it in Talossa and Michigan] before the Liberals implemented it in the 1960s. However, the Canadian people are strongly of the view that they are the "heart", not the "head", of Canada, and not to be trusted with actual governance, much to their frustration every election.

Their origin comes from the other side of the Socialist split, with the rump Socialist Party continuing keeping the name for a bit, but then rebranded as Social Democratic to distance themselves from the Farmer-Socialists. Reunification led to the return of those tensions, and apart from one unusually successful electoral alliance [the SDP-Labour Alliance between SDP, DPP and Workers' Alliance was a last-minute attempt to unify the left in 2011 and it managed to catapult them to second-place... up until it fell apart in bitterness and incrimination] it has absolutely nothing to do with its long-lost sibling.

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Green Party of Canada
LEADER: Member of Parliament Tegid Muin, of Avalon

The "fifth among equals", it is primarily here because of strong local focus on several provinces (and the FD) that has managed to ensure it dominates those to a reasonable level. Avalon regularly returns its popular Member of Parliament Tegid Muin as one of a few Greens and their leader. The Greens overall are not comparable to even the SDP, but it can and often have squeezed significant concessions out of either the Tories or Liberals. The slogan they use, "planet before profit", suggests they're very left-wing, but in practice they're centrist as long as it gets them concessions.

The western Greens are widely integrated within the GPC, but has a different institutional legacy, being the ultimate and final form of the Western Youth League, the official youth group for the UAIC. Even now, the "Young Greens" are dominated by Westerners despite the party normally doing poorly there thanks to the institutional focus on recruiting young people. There have been talks of distancing the party from the "Green" label there and going for a more 'neutral' label such as "Alliance", but the Eastern-dominated establishment has long been sceptical of the idea.
 
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{{Infobox election
| election_name = 2018 Franco-British general election
| country = United Kingdom
| type = parliamentary
| ongoing = no
| party_colour = no
| party_name = no
| previous_election =
| previous_year = [[1949 West German federal election|2013]]
| next_election =
| next_year = ''[[1937 Ontario general election|Next]]''
| seats_for_election = All 919 seats in the [[i|Common Assembly]] <br /> 460 seats were needed for a majority
| election_date = 1 May 2018
| image1 = [[File:Stephen Harper by Remy Steinegger Infobox.jpg|x160px]]
| colour1 = FFD600
| leader1 = [[i|Emmanuel Macron]]
| leader_since1 = [[Ontario Liberal Party leadership elections#1930 leadership convention|6 April 2016]]
| party1 = [[i|Kingdom's Progress!]]
| leaders_seat1 = [[Elgin (electoral district)|Somme]]
| last_election1 = 100 seats, 11.08%{{efn|As [[i|Radical-Liberals]]}}
| seats1 = '''447'''
| seat_change1 = {{increase}}347
| popular_vote1 = '''34,782,205'''
| percentage1 = '''44.93%'''
| swing1 = {{increase}}33.85[[i|pp]]
| image2 = [[File:Stephen Harper by Remy Steinegger Infobox.jpg|x160px]]
| colour2 = 0087DC
| leader2 = [[George Stewart Henry|Dominic Grieve]]
| leader_since2 = [[i|23 August 2013]]
| party2 = [[i|Conservative]]
| leaders_seat2 = [[York East (provincial electoral district)|Buckinghamshire]]
| last_election2 = 303 seats, 30.91%
| seats2 = 247
| seat_change2 = {{decrease}}56
| popular_vote2 = 20,801,198
| percentage2 = 26.87%
| swing2 = {{decrease}}4.04[[i|pp]]
| image3 = [[File:Stephen Harper by Remy Steinegger Infobox.jpg|x160px]]
| colour3 = ED1651
| leader3 = [[i|David Miliband]]
| leader_since3 = [[i|25 September 2010]]
| party3 = [[i|Socialist Labour]]
| leaders_seat3 = [[i|Tyne and Wear]]
| last_election3 = 412 seats, 42.83%
| seats3 = 110
| seat_change3 = {{decrease}}302
| popular_vote3 = 10,714,126
| percentage3 = 13.84%
| swing3 = {{decrease}}28.99[[i|pp]]
| image4 = [[File:Stephen Harper by Remy Steinegger Infobox.jpg|x160px]]
| colour4 = 6AB023
| leader4 = [[i|Yannick Jadot]]
| leader_since4 = [[i|20 November 2015]] ''([[i|Assembly Leader]])''
| party4 = [[i|Greens]]
| leaders_seat4 = [[i|Aisne]]
| last_election4 = 36 seats, 7.39%
| seats4 = 35
| seat_change4 = {{decrease}}1
| popular_vote4 = 4,668,076
| percentage4 = 6.03%
| swing4 = {{decrease}}1.36[[i|pp]]
| image5 = [[File:Stephen Harper by Remy Steinegger Infobox.jpg|x160px]]
| colour5 = 1C9A99
| leader5 = [[i|Christian Troadec]]
| leader_since5 = [[i|12 August 2014]]
| party5 = [[i|Alliance of Nations]]
| leaders_seat5 = [[i|Finistère]]
| last_election5 = 14 seats, 1.52%
| seats5 = 20
| seat_change5 = {{increase}}6
| popular_vote5 = 1,679,888
| percentage5 = 2.17%
| swing5 = {{increase}}0.65[[i|pp]]
| image6 = [[File:Stephen Harper by Remy Steinegger Infobox.jpg|x160px]]
| colour6 = 70147A
| leader6 = [[i|Neil Hamilton]]
| leader_since6 = [[i|26 September 2016]]
| party6 = [[i|British Independence]]
| leaders_seat6 = [[i|Monmouth]]
| last_election6 = 20 seats, 1.27%
| seats6 = 17
| seat_change6 = {{decrease}}3
| popular_vote6 = 781,883
| percentage6 = 1.01%
| swing6 = {{decrease}}0.26[[i|pp]]
| image7 = <span style="line-height:150px; vertical-align:center; text-align:center; color:#DD0000; font-size:37px;"> '''LU/UG'''</span>
| colour7 = DD0000
| leader7 = ''[[i|Unity Committee]]''
| leader_since7 = ''N/A''
| party7 = [[i|Left Unity]]
| leaders_seat7 = ''N/A''
| last_election7 = 14 seats, 2.10%
| seats7 = 15
| seat_change7 = {{increase}}1
| popular_vote7 = 1,525,059
| percentage7 = 1.97%
| swing7 = {{decrease}}0.13[[i|pp]]
| image8 = [[File:Stephen Harper by Remy Steinegger Infobox.jpg|x160px]]
| colour8 = 004A77
| leader8 = [[i|Marine Le Pen]]
| leader_since8 = [[i|12 August 2011]]
| party8 = [[i|National Front]]
| leaders_seat8 = [[i|Pas-de-Calais]]
| last_election8 = 8 seats, 0.93%
| seats8 = 14
| seat_change8 = {{increase}}6
| popular_vote8 = 952,194
| percentage8 = 1.23%
| swing8 = {{increase}}0.30[[i|pp]]
| title = [[i|Prime Minister]]
| posttitle = Subsequent [[i|Prime Minister]]
| before_election = [[i|David Miliband]]
| before_party = [[i|Socialist Labour]]
| after_election = [[i|Emmanuel Macron]]
| after_party = [[i|Kingdom's Progress!]]
}}

As the Franco-British Union [more formally the United Kingdom of Great Britain, France and Northern Ireland] lurches forward in its sixth decade of existence despite the multitude of politicians calling for an end to this "abomination of history", the latest election proves... interesting.
 
The Nautilus: Astra Lion-Core
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Name: Astra Nielsen (known colloquially by some as 'Astra Lion-Core')
Age when becoming leader: 16
Religion: PRIMUS PROTECT
Leadership Style: Temporally she will cooperate with the existing structures while still their master, spiritually she will assert her authority as High Calixte.
Leader Personality: Privately sociopathic, but with a streak of self-awareness and revulsion at such, she presents a serious, but humble, front to the public. She will seek to cultivate her image as a 'consul of the people' above all, one who listens to the masses.
Biography: What can one say about Astra Nielsen? Only that she is truly a product of her society. From an early age, she was noted to be somewhat reclusive, easily taking to books and (somewhat concerning) talking to herself. Always a quick reader, she found the books to be a ‘fun distraction’ from the disturbing reality she realised early on, and pushed hard to read some of the… archived books seized from the Pequod, and eventually received such.

One night she could be found curling up with a book many would call heretical and almost was thrown into destruction, a book all about ‘ancient knights’. It portrayed a very strange world, one of men in charge, but even at that young age she dismissed that as just the book coming from heretics. Still, she had to admit, even the silly book managed to make them look quite admirable. Fighting for a cause greater than them, even if an ultimately wrong-headed one. The ‘rules of a knight’, it tapped something deep in her. Something that needed something to be latched on. It offered what she lacked in life – a sense of morality.

For you see, with her mother too busy with the war and her extensive attempts at reforms, there were often months where Astra was left with tutors, simpering servants, and the voices. The voices were always there, ringing around in her head. She disliked them. They were… demanding. They wanted her to be shaped into something she didn’t want to. The book, as abhorrent as it often was, offered her a way to fend them off. An idea. A sense of morality. She didn’t quite get why knights had to do what they did, but she understood that in some way it was… good?

Astra Nielsen would go from a reclusive and bookish girl to a martial figure eager to practise fighting with a sword, a gun, and what else she could wield. The tutors were given plenty of time to teach her, and she would now be an eager student. The simpering servants proved tiresome, but she grew to tolerate them. A true knight respects her inferiors after all. The voices proved as irritating as ever, unfortunately.

As her mother began to decay, Astra increasingly knew her time to lead was near. While she was never close to her mother, she still mourned when Victoria passed away, and once the funeral was finished, she looked up to the skies.

The Dain was up there. So was Primus. There was this one word she found difficult to understand in the book, but now comprehended to the full.

Crusade.

Goals:

Core Goal
The Crusade
The Dain still looms large. As the ever-faithful servant and conduct of Primus, Astra cannot let this stand. Thus she will authorise the Crusade against the destructive forces of ‘Harmony’ and liberate, in the name of the Ever-Loving Primus, the benighted and broken remnants of humanity, as well as seize once and for all, the lost Erth.

Erth, once portrayed as the hell from where humans fled, will now be portrayed as humanity’s ancient home, and while Primus granted us this bountiful Paradise, we have an obligation to free our old home from the tyranny, and turn it towards the light. The final victory over the Dain will be when we liberate the broken Erth and make it anew, erase his final hiding place on this material plane and make it a bastion of none other than Faith.

The Crusade is nothing but a war of the heavens, the ultimate struggle between Primus and the Dain, and every Nautilien should steel themselves for this. Erth awaits for us to bring the light of Primus to its people. It is our destiny. It has always been our destiny.

[Oh, if this war succeeds, there'll be a custodian order in place to manage Sol, firmly in Nautilien hands, but given enough autonomy to work off]

Secondary Goal 1
A New, Knightly, Order
Astra has long been concerned about the attitudes of the Nautilien elite to their lowers, and will seek to change this. Not via law. Law is the hard hammer. But through the way of the spirit. She will release the ‘Five Conclusions’, which will delineate what she believes to be the ideal Nautilien.

THE FIVE CONCLUSIONS
1. Primus wished for everyone to be cooperative and work within the society for its greater survival. In those times, this rule is more acute than ever as we head towards the ultimate struggle. Hence any behaviour that goes against social cohesion and unity is against Primus’ will.

2. Authority is key to social cohesion, and everyone must pay respect to their superior. Men must pay respect to women, lower castes to higher castes, and everyone to the High Calixte.

3. No one but the High Calixte is immune to the Dain’s influence, hence everyone else must be conscious of their behaviour to anyone else. Would they consider such to be warranted towards a superior, or even to the High Calixte? If not, then that is the Dain at work and they must cease.

4. The ideal Nautilien is someone who is willing to give everything for Primus, including their very life. The expression of utter sacrifice for Primus is one the Dain cannot manufacture.

5. Only the person involved and the High Calixte can see if someone’s soul is that of a man, or that of a woman. If there is any doubt, the High Calixte (untainted by the Dain) can perceive the reality.

Building off this, she will seek to cultivate a specific military order to recognise those soldiers who have fought bravely for Nautilia and for Primus – the Order of the Round Table. She will also grant membership in the order posthumously of course, to anyone who performed great acts of heroism for the Crusade and for Primus. No matter their caste. Chivalry knows no social order in her eyes.

Secondary Goal 2
The Quiet Revolution
Building off the Third Conclusion, Astra will seek to (after the Crusade, so this is null and void if she loses) implement her own reforms to the Consultatium. It would not seek to undermine the agreement made with her mother. It would however, seek to acknowledge further the people who fought for Primus by granting each of the Knights of the Round Table a spot on the Consultatium for life.

Of course, the agreement to maintain the ¼ rule will be maintained, and carried out in full. Even as the Consultatium expands to take in the new Knight-Consultants, the sortition number will be expanded.

The new Consultatium will be turned to to help the Consul fulfil the First Conclusion in full in peacetime, including policies that seek to encourage social cohesion and curb any growing threats. The Dain, obviously now that he has lost his unjust possession of Erth, has sent more nebulous threats to us, like disease, unemployment, etc. Every industry will see state support to return to its pre-war state, and even further!

Minor Goal 1
A Consul and a Funeral
Early on in her time in power, she will seek to complete her dear mother’s plans for a memorial to herself (which Astra considers slightly vain, but she won’t say such). It will be the only expense she seeks before the Crusade.

Minor Goal 2
Le Morte d'Astra
Unlike her mother, she will not seek to live forever. She will appoint a niece of hers as her heir, having no children of her own, and seek to train that niece as much as possible to be the new leader. Once she believes her time is somewhat near, she will make preparations for her own funeral.

It will not be a traditional Primusian funeral, but be a cremation like her mother's. Her body will be burnt, and the ashes scattered to the winds of Paradise. The person who will do the scattering will be specially chosen, a cleaner-caste orphan son of a posthumous Knight of the Round Table. If the preparations go well, he will scatter the ashes of Astra Nielsen on a windy day in front of a solemn audience.

She will make sure to write in her final letter that all this is the will of the Primus.

A cenotaph will be commissioned of course for the mausoleum her mother created.
 
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rando things
Washingtonian claimants to the American Empire - 1789-present
No. Someone else has, and there's conflicting claims, so no.

Adamsian claimants to the American Empire - 1797-present
John I (Adams) 1797-1826
John II and I (Adams) 1826-1848
[also claimant in his own right as John I from 1825]
Mary I (Adams) 1848-1859 [daughter of Prince John, who deceased before John II and I]
John III and II (Johnson) 1859-1938
William I (Johnson) 1938-1940
John IV and III (Johnson) 1940-1953
[brother of William I]
Winters (Johnson) 1953-2002
Eric (Johnson) 2002-present

Jeffersonian claimants to the American Empire - 1801-present
Thomas I (Jefferson) 1801-1826
Martha I (Jefferson) 1826-1836
Thomas II (Randolph) 1836-1875
George I (Randolph) 1875-1893
Francis I (Randolph) 1893-1922
[brother of George I]
Charlotte (Randolph) 1922-1935
Caroline (Rafferty) 1935-1995
Anne (Rafferty) 1995-2010
[sister of Caroline]
Sara (Barnes) 2010-present
Renew, Reenergise, Rejoin!

Boris Johnson (Conservative) 2019-2023
2019 (maj.): def. Jeremy Corbyn (Labour), Nicola Sturgeon (SNP), Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat)
Liz Truss (Conservative) 2023-2024
Keir Starmer (Labour) 2024-2029
2024 (maj.): def. Liz Truss (Conservative), Nicola Sturgeon (SNP), Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat)
Oliver Dowden (Conservative) 2029-2031
2029 (min.): def. Keir Starmer (Labour), Munira Wilson (Liberal Democrat), Humza Yousaf (SNP), Zarah Sultana (Momentum), Alex Haida and Tamsin Omond (There Is An Alternative (Volt UK - Green Party Britain)
2030 (min.): def. Andy Burnham (Labour), Munira Wilson, Alex Haida and Amelia Womack (New Politics Alliance (Liberal Democrat - Volt UK - Green Party Britain), Zarah Sultana (Momentum), Humza Yousaf (SNP)

Alex Haida (Volt UK-led 'New Politics Alliance' [w/ Liberal Democrats and Green Party Britain]) 2031-????
2031 (coal. with Labour): def. Oliver Dowden (Conservative), Andy Burnham (Labour), Laura Pidcock (Momentum), Humza Yousaf (SNP)
2033 EU referendum: 61.1% Rejoin - 39.9% Stay Out


The 2020s is remembered as the second of Britain's "Lost Decades". A sluggish economy, growing decline in exports, soaring cost of living [only contained temporarily after Starmer's "Left Turn" in 2026], two recessions [2022 and 2028] and growing anger enabling first the increasingly far-right rhetoric of Oliver Dowden then the surge of the New Politics Alliance. It is not a decade anyone in Britain wants to remember.

Truth be told, the 2033 referendum wasn't about Europe. Not really. Oh it was a vote for rejoining [which happened eventually in 2035 after two more years of negotiations] that was clear. But it wasn't about Europe. It was ultimately a visceral rejection of everything Leaving stood for. By this point, it was a long and bewildering list. Austerity, protectionism, anti-immigration, elite rule, social conservatism, even imperial measurements and blue passports. The pettiness of identity politics shown in the 2010s for the triumphant Leaver side was matched by the 2030s Rejoiners.

The referendum itself was the most nasty referendum in British history. The once-triumphant Eurosceptics was keen to protect what they saw as 'their' Britain from Volt UK and the New Politics Alliance's attempt to 'reclaim' it for themselves. Calls of 'treason' flew wildly, and the embittered Remainers/Rejoiners were no better, they was at this point fanatical at ending the 'Leaver age'. It got so bad even the European Commission had to call for calm, and many on the continent looked at Britain with fear and confusion. It almost seemed like a return to the 17th century.

But ultimately Rejoin won by selling itself as everything to everyone. End to austerity, end to Toryism, end to social conservatism, end to the police state, end to protectionism, end to the bad days of the Lost Decades. Ultimately, it promised change. Which was the one thing Outters never could.
 
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Decided to do a quickie list of the Argentina governments. All those are broadly 'recognised' ones.

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Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata - 1776-1814 (Spanish viceroyalty)
United Provinces of the Río de la Plata - 1810-1831
(monarchy, in personal union with Tawantinsuyu)
Argentine Confederation - 1831-1836 (monarchy, in personal union with Tawantinsuyu)
Argentine Confederation - 1836-1852 (theoretically 'regency', then republic after conclusion of civil war)
Argentine Kingdom - 1861-1880 (monarchy, in personal union with Tawantinsuyu)
Argentine Republic - 1880-1919 (parliamentary republic, then rule by executive decree from 1893)
Argentine Workers' Federation - 1919-1943 (workers' republic, theoretically anarchist, increasingly military-led)
Argentine State - 1943-1949 (military junta, theoretically 'transitional', fell in a civil war)
Argentine Republic - 1949-1955 (presidential republic, fell due to a coup)
Argentine State - 1955-1972 (military junta, then parliamentary republic, often propped up by Peruvian troops)
Argentine Republic - 1972-1978 (presidential republic)
Argentine State - 1978 (military junta)
Argentine People's Republic - 1978-1991 (communist dictatorship)
Argentine Transitional Government - 1991-1995 (shaky 'non-partisan' state)
Argentine Republic - 1995-present (parliamentary republic)
 
Turkenkreiz
Monarchs of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (-1920)
Victoria (Hanover) 1837-1901
Edward VII (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) 1901-1910
George V (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) 1910-1920


Monarchs of the Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland (1920-1934)
Robert IV (Wittelsbach) 1920-1934
[also King of Bavaria]

Monarchs of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1934-)
George V (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) 1934-

====

Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (-1920)
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (Conservative) 1895-1902
Arthur Balfour (Conservative) 1902-1905

Edward Grey (Liberal) 1905-1918

Robert Crewe-Milnes, 1st Marquess of Crewe (Liberal) 1918-1920

Prime Ministers of the Kingdom of England (1920-1934)
Herbert Vivian ("Jacobite" Liberal) 1920-1927

Gilbert Baird Fraser (Tory) 1927-1931
Winston Churchill ("Jacobite" Liberal, then Liberal) 1931-1934

Prime Ministers of the Kingdom of Scotland (1920-1934)
Theodore Napier (Scottish Unionist) 1920-1924

Ruaraidh Erskine ("Jacobite" Liberal) 1924-1927
Reginald Lindesay-Bethune, 12th Earl of Lindsay (Scottish Unionist) 1927-1933
Noel Skelton (Scottish Unionist) 1933-1934


Prime Ministers of the Kingdom of Ireland (1920-1934)
W. B. Yeats (White Rose) 1920-1933
[symbolic: real power was in the "Jacobite Junto"]
William Redmond (Irish Parliamentary) 1933-1934

Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1934-)
Herbert Sackville, 9th Earl De La Warr (Liberal-Labour) 1934-

Write-up eventually coming. Hoping to submit this as part of the 10th challenge.
 
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Monarchs of the Kingdom of Paraguay (1872-1932) - basically all I wrote before I gave up.
Francisco I Solano (López) 1872-1895 [declared himself King after victory in Paraguayan War]
The War of the Triple Alliance could only have gone one way, the sheer obliteration of Paraguay. That is what everyone believed. But by some strange twist of fate, or as López would describe it, the hand of God, Paraguay triumphed over Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Coming away from the peace conference with ample extra lands for his nation, Francisco Solano López was the undisputed hero of his country, and when two years after the triumph, he crowned himself Francisco I Solano of the Kingdom of Paraguay, nobody batted an eyelid. To the victor goes the spoils.

His newly-appointed Prime Minister, Cándido Bareiro, was tasked with negotiating the loan payments to the Kingdom of Britain, which was taken out by the King to prepare for the war. In the end, Britain played a hard game, and with one eye on other countries with increasing debt such as Egypt, they insisted on the loan being paid back in full. The one concession they granted was the extension of the time to pay it off to twenty years.

Meanwhile, Paraguay remained a deeply undeveloped area. The Royal Post Service was implemented in 1873 under Minister of the Interior Salvador Jovellanos who was firm in his ambition to modernise the ailing bureaucracy. In this, he got slight resistance from the King, who nevertheless allowed Jovellanos to go ahead with his planned modernisation of the civil service and government infrastructure. It was under the Bareiro ministry and especially the enterprising Jovellanos that many roads in the capital city were paved for the first time.

However, as time went on and the reality of King Francisco sank in, there were growing discontent from republicans. The turn of Paraguay from fragile constitutionalism to royal absolutism came after the assassination of Queen Eliza in 1879 by a radical, leading the King to dismiss Cándido Bareiro and install a military regime led by General Bernandino Caballero, who was himself one of the King’s most trusted men due to being by his side at key moments in the war.

Caballero was himself well in the vein of Bareiro and Jovellanos when it came to government reform. The philosophy of coloradismo was well established, although it was now turned towards ‘efficiency’ than anything else. Caballero, taking advantage of the King’s favour, created many offices and organisations, including most significantly the Ministry of Immigration. And under his government, great reforms in education shepherded by Patricio Escobar made its way to reality and the classroom.

But of course, Caballero’s main focus was on ensuring the republicans were destroyed. The anti-lopistas were increasingly radical and violent and after the assassination of Jovellanos, the Prime Minister ordered what would go down in history as “La Tribulación”, an era where martial law was declared and the army had carte blanche to crack down on the anti-lopistas and any presence they had. It was harsh. It was bloody. And according to Prime Minister Caballero, it was necessary.

Caballero’s economic policy would be focused on rapid sell-off of lands acquired in the Paraguayan War as well as many confiscated from anti-lopista traitors, all to reliable men who could be counted on to support the regime and the monarchy. This would prove quite successful at creating a land boom and boost Paraguay truly out of its post-war slum.

As a result of the assassination of his Queen, the King felt his mortality creep on him, and began to make plans for the succession amidst his Prime Minister’s Tribulación. Complicating this matter was that the King never had a marriage according to the Catholic Church. The Queen was only styled the Queen by a vote of the Chamber of Deputies, and none of the King’s children were legitimate.

The answer to that was simple, a royal decree legitimising all his children by Queen Eliza and naming the firstborn son, Juan Francisco, his heir. While this disturbed ultra-Catholics, it held and the succession was now secure, much to the lopista establishment’s relief. Much benefiting them was the fact that ‘Panchito’ the heir was himself popular. As a young man in his teens, he joined his father to fight in the war and even was wounded in the leg as a result, giving him a slight limp for the rest of his days. Here was an unbeatable patriot, and even with a burgeoning family of his own.

Bernandino Caballero would tender his resignation in 1886 a victorious man, but the crisis that would cloud the final years of the King was already set in motion. The King would look around for another conservative figure, and elected to select Juan Gualberto González, a considerably younger figure than Caballero, but one the King believed could bring youthful vigour to an ageing system.

González would continue his predecessors’ combination of harsh military rule with a prioritisation of both development and government reform. However, in early 1887, the banks went on a run. This forced González to find other ways of balancing the books and ensuring revenue for both the reforms and Escobar’s planned expansion of education and electrification. The solution came to him at once.

Real estate tax. When he presented it to the King, the King recoiled in disgust. It took all of the youthful energy of González to persuade and smooth-talk the King in consenting to the implementation of a real estate tax, including a massive carve out for royal possessions. But it was implemented and the books became less unbalanced, a relief for the equivalent of deficit hawks in 1890s Paraguay.

The growth of alternative parties to the dominant Partido Colorado concerned the King and his Prime Minister, but the die-hard anti-lopistas seemed to still be broken as a result of La Tribulación. Still, even those moderate opposition were concerning. By 1891, González’s government was known for one thing – Infrastructure. The railroad, more paved roads, founding of cities, it was all for Paraguayan national development, as now backed by the King.

Meanwhile the debt was slowly and painstakingly paid off, benefiting from the British arient plummeting in value due to the bank run and the ‘Dog Days’ of unstable internal politics. In the end, José del Rosario Miranda, as Foreign Minister, could assuredly say that Paraguay no longer had to worry about the war debt for it was now a thing of the past.

González would prove to be the last Prime Minister of the first King of Paraguay, as Francisco I Solano would breathe his last at the age of 68.

Juan I Francisco (López) 1895-1898
“Panchito” would ascend as the third López to rule Paraguay and only the second crowned. A man touched by war in his formative years, he always had a fondness for the military and wished for Paraguay to spend more on the military than the previous lopista focus of development elsewhere. A man who held on old grudges even more than his father did, he always distrusted Prime Minister González for his past as an anti-lopista before the War (the war and its aftermath led González to switch sides), and for his fighting for the Allies (on distress, González always insisted). Hence once coming to power, he dismissed González in favour of Facundo Ynsfrán Caballero, well-respected doctor of medicine and nephew of still-influential Bernandino Caballero.

Ynsfrán, or as he was known by satirists at the time, “Caballero the Lesser”, was naturally a man concerned with Paraguay’s health. The War, even thirty and so years later, still loomed large on the country. Many of a generation of Paraguayan men went to fight in the war and received wounds that still lingered, and of course the general status of health wasn’t even great apart from the war generation. The military-made King and the medical Prime Minister got on very well despite doubts that this alliance could work. It was within this period, that of King Juan I Francisco and Prime Minister Facundo Ynsfrán Caballero, that Paraguayan citizens’ health became more of a focus for the government. The Council for Medicine and Hygiene was expanded, and Ynsfrán would appoint himself the first Minister of Public Health.

The military got more funding on the King’s orders, but the Prime Minister ensured that most of it went to developing something close to his heart, war medics and health. The King would be diagnosed with cancer in 1897, and succumb despite every attempt to cure him in 1898.

Alejandro I Carlos (López) 1898-1915
The King’s son and heir, Alejandro Carlos, would be the first López to not be shaped by the military since the dynasty’s founder. A man more of books than battles, he considered himself a scholar who was on the latest trend. However, the start to his reign came with the dynasty’s greatest challenge since La Tribulación, a deadly bubonic plague epidemic that came suddenly and without warning. Prime Minister Ynsfrán asked for and received emergency powers from the King to deal with this crisis.

Meanwhile, there were conspiracy in the Colorado ranks against Ynsfrán’s cabinet, many of which were ‘legionaries’ (namely people who were once anti-lopista but defected due to opportunity or to escape La Tribulación). The die-hard lopista faction, rather than Ynsfrán’s moderates, found this despicable and moved to push the King to dismiss Ynsfrán. The King refused, citing the pandemic as a reason to maintain the emergency powers and government stability.

Ynsfrán’s policies were considered effective for their time, with the pandemic increasingly under control and he oversaw the expansion of the immigration policy set by his uncle, with an eye to the Italian states in particular. But in 1902, his time in office would be met with a grisly end. The lopista establishment, grown contented with power, increasingly felt under threat by the rise of the ‘legionaries’ and by vague rhetoric of liberalisation from the moderate camp. So they made their move.

The ‘caballeristas’ (those aligned with Caballero and Ynsfrán) controlled the party and the congress, but their rivals the soldados increasingly controlled many of the army and had the sympathies of many bureaucrats. The soldados demanded Ynsfrán’s resignation in the Congress, which he refused. Then troops marched into the Congress and moved to seize Ynsfrán and his allies. Pistols were fired in response, and at the end of the day, many were dead. Including Prime Minister Facundo Ynsfrán Caballero.

The King was livid. How dare they go against his expressed wishes! And how dare they murder his Prime Minister! An offer to Bernandino Caballero to resume his office was declined, but Caballero recommended Juan Antonio Escurra, a firm caballerista ally, and the King duly appointed him, with one very simple task – perform the Second Tribulación.

Aiding Escurra was that the military were split. The soldados, despite their name, were only reliant on a light loyalty by the generals and their soldiers, one easily evaporated by the threat of a second Tribulación. So the military turned caballerista overnight and the soldados ended up wiped out. The Second Tribulación would have the opposite effect to the first, as it ended the more autocratic faction and allowed for more reformer ideas to spread in Paraguay, benefiting the long-suffering reformistas, the Radical-Liberals.

Facundo Ynsfrán Caballero was afforded a state funeral as a ‘martyr for the Nation’ and his widow and children were afforded a royal stipend. It was Bernandino Caballero’s last public appearance before his death in 1912. The two years after the Second Tribulación was known later on as ‘El Veranillo’, or the ‘Little Summer’, because it was a period of unstable internal peace in the country. The King ruled, his Prime Minister was firm in his control, and the old autocrats were driven out. But there was increasing calls for change. And no one, not the King, not the Prime Minister, not the Congress, not the Colorado Party, could prevent it.

To tell you the truth, the Liberal Revolution was inevitable. The Colorado Party was too disunited, too bitterly divided by internal fights that ended up with the need for a Tribulación, and the King’s favour was increasingly more and more tepid towards a party which had members with his prime minister’s blood on their hands. And the people, who lest us forget really decide stuff when push comes to shove, were increasingly open to reformista arguments.

It started off innocuously enough with a protest arranged by the Radical-Liberals that lobbied for constitutional reforms and more economic liberalisation. A key supporter of the Radical-Liberals were the government in Argentina which wished for a more friendly (not to mention stable) government in Paraguay. The protests were interpreted by the Colorado government as part of a coup attempt and they moved to crack down on the protest. All this did was lead to a riot.

Then a ship landed in the southeast and the soldiers on board started taking over the country, aided by defectors. Many soldiers increasingly abandoned the Colorado government and turned to the man captaining the ship and leading his attempt at a revolution. This man was General Benigno Ferreira, a pro-Argentine but firmly radical-liberal figure who grew so disgusted with Paraguay’s developments that he left for Argentina after the Second Tribulación. The Colorados were bloodletting their own party divisions and Paraguay was bearing the cost, according to General Ferreira.

In the end, after a short but bloody struggle, the King intervened. Alejandro Carlos was acutely aware that he had to be ‘El Rey de los Azules’ as well as ‘El Rey de los Rojos’, otherwise Ferreira would declare the restoration of the Republic, which was a very real possibility as he was a life-long opponent of lopista rule even as far back as the War in which he fought for the Argentines. So in December 1904, the Pilcomayo Pact was finally agreed, and Benigno Ferreira was appointed Paraguay’s first Radical-Liberal Prime Minister, with an aim to usher Paraguay into a new era.

Ferreira was no Caballero. No matter the violent means he took to get in power, he did not wish for nor did he want a Third Tribulación. He wished for something Paraguay long lacked, a proper constitutional democracy rather than the King leading politics. The King in question was by this point exhausted with the entire matter. A quiet scholar who loved books, having to deal with not just one, but two civil conflicts, both requiring him to step in, within two years?

If it was his father, his grandfather or his great-grandfather, they would not have given in, but Alejandro Carlos was a man born to royalty, born to expect that he would one day reign. The plague, the attempted coup, the Second Tribulación, the Liberal Revolution, was that his inheritance? Ferreira noted that the King was more and more eager to become a constitutional monarch and divulge his absolute power by the day.

Ferreira, as befitting his aim to create his new order through reconciliation rather than brute force, implemented a political amnesty law that allowed the Colorados to function in Paraguayan politics. He then moved to form a new constitutional convention, with himself as President. However, much to the King’s dismay, Ferreira’s pledges of a more stable government with liberal ideals underpinning it would evaporate in the face of the Radical-Liberals falling into infighting.

Even the constitutional convention, which did eventually approve the Constitution of 1905, showed this as many bitter arguments were had between reformistas, especially those that wished to push for a purely Liberal republic against the dominant conciliator faction. In the end, the Constitution pleased little, but everyone could agree that it did give power away from the King and towards the growing civic sphere. The King gave royal assent immediately.

One thing has to be said for El Veranillo and the subsequent years, they did experience Paraguayan prosperity. Many banks sprang up, many villages emerged, the first automobiles could be seen on the streets of Asunción, of which many were now paved. The King opened the National Library in 1906 to great fanfare. It just so turned out that amidst those prosperity was political chaos.

Benigno Ferreira requested the King call an election for 1906, and in that election despite their growing factionalism the Radical-Liberals won a comfortable majority. Ferreira now had his mandate. It was within the new cabinet that Emiliano González Navero started to emerge. A man firmly dedicated to using the state to defend his vision of Paraguay, he was increasingly seen as Paraguay’s foremost ideologue.

For González was a proud ‘radical’, and indeed was one of the republicans in the Constitutional Convention. Defeated on the monarchy question, he immediately switched focus on to the ‘social ills’. In his post as Minister of Education, he implemented free and compulsory primary education which got him attacks from some unreconstructed Colorados, but the cheers of his own reformistas. As Ferreira increasingly lost control of his unruly party, González became its maestro, and in 1909, Ferreira duly handed in his resignation to the King upon the Radical-Liberal Conference voting to dismiss him as its president.

There was really only one man to summon, and the weary King appointed González. Once with power as Paraguay’s first truly radical prime minister, he swiftly went around his plans. A comprehensive Rural Code for the benighted farmers was implemented, a rapid expansion of the railway in Concepción so to better connect the west of Paraguay with the east, sponsorship of young artists began, the completion of the paving of Asunción’s streets, local government reform, all happened within his government.

The King was to call for a new election at González’s request in 1911, but Albino Jara intervened. A general aligned with the conciliator faction of the Radical-Liberals, he grew more and more disturbed with the radicalism in government and chose to make his move. The Army pressured Congress to appoint him the de facto chief minister and dismiss González, causing a constitutional crisis. Was it in the King’s power to choose a Prime Minister, or was it Congress?

Alejandro Carlos ended this with a declaration that the King will appoint Prime Ministers with Congress’ advice, and since Congress advised a new man, he will thus appoint that such man. González would flee the country in fear of reprisal. His fellow radicals rose up against the undemocratic regime of General Jara only to be crushed, and the Prime Minister declared that since Paraguay was in a crisis, that he would assume emergency powers.

The last four years of Alejandro Carlos’ reign would be powerless years. A figurehead for a supposedly-liberal dictator who governed without care for what the King thought. Jara ended up dissolving Congress and centralising all power in his hands after more uprisings happened. Harsh responses happened and many feared the possibility of a Third Tribulación.

By the dark days of 1915, the King not even in his forties found it all too much. He went to his death willingly, and he went to it knowing he failed his country which was now bloodied once more, he failed his people which had their say be denied once more, he failed his family which had their legacy be ruined by him and he even failed himself in that last moment.

Francisco II Luis (López) 1915-1932
Nobody was more shocked by the announcement of the King’s tragic death than his brother. The two occupied distant worlds. One loved books, the other loved the outdoors. One was a philosopher, the other a matter-of-fact man. But Francisco Luis was a man who knew exactly what happened to his brother and who drove him to that decision. Once confirmed as Paraguay’s fourth monarch, he announced that the era of the dictatorship was over, he has dismissed Albino Jara from his post, and even more outrageously, placed a royal bounty on Jara’s head of a considerable amount of money.

Within 24 hours, Jara’s men turned upon him and his dictatorial order crumbled. The Radical-Liberals would find Francisco Luis a much more hard man than his brother. They would be allowed their democracy, but it would never be at the King’s expense, this he swore. His choice of Prime Minister was someone known to be completely opposed to Jara and his abhorrent regime. He despised dishonest and disloyal men, and sought someone who he could rely upon to not betray him. By necessity, a radical, yes, as they were the only ones not with their hands once in the Jara dictatorship. But strange times make for strange bedfellows.

Manuel Gondra was a radical, but he was well-respected by all sides of Paraguay’s turbulent political spectrum, a hard thing to achieve. As he walked his way to the Royal Palace, he pondered on the new King. Would he be a tyrant like his father? Or a compromiser like his brother? Or perhaps someone else entirely? As he entered the Royal Chamber, the King looked at him with imperious eyes, while signalling for him to approach.

“Señor Gondra, I am besieged by dishonesty. Besieged by men who seek my favour and yet plot my downfall. I do not wish to work with those men, for they are as slippery as fish. I would much prefer an honest republican to a dishonest monarchist. Hence I would like to offer you an agreement that I think will benefit us both. You will be Prime Minister, and will be able to do all you wish for this nation. On one condition – that you do not seek to undermine my stature or my crown.”

Gondra went quiet at this. The King was offering him all the power to transform Paraguay. And yet the King was correct. Manuel Gondra was a sincere republican who believed the lingering influence of the monarchy was corrupting Paraguay. It felt like a deal with the devil. He licked his lips and sighed, before agreeing to this curious concord. The King broke out in a triumphant smile. And so began one of Paraguay’s most curious eras, that of ‘Guided Radicalism’.

The Prime Minister, now armed with royal approval, would seek to reorient Paraguay. The dependence on Argentina the Liberal Revolution brought with it was now growing obvious and a concern for many. Gondra, despite his Argentine father, was not a man who approved of Ferreira’s reliance on Argentina to topple the old Colorado regime, but he was not a man who thought of would-haves, but one who knew that actions done in the now mattered far more.

The best way to reorient Paraguay was via connections. Namely infrastructure. A key part of Gondra’s time in government was ensuring that trade could come far easier through Brazil than from Argentina. Any parliamentary concerns were swept aside as the King issued his first Royal Dictation, which was to order the bridges Gondra planned for, built. This would be the harbinger of a new way of doing politics, which would be that the King would exercise his still considerable power at the Prime Minister’s advice, and hence the ‘perfect fusion’ of the court and civic society. Or at least that was the idea.

Manuel Gondra, always a man of soaring ideals, found this profoundly disturbing. Yet he persisted. It is the cruellest of fates that Paraguay’s early human rights laws come not from a passionate discourse in its parliamentary democracy, but via several royal dictations as part of a corrupt bargain between the King and the Radicals.

The economic crisis following the First Great War had Gondra’s keen interest, as he was the poorest Prime Minister to date and this crisis mostly affected Paraguay’s middle-class and poor. The Department of Development chose to take advantage of an unspoken fact – the people who backed Jara and didn’t get away with it tended to be of the moneyed landowner class, and their lands were now in the government’s hands. They were partitioned into smaller lots and sold off at cheap prices in an attempt to alleviate poverty.

The Fifth Pan-American Conference, held in 1920, was Gondra’s masterpiece, his main ambition as Prime Minister, and he chose to attend it himself personally. By all accounts, he came across exceptionally, and pushed human rights in Latin America to a wider audience. Meanwhile at home, the Colorado Party and the ex-conciliator faction of the Radical-Liberals were stewing. The lopistas supported Alejandro Carlos and his Second Tribulación and for nothing! The ex-conciliator faction grew to perceive the King as a puppet, if not a willing collaborator, of the radicals.

And some of them grew to nurture a really deep hatred for Manuel Gondra, face of the Guided Radicalism era. Perhaps Paraguay is a deeply cursed land whose citizens can never wish for happiness. But Gondra was shot as he disembarked from the plane flying back from Brazil, and succumbed to his wounds. A nation mourned for its champion and demanded answers.

The King rubbed his temples and sighed. Who could he appoint now in yet another of Paraguay’s dark hours? Entertaining ideas of restored absolutism, or a true council of ministers with him as head, he then remembered one name in particular, and called upon that very same man. Emiliano González Navero was an older man, a more bitter man, and one eager to return to power and hold it truly, not have it be snatched away by a dictator. The idealistic Gondra was gone, taken away by a tragedy. Now the pragmatist king would have a pragmatist prime minister.

Despite González helming the second of the ‘Guided Radical’ ministries, it was dominated by his ministers including the Minister of the Interior Manuel Franco who was widely seen as Gondra’s intellectual protege and was determined to continue on his work. Drastic reform including agrarian relief, the introduction of the secret ballot in 1922, the continuation of Gondra’s educational reforms and the opening of the Manuel Gondra Square in what was once a market in Asunción.

However, the remaining ex-conciliators tried another tack. In 1923, they managed to take over the Radical-Liberal party conference and voted to condemn anyone who worked with the ‘royal dictatorship’. This led to a split as the radicals broke off, condemning the ‘underhanded’ tactics used to leverage this policy shift. The King, always keen to maintain the corrupt bargain, leaned on the important people in the Paraguayan bureaucracy and ensured that the radical split was acknowledged as the true Radical-Liberal Party.

And the Colorado Party? Well, they did what they knew best, and in 1924, they took up arms against the King and the ‘socialistic’ government. The new civil war lasted two years, and unlike the last one, had a clear victor. Namely the government. The Colorado Party was purged, many of its members were forced to go underground, and control tightened once more. In 1927, the right to public assembly was suspended for ‘the duration of reconstruction’.

Eligio Ayala, a minister in González’s cabinet, resigned in protest and released his Ten Principles of National Democracy, now often just called the ‘Ten Principles’. They tore into the ‘Guided Radical’ era, the moral bankruptcy of González and his ‘cronies’ and concluded with the famous quote – ‘O! If Manuel Gondra had lived to see what his agreement has transformed into, he would die at once in shame!’.

The King issued a ban on propagating the Principles and forced Ayala into exile immediately of course, but the damage was done to the credibility of his government. The Paraguayan Communist Party, a very minor party, would benefit from a new generation of anti-lopista students, which would clandestinely share the Ten Principles with each other. Meanwhile tension with Tawantinsuyu would increase over time as border clashes increased. Many worried that there would be a war in the west.

Gunboats were acquired, a new military school was created, and a move to appease the religious elements in Paraguay happened with the establishment of the Archbishopric. The Great Depression hit Paraguay considerably, but the government managed to cushion the blow somewhat. Tensions with Tawantinsuyu got worse after the Depression as Tawantinsuyu desired the Chaco as a distraction from its unstable politics.

After nine years in his second stint in power, the increasingly-exhausted Emiliano González Navero finally resigned at the age of 70 in 1931, the oldest Prime Minister to date. After careful consultation with the Radical-Liberal Party, he sent for Eusebio Ayala (no relation with Eligio Ayala), the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and confirmed him as the new Prime Minister.

Ayala would face a bumpy start as tensions finally spilled out and Tawantinsuyu declared war on Paraguay for the Chaco, and Argentina intervened in Paraguay’s favour. The King would approve him invoking wartime measures via a few royal Dictations, before electing to visit his soldiers and rally their spirit. A well-aimed bomb ended his reign. The Guiding Radical would die with his men. History would remember him as a king who originally did the corrupt bargain for his own preservation as a reaction to his brother being hollowed out by power-hungry conservatives, yet became an active participant in radical policy-making by the end.

=====

All this is a write-up that I did a year ago, and decided to post it for posterity. It is likely shockingly inaccurate and all, I relied a lot on Spanish Wikipedia.
 
Always the Bride...
Always the Bride...
Elizabeth (Tudor) 1558-1603
George I (Rurikid) 1603-1643 [also Ivan V of Russia]
George II (Rurikid) 1643-1661 [also Ivan VI of Russia]
- Interregnum 1661-1666 [First Regency-State of England]
Charles I (Stuart) 1666-1685 [also Charles II of Scotland]
James I (Stuart) 1685-1688 [also James VII of Scotland]
- Interregnum 1688-1690 [Second Regency-State of England]
William III (Orange) 1690-1702
- Interregnum 1702-1703 [Third Regency-State of England]
James II (Stuart) 1702-1743 [also James VIII of Scotland]
- Interregnum 1743-1744 [Fourth Regency-State of England]
Anthony (Braganza) 1743-1750 [also João V of Portugal]
Joseph I (Braganza) 1750-1777 [also José I of Portugal]
Peter (Braganza) 1777-1781 [also Pedro III of Portugal] - 1781: England conquered through the "Second Armada"
Joseph II (Habsburg-Lorraine) 1781-1790 [also Josef II, Holy Roman Emperor]
Leopold (Habsburg-Lorraine) 1790-1793 [also Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor]
- Interregnum 1793-1805 [Fifth Regency-State of England]
Napoleon I (Bonaparte) 1805-1815 [also Napoléon I of France]
Francis (Habsburg-Lorraine) 1815-1835 [also Franz II, Holy Roman Emperor]
Ferdinand (Habsburg-Lorraine) 1835-1847 [also Ferdinand IV, Holy Roman Emperor]
- Interregnum? 1847 [Sixth Regency-State of England for a few minutes?]
Napoleon II (Bonaparte) 1847-1873 [also Napoléon III of France]
Napoleon III (Bonaparte) 1873-1899 [also Napoléon IV of France]
- Interregnum 1899-1901 [Seventh Regency-State of England]
Charles II (Braganza) 1901-1908 [also Carlos I of Portugal]
Emmanuel (Braganza) 1908-1932 [also Manuel II of Portugal]
- Interregnum 1932-1940 [Eighth Regency-State of England]
Charles III (Habsburg-Lorraine) 1940-1947 [also Karl VIII, Holy Roman Emperor]
Otto (Habsburg-Lorraine) 1947-2011 [also Otto VI, Holy Roman Emperor]
- Interregnum 2011-2020 [Ninth Regency-State of England]
Henry IX (Yamato) 2020-present [also The Reigning Emperor (Reiwa), of Japan]
 
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The Collapse of the Ancien Régime
Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (-2024)
Boris Johnson (Conservative majority) 2019-2022
2019: def. Jeremy Corbyn (Labour), Nicola Sturgeon (SNP), Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat)
Rishi Sunak (Conservative majority) 2022
Keir Starmer (Labour 'Non-Partisan National Government', then Labour majority) 2022-2023 - appointed by King Charles III
2023: def. Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat), Nicola Sturgeon (Scottish Concord [SNP/SGP]), Tamsin Omond (Extinction Rebellion), Theresa May (Team May), Ben Wallace (Global Britain), Rishi Sunak ('Conservative'), Adam Price (Plaid Cymru)
John McDonnell (Labour majority) 2023-2024

Prime Ministers of the Democratic Commonwealth (2024-)
John McDonnell (Labour-led People's Front majority) 2024-2027
2026: def. Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat), Tamsin Omond (Green New Deal), scattered nationalist/conservative opposition
Jonathan Reynolds (Labour-led People's Front majority, then People's Socialist Party) 2027-
2030: unopposed
 
Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (-2024)
Boris Johnson (Conservative majority) 2019-2022
2019: def. Jeremy Corbyn (Labour), Nicola Sturgeon (SNP), Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat)
Rishi Sunak (Conservative majority) 2022
Keir Starmer (Labour 'Non-Partisan National Government', then Labour majority) 2022-2023 - appointed by King Charles III
2023: def. Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat), Nicola Sturgeon (Scottish Concord [SNP/SGP]), Tamsin Omond (Extinction Rebellion), Theresa May (Team May), Ben Wallace (Global Britain), Rishi Sunak ('Conservative'), Adam Price (Plaid Cymru)
John McDonnell (Labour majority) 2023-2024

Prime Ministers of the Democratic Commonwealth (2024-)
John McDonnell (Labour-led People's Front majority) 2024-2027
2026: def. Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat), Tamsin Omond (Green New Deal), scattered nationalist/conservative opposition
Jonathan Reynolds (Labour-led People's Front majority, then People's Socialist Party) 2027-
2030: unopposed

Would be quite an interesting 2023 to see.
 
Ode to Joy...
Ode to Joy...
Winston Churchill (Conservative-led Wartime Cabinet) 1940-1946*
Joe Anderson (Independent-led Wartime Cabinet) 1946-1947
Ernie Bevin (Labour-led Wartime Cabinet) 1947-1951*
Anthony Eden (Conservative-led Wartime Cabinet) 1951-1954*
Harold Nicolson (National Labour-led Wartime Cabinet, then National Labour-led National Government) 1954-1957

It has been 18 years of unrelenting war.

Britain refused to surrender, even as London itself faded to rubble, children were forced to work in the fields, people were put on starvation rations, the Navy acquired more and more of the monetary funding to the point where the Army was barely an afterthought at the worst times.

Even the arch-imperialist Ernie Bevin had to, after fighting off a bad case of indigestion from the latest National Bread, sign the agreement to give further concessions to the colonies to ensure their further recruitment for the British Armed Forces. More bodies were needed after all.

America proved intransigent yet again and refused to bail out Britain or even help it. Free France suffered a major morale hit when De Gaulle was killed in yet another London bombing. Even a fumbled plea for a deal from Japan received no response.

Britain was alone. It had to fight Germany, Italy, Russia and Japan. Surely it would perish?

The emaciated figure of Harold Nicolson, dressed in a tatty suit and with a thousand-yard stare, looked as if he would sooner fall over and die than announce victory. But due to a series of lucky breaks, including Italy suddenly declaring it was out of the Axis, the Japanese armed forces turning against each other, Germany and Russia going to war, and massive massive promises made to secure the final, tantalising, victory.

The Treaty of London was at once the declaration of Britain's final victory in the brutal Second World War and its Empire's death warrant. Just as promised, the exhausted Britain in the following years gave independence to what was regarded as 'Dominions', but they quickly acquired republican governments and declared Queen Elizabeth II no longer their monarch, even if it was all done in very polite terms.

However, in exchange for losing its second Empire, Britain has acquired a third. With the Nazis and Soviets done for, Europe is Britain's oyster, its bloated imperial armed forces currently setting up new states with help from some governments-in-exile. The thinking in Chequers [Downing Street is just... gone] is that Britain's new dominion will be one of... economic association, instead of the costly imperium that was the old thinking. Lots of people to employ in those countries, it'll have to be emphasised as one of equals, just with Britain at the helm naturally.

After so much years of Britain standing alone in the Second World War, it now has its new European Union standing with it.

[this is a silly list off the idea of twisting the gammon idea of WW2 into a 'Britain-led EU' outcome].
 
The Great Collapse
The Great Collapse
Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (-2031?)

Boris Johnson (Conservative minority, then majority, then minority) 2019-2027
2019 (maj.): def. Jeremy Corbyn (Labour), Nicola Sturgeon (SNP), Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat)
2024 (min.): def. Keir Starmer (Labour), Nicola Sturgeon (SNP), Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat)
Liz Truss (Conservative minority) 2027-2031
2029 (min.): def. Wes Streeting (Labour), Nicola Sturgeon (SNP), Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat)
Graham Brady (Conservative government-in-exile) 2031-???? [vanished?]

Chairs of the People's Autonomous Republics of Britain (2030-2032)
Richard Burgon and Nadia Whittome (Momentum) 2030-2031

Tamsin Omond and Nadia Whittome (Momentum) 2031-2032
Nadia Whittome (Momentum) 2032

Presidents of the Free Republic of Scotland (2031-)

Ian Blackford (SNP) 2031-present

Protectors of the Patriotic Commonwealth of England (2031-2033)
Tommy Robinson (England Arise!) 2031-2033*

Anne-Marie Waters (England Arise!) 2033

Prime Ministers of the 'Provisional Government' of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (2031-2033)
Stephen Kinnock (Labour) 2031-2032
Dominic Grieve (Independent) 2032-2033

Governors of the European Union Mandate of Great Britain (2033-)
Jeppe Kofod (Social Democrats [Denmark]/S&D) 2033-present

How did it get to this point? How did it get to the point where Britain failed completely and utterly as a state? As the European Commission prepares Britain for a future utterly dependent on the European Union [but crucially, not in the EU, and won't be for decades at least], the people are resigned to it. In just a few years they went from teetering on the brink to smashed on the floor. A society in ruins. The smouldering wreck of the Houses of Parliament pays testament to that, and even as Governor Kofod speaks of 'rebuilding and reorienting Britain', there is no interest in restoring the old UK.

Dominic Grieve's agreement to the Chequers Treaty will be forever controversial. But with Graham Brady all but vanished after announcing he would form a government in exile, the Patriotic Commonwealth on their last legs and the tragically amateurish PAR destroyed, Grieve was given an ultimatum. The decade of 'Brexit'-obsessed governments alienating Europe proved too much, and the Commission wanted one of their men in charge. With the Provisional Government's very existence propped up by EU armies which were French or Spanish, he had no choice.

Much to Scotland's displeasure, their overtures have been ignored. To Kofod, Grieve's signature confirmed that all of the former United Kingdom was now the Mandate, and Scotland was regarded as similar to the PCE or the PAR. President Blackford has vowed to fight on, but it is doubtful that Scotland will last beyond the next year. Northern Ireland shortly after was hived off as its own mandate, with vague promises of the restoration of the Assembly that was basically non-existent for more than a decade made. The Taoiseach has pressed on the idea of an 'united Ireland' of course.

Where did it all go wrong? The Mandate Commission is very clear. 2016. That was where it all went wrong. Some Labour people mutter 2024 when the Tories successfully won a minority government off labelling Labour as a party of pedophiles. Or 2019 when Corbyn lost. Or 2017. Or 2015. Or... To Tories [what remain of them], the moment is either 2027 when Truss became PM, or to 2019 when Johnson became PM. Blame games all around.

Some mutter of the 'king over the water', namely Charles III who was forced into exile to Canada at the start of 2030 when the Collapse began. Kofod is not a stupid man, he knows the King has appeal to the people. He is just not sure how to... use that. As many letters scribbled in black spider writing on the Governor's desk indicate, the King is very concerned about his people and want to help the most he can. To Kofod, those letters are irritating, but useful. He has no wish to discourage Charles III from writing to him. It's very good for legitimacy after all.

The Senedd of Wales barely escaped abolition, but in return they were made a puppet. First Minister Vaughan Gething now oversees a policy programme handed to him from Chequers and Mandate military presence in Cardiff makes sure he and the Senedd does not object to it.

The times of negotiation is over. It has been over for a very long time.
 
testi.png
Rundown of the Political Parties of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt and Nubia - 28/02/2041

Her Majesty the Pharaoh:
Cleopatra IX Kolymuitis is currently fairly sick. Hopefully it's not that disease going around. She's young, so she'll be fine.

The Government: Technically an interim one, as the election has come and went. The Prime Minister is still that smug bastard. For now...
- National Progressive Unionist Organisation: No, they're no longer genuinely Nasserist anymore. They sold out back in the 1990s. They're now for something like... "Arab Socialism with Egyptian Characteristics" or something. I never listen to them, their rhetoric is always so milquetoast now.
- Tomorrow Party: The party of basically the new money up in the Delta, they love low tax and weird transhumanist shite. Never works with the Islamists, obviously, but working with NPU instead of Wafd was a surprise back then. Of course, we all assumed NPU still had principles!

The Opposition: Mostly just Wafd and MB, with the Copts relevant some of the time.
- Wafd Party: The party of the Revolution, the party of President Ptolemy, the party of a long period in Egyptian history, and those days it struggles to win elections. What is it now, they lost like 5 out of the last 7 elections? And the Tomorrowists continue to eat up younger liberal votes.
- Muslim Brotherhood: The 'respectable' face of Islamism, they have at times worked with either NPU or Wafd to get what it wishes. The economy's slow growth and growing inequality seems to be pushing younger working-class Muslims away from NPU and towards the MB for now.
- Coptic People's Party: To be honest, they're nailed-on to enter government after the recent election. Wafd loves them, and NPU finds them convenient allies when the MB or more radical sorts are more popular. Talks with the PM are very promising, according to their social media.
- Green Party: How do one even start with this. See, originally 'green' meant Muslim, Islamic democracy and all that. Hence they're on the political right. But the start of a focus on using Islamic scripture and arguments in favour of fighting climate change meant that they have acquired more younger voters, who have different ideas beyond the Islamic politics and environmentalism - i.e. more redistributive economics - have created a very uncertain party.
- Party of The Light: The Salafists. The ones who make MB look as if it's sopping-wet liberal. They're thankfully not gaining votes.
- Arab Democratic Nasserist Party: The splitters from the NPU when the NPU sold out. They pride themselves on sticking to Nasserism, true and untainted. They even talk of turning Egypt into the core of the 'United Arab States' when that was just something Nasser floated at best.
 
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Rundown of the Political Parties of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt and Nubia - 28/02/2041

Her Majesty the Pharaoh:
Cleopatra IX Kolymuitis is currently fairly sick. Hopefully it's not that disease going around. She's young, so she'll be fine.

The Government: Technically an interim one, as the election has come and went. The Prime Minister is still that smug bastard. For now...
- National Progressive Unionist Organisation: No, they're no longer genuinely Nasserist anymore. They sold out back in the 1990s. They're now for something like... "Arab Socialism with Egyptian Characteristics" or something. I never listen to them, their rhetoric is always so milquetoast now.
- Tomorrow Party: The party of basically the new money up in the Delta, they love low tax and weird transhumanist shite. Never works with the Islamists, obviously, but working with NPU instead of Wafd was a surprise back then. Of course, we all assumed NPU still had principles!

The Opposition: Mostly just Wafd and MB, with the Copts relevant some of the time.
- Wafd Party: The party of the Revolution, the party of President Ptolemy, the party of a long period in Egyptian history, and those days it struggles to win elections. What is it now, they lost like 5 out of the last 7 elections? And the Tomorrowists continue to eat up younger liberal votes.
- Muslim Brotherhood: The 'respectable' face of Islamism, they have at times worked with either NPU or Wafd to get what it wishes. The economy's slow growth and growing inequality seems to be pushing younger working-class Muslims away from NPU and towards the MB for now.
- Coptic People's Party: To be honest, they're nailed-on to enter government after the next election. Wafd loves them, and NPU finds them convenient allies when the MB or more radical sorts are more popular. Talks with the PM are very promising, according to their social media.
- Green Party: How do one even start with this. See, originally 'green' meant Muslim, Islamic democracy and all that. Hence they're on the political right. But the start of a focus on using Islamic scripture and arguments in favour of fighting climate change meant that they have acquired more younger voters, who have different ideas beyond the Islamic politics and environmentalism - i.e. more redistributive economics - have created a very uncertain party.
- Party of The Light: The Salafists. The ones who make MB look as if it's sopping-wet liberal. They're thankfully not gaining votes.
- Arab Democratic Nasserist Party: The splitters from the NPU when the NPU sold out. They pride themselves on sticking to Nasserism, true and untainted. They even talk of turning Egypt into the core of the 'United Arab States' when that was just something Nasser floated at best.
Do like the idea of an Islamist Green Party looking at all the other Green Parties and deciding, “well, might as well start advocating for environmentalism…”
 
This Sceptred Isle: Johan Wyndham (TBD)
unknown.png

John Byng
AP: 5
Name: Johan Wyndham (full name: Herr Johan Totcher Frederiksson Wyndham)
Gender: Male
Nationality: Brytisk, born and bred (AEnglisk)
Date of Birth: 17 January 1720 (35 years old)
Profession: Huscarl, Scipwalda (before the Rasmussen takeover)/Gros Flotwalda (after), Thingman
Aims:
  • The Stratocracy: Wyndham is a loyal ally of Rasmussen and will seek to fulfil his aims and continue the idea of the Stratocracy. If Rasmussen somehow dies before the Stratocracy is fulfilled, Wyndham will continue the plans, but more... subtle as befitting one called the 'Wyrm'. The Heer and Flotte will have complete control under a Wyndhamite Stratocracy, of course, but the idea of an overt one-party state is something he instinctively distrusts. Indeed, if the Stratocracy is shaped by Wyndham and not Rasmussen (which again, Wyndham would not dare think of crossing Rasmussen in the latter's lifetime), it will be one of a 'shadow state' in where the Grand Executor and the Heahcarl are as one, with the positions inexorably bonded, but not merged. Of course, if Rasmussen is alive/politically powerful, his plans go ahead, not Wyndham's.
  • Matters of the Colonies: Always disgruntled at the lack of sufficiently developed naval ports from his days as a sailor, and of chronic underinvestment in them, he will seek to orient investment towards strengthening colonial ties with the motherland via port development, and crack down on colonial dissent. The new regime has no need of tolerating ne'er-do-wells and traitors. Indeed, he will seek to make examples out of traitors by bringing in an Eastern invention, the knout, that he encountered while in the Volga. He admires how it utterly break even strong men. Any who seek to foment dissent in the colonies will feel the knout. However, he will seek to bring the carrot with the stick - those that work with the new regime will get favourable state treatment, and the developing cities and settlements will receive investment for new naval ports which will bring in trade with the mother country and new settlers - more loyal to the state.
  • Feathering His Nest: As a Huscarl, but not a peer, Wyndham will seek to cultivate his dominance of the Folkshus and of the more 'common' aspect of the military, seeing off any possible dissent from the non-Huscarl aspects of the military to the new regime by emphasising its more meritocratic and constitutional (ha!) approach compared to the old way. He will seek to use his patronage as an influential member of the new Stratocracy to encourage this meritocracy. He won't take a peerage for himself, aware that his reputation is shaping up to be that of a 'great commoner', even if he's far from one of the common sort. The people are easily fooled by the lack of a title...
  • There Once Was A Ship That Put To Sea...: The Navy/Flotte will get favourable contracts and ports be expanded in Bryten itself if Wyndham can help it, with a keen focus on Lunden. He knows it instinctively distrusts any dictats from Yorvik, so he will move to authorise the renewal and expansion of the Lunden port set up by Magnus IV and Lockrona and set up a strong naval presence there, coupled with some (limited) investment in renovating buildings. Naval ports all over Bryten will get investment, but the ports will be more built around naval usage. The Flotte needs strong and well-maintained ports if it is to be Bryten's greatest military force.
  • ...The Name Of The Ship Was The Billy Of Tea: Always a keen man for technological development, he will sponsor certain men who are trying new ship designs, and he will insist on every one of those designs being rigorously tested. If any proves their mettle, he will authorise the designs to be built and slowly replace older ships of the line of a previous and now inefficient design.
Unique trait(s):
  • Dutiful: No matter what else, Johan Wyndham is dutiful to his country, suffering multiple wounds in sea battles for the Northron Empire.
  • Loyal: He is loyal to his emperor, his mentor and his country. He is very much a 'my country right or wrong, if wrong to be set right' man.
  • Resentful: He is a man who does not forgive easily and will brood grudges against people he has deemed traitors to the country.
  • Piece of Shit: He is not a man who treats his wife very well. She can often be seen hiding bruises from when he deemed her to be going against him. His children all privately despise him, but since he rarely sees them, he doesn't know it. He has lots of mistresses as well.
  • Wily: His greatest talent is not that he is charismatic, which he is not. It is his ability to read a situation and work out how to adjust it to his advantage. Some have called him "the Wyrm" for such, but it has got him far in life and may reach further yet.
Background: (Go as detailed or as vague as you like. I might reward more detailed stuff with a bigger mention or a boost to rolls but all depends on how well the character fits in the update.)
Other Details: (Got anything else you think I should know or want to mention? Put it here!)
 
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