Seven Surprising Facts about Louisiana
1. Measured both as a portion of the total economy and per capita, Louisiana has the highest military spending of any country in the New World. Louisiana believes it lives under a perpetual threat to its form of government and way of life. Much of this apparent threat comes from the RCR, or its neighbor to the north, Illinois. This fear is not self-induced: the destruction of that state is the official policy of both the RCR and Illinois, and they have entered into an alliance to pursue that purpose, albeit by less destructive means than an overt invasion. Louisiana is also subject to punitive trade measures by over half the countries in the world. The only neighbor with which it maintains completely unimpeded commerce, travel and financial relations is Neupreussia. Neupreussia is simply too pivotal to too many countries' economies to be treated roughly, and so it enjoys a stream of business by people and commercial entities needing to work around the various state-disciplinary regimes. New Netherland has a similar relationship, but is limited in its connections to Louisiana by domestic political considerations.
2. Despite controversy, Louisiana is an extremely popular tourist destination. Monde du sucre and Monde du sucre adulte are by far the most popular resorts (35 and 30 million annual visitors, respectively). Somewhat more tasteful is Louisiana's historic capital Philippeville, which is a thriving center for the arts, music and of course Louisiana's world-famous native cuisine. At Philippeville's center is the amazing Palais-Royal, built during the 19th century in a quixotic effort to outshine Versailles itself. Over 2,000 people died working on it, whether from heat, dehydration, illness arising from poor sanitation, or workplace injury. The mass grave is marked by a plaque and an 18-inch high obelisk adjacent to the enclosed hunting park.
3. Louisiana has an unusual and highly volatile media culture. This is best illustrated by reference to the referendum Louisiana held a few years ago as to whether princes of the blood and the lesser nobility should be subject to ordinary criminal prosecution. Early in the referendum campaign, the proposition had the support of a narrow majority of active citizens, before in the final weeks state-run journals broke a story alleging the involvement of an Afro-Satanist conspiracy in the pro-referendum movement. The referendum was defeated by a margin of 220,000 votes, and several members of the committee leading the referendum campaign were forced to emigrate shortly afterward.
4. While overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, Louisiana is the only nation in the world with a Catholic Church that is committed to neither the Vatican or the Court of the Regina Coeli. At first, Louisiana's steadfast loyalty to the Vatican was hardly surprising, considering the necessary alignment of the Mexico City Church to the RCR and the RCR's attitude toward Louisiana. Louisiana was even willing, somewhat grudgingly, to accept female priests and other twentieth century reforms. The breaking point came when the parlement-generale ordered every priest conducting mass to read a vehement condemnation of universal suffrage as "fresh nails in the body of Christ." Rome balked, an overwhelming majority of the priests refused, and an international crisis loomed as the Louisianan government considered criminal penalties for the refusal to comply. In the end the state backed down from the harsh measures originally considered, but punished the church with what it called a "new gallicism", severing Rome's authority within its borders. Whether this has had the effect of creating a new church is still hotly debated.
5. Many labor rights in Louisiana are waivable and merchantable. In Louisiana, entrants to the labor force 15 and older can sell to the state their rights to either sue or file complaints against their employers with the state alleging violations of laws against them. The laws employees can thus consent to not be protected by include those setting a minimum wage, limiting work hours, ensuring workplace safety, or guarding against long term health hazards. While selling the waiver to the state is ostensibly voluntary, and businesses are forbidden from making it a condition of employment, whether that is the actual case is also subject to intense debate. Upwards of 90 percent of all employees sell the waiver. In the customer service sector, the number is over 93 percent, and in heavy industry, 95 percent. Presently the state will purchase the lifetime waiver of a secondary school graduate for 2,600 ecus (800 pounds or 660 Reichsthalers). The best demonstration of this amount's purchasing power is that it's conventionally used to buy a basic weekend at
Monde du sucre the summer one turns 18.
6. Sometimes, the system works. In a way. Some years back the Dauphin Henri (who goes by the time-honored nickname in the Louisianan press of le Petit Fu--er, the title of le Gross Fu--er being reserved for His Most Christian Majesty) adopted as a pet issue the condition of Philippeville's levees and canals. Mid-level officials were berated on imagebox, additional funding was demanded, and kickback schemes of long standing were exposed and their perpetrators prosecuted at the young prince's vehement insistence. Even the most enthusiastic Bourbonists could barely suppress their eye-rolls at his sudden commitment and expertise. Then came the Storm of St. Giles' Day, when in the face of the worst cyclone the city had seen in a century the Dauphin insisted Philippeville did not need to be evacuated after all, because of the work he had done. Moreover, he decided at the last minute--to prevent panic by the general citizenry--to demonstrate how safe the city was by bedding down in
le fond, the lowest neighborhood of the city, the night before the storm hit, with his two small children.
The city awoke the next day almost certain that the royal succession had undergone significant change the night before, but found to its surprise that Henri's extensive new earthworks and elaborate machinery imported from the United States and Friedrichsland had actually done its work as promised. Addressing the media, he confidently declared "a state which cannot preserve the lives of its people against the elements does not deserve to continue", and got for his trouble glowing headlines, some of them for once actually outside Louisiana. Of course, it later became known that 350 Louisianans outside the anti-flood measures, which were concentrated around Philippeville, had perished. A recent informatic search found that the Louisianan media lists total casualties from the storm at between 6 and 9.
7. Louisiana-hate makes strange bedfellows. A phrase that has entered in the idiom of many western cultures is "like when Fortitude went to Mascoutaine." It's essentially a shorthand for not letting differences of opinion from getting in the way of a desired goal. This refers to when Clarice St. Claire invited Judge Fortitude Gutierrez to make the first state visit by a leader of the RCR to the Republic of Illinois, to seal the alliance resolved upon Louisiana's end. For context, it helps to understand the Illinois Republic has always been of a deeply reformist bent. At the time it had just become the first country in the world to recognize sex-concordant marriage, whereas Gutierrez led a republic where a criminal penalty of five years' imprisonment for sodomy was still commonly enforced. A half-million demonstrators from groups championing the causes of women and sexual minorities gathered to jeer the procession as Gutierrez and his entourage made their way fitfully to Coeur-de-la-Nation. With the gravitas of his 75 years, still bearing the facial scars he won (in Skinner culture, these things are "won") at Torun, he exited his palanquin and was greeted by St. Claire.
The orchestra was supposed to greet him with the anthem of the Republic of Christ the Redeemer, "Chain, Stone and Thunder." Instead it played the villain's march from the popular speculative fiction epic
Dreadnought, as a protest. Gutierrez did not flinch or betray annoyance. Three days later St. Claire and Gutierrez signed a treaty that resolved every issue, all the way down to the respective occupation zones in the event of an actual war that results in Louisiana's complete defeat.
Bonus: there is one thing we have for which we can thank the Louisianan press. It's in the broadsheets of Philippeville one first finds the collective references to the English colonies, later the English-speaking countries of North America, by the reference to a group (la portee) of puppies. In English, this of course translates as the litter. And that is how they are known today.
People who were around for the old timeline might remember Brazil got a tad weird in the seventeenth century, and I'm not sure how the Ploughing Under plays out when it reaches those states, because the first time we never got that far, because the research I had done on Latin American history then was criminally insufficient anyways, and because we are in this second timeline still so early on, and there are going to be many many many butterflies between now and the post-1800 world.