A More Personal Union

[Nazi Space Spy]

Wow! It looks like Ferdinand is going to get the Saddam treatment.....

[Grouchio]

Wait for a three-year long trial to go somewhere and then hang him?

[Thespitron 6000]

"Behold, The King Of Spain"

Summer 1598: The Siege of Madrid begins. Alliance cannon bombard the Alcazar, causing masonry to crumble down around the ears of the terrified defenders. A dusty haze hangs over the city as the Madrilenos can only watch the occupying armies encamped on the surrounding fields. The Alliance armies are in no hurry. Eventually Madrid will fall, most likely sooner rather than later.

Inside the Alcazar, a tomblike pall hangs over the Court. Philip is dying. The old tyrant has long since retreated from the world of politics, and now a frail old man, clings to life in his deathbed. Ferdinand can only watch helplessly as his father slips towards the abyss. Philip slides between wakefulness and sleep, often going hours without speaking, as his son sits by his side.

“I hear thunder,” he gasps.

“Cannon, father. The enemy is at the gate,” says Ferdinand.

“I dreamt that the land had fallen, and was wholly burnt up, and there was no green thing in it.”

“‘Twas no dream, father,” Ferdinand says, and closes his eyes in weariness.

“Then the war is lost? Is it Elizabeth? Has she come for me? I will still take her to wife, if she will have me.”

“No, father, no.” Ferdinand’s mother, having been sent away from Madrid for her own safety, has already been captured by the Alliance. Henri treats his aunt kindly, but she is still kept under armed guard.

“Why have you done this?” Philip hisses, his decrepit voice filled with bitter fury.

“Why have I--All that I am, everything I have done,” says Ferdinand, angry tears in his eyes, and grasps his father’s hand tightly, “has been for the glory of Spain! For your honor!”

“There is a country, beyond these fields, a country of wheat and honey, a country of apples, a country where there is no sickness, no war...” Philip’s voice trails off into murmurs.

“You are my father, and I am your son, and you are still in this country, this land, and I am with you!”

Philip seems to fall asleep. Then his eyes flutter open. “The country is lost, gone forever.” His voice is very weak.

Ferdinand can only nod brusquely, tears rolling down his cheeks.

“O my son,” gasps Philip, “O Carlos, what a king you would have made! A king of Spain!” Then he closes his eyes.

He lingers on for a few minutes longer, and then Ferdinand feels his father’s spirit depart. The Prince of Asturias sits for a long time, holding his father’s hand.

In the antechambers, the courtiers hear a loud crash, as if some great wooden plank had been rent in two. Then the door to the King’s bedchamber creaks open, shafts of golden light streaming through, and Ferdinand stands in the door, eyes red, his face like granite. “Behold,” he says, in a bitter tone, “the King of Spain.”

In the first week of August, Madrid falls. Alliance troops storm through the city, sacking it thoroughly, looting priceless treasures and anything else they can take. The Alcazar itself holds out a few hours longer, but it too falls, and Henri himself is the first through the door. They find Philip’s body, in a crude tomb off the chapel, but a systematic search of the castle turns up no sign of the King of Spain.

Ferdinand has escaped.

[Shawn Endresen]

Hmmm. There's New Spain, I suppose, although it isn't that well settled yet...There's also Vienna or Serbia, as his cousins wouldn't turn him over and I'm pretty sure nobody's willing to restart the war in the East...

Serves Henri right. Hell, I realize they were poorly trained levies, but Spain went down too easy

[Xgentis]

Damn it where did that devil has gone to? By the way who or what Spanish nobility has a claim on the Spanish throne?

[Saya Aensland]

*flashbacks to Ferdinand's childhood, when Philip treated him brusquely when he just wanted his father's approval*

Now look what you made me do, I'm sympathizing with the antagonist.

[Xgentis]

Originally Posted by Shawn Endresen

Hmmm. There's New Spain, I suppose, although it isn't that well settled yet...There's also Vienna or Serbia, as his cousins wouldn't turn him over and I'm pretty sure nobody's willing to restart the war in the East...

Serves Henri right. Hell, I realize they were poorly trained levies, but Spain went down too easy

The only guy rooting for the spanish

[J. de Vos]

Whow, that bastard just doesn't know when to quit! Yet, atleast the war is now over. Peace (for now), at last!

[JacktheCat]

Shades of Senor Lopez.

Let's hope the population of Spain in TTL has fared better than the OTL male population of Paraguay did.

[Razgriz 2K9]

The war is not over. It will not end until we have Ferdinand's head on a pike...Even if we have to turn Europe and the Americas upside down and inside out to do it. Even if we have to end Hapsburg rule everywhere in Europe...

MY VENGEANCE WILL NOT BE DENIED!!!

[naraht]

(not official!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

"Exploration for Revenge"
1598-1613: Perhaps in another timeline, exploration would have continued for Gold or Silver, for Religious freedom (Perhaps English or French Catholics), for farmland or for Competition between England, France, Portugal, Navarre and Spain, but at least for the 15 years following the fall of Madrid the primary reason for exploration among the best known of the English and French explorers was the search for Ferdinand. Finally in April of 1613, near where Magellan had first landed in the Philippines, was the last King of Spain found and captured. Representatives from four continents observed the trial, and King Augusta's personal priest gave him confession. The following morning, Ferdinand, and in essence Spain, were dead.

[Nazi Space Spy]

Wow....Hopefully Ferdinand will not try to make it to New Spain.

[J. de Vos]

I don't think he'll get a warm reception. Perhaps slaves all over the Spanish Empire are in now in revolt.

[Saya Aensland]

Re-reading older posts for fun...

Originally Posted by Thespitron 6000

“Nay, Geoffrey, nay,” gasps Shakespeare, pulling Bourbon away, and Bourbon is shocked to see the man pale, his narrow, beardless face drawn and damp with sweat. “Look not you in yon shed, there are some things a man should not see.”

Throwing off Shakespeare’s arm, disturbed by his friend’s countenance, he places a hand on the door of the shed. Shakespeare is a hardened veteran, his soft, boyish face betraying nothing of the ruthless blade beneath--as deadly a swordsman as Bourbon has yet known--what could upset him so?

Kudos on the foreshadowing, Thespitron.

[Tyg]

Originally Posted by Saya Aensland

Kudos on the foreshadowing, Thespitron.

Indeed, that was subtle.

I did a search and couldn't find any mention either way, so... Is Geoffrey de Bourbon married?

[kellineil]

I would also note that POD is late 1560. OTL Shakespeare was born in 1564. Excellent subtle butterflies!

[Xgentis]

A little bump.

[Positively Indecent]

A bigger bump :P
I love how many kickarse women there or ITL

[Thespitron 6000]

“A Land Given Over to Ghosts and Dogs”: The Last Days of the Ming

Spring 1599: With the end of the Great War, Portuguese trade in the east, now accompanied by Dutch, Navarrese, and English voyages, resumes. The Indians and Japanese are happy to return to the profitable days of not too long ago, when silk and sugar and ivory and silver flowed throughout the lands touching the Indian Ocean and the Chinese Seas and everyone got rich.

In China, however, things have stayed much as they’ve always been. The dynasties may change, but nothing else much does. And the Ming rulers of China want little to do with the outside world. Although Europeans like Marco Polo, the Portuguese in Macao, and the Navarrese under Jean Ribault might visit, the Chinese have no desire for them to stay, nor do they see the outsiders as having anything China might want or need. Secure and smug in their little world, the rulers of the Middle Kingdom are confident theirs is a dynasty that will last a thousand years. China is serene, and unaffected by shifts in politics, religion, and trade elsewhere.

That is about to change.

Trade brings opportunities and increased wealth, but it also brings danger as well. The sugar trade has made both the Portuguese who provide it and the Japanese who control it rich. But in the spring of 1599, a cargo of sugarcane arrives in Nagasaki tainted with the fungus that causes stem rot*. Alone, this is not such a big deal. But the fungus leaps from sugarcane to rice stalk, and within months an epidemic of stem rot is raging up and down Japan, destroying tens of thousands of tons of valuable rice via what the Japanese bitterly dub the “foolish seedlings”. Heroic and often dictatorial efforts on the part of the Oda government stem and eventually turn the tide of the epidemic--agents of the Regency burn entire fields over, scattering oil on the surface of the paddies and setting them alight, if there is the slightest sign of the foolish seedlings--and a major famine is only just averted. Hunger is widespread throughout Japan in 1599 and 1600, and foolish seedlings will continue to dog the Japanese rice industry, but for now the situation has been saved.

China is not so lucky. Rice tainted with stem rot is accidentally brought into Shanghai, where it spreads into the local supply. Although the wheat-growing north is relatively unaffected, the rice-based south staggers as if sucker-punched. Stem rot strikes without warning, rendering huge swathes of farmland useless. Tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands begin to starve. By this time, the Wanli Emperor has begun to withdraw from the day to day political life of the Empire, leaving China to the increasingly faction-riddled bureaucracy. For the bureaucrats, the danger is the Manchu raiders on China’s northern border, not the increasingly devastating famine that rages through 1599 and 1600.

For the peasants, on the other hand, this is a time of omens. A comet seen in 1599 presages great changes to come. It is said hungry ghosts now walk the trails and roads of the interior, that monsters roam the coastal seas. The famine results in isolated instances of cannibalism that become worryingly common as time passes and no end to the hunger appears to be in sight. Secret societies flourish, and the wise speak, when no one can hear, that this is the time of the fall of dynasties.

Worse for the government, the particular strain of stem rot that develops in the southwest causes ergotism in those foolish enough to eat it. In Sichuan, the hallucinations and mania produced by the fungus give rise to a combination secret society and religious mystery cult that calls for the overthrow of the Emperor and the establishment of a new, “pure” dynasty. Initiates eat contaminated rice, and then once a hallucinogenic state has been induced, they chant, dance wildly, and grapple with each other while in the grip of this madness. They claim to be the reincarnation of the ancient White Lotus society, and call themselves the Heavenly Society of the Reborn White Lotus, but to those who come to fear them, and there are many, they are simply known as the Wrestlers.

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*OTL Gibberella fujikuroi

[Saya Aensland]

Oh dear, China is familiarizing itself with fecal matter and electric fans...