The product of what probably adds up to...ah...
carry the one...adjust for windspeed...wow, really? Yeah, a couple hundred hours of work: a map of North America from Robert Sobel's classic
For Want of A Nail, as well as the extensive universe created by the
For All Nails cabal visible through
this link.
It has been two hundred years (or bloody close to it [1]) since the North American Rebellion broke out, and 194 years since the Britannic Design resolved the American Crisis with the creation of the
Confederation of North America. The C.N.A., since its founding, has been a faithful member of Britain's domains, perservering with the institutions of King, Viceroy, and Governor-General through thick and thin. However, as many have noted with varying degrees of concern and joy over the years, this commitment has waxed and waned.
At present, things are very much on the wane.
Since the United British Empire [2] fought its way with considerable North American aid to a stalemate against the Germans, the CNA has been moving steadily out of the British orbit, first with Richard Mason's nigh-messianic pacifism [3] and now with the accession of Lennart Skinner to the Governor-Generalship. The canny Georgian has steadily sought to maximise the CNA's real power (in the wake of the abortive effort to "restore order" to the erstwhile Spanish associate state of Puerto Rico, now the Jeffersonist Republic of Boricua), and increasingly seeks friendlier relations with the CNA's western neighbour - possibly at the expense of relations with the Mother Country, particularly as the National Revival government of Sir Geoffrey Gold seeks to make Britain great again - whatever the cost.
To the C.N.A's west lies that land of exiles and adventurers, of wealth and poverty, of democracy and militant expansionism: the
United States of Mexico. Since its establishment after Andrew Jackson's coup in 1817 and the subsequent gerrymandering of the new nation to favour the Anglos of Jefferson (the state founded in Spanish Tejas by exiles from British North America after the Wilderness Walk of 1780-82), the U.S.M. has fought its way up and down the continent and across the Pacific. Its democracy has been more...irregular...than that of the CNA, from Benito Hermión's brief stint as Emperor in 1901 to Vicente Mercator's 1950 coup which saw the man known as the Mapmaker oust President Alvin Silva in the bloody aftermath of the Global War [4]. The Mapmaker officially ceded power in 1965, with his successor Raphael Dominguéz largely a figurehead, but at least he gave up after his term in office was up.
Enter Immanuel Moctezuma.
The new President of Mexico, also known as El Popo due to his size and temper, is determined to root out the parallel state Mercator has spent twenty-five years building in the War Department.
Especially since Bali.
With a massive percentage of the Mexican budget going into Mercator's domain, everyone knew the Army had to be working on
something - but nobody was sure what. The atomic bomb? Well, the project in Alaska was already ticking along without success. Something in New Granada? No, Colonel Elbittar deposed President Hermión, so he couldn't possibly be a Mercator ally.
So that nobody found out about the bomb works in Ciudad Camacho before it was too late made sense. A pity, then, that it took the world's first thermonuclear detonation [5] at Kramer Associates' annual retreat during Christmas, 1974 on the island of Bali. Tens of thousands died, and the beating heart of the world's largest company was torn out. Mercator's vitavised address to Mexico only confirmed people's worst fears of the Mexican madman.
Among the chaos and shock reigning since, the world community has established two things. First: New Granada, and its leadership, gave aid and comfort to an enemy of world peace. Second: they must accept international investigation of the bomb factory in Ciudad Camacho and punitive restrictions on their armed forces if they want to stay independent.
Elbittar [6] respectfully declined, and now the clouds of war gather over the Caribbean.
It's going to be an interesting bicentennary decade.
[1] The Rebellion broke out in April 1775, while the Britannic Design was signed in January 1781. Today is January 10, 1975.
[2] TTL's Commonwealth-equivalent (also known as the United Empire or UE), formed in 1906 from Britain's larger holdings but notably missing the CNA, which had already developed an independent enough foreign policy and national identity to decline entry, though it maintained Associate status. Since the British developed and detonated an atomic weapon in 1965 in the wildernesses of the Kingdom of Australia, the UE has reacquired relevance.
[3] Imagine Howard Beale from the film Network given a religious conviction, nervous disorder, and control of the most powerful nation on Earth.
[4] Specifically, the
Rainbow War, an eight-year insurgency by Negro and Mexicano fighters seeking their own form of justice against the Anglo and Hispano elite.
[5] Mercator, subtle man he is, does not object to the colloquialism "M-Bomb" or "Mercator bomb".
[6] Alexander Elbittar is somewhat like Francis Urquhart, albeit more loyal to the young Hohenzollern prince who has become the country's king.
Seriously, though, utterly fantastic work, this is the kind I'll come back to and enjoy time and time again. 
