Make this dream come true

Had a dream last night... Post-Napoleonic but a strange map of Europe, the dream set in 1918 as Tsar Aleksandr II was 100

French Empire (Bonaparte)
Rules roughly over France, Piedmont, Lombardy, Parma and Rome, and further North over Westphalia and Lower Netherlands (Belgium), also with dominion over Spain and Portugal which are now sub-kingdoms of the French Empire. The Barbary States (Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli) have been subsumed into the empire.

Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland
Basically the British Isles plus Heligoland

German Empire
Based around the pre-Napoleonic Prussia, this includes the Polish partition lands such as Warsaw, also Bavaria into the Tyrol, and though it lacks the Westphalian lands, it rules over the Netherlands, and has dominion over Denmark

Austrian Empire
Think Austria without the Tyrol, but with dominion over Venice as a sub-entity still including its Illyrian, Ionian etc possessions

Ottoman Empire
With dominion still over the (Rumanian) Principalities, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Hercegovina, and Greece in Europe. As well as the Middle East and Egypt

Sweden
Rules over 'The North' - OTL Norway, Sweden and Finland

Russian Empire
Smaller than OTL, mainly in Europe due to lack of Finland and central Poland. Asian possessions are less, due to circumstances listed below (Persia, Bokhara etc)

Persia
Includes dominion over Turkmenistan, all of Azerbaijan, and parts of Khiva

Bokhara
Includes dominion over parts of Kazakhstan, most of Khiva, Afghanistan and Kokand

Two Sicilies
The remainder of the Italian peninsular, equivalent to OTL's kingdom. Under the Murat dynasty


The main thrust of the political aspect of 1918 was that Europe had become a concert of old men - the emperors of France, Germany, Austria and Russia most especially


Grey Wolf

I remember three or four political tensions from the dream :-

1. British meddling in Denmark against the Germans

2. German gun-running and support for irredentist movements in Westphalia and the Lower Netherlands

3. The frail state of Aleksandr II and the question of Russian succession

3+ - That Europe is a concert of old men, and that a time of change is coming...

Grey Wolf

You are dreaming very detailed dreams - political dreams no less
I think we can thus declare you to be King of AH Geeks. Oh, wait, youre monarchist - makes this Presiden of AH Geeks then

Seems like Prussia stayed truely neutral during the war... ah, then how did they lose their west-elbian possesions to Westphalia? Hm, maybe the were defeted, in a minor defea, and thus began to organise german resistance... but westphalia they could not beat. Maybe it allied with GB or thus - could explain the seeming histilities bewteen GB and Germany...

Filling things out :-

Germany
United in a series of leagues, wars and alliances
Eventually sees Prussian hegemony
Wilhelm, brother of Friedrich Wilhelm IV is killed in action
First German emperor is Kaiser Karl (dies 1883)
The German Emperor in 1918 is Kaiser Friedrich Karl (born 1828 so aged 90)

Russia
One gets the impression that there is a Habsburg-like succession crisis. To fill this out, have Aleksandr III of OTL (in this the Tsesarevitch) die as in OTL, have Nicholas die at Livadia at the turn of the 20th century when he had only had daughters, George die as in OTL, and Michael assassinated. Thus by 1918 the heir is Kyril Vladimirovich but his legitimacy is challenged by Grand Duke Paul and his son Dmitri over the fact that Kyril has married a divorcee.
Aleksandr II is 100 years old, and increasingly frail

Austria
Kaiser Rudolph at 70 years of age is the relative youngster in the quartet of European emperors. He succeeded his father Franz Josef, who succeeded his own father, and he his brother Ferdinand. The abdications and waivers of OTL have not happened in this ATL

France
Given that this ATL is based on Napoleonic divergence, one can assume that the line of Napoleon I continues directly. Despite different than OTL political/military events after Amiens, the divorce of Josephine and the Austrian marriage goes ahead. This provides history with Napoleon II, born 1811 and ruling from the 1840s or so. His son, Napoleon III born in that period is now emperor of France, and aged in his 80s

The other monarchs of note within Europe would be the Ottoman Sultan, the King of Great Britain & Ireland, and the King of Sweden, along with the (Murat) King of the Two Sicilies.

Grey Wolf

Susano said:

You are dreaming very detailed dreams - political dreams no less
I think we can thus declare you to be King of AH Geeks. Oh, wait, youre monarchist - makes this Presiden of AH Geeks then

Seems like Prussia stayed truely neutral during the war... ah, then how did they lose their west-elbian possesions to Westphalia? Hm, maybe the were defeted, in a minor defea, and thus began to organise german resistance... but westphalia they could not beat. Maybe it allied with GB or thus - could explain the seeming histilities bewteen GB and Germany...

Click to expand...

One's impression of the dream was that it was mainly post-Amiens that things diverged, this could include conflicts with losses, as well as agreements that brough restitution of lost lands.

As it was only a dream, and mainly seen from a French perspective, I don't know how to answer the question of how Russia emerges so relatively weakened. Perhaps the accords lasted longer, assassinations were not carried out on schedule, they were 'content' to play second fiddle to Napoleon's France, etc

One also got the impression that it was Napoleon I who went after the Barbary states, that this diverted a lot of attention from further adventures within Europe, and that a prime motivation was the massive debt that France incurred to Algiers, plus a focus for imperialism

Grey Wolf

How did France keeps westphalia but lose holland?

I'd actually say europe was only freed after a generation of bonaparte's hegemony; thus russia was beaten by boney, and lost finland.

Don't you just want to break into Grey Wolf's house one night and saw the top of his head off to see how his brain works?

Landshark said:

Don't you just want to break into Grey Wolf's house one night and saw the top of his head off to see how his brain works?

Click to expand...

Yes.

Maybe I shouldn't post the 'sequel' dream I had napping this afternoon ??? It was focused on South America, with a giant Colombia which basically covered Peru as well as Gran Colombia and as far as I could tell was a monarchy.

A main character was called Michael Powell, and the dream focused on a minor event (someone placed a paper knife on his cigar case, he pocketed both in his breast pocket whereas he would normally have pocketed a pen, and in getting them out in evening conversation he dropped the knife in surprise, bent to receive it and someone shot at him, missed and killed someone in the background). This was somehow related to a Great War which included the South American nations as well as the aforementioned European ones

Yes, please come and saw the top of my head off

Grey Wolf

Wolf> geez, you dream the weirdest stuff...

Truely, your brain should be conservated after your death. Who knows what still could come out of it!

Here's a dream of mine: I was playing basketball with a girl I liked, and icecicles were hanging from the ceiling of my school's gym.

Mikey said:

Here's a dream of mine: I was playing basketball with a girl I liked, and icecicles were hanging from the ceiling of my school's gym.

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Yeah, you're young lol I think the icicles be telling you she is not hot on you though ?

Grey Wolf

What the Hell are they putting in the water down there?

I mean the most interesting dream I've ever had was about fighting off a plague of zombie Manchester United fans while dressed as a British Airways stewardess.

If we ever have an AH.Com convention we have just got to strap him down and experiment on him. It's our duty to mankind.

The sequel sounds like the plot of John Buchan's unpublished AH novel.

Grey Wolf said:

Yeah, you're young lol I think the icicles be telling you she is not hot on you though ?

Grey Wolf

Click to expand...

Thank-you Doctor Frued.

Sorry Grey Wolf, I don't know enough to help you. I will now go willfully off topic. I apologise.

I've never met anyone with stranger dreams than myself. Still, none of my dreams come out looking like the outlines of novels!

Okay, one of my favorite odd dreams...

I am kidnapped by the government (from a generic alley, as far as I can remember). They give me to a private company that sticks me in a clear plexi-glass tube which is filled up with a generic green goo. I then turn into a plesiosaurus... That's one of those swimming reptiles contemporaneous to the dinosaurs. Long thin neck, teeth like needles, four flippers.

Yeah. I know.

Anyway, I'm stuck in this indoor animal park with a bunch of others. The younger someone was, the less dangerous an animal they were turned into, on the premise that they would be more likely to cause trouble. Teenagers were turned into Plesiosaurs, children into Compsognathus (a kind of chicken-sized bipedal dino), middle-aged people into Stegosaurs, and the elderly into Triceratops.

We could talk to each other, but not to the humans (who watched us from behind a railing). I distinctly remember chatting with a little girl on a riverbank for a while (I couldn't get on land). It was very odd. Towards the end I think I was flirting with a girl I knew from school, who was also a Plesiosaur, but that may have been a later dream.

Honestly, can anyone compete with that?