Tibby's Graphics and Grab-Bag Thread.

[Turquoise Blue]

The Wikipedia infobox of the 2018 Kentucky election in MC's Seventh Party System.

 

[Turquoise Blue]

The Korean Language Board was reflective of its very middle-class and conservative base. The Progressive Party dominated for the first two elections, winning comfortable majorities due to a perception that it was above all a minority-interests party. Asian Action, through its Daehan Gukmin Dang branch, struggled to break through. After all, in many Korean-American voters’ thinking, why vote for the Asian Action branch when the electorate is wholly Korean?

The Progressives’ increasing ties to the Social Justice Alliance [widely known as the Feminist-LGBT Alliance in common parlance] in the 2000s disturbed many Asian-Americans who were still of the socially conservative thinking. This led to a common swing against the Progressives in those boards. Still, the Korean Board Progressives managed to fracture the swing against them, with voters going to Daehan Gukmin Dang and the Progressive Conservatives in equal measure. The final result was 7 Progressive, 5 Daehan Gukmin Dang and 3 Progressive Conservatives.

A deal was rapidly made, and DGD got its first Superintendent. As the Progressives increasingly became more liberal due to the SJA and Green influence, up to absorbing the former, the more middle-class and socially conservative Asian-American voters swung away from them heavily. Compounding this was that in the Korean Language Board, Daehan Gukmin Dang moved to utilise the Board’s powers that the Progressives chose to neglect.

The Progressives baked in extensive powers over language provisions and even cultural representation into the Boards, as a way to sabotage any attempt to undermine what they perceived Media California to be, a ‘rainbow state’. The Progressive Conservatives however, was a very different beast to the Republicans that they expected. The bulk of the people who made up the merged party was more Hispanos Unidos than Republican, and their coalition partners too liked the idea very much.

So the Progressives’ expected clash with a more centralising or bigoted conservative party just… didn’t happen. And while that was happening, they were losing more social conservative voters by the day. The status quo, after 20 years of Progressive rule, was essentially their perfectly-crafted crystal and they didn’t want to change anything about it. Then along came Daehan Gukmin Dang.

Daehan Gukmin Dang was notably contemptuous of Progressive ‘stagnation’, and elected to use the ‘cultural provisions’ power to the maximum extent, carving out several areas of Media California where de facto it was the Korean Language Board that was the main government, with many ‘Koreatowns’ emerging in the San Fernando Valley. It was even noted that there were even quite a few towns that worked in the Korean language first and English second.

This growing cultural isolation ended up benefiting it, even as the Progressives started to get wary. They were supportive of multiculturalism, but this? This smelled like separation. And there were increasing rumours that those isolated ‘Koreatowns’ were embezzling funds, or even acting as a hub for spies for Greater East Asia. When the Progressives got back in power in 2010, it was via a coalition with Social Justice and the Greens, and hence they could act on this suspicion.

The 2010 Korean Language Board election delivered an outright majority for Daehan Gukmin Dang, as it span the ‘cultural provisions’ into supporting struggling Korean-owned business via fiscal support, a far cry from mere ‘wider cultural awareness campaigns’ the Progressives intended that to mean. The Korean-American middle-class, anxious of not falling into the working-class, deeply appreciated this very much. But the Progressives fumed. This was increasingly looking like its own government and not a mere ‘language board’.

In 2012, just before the elections, the Progressives authorised a raid of several Korean-American businesses, sure that they were embezzling funds or even sending it overseas. The public backlash was immediate. Progressive support with Korean-Americans collapsed and they swung to voting Asian Action even in the House and Senate, even winning a few geographical seats in the latter. However, despite this, the Progressives as a sum gained due to other demographics swinging to favour them after a successful two years of recovery. The embezzlement, it proved smaller than they expected, and the so-feared sending money overseas? It was to family and relatives.

Daehan Gukmin Dang won a two-thirds majority in the Board as a result of this, and it was a boon to other Asian Action affiliate parties too. With political capital on this matter for the Progressives collapsing with even internal polls showing a distressingly high amount of Hispanic voters open to voting PC if the Progressives touched the power of the Boards, they elected to abandon the idea.

After this humiliation, the Progressives chose to take a different direction, that of quietly accepting the new status quo while quietly doing their best to chip away at the insularity of the ‘Koreatowns’. A key weapon was strengthening road infrastructure, and trying to get Korean businesses to see the State Government as the main organisation to turn to. Lowering taxes for ‘diverse’ businesses once the budget recovered from the start of the Second Great Depression worked wonders too.

But their increasing social-liberalism, including the absorption of the Social Justice Alliance, and the growing strength of the political right in Media California, hobbled efforts. The best result since 2012 was in 2016 when they managed to pull a respectable 4 seats due to high-effort and several charismatic candidates, and deny Daehan Gukmin Dang its two-third majority.

So how did it go all wrong in 2018? The slow grind of the Depression forced the Progressives to remove those ‘diversity tax exceptions’ to maintain a sustainable budget led to a backlash, but it was something completely different that would wipe them out and return Daehan Gukmin Dang to two-thirds. The Revolucionarios.

The Revolucionarios in Media California had a very vocal element that portrayed whites and Asian as privileged ‘colonisers’. Korean-owned businesses tended to employ Hispanic workers because of the cheap labour, and hence they were quite anxious of stuff such as trade unions being more powerful or the workers becoming class conscious. But the racial tint to such radical rhetoric becoming more popular gave a deep chill through every Korean-American’s bloodstream.

And hence they turned once more to the party that always had their back – Asian Action, and hence Daehan Gukmin Dang. The Asian Action party ran 2018 exclusively on ‘protecting Asian values’ and encouraging a reflexive vote against the Revolucionarios.

Some Progressive branches emphasised their strong rejection of Revolucionario ideas, like the Tagalog one where it was noted that at times they sounded very like the Nacionalistas in rhetoric. But by 2018 the Korean Board Progressives was badly managed and couldn’t fight off a deep and strong upsurge in Daehan Gukmin Dang support.



Benefiting this upsurge was the Dang’s structure. Unlike a lot of other parties, it relied extensively on the insularity of Korean communities to cultivate extensive personal connections of the voter with their politicians, and actively encouraged both high turnout and a distinct view of the Korean Board. A common sentiment expressed by a Korean-American voter in 2018 was ‘I vote for the party in the House and Senate, but for a friend in the Board’.

The Progressives failed to construct such networks, finding them distasteful and distracting from the actual issues. This seemingly distant and aristocratic politics, combined with lingering distrust from 2012 and growing fear of the Revolucionarios, doomed them. They lost two seats and fell down hard.

Now with Asian-Americans’ greatest fear realised as Progressives and Revolucionarios shake hands, the Progressives look to a wipe-out in the Korean Language Board as even staunch Progressive voters declare they will vote Daehan Gukmin Dang. The Progressive Conservatives on the other hand, has started to grow comfortably as the main opponent to the Progressives in wider state politics, with their Korean Language Board seat won in 2016 and held in 2018 expected to be accompanied by a second, or even a third, come 2020.

Helping them is the disunity of the Korean Language Board Democrats. Emerging on the bloc in the 2012 Progressive collapse as some Korean-Americans who distrusted Daehan Gukmin Dang ended up voting Democratic, it ended up dominated by its two elected board members, which had totally different views for the Party vis a vis the Board.

Jay Choi was of the more nationalistic bend, albeit not of the type of Daehan Gukmin Dang. He wanted the Democratic Party on the Board to aggressively promote Korean-American nationalism, deploring the idea of Koreans working with East Asia and saw Daehan Gukmin Dang as undermining his vision. He believed intensely in Korean-Americans having the capability to be full-blooded Americans. Also notable is his deep distaste of ‘mixed-race’ Korean-Americans, comparing them negatively to ‘purebloods’ like himself.

Contrasting to him was his fellow board member Steven Kim who wanted to focus on turning the Board to religious matters, being a member of the Pact of Christ faction. Kim wished for further cooperation between Democrats and Daehan Gukmin Dang on common religious lines, and even reached out to mixed-race Korean-Americans [of which there wasn’t much, but Kim was unusual for a Democrat] as fellow ‘children of God’.

Choi’s race-based American nationalism went up against Kim’s deep religiosity and in 2016 it proved too much and the party split when deciding on who would be the official leader after years of putting it off. Choi, believing that the wider Democratic Party would push for Kim, withdrew to form the Korea Democratic Union for the election. In the end, the majority would vote for Choi’s Korea Democrats above Kim’s rump Democrats. Before the 2018 election, the two would merge with Choi at the helm and Kim was promoted to top of the list in an Orange County constituency for the House.

But the Korean voters who voted for Kim, they were mostly motivated by religion, and combined with the pre-mentioned fear, would flee the Democrats for Daehan Gukmin Dang, losing them Kim’s seat in the bargain. Choi would hold on as the party’s sole board member, but the wider Media California Democratic Party would look at the party in confusion and frustration.

[New computer, so wikiboxes will look a little different. Flag is Los Angeles one, pictures courtesy of FaceApp, blah blah].

 

[Turquoise Blue]

The 2018 Media California Mandarin LB election in MC's Seventh Party System. Faces of course courtesy of FaceApp.

Yes, the results are fucky, but what do you expect when it's multi-constituency threshold "PR" and one constituency has 13 out of 30 of the seats?

 

[Turquoise Blue]

After the 2018 Mississippi election, the Reform-Pirate-Green coalition got to working on transforming Mississippi into their vision. As every party was tainted with corruption apart from the government parties, the polls went irresistibly higher and higher for them. Nobody could defeat them. Nobody.

Enter Jack Dayton. Incumbent Labor mayor of Bismarck, the capital of the state, for two terms, he was from a very old political dynasty and the son of a Governor in the 90s. He was the epitome of what the United Left portrayed disparaging as ‘labor aristocracy’. Union to his bones, he grew up on his father’s knee learning of the importance of helping other people out. Or at least that’s what he says to voters.

Affably known by the city as “Bismarck Jack”, he was before all the scandals sank Labor an unbeatably popular mayor who seemed set for a third term. As he looked at his polling, he realised one cold hard fact – if the people was voting for the party, he would lose. Labor was seen as too corrupt. But if they were voting for the person, well that would be a different story.

Local parties at a city level is not an unknown phenomenon in America. But since the collapse of the Bismarck German-American Bund in the 40s due to an embezzling scandal, it was not present in Bismarck. Dayton chose to move quickly, and pulled in a few contacts in the city council, and declared in one snowy day in February 2019 that he was leaving Labor to found a party that would work ‘for all’ - Bismarck for All.

In his speech, he peppered in some suitable criticism of the state Labor Party but carefully chose to avoid any of the city’s own politicians, even those under assault by the Pirate hackers in their quest to take over the city. Then he announced he would run for a third term under that party label.

Even as Pirates and Reformists lambasted Dayton’s new party as ‘Labor with a new coat’, they knew that Dayton was a formidable beast who held the treasure that the Pirates so desperately sought, that of the title of Mayor of Bismarck. The state was one thing, but if they could deny Labor their last statesman, they could complete the revenge on the party they left.

The polling showed Dayton, shorn of the unpopular Labor brand, surging from 13% to 19% and leapfrogging the Republican, Reform and Green candidates in the bargain. Of course, those three, and the Pirate one even, was generic candidates, but it had ill portents for the coalition’s chances. But they would win! After all, the voters wouldn’t re-elect a Labor man! He’s too corrupt! They would see sense, and the hackers would make sure of that.

The first of the main four opponents to Dayton to be nominated was the Green Andy Gordon. Andy Gordon was a long-time Green politician since he first won election to the Bismarck City Council in the 1980s. Gordon was of the more centrist bend in the Green Party, more influenced by the southern Missouri Greens than any more left-wing variety, and this showed in his rhetoric where he pledged “a more progressive and renewable Bismarck”.

The second of the four was Reform, hot on the heels of the Green announcement. And they picked a “star” candidate in former Senator Fred Quie. Quie was ex-Labor and often bemoaned of the growth of ‘identity politics’ in America as a whole. His curmudgeonly rants would prove popular on the radio and get many old heads nodding along sagely to his incoherent wisdom. “The one thing I will say to the youths of this great country of America – you didn’t build it! We did! We need a leader who respects elders!”.

The Pirate ‘establishment’ [for lack of a better word] was concerned about Quie. After all, his rants were often more directed at bemoaning the youth, which tended Pirate, than parties like the Republicans or Labor. But surely those worries weren’t concrete. It was too soon for the coalition to fray. Polling still had them with a strong lead in the preferences.

The Republican candidate was announced in April. The Bismarck branch seriously considered just endorsing the Libertarian candidate and focusing on securing as many council seats in the anti-establishment wave as possible. But then the twenty-something scion of a multi-millionaire confectionery family Matt Cawthorn promised to fund their entire campaign, including down-ballot, if he was the mayoral candidate.

With the national and state Republican Party withdrawing funding from Bismarck proper in favour of the outer metro, the local branch agreed to nominate Cawthorn. Once he was introduced as the candidate and took the stage to speak, they realised just what an utter out-of-touch loon he was. He kept talking about ‘small million-dollar loans’, ‘ensuring that every poor person is able to set up a start-up with a wealthy investor’ and the most damning - ‘the trains would be sold to my father who would manage them well’.

The Republicans scrambled to replace him, but with many of their local candidates already accepting his money it was clear that it was Cawthorn, or oblivion. In the end, the head of the Bismarck Republicans decided to give Cawthorn a ‘crash course’ on politics to salvage their chances.

After one too many hair pulling moments, Cawthorn finally was pushed back on the stage for a ‘relaunch’ and this time sounded more like the average wealthy Republican. Bit too Dewey-like for some tastes, but this wasn’t rural Mississippi, this was Bismarck. As long as the state party isn’t giving them funding, they would skew more moderate if it was necessary.

While the saga of Matt Cawthorn’s rocky start in electoral politics was going on, the Pirate Party held their e-primary in June, and in the end chose Facetuber and blogger Sophie Osnes in a landslide. Her acceptance video was exquisite and well-choreographed, just like what people grew used to expecting from her. Her message was of course oriented around ‘cleaning out City Hall’, listing the city Labor Party’s many crimes, including some that was floating around to be Dayton’s. She was a candidate well-suited to the Pirate base of young people desiring an alternative to establishment corruption.

With the line-up of the five major candidates completed – Cawthorn, Dayton, Gordon, Quie and Osnes – the campaign entered the second phase, that of an intense few months of feet on ground and big rallies, with a solitary debate near the end between the five despite attempts by the Libertarian, Black Panther and Asian Action candidates to enter.

This hectic period was always the hacker’s paradise, and they had one target in mind, that of the Mayor. A key part of Dayton’s message was that he was not like state Labor, that he had clean hands and could be trusted to look after the city well. This message, to the hackers, had to be shattered.

The hackers released sources that alleged that Dayton was embezzling the city’s funds and released ‘statistics’ that showed money ‘mysteriously’ disappearing from the balance each month, presented in a very biased and ‘scandalous’ light. They thought they got him. This attack was a tried and true one that would take down many politicians.

But as ‘Bismarck Jack’ walked to the podium, he held up a huge black folder, overflowing with bookmarks and groaning under the weight of the papers stuffed into it. Putting it on the podium, he began “Now, you may have heard concerning stuff about some statistics, so I’ve got the budget book out. I have got permission from the treasurer to show this to you, the voters, since you deserve to know the truth.

I almost believed those news, don’t get me wrong, but then I realised one thing that this city under my leadership has never done. It has never uploaded the budget to the Internet! You can’t hack a piece of paper!”. This was said with a light laugh, then he pledged to release the year’s budget statistics as a summary to every voter so they could judge for themselves.

The hackers seethed. ‘Bismarck Jack’ came out of it smelling of roses.

Meanwhile, Fred Quie was seemingly zeroing in his favourite target, the youth, with a radio rant all about how ‘the internets are addling our youth’s brains’, laced with not too subtle implications about Osnes’ mental health. This got Ross Ventura [under urging by his Pirate cabinet members] to phone him and ask him to ‘settle down about the young people’. This just led Quie to explode at Ventura and question him ‘how much of those cockamamie Pirates have ever had a proper job? Answer me that, Ross. Answer me!’.

Faced with this, all the Governor could do was hang up and shrug helplessly. At this point for the Pirates, they concluded the mayoral election was less a cherry on the sundae of victory and more a poisoned apple that threatened to collapse the entire thing.

The campaign continued. Matt Cawthorn was, to the surprise of everyone including himself, a good campaigner once he was shook into sense. The fact that when he saw a person with a problem, he acted like he did to any problem he encountered, he promised to throw money [either his own or the city’s] at it, helped to inflate the GOP vote beyond what it normally would have been, even if the more ideological aspect of the party bemoaned this ‘socialism’ and a few voters trickled to the Libertarians.

The below is one such example of the sort of campaign that appealed to people who wouldn’t normally have voted Republican.

"I've been struggling to look for a home. What will you do to fix the homing problem?"
"Well, I'm sure we'll find something. Money is no object when it comes to helping people after all."
"So that means you'll promise to spend more on housing?"
"Sure. I'll even phone up a friend of mine, heard of Dennis Lath? He's good at building houses. I'll ask him to build houses here and cover the expense on behalf of the council if I'm elected."
"... You are truly a great candidate."
"Thanks! Mother said that too."

Andy Gordon was unlike the others, a rather boring candidate. Unlike the bombastic rhetoric of ‘Bismarck Jack’, the choreographed personality of Osnes, the incoherent rants of Quie and Cawthorn the man rich in money but poor in sense, Gordon was just a simple man. He would promise well-funded services, point out they would be balanced in his budget plan, highlight his long years as a local politician, and promise to be an honest Mayor.

But when has that ever been appealing? But Andy Gordon wouldn’t give up, that much has to be said. Getting out of bed every morning, even to stagnating polls, he would regularly meet voters, shake their hands, and even throw a barb at a fellow candidate here and there. But he preferred a ‘bread and butter’ campaign on ‘the basics’ than whatever the others did.

The debate came in October. By then, the city was sort of roused up by the intense campaigning, and wanted to see what the five were like in a debate. Osnes was by that point still leading in polls, even if the preferences in the second round was slimming as more and more Reform voters put Dayton above Osnes. This debate had to be crucial for her.

In the end, a campaign ran entirely out of prepared videos, fervent students and mudslinging hackers failed entirely to hide the one weakness of Osnes. That she was crap at speaking ‘from the hip’. The charisma fell apart as she began mumbling incoherently and failed to provide anything but rehearsed soundbites. You could just swear that over the course of the debate, Dayton’s smile got even wider than before. Meanwhile, Dayton and Quie exchanged banter as the two got on very well as the ‘elder’ candidates in the race.

The hackers panicked and ended up releasing their ‘Mother of All Bombs’ a few days after the debate, hoping to salvage their candidate’s victory. It was lurid, graphic, and tried to portray Dayton as a man who exploited his staffers for his personal sexual gratification.

The Mayor stood at the podium once more, with his wife next to him and people sat behind him, and stated, with the utmost confidence – “We have had lies and statistics. Now we have damn lies. There’s nothing true about those allegations, and in fact those staffers are here today to give their side of the story, not what some sicko in a mask says. I believe women, not hackers.”

The ‘Mother of All Bombs’ was a dud. They believed Dayton would react like other politicians would have, hide away even if it was false. The hackers were chewed out by people back on the Pirate Galleon [what they called the HQ, yes you can tell they’re mostly students] for being utterly lazy and treating Dayton repeatedly like a normal politician when he was nothing of the sort.

Despite all of that, the polls were still tight, even as Dayton took a lead in the preferences for the second round. Osnes released much more videos, each of them designed to look ‘casual’, and her students became so fervent in their campaigning that some even fell asleep on the street. There would be one final event related to this before the voting happened.

The Mayor was looking out of the window as his guard drove, and he noticed a young man sleeping face first on the pavement. Ordering the car to stop, he smelled a new PR win for him, and gently shook the young man awake. Upon getting an explanation of why the young man was there, the Mayor asked the guard to take him home, and he himself would walk the rest of the way to his destination.

This was of course frontpage news the next day. And arguably sealed his victory, dashing the final fragile hopes of an upset.



The make-up of his second-round victory, surprisingly enough, came primarily from Reform and Republican voters. The Reform voters became increasingly second-preference Dayton after the warm exchanges between him and Quie, but the shift, as poll analysts would say, ultimately began with the budget fiasco when Dayton declared he preferred to do it paper, rather than online.

And the ones who went Cawthorn first, Dayton second? They were mainly people who were primarily middle-aged and struggling, and appreciated a politician who seemed to speak to their concerns, even if one was just promising to throw money at it, and the other already had eight years to fix it.

There were political commentariats afterwards that were sure of a possible extrapolation of the ‘Bismarck case’ to the whole of Mississippi, or even suggested a merger of Labor and Populist to form ‘Mississippi for All’, but this was quickly shot down by people on the ground there who pointed out that Bismarck was an unique case and Reform’s greater strength elsewhere would doom any ‘Mississippi for All’ endeavour.

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Flag is that of a modified proposal for Minneapolis I found on Reddit, produced by mattcscaz that I recoloured in Imperial German colours.
Pictures are, as always, courtesy of FaceApp.

 

[Turquoise Blue]

Kings and Queens of Trefor
Macsen I “the Magnificent” (House of Meurig) & Catrin I “the Cunning” (House of Howell) 1211-1230
Macsen II “the Young King” (House of Meurig) & Catrin I “the Cunning” (House of Howell) 1230-1232
Macsen II “the Young King” (House of Meurig) 1232-1238
Owain I “the Lawgiver” (House of Meurig) 1238-1280
Macsen III “the Boneless” (House of Meurig) 1280-1295
Macsen IV “the Sword of Hunkara” (House of Meurig) 1295-1313
Catrin II “the Maiden” (House of Meurig) 1313-1339
Rhys I “the Shadow” (House of Meurig) 1339-1360
Owain II “Storm-Eyes” (House of Meurig) 1360-1391
Rhys II “the King-in-Rags” (House of Meurig) 1391-1403
Macsen V “the Monk” (House of Meurig) 1403-1409
Catrin III “the Great” (House of Meurig) 1409-1458
Gavan I “the Scholar” (House of Morcant) 1458-1489
Gavan II “the Plumed Knight” (House of Morcant) 1489-1503
Owain III “the Frugal” (House of Morcant) 1503-1540
Catrin III “the Laughing Dragon” (House of Morcant) 1540-1558
Gavan III “the Clement” (House of Rhydderch) 1558-1571
Talfryn “the Tenacious” (House of Rhydderch) 1571-1609
Macsen VI “the Mad” (House of Rhydderch) 1609-1613
Owain IV “the Listener” (House of Rhydderch) 1613-1649
Macsen VII “the Mild” (House of Rhydderch) 1649-1668
Owain V “the Warrior” (House of Rhydderch) 1668-1683
Gwen “the Green Queen” (House of Rhydderch) 1683-1687
Interregnum 1687-1691 [Crown held by Parliament]
Lloyd I “the Great” (House of Llywelyn) 1691-1723
Iestyn “the Innocent” (House of Llywelyn) 1723-1724
Macsen VIII “the Terrible” (House of Llywelyn) 1724-1755
Gavan IV “the Quiet” (House of Llywelyn) 1755-1784
Lloyd II “the Loud” (House of Llywelyn) 1784-1803
Macsen IX “the White” (House of Llywelyn) 1803-1805
Llinos “the Diamond” (House of Llywelyn) 1805-1864
Owain VI “the Musician” (House of Jernigan) 1864-1899
Lloyd III “the Bastion” (House of Jernigan) 1899-1911
Lloyd IV “the Lucky” (House of Jernigan) 1911-1937
Dylis “the Holy” (House of Jernigan) 1937-1981
Gavan V “the Modern” (House of Coedwig) 1981-2019
Rhys III "the Romantic" (House of Coedwig) 2019-2051
Owain VII "the Solemn" (House of Coedwig) 2051-2083
Medi I "the President" (House of Coedwig) 2083-present

 

[Turquoise Blue]

Kings and Queens of Taobh (1571-1655)
Bran I (House of Taobh) 1571-1598
Séamus (House of Taobh) 1598-1602
Bran II (House of Taobh) 1602-1621
Caitlin (House of Taobh) 1621-1635
Rían I (House of Taobh) 1635-1655

High Kings and High Queens of An Cosán (1655-1737)
Rían II (House of Taobh) 1655-1659
Maeve I (House of Taobh) 1659-1691
Gobán (House of Conmara) 1691-1725
Rían III (House of Conmara) 1725-1737

High Kings and High Queens of An Cosán in pretence [unified line] (1737-1899)
Rían IV (House of Conmara) 1737-1743 [Crown Prince Rían] - claim: firstborn son of Rían III
Bran III (House of Conmara) 1743 [Prince Bran] - claim: eldest surviving child of Rían III
Fionnuala (House of Conmara) 1743-1747 [Princess Fionnuala] - claim: eldest surviving child of Rían III
Séamus II (House of Conmara) 1747-1749 [Prince Séamus] - claim: eldest surviving child of Rían III
Norene (House of Conmara) 1749-1755 [Princess Norene] - claim: eldest surviving child of Rían III
Íomhar (House of Jernigan) 1755-1783 [Ieuan Jernigan] - claim: eldest child of previous claimant
Gobán II (House of Jernigan) 1783-1819 [Gavan Jernigan] - claim: eldest child of previous claimant
Gobán III (House of Jernigan) 1819-1855 [Gavan Jernigan] - claim: eldest child of previous claimant
Eoghan I (House of Jernigan) 1855-1899 [Owain VI of Trefor] - claim: eldest child of previous claimant

High Kings and High Queens of An Cosán in pretence ["Buttonite" claim] (1899-1984)
Derdriu (House of Coedwig) 1899-1931 [Deris Coedwig] - claim: sole child of previous claimant
Rían V (House of Coedwig) 1931-1984 [Rhys Coedwig] - claim: sole child of previous claimant

High Kings and High Queens of An Cosán in pretence ["Treforist" claim] (1899-1981)
Lachtna I (House of Jernigan) 1899-1911 [Lloyd III of Trefor] - claim: closest legitimate relative of previous claimant
Lachtna II (House of Jernigan) 1911-1937 [Lloyd IV of Trefor] - claim: eldest child of previous claimant
Dáiríne (House of Jernigan) 1937-1981 [Dilys of Trefor] - claim: eldest child of previous claimant

High Kings and High Queens of An Cosán in pretence ["Legitimist" claim] (1981/4-2092)
Gobán IV (House of Coedwig) 1981/4-2019 [Gavan V of Trefor] - claim: eldest child of previous claimants
Ruadh (House of Coedwig) 2019-2051 [Rhys III of Trefor] - claim: eldest child of previous claimant
Eoghan II (House of Coedwig) 2051-2083 [Owain VII of Trefor] - claim: eldest child of previous claimant
Maeve II (House of Coedwig) 2083-2092 [Medi of Trefor] - claim: senior grandchild of previous claimant.

High Kings and High Queens of An Cosán as recognised by the Government of An Cosán (2092-present)
Maeve II (House of Coedwig) 2092-present [Medi of Trefor] - claim: senior grandchild of previous claimant.

 

[Turquoise Blue]

Notes on Treforic Culture (basically an Wales analogue influenced by Asia)

Part 1: Treforic Name Structure

Basically a Treforic name is threefold.

There's the given name. It's trendy to have a second given name those days, like a middle name, but traditionally it wasn't done. Example - Bethan.

There's the descent name. Either patronymic or matronymic or increasingly both. Yes, long names is trendy those days. Example - ferch Medi, meaning daughter of Medi.

Then there's the clan name, which is always the one of the descent name. Even immigrants have one, it's their family name elsewhere but in some cases a clan can 'adopt' an immigrant and give them their clan name. This is a high honour that needs approval by the head of the entire clan, and is normally given to adopted children (who otherwise wouldn't be in the clan). Example - Parker, denoting being part of Clan Parker.

The full example would be Bethan ferch Medi Parker. Bethan, daughter of Medi, of Clan Parker.

A long name would be Sieffre Tegid ap Cystennin Morgan a Ifanna Fenna. Or Tegid Morgan Fenna for short. A bit like the Spanish, yeah. But this is a new thing, not quite traditional, but it's getting popular with people who want to respect both families.

In Treforic culture, adoption is seen as both religiously virtuous (there's even a ritual marking it) and benefiting a clan. You're kind of reborn as a new person in the ritual, symbolically. Adoption legally essentially changes your clan affiliations to those of your adopted parents with the permission of the clan heads (which are expected to approve, it's their duty to encourage further growth of the clan. Declining would be seen as religiously immoral and face social backlash as well as cause people to suggest it might be time for a new clan head).

I have notes on the religion and how the specific Treforic variation deals with stuff such as trans people transitioning (which is both very progressive and yet not quite). That'll come in another post.

 

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Notes on Treforic Culture

Part Two: The Tale of Trefi and Cosan (the founding myth of Trefor and An Cosan)

Once upon a time, across the eastern sea, there lived a brother and a sister. One was a daring yet brash explorer who had a bold dream of sailing across the wide ocean to find a new land. This man was named Cosan. The other was his quiet, scholarly sister who often had her nose in a book yet her ultimate loyalty was to her family, especially Cosan. This woman was named Trefi.

After many moons of preparation, Cosan was about to sail with his thousand men and women. At the last second, Trefi realised she couldn’t let him leave without her there to protect him, so she jumped towards the ship even when the gap was too wide. The wind blessed her decision and lifted her the rest of the gap. The journey took many more moons, but eventually Cosan’s battered ships arrived to land. It was a soft land overflowing with green, yet there was an aura of mysterious danger around it. Trefi advised caution, but Cosan took a group of 12 into the interior. A sun later, three survivors came out, including Cosan, and called to lift anchor. They managed to escape the incoming natives who took offense to Cosan’s brash and domineering attitude and decided to drive him off their land.

Eventually the ships arrived to a much more promising land. It was rich in soil, and the rivers ran regularly opening up the possibility of agriculture. Trefi approved of the sight, and even the brash Cosan could see the value of the land. The first settlement was set up and over the next few years, the place grew. Over time, Cosan handed all effective management to Trefi, who could deal with the nitty-gritty while Cosan became a national figurehead. This agreement worked very well for the two, up to a point.

Ten years after the start of the sailing of Trefi and Cosan, a new ship decked out in purple appeared on the horizon and came to shore. It was from their old home, and was from their father the Emperor of Mangowl bearing gifts to his children. Trefi was eager to accept the gifts and open up trade between their old and new homes. Cosan was of a different mind. Part of the reason he wanted to sail and explore was to escape his father’s shadow. He wanted to be his own man, and accepting those gifts in his mind was to accept his father’s authority over him once more. The two siblings argued for many days and nights over this, Cosan’s stubborn nature only matched by Trefi’s loyalty to her family.

In the end, Cosan called a meeting of all the settlement’s families and declared that he was going to leave the place “with those truly loyal to him and his dream”. Most families by this point accepted the quiet authority of Trefi, but a considerable chunk still followed Cosan out of the settlement. Some families sundered in the process, spreading the misery that a broken family brought to Trefi and Cosan, to even more people. After Cosan left, Trefi wept for many more days over her brother’s stubbornness. Cosan along with his people marched northwards to found a new settlement, one that would “stand on its own”. This ended up the land of An Cosan, the smaller and less developed of the two countries the siblings founded.

Trefi soldiered on and managed to continue the original settlement’s growth, furthering trade with the old country and expanding the settlement into a new country. She married an unusual commoner with glowing blue eyes and had many children. And of course, the land they founded became the Kingdom of Trefor, the bigger and more developed of the two countries, and still ruled by the descendants of Trefi even to this day.

 

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Notes on Treforic Culture

Part Three: The Pobl Pili Pala

The Treforic culture's perception of trans people is at once accepting and yet not. The Treforic people, being firm Rauists of the Treforic denomination, has certain beliefs, and one of those beliefs is that people who are seen as "having the soul of the other gender" are special in the eyes of Hunkara, their omnipresent goddess of everything. So naturally, they wouldn't want to allow those Hunkara-blessed people to just melt away to normality.

Treforic society is one of the most pro-trans rights societies in their world, and yet they refuse to treat trans people as "just" normal people of their gender identity. No, the Hunkara-blessed, the pobl pili pala ["butterfly people"], they are obviously chosen for a higher purpose, and since Treforic society tends collectivist, there are considerable expectations put on such people to fulfill that higher purpose. The most obvious is that they're called upon to take part in several religious rituals that take place through the year, and are expected to attend Temple wearing special sky-blue robes, marking them out from the normal attenders. It's kind of a mark of pride, and yet some feel it's constraining. It varies.

The conception of the pobl pili pala is a very old one in Treforic society, and once long ago was a clear third gender like the Shanthian hijra, but over time it became a label for those that transgressed the sex-gender binary, and ultimately ended up equivalent to the modern conception of trans people. The expectations placed on the people in question also comes with the Temple's strong support of them against possible hostility from their family, clan or society. And when a very religious society is told to step in line by its own religion, it tends to do so immediately. Hence why Treforic society in a sense has "normalised" trans people and yet has not as it has made them a special group separate from everyone else.

There is a religious ritual someone goes through to mark their transition, which has similarities to the adoption ritual, that marks them as one of the pobl pili pala, and it is considered a positive one, and often matches with their legal status changing to mark their new situation. Treforic society can be considerably clueless about transphobia in other countries, up to the point where at some point they marked people's status as pobl pili pala on their passports, opening them up to targetting by considerably less accepting people managing borders and migration. In the early 2000s, this was changed by the Divkovic Ministry to protect them from such targetting.

Despite how clueless Treforic people can get, and the considerable expectations and special treatment trans people get in Trefor, it's still a society that overall has became completely used to the existence of trans people. Transphobia is seen as weird, against Treforic values, and fundamentally foreign. Why would you want to target one of the Hunkara-blessed butterfly people? Do you wish to make Hunkara disappointed in you? And do you want to make Treforic society look at you at once and heavily disapprove?

 

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Notes on Treforic Culture
Chapter 1: Treforic Name Structure
Chapter 2: The Tale of Trefi and Cosan
Chapter 3: The Pobl Pili Pala
Chapter 4: Name Registers

A Treforic name, as elaborated in Chapter 1, is three-fold. But it can be extended or reduced according to the social situation. If you are in an unclear social situation, you may use the "casual" name structure, which is pairing the given name with the clan name - "Bethan Parker". It is often the name someone is introduced to other people as, in "normal" situations. Like a new office worker being introduced to her workmates for one.

For a society that is so insistent on social formalities in a lot of places, it is notable that they are more free in their use of given names than a lot of other countries. Indeed, they peg it directly to their linguistic distinction between the informal ti and the formal chi. If you call someone ti and they permit it, you can call them by their given name. No matter their place in the social hierarchy, if they allow you to ti them, they're on given name basis.

Now, given that the concept of "surnames" don't exist in Treforic culture, what do people refer to others as, instead of first names, if they're only on chi basis? They use the clan as a reference. For the vast majority, they are called "Scion X" in which X is the clan name. "Scion" [Treforic: Epil] is the Treforic equivalent of "Mr./Ms.". You can also just use the clan name for short, which is more popular in the busy cities. Using Bethan Parker as an example again, she would be referred to as "Epil Parker" or "Parker" by people she is on chi relations with.

Treforic people have a rich tradition of nicknames, adding a new nuance to the name register. Take Bethan Parker again. While she may be on ti relations with someone, if they refer to her as "Bethan", it's obvious that they're more acquaintances than actual friends. Her friends call her "Tani". Of course, she is also a politician, and doesn't hide her nickname from people, so even her acquaintances could call her "Tani". But for most people, the nickname adds a third level of relationship with someone, when you refer to each other by nicknames.

Now, not all people are referred to as Epil. Indeed, a common Treforic tradition is to use your occupation as a clarifier instead of Epil. So someone would be "Baker Jones", "Doctor Gwalchmai", "Engineer Bennett" or "Assemblywoman Parker". Epil is just the default, like "Mr./Ms.", not the universal. And of course, we cannot forget that those are not surnames, but clan names. The head of the clan is always referred to in chi situations as "Lord X" or "Lady X" unless they hold a landed peerage which supersedes it, and their heir in chi situations "Heir/ess X".

It is rare that the name structure extends beyond your parental descent. But in extremely formal situations, you can extend it to your grandparents. For an example, the current king would be Rhys ap Bethan ferch Eirwen Drakeford a Lloyd Howell a hefyd Gavan ap Rhys Coedwig a Dilys Jernigan. Normally the order goes female-male, but in Rhys' case his paternal grandmother goes last because she was Queen. There exists a never-used version, the "imperial descent" structure that tracks Rhys' ancestry all the way back to the mythical Trefi and her father Taejo the Mangowl Emperor. It is a direct descent one, only focusing on the people that Rhys can track his descent from Trefi and Taejo through. Because of this, Rhys and the Royal Family can phrase their name structure to mark their descent from Trefi.

The reason they can do that is because of a Treforic tradition to phrase your name structure to emphasise your descent. You do this by changing it to say you're the "child" [ap/ferch] of the person in question. So the King could phrase his name Rhys ap Trefi ferch Taejo for example. It's only used when you need to emphasise your social status to someone who might interpret you as their social inferior otherwise.

The royalty and landed nobility has a whole different set of rules to refer to them, which will be covered in another chapter.

 

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Not a proper "Notes on Treforic Culture" post, but here's a few [well I lie, just two] words that replaces OTL Welsh words.

Instead of the emperor being called ymerawdwr [from the Latin imperator] the Treforic people say hwngti [from the Sinsic huangdi].

Instead of a library being called a llyfrgell [meaning "book-cell"], the Treforic people call it a tŵsi-cŵan [from the Sinsic túshū guǎn].

The Treforic word for cartoons is not cartŵn [a Welshification of the English cartoon], but syluniad [셀운얟] [a portmanteau of symud ["move"] and luniad ["drawing"], hence meaning "moving drawing"]. The aesthetic is way more Japanese anime of course, so expect anime Superted and stuff like that.

The Treforic word for tea is not te [which comes from primarily European takes on Southern Chinese dzhou], but tsai [which comes from the direct Mandarin cha].

The Treforic word for sky, air and heaven is not awyr [from the Latin aer] or nefoedd, but instead tanco [from the Sinsic tiānkōng].

The Treforic word for nation is not gwlad, but instead gwa, because of the influence from Tae guk and Sinsic guó. It is etymologically the same, just changed due to different influences.

So far it's because Sinsic culture has been in Treforic culture associated with "high culture". I might add more Tae [Korean] later on.

I'll add to this post all the words that I figure probably will change in Treforic compared to Welsh.

EDIT: I am adding the "blood script" to those words as well.

 

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An example of a Treforic sylun [anime-style, Welsh-attitude, basically] is...
The Ridiculous Life of Siana L. (ᄇᅻ읻･궬틴릳･ᅀᅣ나･러。- Bywyd Chwerthinllyd Siana L.)

Basically it's about a very withdrawn and slightly depressed schoolgirl with immense powers. She hates it, and just wants to be left alone. Tragically, she's stuck in a situation where there's a lot of teenage boys pining for her, and she's just irritated by the whole thing. The whole thing is one giant piss-take at anime, of the Sinsic (donghua), Tae (aeni), Kogojin (anime) or Treforic (syluniad) model, and has been praised for its utter dead-pan surrealism.

[Basically this is a mixture of Daria, The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. and piss-taking of harem anime, but fair warning, I have only watched the second].

 

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Trefor has a traditional way of stating the time, known as the ‘time of quarters’ [amser pedwerydd] for dividing the day and night in three quarters each.

This is a shifting system based on the rough average of when the sun rises in the morning, and for peasants it was exclusively based on that, but as desire for some standardisation grew with the intellectuals influenced by Sinsic time and its regularity, one man would eagerly rise to the task. This man was Aneurin ap Llyr Gwalchmai, and he was every bit the ‘modern Treforic man’ in the tributary era.

His system was nothing short of genius. He took the ‘time of quarters’ idea of dividing the time into chunks of fours and elaborated it on a higher level, dividing the Treforic year of around twelve months into four quarters. Trefor did not have seasons like the West would think of [it’s mostly one of dry and wet], but the higher four fours would be widely seen in the West as an equivalent.

So what was Scholar Gwalchmai’s system? Taking the names from the moon phases, his four would be defined as the ‘new’, ‘waxing’, ‘full’ and ‘waning’ month-phases. In a ‘new’ phase, the day starts at 8:00 Treforic Time, and is widely considered by the West to be equivalent to winter. ‘Waxing’ and ‘waning’ fundamentally works the same, with the day starting at 7:00, and are seen as ‘spring’ and ‘autumn’ respectively. The ‘full’ is to the West ‘summer’, and started at 6:00.

This helped cement some regularity to the system. But what was the system in the first place? To understand it fully, we should go through a normal Treforic day. And a normal Treforic night as well, for the Treforic system is notable for elaborating on night as equal as day, unlike the more flexible system found in the East, or the ‘day-oriented’ system of reference in the West. In Ashfield, you wouldn’t say something like ‘aftermidnight’ or have an equivalent of a morning for the night. But in Trefor, the equivalents are widely used. You can see this also in their way of referencing a calendar day, as night is baked in as well as day – ‘Dydd Taen’, but ‘Nos Daen’.

Depending on if the month-phase is full, waxing or waning, or new, the day properly starts at 6:00, 7:00 or 8:00. It is said to be ‘one on sun’ [un ar haul], and this continues, with the next hour being ‘two on sun’ [dau ar haul] all the way up to ‘four on sun’ [pedwar ar haul]. This quarter-day is defined by the sun arriving. It ends at 10, 11 or 12, depending on the phase.

The next phase is the ‘high’ quarter. There is an equivalent in Herish where 12:00 is ‘high’ noon, but that is more a specification. The ‘high’ quarter is defined by the sun being high in the sky. It goes on for four hours, from ‘one on high’ [un ar uchel] to ‘four on high’ [pedwar ar uchel], and goes on to 2, 3 or 4 PM using Western/Zalivian phrasing.

Then comes the ‘low’ quarter. This phase is defined by the sun visibly starting to go down to the horizon. Once again, the system goes from ‘one on low’ [un ar isel] to ‘four on low’ [pedwar ar isel], and the day officially ends at 6, 7 or 8 PM by Western phrasing.

Now we enter the aspect that people in the West are often confused by, but the quarters essentially reset for the night. The moon’s arrival [or in the systematic version, when isel ends] heralds a new quarter as the hour is ‘one on moon’ [un ar lleuad], goes up to ‘four on moon’ [pedwar ar lleuad], ending at 10, 11 or 12 PM and then it repeats the ‘high’ and ‘low’ quarters, without elaboration, for context is often enough. ‘High’ ends at 2, 3 or 4 AM, and ‘Low’ at 6, 7 or 8 PM, which starts the following day.

But when it is necessarily to elaborate if you mean ‘high’ or ‘low’ in the day or night sense, you say something like ‘three on high moon’ or ‘one on low sun’ [tri ar lleuad uchel and un ar haul isel respectively]. The omission of the article you would normally encounter [on the moon is ar y lleuad] is down to the y being a schwa and hence easily skipped over.

The days as in calendar days are simpler however. Treforic days, thanks to centuries under tributary rule, are based on the Sinsic, but it is not a calque, but rather a ‘Trefisation’ of the Sinsic words for the days. Monday to a Herish person would be Dydd Ei to a Treforic [or Nos Ei, don’t forget the nights either!], Tuesday Dydd Ier/Nos Ier, Wednesday Dydd Sen/Nos Sen, Thursday Dydd Gweu/Nos Weu, Friday Dydd Lleu/Nos Leu and Sunday is Dydd Taen/Nos Daen.

To go further in than the hours and quarters, we get to the minutes. In Trefor, the hours were divided in thirds, and those thirds were divided in half, to make something equivalent to ten minutes per ‘half-third’. The thirds were called ‘notches’ [rhiciau] due to being used by sundials during the day. The Sinsic phrasing of ‘first’ and ‘central’ did not sink in the hour, but it did the half-thirds in a way.

The notches were divided in shallow and deep notches [rhiciau bas and rhiciau dwfn respectively], but Trefor often associates deep with central. Despite the wording, only the deep notches count as notches [rhiciau] and hence are the ones referenced to by the word unelaborated. The shallow ones are more time-indicators than ‘true’ notches.

They are referenced to by their number. The first [deep] notch of one on the sun in the waning phase is 7:20. Before that, it is the first shallow notch [7:10] and before that it is llyfn, ‘smooth’. A further division of the half-notches, what is commonly known as ‘scratches’ [crafiadau], was primarily created by the 1400s, but never quite took off with the people until the Zalivian conquest. Zalivia was known for its exacting time standards, and ‘scratches’ were adopted as a way to further get exacting time. It is notable that the original ‘scratches’ were one sixths, but the Zalivian decimal system led to one tenths dominating and becoming the accepted standard.

The Treforic second, unlike the rest of all of this, is very much one created in modernity and the 1700s, and is called the ‘moment’ [eiliad]. It is a further elaboration of the Zalivian system, taking their 60 seconds and renaming it ‘moments’. There is no system associated with the ‘moment’, unlike the rest.

All of the above is the Treforic traditional time-telling, from the phases all the way to even the moment. Those days, globalisation has led to more of a universal standard, including clocks built around the Zalivian idea of midnight and noon. But when you chat with a Treforic at 1:20 PM in December and ask them the time, they will look at their Zalivian-style watch and say with no hesitance – ‘un rhic ar ôl un ar uchel’. One notch after one on high.

 

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The Mari Lwyd [마리･륃] is a complicated figure in Treforic culture. The first Rauist preachers noted that she was the Treforic 'Queen of Bones' and their chief pagan deity. It is widely accepted that this deity came from the indigenous Animatan faith and not the Sharastran settlers, as there exist little equivalent in the East, and Treforic settlers more or less adopted the native faith via intermixture after a few generations. The Rauist preachers, despite wishing to eradicate the pagan faith, took great pain to note down all of what they knew of the 'Queen of Bones'.

And it is this record, found in the Fabrizian academic halls, that we can glean out the origin of the Mari Lwyd, and also the modern understanding of the Treforic 'national-mother', Trefi. The ancestral 'Queen of Bones' was unusually enough, a maternal figure despite her skeletal appearance. She was the goddess of birth and of death, for the faith saw little difference. You were born, died and born again, never truly gone from the world. It was but a process, even if a terrible and yet blessed one. Life was the greatness, and the inbetween of lives were but a moment.

Perhaps it was this that made the ancestral Treforic people noted to be a race of warriors. But as the Treforic people converted to Rauism, many of their beliefs were syncretised into Rauism. However, the 'Queen of Bones' clashed a lot with traditional Rauist beliefs, and the preachers took great effort to shatter the 'bone cult' as they called it later on. It was circa this time that the first records of 'Trefi' emerged, the so-called 'national-mother' of Trefor. The stories of her and Cosan, the idea that her father was the Mangowl Emperor, all that, were not until later. Ancestral worship was not foreign to the Treforic, and indeed even traditional Rauism permitted such if it was understood that they were but 'interlocutors' to Hunkara.

But Trefi adapted many of the elements of the 'Queen of Bones', becoming seen as the 'great mother' [Treforic - 맘웈엘 - mamuchel] and ultimately 'nation-mother' [맘ᄋᆉ - mamwa]. Many fantastical stories were pinned to her, many originally about the 'Queen of Bones' and passed down through oral folklore. However, she was seen as primarily a national figure, and not associated specifically with the supernatural aspects of the old 'Queen of Bones'.

A few centuries later, we get the first written records of the Mari Lwyd. Rauism, even in its syncretic form, was only just starting to seep into the populace, truly, and the 'bone cult' was on its final rattling gasp. But many of its devotees went on to create the imagery of the Mari Lwyd, the Grey Mare. She was the other half of Trefi. While Trefi was the national personification and mamwa of the Treforic people, the Mari Lwyd took the more supernatural elements. Treforic Rauism was open to belief in reincarnation at this point, and folk beliefs in it remained strong. Old customs of getting drunk and singing songs about the deceased, originally to 'send them on their way', were still alive and well.

Treforic folklore rapidly acquired the belief that the Mari Lwyd was the one to truly sing you off to your next life, often with a musical instrument in her bony hands. Reincarnation was, like everything in Trefor, musical. The song of the Mari Lwyd would perfectly encompass your entire life and your purpose in that, and serve as the closure, the epilogue. It was said to be at once haunting yet profound. Clearly from the scratchy internals of a skull-horse yet the most beautiful song anyone would hear. Even the strongest of strong men would break down weeping as it took them apart.

As the song went on, it is said, the person starts to fade away. With their existence so summed up by the song, they become ready to move on, to be reborn. While more orthodox Rauists tutted at this 'folk-belief' and some murmured that it was still the old 'bone cult', it proved impossible to uproot, and once the new authority became Sinsic, they lost true state power to deal with this, something they wouldn't get back for almost a thousand years.

The Sinsic celebrated a winter solstice festival [Dongzhi], and although it wasn't completely unique [indeed, even the preachers noted some sort of winter festival celebrated by the ancestral Treforic, and Rauists elsewhere syncretised it to some extent], the Sinsic influence on the Treforic Solstice cannot be denied. The clan structure was already deeply in place by this point, but the Solstice was used by the clan leaders to maximise influence by gathering the clan once every year to reassert leadership and to expand their connection network.

As time went on, and the Solstice became more and more associated with clan and lineage, the Mari Lwyd assumed its other role it inherited from the 'Queen of Bones', as the granter of birth and of overall celebration. With many clan halls often having a horse skull decorated with the festive offerings of the year as a 'tribute' for a year of birth and deaths, it was only a natural step to associating it with the season overall. On the Solstice itself, people were now singing to the Mari Lwyd, singing to keep away death and to bring life. Theological interpretation of it as one of the avatars of Hunkara [the supposed omnipresent deity of Rauism] was now widespread in a syncretic religion without state power. The tradition of giving tangion [boiled coloured rice-balls, traditional Sinsic winter festival food that Trefor inherited] as an offering to the Mari Lwyd was first noted in the last years of Sinsic rule.

Under the Zalivian imperium, after a brief moment of independence, Solstice became known also for gift-giving. The Sinsic did not traditionally associate the solstice with gifts, but the Zalivians did. The Khothist festival at this time was noted for symbolic pottery gifting, and while the Treforic did not take the pottery, they did take the concept and while it started off as the clan leader building on connections by gifting his clan members gifts, the size of the clans rapidly made it unworkable. In the end, the Mari Lwyd became associated with the ritual of gifting as people would give others gifts under the horse-skull. But as the clan system became less tight and Trefor became so populous that clans gathering became unworkable, the Mari Lwyd was now the 'giver figure', coming around to grant the families presents as long as she receive tangion and a proper song.

Otherwise, well there's plenty of dark scary stories of people who don't bother. None of which are based in fact, but it's always fun to scare people, especially impressionable young kids. Also emerging in this time was the belief that people who die on the Solstice enjoy singing a duet with the Mari Lwyd before moving on. With independence, the more 'orthodox' Rauists were now completely gone, replaced by a deeply nationalistic spirit eager to promote its culture abroad. Included was the Mari Lwyd, Trefor's skeletal bringer of birth, life, death and celebration in the darkest of days.

And the world went as one and went "what the FUCK, Trefor".

 

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I have decided to scrap using katakana and instead use Hangul. Now, Hangul is a featural script, so using it in its original sense doesn't make sense.

However, I am going with the presumption that Hangul in Marcapada is way older, and hence use it in a corrupted way for Treforic. I'm ignoring completely all grammatical combinations and just using the base symbols. Remember, this is originated with like, Treforic monks mangling it for Treforic.

아리냍･라훌 is an example of what I am calling the "blood script". Blood in the sense of lineage of course. The others are renamed to "gold script" [for Sinsic/Chinese] and "dirty script" [for Coric/Latin]. The written out script that I have posted translates as Aliniad Llafur, or Labour Alignment, my party.

To go into how to convert Welsh/Treforic to be able to write it in the blood script, I'll use the classic Welsh national anthem's first line.

Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn annwyl i mi

Mae is simple enough - 매 [this is mae too].

Now to hen. 헨 [this one - hen]

Now we get to a bit of a conundrum. How do we represent w in Hangul? That is actually quite simple, as Korean doesn't make a distinction between u and w, using the letter-equivalent of o or u to represent a consonant such as in wo or we. This dovetails quite nicely with historical Welsh orthography.

We get to l. And this is where we must simplify Welsh a bit to push it into an alphabet designed for Korean. Korean doesn't have different letters for l or for r, as it does not have the scriptual distinction [indeed the l sound is apparently only found in the final]. So I am electing to use the same version for both. And this is the case for mutations too which will not be represented. Before you cry foul, I will have to cite early medieval Welsh orthography in where <p> and <t> were used to represent /b/ and /d/, and mutations weren't written at all. So I feel warranted enough to build on this.

Anyway, the final two is simple enough, and we can construct the Hangul for wlad. Now, remember the "no writing down mutations" rule. This does not except the soft mutation [maybe in more modern writings it does, but not traditionally]. Hence we write gwlad. Which is 구랃 (gulad in the original script).

Anyway, we're almost half-done. Fy is 위 [wi in the original Korean]. I had two options to encode the /f/ and /v/ sounds. Either the traditional Welsh way of merging it with <u> or the Korean custom of romanticising /h/ sounds as <f> and just use the /h/ symbol for /f/ and /ff/. I have elected to do the later, but I will say that the former is the traditional way of writing /f/ and /v/ and is likely still quite used especially for personal and place names. And of course, for particles like fy, the wi usage is used as a sort of hodge-podge compromise since people likely will resist changing such elementary words.

The circle above the symbol for u/w is a filler space for vowel-first blocks, and expect to see it a lot in Welsh/Treforic Hangul, that is all I will say.

Now on to nhadau. Nh is a mutation, and as covered before, we are not encoding them in Welsh/Treforic Hangul. So we are electing to use the t encoding instead. This is a multi-syllable word, so we must work out how to 'break' it. Since breaking it in 'tad-au' leaves us with a completely vowelised bloc, which would require a filler circle, I am encoding a rule that every medial or final block in Treforic/Welsh Hangul must start with a consonant if possible.

Ta is easy enough - 타. Now for dau, I am going to use some archaic Korean writing to represent the /au/ sound. ᄃᅷ. That translates to dau!

For yn, that's not hard, Filler circle, use the closest thing to a schwa for a symbol, then the n. 앤. There you are - aen in the original romanisation.

Annwyl. That's not hard now we got in the swing of things, really. 안 윌.

I is obviously 이 , which isn't hard.

And mi is 미.

Before we put it all together, I would like to note that because the Korean is agglunative and the Welsh/Treforic is not, those Treforic monks came up with a way to distinguish words. Namely, a dot between each word. This is very like the Japanese nakaguro.

So together, let us sing the anthem...

Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn annwyl i mi (original Welsh)
매･헨･구랃･위･타ᄃᅷ･앤･안윌･이･미 (Welshised Hangul)
mae hen gulad wi tadau aen anwil i mi (transliterated).

And that's how to encode the first sentence of the Welsh national anthem in a very, very mangled version of Hangul.

Oh, to continue, 터레홀 [teorehor] is the writing for Trefor, the name of the weird Welsh-Korean country.
The -eo symbol [ㅓ], being the closest audio-wise to a schwa, is the "filler" sound. It's basically never used outside of being a filler vowel between two consonants. Actual schwa is ㅔ, and the extra line denotes that "yes, this is a sound you say, don't ignore it".

 

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Gwlad beirdd a chantorion, enwogion o fri (Original Welsh)
구랃･배이ᇎ･아･가ᇉ오ᄅᆚᆫ･엔워굔･오･터라 (Welsh Hangul)
gulad byaerd a cantorion enwogyon o beori (transliteration)

If you read a syllable without any vowel, and only the silent one, you're supposed to add an "i" to the end of reading it aloud.

And here's one I made for the topical issue of our times - coronafeirws! 고로나햬룻

Oh, and for a full stop, the Japanese circle is used. Dots in Welsh Hangul denotes spaces, circle denotes end of a sentence.

Okay, just had to alter a certain rule to fix the irritating consonant combination starting.
If you see a syllable block of one consonant and the "silent verb", it is more a prefix than anything, to the succeeding block.

버리 - beori - read that as bri, or accounting for mutations, fri.
터라 - teora - read that as tra. The silent verb is never spoken, it is more the verb equivalent of the circle for "filler consonant".

 

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Alright, time to properly do the whole of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau in Welsh Hangul [Hangŵl? Henŵyl.]. After this, I'll do Siant Plant Trefi [the actual song of the Treforic] and then I'll try to do a complete breakdown of what each 'letter' means in the Welsh Hangul reading, along with notes on each of them.

매･헨･구랃･웨･타ᄃᅷ･앤･안윌･이･미
구랃･배이ᇎ･아･가ᇉ오ᄅᆚᆫ･엔워굔･오･버리
의･고롤･레헤윌･구랃갈윌･터라･맏
더롯･렏읻･골아사ᇉ･으･괟

「고룻」
구랃!･구랃!･버릗욜･윟･임･구랃
터라･몰･앤･밀･일･불･홓･배
오･빋엗･밀･헨･얕･발애

헨･겜리･멘읻익･바라뒷･에･바ᇎ
봅･데린･봅･거록윈･임･고록･싣･하ᇎ
터뤼･틔랃･구랃가롤･몰･쉬놀･으･시
의･넨틷･아혼읻･이･히

옷･터의ᅀᅩᇀ･에･게인･웨･구랃･탄･의･터ᄅᆁᆮ
매･헨･ᄋᆙᇀ･에･겜리･몰･ᄋᆌ･악･엘ᄋᆜᆮ
니･룯ᄋᆔᆮ･일･ᄋᆣᆫ･간･엘칠･ᄅᅷ･버앋
나･테린･벨싄ᄋᆚᆯ･웨･구랃

This took me like, three days. So yay, happy it's done.

 

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This is set in a Britain where Blair somehow gets his way up to... 2007 or so. Everything rapidly falls apart after that.

First Ministers of Wales
1999 - 2003 - Alun Michael (Labour)
2003 - 2006 - Rhodri Morgan (Labour - Plaid Cymru)
2006 - 2007 - Rosemary Butler ('UK' Labour - Liberal Democrats)
2007 - 2010 - Adam Price (Plaid Cymru - Conservative - Liberal Democrats)
2010 - 2012 - Adam Price (Plaid Cymru - Cymru Goch - Liberal Democrats)
2012 - 2019 - Neil McEvoy (Cymru Goch - Plaid Cymru - Liberal Democrats)
2019 - 2020 - Hywel Francis (Cymru Goch - Plaid Cymru - Liberal Democrats)
2020 - pres. - Mick Antoniw (Cymru Goch - Plaid Cymru - Liberal Democrats)

 

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Ideas to incorporate in future lists

Keir Starmer the Radical Leftist [inspired by that excellent list done by someone else]
Cornish Nationalist Rab Butler [the guy really did identify with the Cornish language, so it isn't that implausible]

Others yet to come

 

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The Commentaries on the Language and History of the Egyptians, often shortened to simply the Egyptian Commentaries, is one of the most relied-upon secondary sources for Ancient Egyptian history, and has made its author a name to be known in Egyptologist circles as well as Roman.

The Penguin Classics Edition uses the manuscript version that was found in the so-called 'Roman Pyramid', the tomb of the Roman Emperor Appius Fabius Maximus Eumenius [or just simply Eumenius]. Eumenius was buried with many of those that he had his literate slaves write out on papyrus until he had a stockpile, which he then put in thick vases which after his death were sealed in with his tomb.

But awareness of the Commentaries was much earlier than that, as it was passed down and translated into many languages after the author's death. The Arabic scholars translated it extensively and it was noted to be a 'tale of an ancient land' in many parts of Europe. The art of the hieroglyphs led to there being a recurring fad from the 1600s on to write your name in the 'ancient script' of the land of Egypt.

The Commentaries, from the moment it was book-bound, was traditionally divided into three parts - the Histories, the Language and the Script. Those three are structured very differently, and were notably written at different parts of Pishoy's life. The Script was the first, and was created by him as a young man eager to preserve the glory of his homeland. This one is the one that was preserved best as he had it published most in his lifetime, and it gives an exacting definition of how each symbol works, and how to read it. A 19th-century Egyptologist frankly stated - 'If it was not for the Script, we would have to decrypt it out ourselves, taking decades, if not centuries'. Pishoy's Script is itself divided, by Pishoy himself, into what he noted to be High and Low versions, what we would consider the classical hieroglyphs and the second the 'Demotic' version, and noted that 'both are scripts true to the land of Egypt, the first the declarations of the ancients, the second by the people who live in the now'.

The Language is one of the most controversial works of Egyptology, as Pishoy, by now an older and more influential man in Roman society, focused on elaborating his version of Egyptian, a heavily Greek and Roman influenced version of a language shifting to Coptic, and consciously chose to emulate the legacy of Claudius and Etruscan. Many of the bold national declarations of the Script is gone, and in their place is a more staid and 'objective' look at the language, and every comparison was made to Classical Greek and Latin. But of course, it is primarily remembered for the final line - 'I write this because as a man from Egypt, I know the sands of time take everything. The more I write, the more my Nation holds true'.

The Histories is however, one of the most elusive manuscripts, and if it was not for a fluke of luck enabling an Arabic scholar to discover it in an Alexandrian market, it would not even be known by the 800s. It is considered one of the most in-depth and unique ancient writings on Egypt, and was written by an ageing Pishoy, now at the top of his power and wishing to complete his work. It is part fable, part fact, as it spins a complicated tale from the ancient mythological past where Ra emerged, all the way to the moment where he pens his book. He deems 'Egypt's history has not been finished with Roman acquisition. History never ceases and will not do so with this work.'. Pishoy was notoriously cagey about his identity, and all we know in the Commentaries of his position is from his oblique references to his writing station's quality.

Pishoy was for centuries treated as an unusually productive Egyptian writer, and nothing more. Then the Roman Pyramid was opened. It was a fascination of many, this pyramid created, according to Roman writers, of the half-Coptic Roman Emperor Eumenius, and one where it was rumoured, his tomb resided. Unlike many Roman Emperors, he insisted on being buried in the 'old Egyptian custom', creating outrage in his time, but it was ultimately followed out by his adopted heir and successor. The people who cleared the tomb noted that in many vases surrounding the sarcophagus there were copies of the Commentaries. The assumption was that Pishoy was funded by Eumenius, but then they noted that the hieroglyphics on the walls told a different story. Notably they did not use a form of Eumenius in the script, but instead the name Pishoy.

Historians then concluded that the Roman Emperor Appius Fabius Maximus Eumenius and the Egyptian writer Pishoy were one and the same, and it led to a scholarly dispute over how to reference the man that concluded with a consensus that in Roman history he would be Eumenius, and in Egyptology he would be Pishoy. Wikipedia has it as Eumenius for the title, but the start goes "Appius Fabius Maximus Eumenius, also known by the Egyptian name Pishoy". Further research into the different names led to an off-hand commentary by his father that 'my son's mother calls him a name from her race. I do not acknowledge such a name, but let it be for my own sake' found underneath a page of a medieval Irish Bible in 2017.

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Decided to do something silly.