The Silver Knight, a Lithuania Timeline
- Thread starter Augenis
- Start date
Interesting stuff so far. I wonder if religious issues will break up England-France?
I think you may be exaggerating the prevalence of Serfdom in Russia proper: as in Poland and Lithuania, transition to full "official" serfdom was a 16th century phenomenon, and even in later times much of Russia was under 55%:
I think you may be exaggerating the prevalence of Serfdom in Russia proper: as in Poland and Lithuania, transition to full "official" serfdom was a 16th century phenomenon, and even in later times much of Russia was under 55%:
Well, to be fair, I wasn't comparing serfs and free peasants. I was comparing baudžiauninkai and laisvininkai, both of which are forms of serfdom, just that one is lighter than the other. The free peasants who live on their own were not included in that post.Interesting stuff so far. I wonder if religious issues will break up England-France?
I think you may be exaggerating the prevalence of Serfdom in Russia proper: as in Poland and Lithuania, transition to full "official" serfdom was a 16th century phenomenon, and even in later times much of Russia was under 55%:
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Well, OTL it was written in Poland and not considered to be a part of Lithuanian literature. I did try to replace it with "Song of Jogaila the Great" though!Thanks for "Radzivilliada" and "A Song about the the Bison"!
It seems, you have skipped "Prussian war", but I cannot find another name for TTL. Maybe, "Jogaila's wars"
I promise that the next chapter is coming next week, I swear! Western Europe will go to war, so you can all look forward to that.
It's interesting.
In Belarus, we believe that the poem was a part of Lithuanian literature (more exactly - a part of Belarusian literature), as an author was born in Lithuania, between Kletsk and Pinsk by the river Vislica. I see, there is another version, but it's surprise that in Lithuania "Polish version" is used, not "Belarusian".
I have lost in old literature again, as I thought that "Song of Jogaila" was OTL-"Song of Vytautas". Thanks, it's useful to remember old knowledge!
Chapter 19: Suppression, Depression
Part 19: Suppression, Depression (1546-1560)
Valdislavas II, the new King of Lithuania, represented a much different generation and a much different train of thought than his father. Valdislavas I was born in the upheaval of the Renaissance, and his beliefs largely followed the ones of that period: as in, he and his peers saw man as the greatest value of the Universe, a being capable to unveil the greatest mysteries of the world and reign over it. The humanist school of thought upheld early virtues like intellect, power and knowledge, and actively doubted the religious and ascetist ideals of the Medieval era. Valdislavas I was confident, a patron of the arts and an intellectual. However, by the time of his death, the era of the Renaissance had started to fade. As the Age of Discovery concluded, it had become clear that the world - no, the Universe itself - are vast and impossible to explore with the limitations of the human life. The active doubt of the system that Renaissance was famous for brought the Reformation and the subsequent wars, conflicts and horror. Valdislavas II was an erudite, highly intelligent, he knew numerous languages, from ancient ones like Latin and Ancient Greek to Russian and Spanish, but he was not the same "I am above all and you shall listen to me" type that his father was.
The very first thing the freshly baked King had to deal with was the rising Volanite movement. This movement, fighting for the destruction of the Brest Concordate and the reformation of the Orthodox Church in the spirit of Melanchthon's Reformists, was spreading across the Kingdom of Lithuania like wildfire. The biggest concentrations of the so-called "Volanites" were in the East, in Russia - in Tver, Novgorod and Yaroslavl, for example. It also had some followers in Ruthenia proper, especially around Chernigov and Polotsk, as well as in Lietuva Land. Upon the ascension of Valdislavas II, he was approached by Martynas Mažvydas, a Volanite preacher from Samogitia, on embracing this movement and helping change the Lithuanian Orthodox Church from within. The king considered it for a while, but that's when the court and the Council of Lords - both composed of much more reactionary members that wanted to retain the Concordate - stepped in and convinced him to kick the preacher out. The message was set - the King will not be in favor of the Volanites.
"What if Valdislavas II converted to Volanism?" That's an interesting question for alternate history. One thing can be said - the 16th century might have developed quite differently for the Lithuanians...
Despite the official anti-Volanite stance, Valdislavas II was a tolerant man. In 1547, he extended the section on religious freedom and autonomy to the Volanites, declaring that the supporters of this pseudo-Reformist movement cannot be prosecuted for their religion alone. The King also encouraged healthy religious debate in Vilnius University and other institutions. While in the rest of Europe, say, in the Holy Roman Empire, Reformation was associated with conflict, wars, revolts, book burnings and heresy, Lithuania looked like the exemption, a country where reformists and the orthodox could coexist.
In 1548, King Valdislavas II married Astrid, the Princess of Sweden, who arrived to Vilnius with a large dowry and 500 followers. This was a part of the diplomatic effort of King Jan Bielke, the first post-Kalmar King of Sweden, to find possible allies against Denmark as well as to secure his nation's eastern frontier. Sweden and Lithuania share a long, albeit largely unknown history of both trade and conflict. The battles between the Balts and the Vikings have been recorded in many Scandinavian sagas, and not as one-sided as one may believe - the mentions of such Norse kings like Sigurdr Ring having to defend their homeland from invading Curonians, as well as Baltic names and forgotten settlement ruins in Gotland tell a different story. And now, these two nations were connected by marriage ties.
This marriage produced a single child, a princess named Sofija, two years later. However, Valdislavas II did not love his North-born wife, and was overall disappointed, even depressed with the burdens of rule and the problems of his private life...
The colonization of the Vespucias continued throughout the 16th century, albeit extremely sporadically and only in limited settlements around the coast. Around the year 1550, the Portuguese made first contact with a native Vespucian empire on the west coast of South Vespucia, in what is now called the Antikuna mountain ridge (after the local name for a mountain and mountain pass in the area) - named the Inca. Lacking any capability of power projection in the region, the Portuguese explorers and colonists - now stretched out in a thin coastal line of settlements across Manuela - decided to avoid any sort of conflict with this peculiar civilization. In the north, the Spanish were struggling with the resurgent Mejico, and slowly making a push towards the control of local trade routes and the Caribbean. However, they weren't the only country interested in North Vespucia... Flying the Anglo-French banner, Dutch explorers under the lead of William van den Soepenberg visited Saint Brendan's Land in 1549 and pushed south and west. van den Soepenberg was the first to discover land beyond the island as well as a gulf beneath them, fertile and full of fish. The explorer named the newly discovered territory "Flevoland", after the Roman name for the Zuiderzee (Lake Flevo), of which the gulf and it's shores reminded the sailors of. Later exploration missions pushed forward across the eastern coast of North Vespucia, still far away from the Spanish-dominated "Mariana Gulf", but close enough that the lands were worthwhile.
The sailors and merchants of the Dutch Free State managed to convince their superiors, the King of England-France, that exploration and possibly colonization of North Vespucia was a lucrative endeavor that could benefit the massive nation. Many other interest groups saw Vespucia as a land of opportunity, too - for example, refugees fleeing religious oppression and wars, or opportunists seeking a better life elsewhere, or peasants wishing to escape from their landlords, or escaped convicts with nothing else to do, or crazed religious sects wishing to spread their heretical beliefs elsewhere - and people like these would later form the basis of the colonists that would arrive to Vespucia decades later.
Not that they would be alone out there, of course - native Vespucians did not take this development from the East lightly.
Late 16th century drawing of Dutch merchant ships
Some news arrived from Europe about the dealings in the Muslim world. Facing stiff and bloody competition in their push into Europe in the form of Visegrad, the Ottomans regrouped to put pressure in the Middle East. The Mamluk sultanate was eradicated decades ago, and the Turks were engaged in wide combat in Arabia and Persia. It was pretty clear by now that the Sultan of the Turks was the one true Caliph - who else was there to challenge him? Well, now there was - news arrived from India that a successor of Tamerlane had began the process of uniting the subcontinent under one banner, beating one local ruler after another...
India had seen numerous empires before, like Maurya and Gupta, but will this new development be any different from what happened before?
Well, it's not like the Lithuanians even knew what was going on over there. They had other matters at hand.
In 1554, the King's wife, Astrid of Sweden, suddenly passed away from malaria after the royal family's visit to Italy, and the nation, the court and her husband was left to mourn. But not for long, as soon plans for a new marriage for Valdislavas II were drafted by the Council of Lords, and especially it's head and the Grand Chancellor, Jonas Antanas Sapiega. Possible choices were Hedwig, the Princess of the Visegrad Union, or the dead Queen's sister Matilda, but Valdislavas was having none of that. It seemed like a sudden mood change for the usually content and malleable King. It was around this time that the monarch had met and got acquainted with one of his courtiers and the daughter of a Lithuanian magnate, Viktorija Kęsgailaitė.
In one of his many failed attempts at writing a some sort of poem to cheer himself up, Valdislavas added a little scribble on the back:
"The boyars, they're judging, they want me to be a good king. Who could have thought that to be one, you have to be a horrible pragmatic monster, though"
It wasn't his fault that he saw everything in such a negative light. Valdislavas II did not see the world in such a materialist, pragmatic light that his father did - he wasn't even the type of person to be a monarch...
The meeting with Viktorija soon developed into a fiery love for each other, one that was becoming more and more visible to the rest of the court. At the same time, Valdislavas was trying to drag out and delay his official marriage, one that Jonas Antanas Sapiega had already decided to be with Hedwig Luxemburg: the King first started chaotically changing possible places of wedding, then demanded for a change to the ornaments and the guest list, then suddenly just didn't respons to the courtiers' questions at all, until finally, in 1557, he declared his betrothal to the Visegradian princess to be null and void and that he shall marry Viktorija Kęsgailaitė.
This caused a massive uproar among the Lithuanian nobility? The King, marrying a mere noble? And declining a betrothal to the Princess of Visegrad? And denying the best wishes and hopes of the Council of Lords? What, are we entering despotism now? What is the King trying to do, rule all by himself? And Viktorija... are you sure she's not some sort of witch who seduced the young and confused monarch with her magic? She should be burned at the stake for that! But, no matter what, despite the outrage, the marriage went as planned, and contemporary writers noted that it was one of the very few times that Valdislavas II actually made and wore a real, not faked, not forced smile.
The marriage between Viktorija and Valdislavas did not last long, though... Mere months later, the Queen died, cause still unknown. It could be poisoning or an another type of attempt on her life by the opponents of this marriage, or it could just be an unknown disease.
Despite hating on her for this "witchcraft", Viktorija is still described as a beautiful woman, and one that knew how to make the young King lean to her side. The story of Valdislavas II and Viktorija Kęsgailaitė was sung about by numerous poets, writers and bards across the years, it is a very popular setting in Lithuanian literature and art today, but still, none know what exactly went on that day...
"The Death of Victoria" by Nicolo Malbertano, 1885
While the King of Lithuania was mourning the loss of his loved one, something much, much more ominous happened in Western Europe. Ominous, but predictable. The differences and hostilities between the French and the English were set by the Eighty Years' War, and the latter, having enforced a personal union on the former, were not particularly nice overlords. It was also worsened by the fact that the center of the government was located in the British Isles, in Westminster, and thus could not effectively respond to problems in the mainland. However, despite the animosity and differences between the two nations that were there from pretty much very beginning, England-France clinged on and was still a superpower compared to it's neighbours - the reason being that the "French nation" had little in common between each other. They were composed of different regions, each one with different traditions, and while they were for the most part against English rule, they lacked a unifying force to truly set the ball rolling.
Which is exactly what happened when the Reformation, and thus the preachings of Jean de Flammant. The Flammantian ideology carried a tint of national thought with it - it held the idea that man needed to learn in his mother tongue and be surrounded by the people of his nation, and ruled by people of his nation, so he could more easily hear the voice of Christ... Of course, it also embellished ascetism and piety, but that wasn't a bad thing to have along the way. The Flammantian Reformation spread across the cities and countryside of France likewildfire and the suppression carried out by the fanatical Henry VIII did little to stop the expansion. The French reformists were mostly concentrated in the south of the nation, and soon, a man by the name of Pierre de Foix rose up to unite the French for one more stand...
The beginning of what will be known as the Flammantian Wars began in late 1558 in Clermont, where de Foix - a somewhat powerful French war hero and veteran of the Burgundian Wars, as well as a devout Reformist - rallied the representatives from all of France into the Estates General of Clermont, named after the "parliament" of the annexed French kingdom. There, the French representatives from all three estates of the nation declared "the beginning of the struggle of the French nation to rid the country of the Englishmen and to reorganize France according to the teachings of Jean de Flammant".
In the 20th century, historian Jogaila Bucevičius would write: "The followers of de Foix were the first nationalists in Europe..."
Soon, town militas and raised revolter units formed across the nation, and the first military engagements took place. Henry VIII was already dead, replaced by Henry IX, who promptly rallied his troops to sail and march to the Continent and put down this rebellion. Meanwhile, Pierre de Foix was getting ready to reorganize the disorganized French militias according to the newest tactics of war.
This "French Rebellion" soon caught the attention of nearby powers, like Spain and Austria, which faced a dilemma. Supporting the French would mean knocking down England-France a notch and disintegrating it, but then the flag would be set for even more Reformist rebellions across Europe...
---
There we go. A longer part than usual. I think. I didn't count.
Don't count words, don't count paragraphs! Count only the number of readers you've caught interest of! - Writer Stalin
Ah, the Inca, the best way to get on any proud AH fan's good side...
It's quite a bit of lucky for them that the TTL Tordesillo treaty hands over all of South Vespucia to the Portuguese, huh?
Paging the biggest Inca fan I know, @Emperor RyRy
Sure. Manuela is more than the Portuguese can bite off and chew.Ah, the Inca, the best way to get on any proud AH fan's good side...
It's quite a bit of lucky for them that the TTL Tordesillo treaty hands over all of South Vespucia to the Portuguese, huh?
Paging the biggest Inca fan I know, @Emperor RyRy
Emperor RyRy
Banned
Ah, the Inca, the best way to get on any proud AH fan's good side...
It's quite a bit of lucky for them that the TTL Tordesillo treaty hands over all of South Vespucia to the Portuguese, huh?
Paging the biggest Inca fan I know, @Emperor RyRy
WHAT
OOOOH YEAH
Chapter 20: All is Fair in Business and War
Part 20: All is Fair in Business and War (1560-1568)
1561 began with a surprising discovery. The Portuguese vessel São Manuel, one of the Iberian nation's most reliable ships for trade in the Far East, was blown off course while sailing for a regular trip to Guangzhou, and after a few weeks of travel in unmapped waters, it landed near a strange, mountainous island inhabited by a civilization that, while it resembled the Chinese in some ways, was also quite different. It turned out that the crew of the ship were the first Europeans to step foot on Japan, the Land of the Rising Sun, a territory mentioned by Marco Polo as Cipangu. While the local warlords and civilians of the Japanese isles viewed these Westerners with suspicion, the Portuguese were highly intrigued by the silver mines and production in this land. This archipelago was in fact China's main source of silver and gold, precious metals that Europe was lacking more and more now that it's local mines were being depleted. The Portuguese were also highly surprised by the warrior culture and extreme population density of the nation - this group of islands, most of which is mountainous, can hold more people than France!
Throughout the 16th century, Portugal was the dominating European force in East and South Asia. It pretty much monopolized the trade route to India around Africa, and even had a few treaty ports on the tip of the subcontinent, such as Cochin. The Portuguese also pushed forward, using the yearly monsoons to navigate the Sea of Arabia and the Gulf of Bengal, and often visited China, from which they would bring tea, porcelain and the ever so precious silk. And now Japan, with it's silver and copper, was added to their potential "customers". While the trips from East Asia to the bases in India and then all the way to Europe were dangerous and expensive, the demand for Eastern goods was so great that it more than paid off. Would this lucrative endeavor last forever, though, especially when other naval powers like the Netherlands and Spain explored similar routes?..
There was one more particular good that the Portuguese domineered in - slaves. Slaves from the Black Continent in particular. The Europeans held a few strongholds on the coast of West Africa, but they didn't capture locals by themselves - they had other people. Either local African kings, who would gladly sell war captives or even sometimes their own people to the Whiteskins in exchange for alcohol, Bibles and weapons, or Arabian merchants who would do the capturing for them. It's a dark portion of history of trade and history of Europe, but one that needs to be known. While the Portuguese sent many of the captured slaves to their own colonies in Manuela, where the colonists adopted a neu-latifundium stance towards these massive lands, creating fazenda - large plantations and estates using slave labor - but the biggest customer for the Atlantic slave trade was the Spanish empire.
The Spanish struggled to push inland due to fierce resistance from the locals and competition with the Empire of Mejico, but the Caribbean was firmly in their control. While the first half of the 16th century saw the colonization of the Vespucias to be an expensive endeavor and largely a money sinkhole, the other half saw everything change with the introduction of sugar cane plantations. Before the discovery of the New World, sugarcanes were already common among the Islamic world and Southern Europe, brought there from India, and the warm and humid climate of the Caribbean was perfect for growing this produce that was growing more and more valuable every year. 1563 was a turning point, at least in some places - in the island of Santa Ana, the profits of the colony, most of them from sugar trade, that were sent to the homeland for the first time in the colony's history were higher than the value of material and other support that Spain sent to it. A development that the Governor of Santa Ana, Manuel Xavier Encarnación, famously commented on saying:
"We are exporting white gold."
But, obviously, someone has to grow and extract this "white gold", and that is where the African slaves come in. After all, someone had to work in sugarcane plantations and harvest sugar for Europe to enjoy and buy. The work and living conditions in Caribbean sugar plantations were absolutely awful, the life expectancy of an average slave from their arrival to their death was six years. Only men were brought in, at many times mixed in the same ship with people from different tribes to avoid communication and thus rebellions, their former lives were completely crushed and they were treated as literal living tools by the Spanish owners. And despite the horrible conditions and the situation, the Spanish had little empathy for the African slaves - "what, are we supposed to care about these negroes? They were made by God to slave for someone, if not us, then each other!", they seem to say.
African slaves working in a sugar plantation in Puerto Norte
While the Iberians were conducting business across the world, Europe was bleeding. The Flammantian Wars across France quickly kicked into gear. Most of the French units were organized from lightly armed civilian volunteers gathered in cities and towns, the city levée ("uprising" or "levy"), but Jean de Foix knew that this was not going to cut it - his forces were untrained and equipped with much lower quality weapons than the English, and if some major reorganization and armament is not made, and fast, then the Uprising will fail. It was truly a lot of pressure - in many ways, the Flammantians had to improvise equipment and formations completely. However, the first few years of the war gave the French some luck. First, the French soldiers in the Anglo-French armies and garrisons began deserting and joining the Revolt en masse, provinding de Foix with fresh trained warriors. And second - the foreign situation was on his side.
The Holy Roman Empire, led by Austria, was still bitterover the defeat in Burgundy a few decades earlier, and the Emperor began preparing a campaign into Lorraine to reconquer Imperial territory, and even provided the Flammantians with some financial support to weaken his rival. Spain, meanwhile, led by the religious Philip III, stood firmly against these Reformist rebels, preparing it's own campaign through the Pyrhennes... Austrian help, hired mercenaries using the wealth from raided and looted pro-English estates and French deserters allowed Jean de Foix to form the Liberté Legion. Despite Henry IX landing in Normandy and pacifying Paris - and pacifying through massacring the organizers of the Paris Levee and enacting harsh punishment of the rest - the war was generally calm and focused on low-level combat for the first few years. Neither force really lacked the capability to even "find" the other one, instead resorting on low-scale raids, scouting the land and capturing unprotected cities.
Of course, this idyllic war didn't last forever, as in 1566, the armies of England-France led by Henry IX engaged the Libertè Legion near Limoges, not far from the Flammantian base of operations in Clermont. The Battle of Limoges carried a tint of irony with it - the English, confident in the superiority of their forces and believing that the Legion was just "a group of peasants with muskets", decided to just send a cavalry charge to crush and break the French - the exact same mistake that the French themselves did numerous times during the Eighty Years' War. Meanwhile, the Libertè Legion employed the new and only recently developed pike-and-shot tactic - that is, and army composed of musketeers in the center and pikemen in the corners and sides to protect them from cavalry charges. It worked out just as well as one would expect - with a victory for the French. Not an absolutely crushing one, but a powerful one that echoed and resonated across Europe. God supports the Reformists! The French might actually win! Southern Germany and Bohemia, both Reformist dominated regions, began swirling and shaking a little - maybe they could be just as successful? Jean de Foix was well aware that the war was not yet won, though. However, he still rallied the Second Estates General of Clermont, where the Flammantians decided their strategy, both during an after the war - the kings of the past turned France into an English province, thus, much like the citizens of Rome after overthrowing their tyrant king, the French will organize themselves without a monarch...
The Anglo-French forces pillaged and burned Centrè and the regions around the Loire river as punishment. Henry IX famously stated:
"If God wants to support the Bores, then we will change his mind by killing all of them."
The Parliament of England wasn't particularly keen on mass murdering it's subjects, but what could it do? The Kings of England were covertly, secretly, working on curbing the powers of the Parliament, piece by piece, and the Flammantian Wars were their greatest opportunity to enact "emergency acts" to "save the Kingdoms", and consolidate their power that way.
There is one war participant that hasn't been mentioned yet, though. The Netherlands Free State, a client state of England-France, was officially in war against the Flammantians and de Foix's revolters, as well as Austria, but was relatively neutral. Despite having been freed by Anglo-French forces, the Dutch did not see them as liberators - the pillaged landscapes of the Low Countries after the Burgundian Wars speak for themselves. The burghers and merchants of the Free State were still considering their choices - remain loyal to the English or align with the French? Either way, they were making profit from the mess through English concessions for loyalty and secretly trading with both sides, as well as acquiring a cheap source of colonists through French war refugees. It was the Flammantians Wars period when the Dutch began their own colonization of the Vespucias, starting with Nieuw-Amsterdam in 1567, a stronghold and minor settlement on a long island along the North Vespucian coast. North Vespucia did not blast such advanced native civilizations like the South, but it was nevertheless inhabited, and arriving Dutch merchants immediately saw the potential of the local furs and fish sources.
It would take a while before all this would really kick into gear, though...
The victories of the French Flammantians and Reformist insurrections in the Holy Roman Empire, as well as the spread of the Reformation in general, motivated Pope Nicholas VI to organize a council of the Catholic Church in Salerno, starting from 1567. There, the Papacy would declare the beginning of the Anti-Reformation, a Catholic movement to fight the spread of the Reformists and provide a reasonable alternative to this rebellious faith. Some changes in doctrine were also initiated - for example, indulgences and simony were both banned completely, and Mass was now allowed to be held in local languages along with Latin. However, the Church did not change their stance on things like celibacy and worship of saints, and declared the Reformists, Flammantians and Volanites to be heretical movements. The Inquisition was resurrected from dormancy as the Church's tool in the Anti-Reformation, too...
And speaking of Volanites - Lithuania. In 1567, the only child of Valdislavas II, Sofija Valdislavaitė, was sent away from Lithuania to marry the Prince of the Electorate of Brandenburg, Friedrich von Hohenzollern, in a strategic marriage to get Lithuania and this possible ally against Visegrad closer together - and an alliance against Visegrsd was required, especially after the insulting breaking of betrothal that Valdislavas II enacted dramatically soured relations between the two Eastern empires. However, this did not bode well with the depressed King. Sofija, his daughter, while born from his marriage to Astrida, was indeed deeply loved by the monarch, she reminded him of Viktorija... and now she was gone, in a foreign court, probably never to meet him again.
Five months after the marriage between Sofija and Friedrich, in January of 1568, Valdislavas II suddenly died. From what? None are sure. Sources on this death differ, but considering that the King was only about 50 years old by that time and had no history of former sickness, it couldn't have been a simple natural cause. Some say that he perished from an infected wound that he hid from his court and the doctors. Some say that he accidentally, or maybe even purposefully, ended his life by leaping off the tower of the Trakai Castle, where he lived at the time, some say he was poisoned an unknown spy, or a courtier. Or by himself...
And thus died the last male descendent of Valdislavas I, and the succession was now in turmoil. Logically, it should be Sofija who inherits the throne, but can a woman really rule? Lithuania has never experienced a female ruler, at least... The ideas of a "noble republic" proposed during the Glinskis Regency received a revival, and the Chancellor, Jonas Astikas, who was a supporter of this cause, ordered the troops of his estate to seize Vilnius and declared himself recent until a King is found. Numerous pretenders, descendants of Gediminids or Jagiellons, sprang up to raise their banners for the claim on the throne. And finally, in April, a detachment of 500 Brandenburgian knights with Sofija and Friedrich in the lead landed in Klaipėda...
Who will turn out victorious in this "succession crisis"? Or is this question even meaningful?
---
Here are a few other Vespucian locations, some from the last part that I forgot to inform of:
Santa Ana - Jamaica
Mariana Gulf - Gulf of Mexico
Flevoland - Nova Scotia/Gulf of St Lawrence
Nieuw-Amsterdam - Long Island
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We have reached 20 chapters! Woohoo!
*crack opens a can of Kalnapilis beer* Cheers. To us, the survivors!
Here's an interesting question to all of you still following, now that we have a big enough TL to draw an answer from: Which nation in "The Silver Knight" are you most interested in? Is it good old Lithuania? Visegrad? England-France? Austria? Others? What do you think?
*crack opens a can of Kalnapilis beer* Cheers. To us, the survivors!
Here's an interesting question to all of you still following, now that we have a big enough TL to draw an answer from: Which nation in "The Silver Knight" are you most interested in? Is it good old Lithuania? Visegrad? England-France? Austria? Others? What do you think?
I especially like the republic of Novgorod, I hope they can stay independent in this, I've a fondness for republics.
They've been good at kissing Lithuania's ass so far and lucky at choosing the right side.
Though, if you like republics, I think you'll also like what the Second Estates General of Clermont has proposed...
The Uralic people are there. The Finns are firmly under Sweden, Estonians under Livonia, Hungarians are one of the three main nations composing the Union of Visegrad, Mordvins are divided between the Kazan Khanate and Lithuania, while the rest are more or less free and stateless.
Oh, yeah, and Great Perm still exists, though the continuation of it's existence is a big question, considering Lithuania and the Tatar khanates are both strong and wouldn't be against annexing the Komi.
I do have ideas for some of the Uralic peoples, but they are still mostly in my head and not developed yet (I mean, except for Hungarians, which should be pretty obvious)