Thande

Donor
Before I write the next update, thanks to whoever pointed out I'd accidentally duplicated Ireland's infobox. This one will replace the first Irish one (in part #244):

The country’s official name is: KINGDOM OF SPAIN (Spanish: Reino de España)
The people are known as: SPANIARDS.
Capital and largest city: Madrid (500,000)
Flag: A yellow Scandinavian cross on a field of red (to the right of the crossbars) and purple (or murandy) to the left of the crossbars.
Population: 15.5 million.
Land area: 30,000 lcf.
Economic ranking: Low compared to its historic peak, but increasingly significant within Europe, in part due to many French industries investing there due to the combination of lower labour costs and years of relative stability.
Form of government: Constitutional monarchy, transitioning from a presidential republic in 1861 with the crowning of the sitting president (born Charles, Duke of Anjou) as King Charles V. Though Charles was initially not very popular with the Spanish people, the fact his reign has delivered peace and prosperity won their support. The parliament, the Estados Generales (so named to avoid comparison with the Meridian Cortes) is powerful, but elections to it are not as democratic or as rigorous compared to its French counterpart, though they are rarely blatantly rigged. There remains a significant republican faction within the Partido Cobrista (again named to avoid comparisons with the Meridians’ Adamantine Party) but two Cobrist-led governments have briefly held office without the monarchy being seriously challenged. The government is usually led by the Partido Azul, a francophile and pro-business doradist party close to the King, but the more nativist and traditionalist Foro Catolico also has significant influence. The Constitution was drawn up in 1861 as part of a French ploy to have the crown of Spain eventually unify with France’s due to Charles’ wife’s suspected sterility, though rumours of illegitimate children abound.
Foreign relations: Since its separation from New Spain (and therefore the old Spanish Empire) and the ascension of Charles V, Spain has withdrawn into a European-focused polity and largely backed French policy outside Europe. New Spain did not recognise the Madrid regime until 1880, by a suspicious coincidence around the time that the UPSA found the dispute inexpedient for trade.
Military: Unlike the world-spanning force it once was (now inherited in a dilapidated state by New Spain, or increasingly the disparate components of it) the modern Spanish army and navy are small forces intended for local missions or supporting French interests farther afield. However, following some initial corruption and poor performance in the 1860s, reforms have also led to Spain’s forces being impressively modernised. Spanish troops under General Enrique Cavadas won a high-profile victory suppressing a warlord invasion from the Aryan Void into the International Guntoor Region in 1888—which became particularly celebrated when Voroshilov exposed the corruption and exploitation there a year later, as it was a ‘good news story’ for supporters of European colonisation to point to. As a consequence of this, Spain’s formerly poor reputation in Europe has seen something of a revival at the end of the nineteenth century.
Current head of state: King Charles V (House of Bourbon) (since 1861)
Current head of government: First Secretary of State (usually rendered into English as ‘Prime Minister’) Don Pedro Fernández de Velasco, 15th Duke of Frías (Partido Azul) (since 1895)

– Taken from APPENDIX: GUIDE TO THE WORLD’S NATIONS AT THE EVE OF THE PANDORIC WAR, OCTOBER 1896, from
The World At War: From The Pages of The Discerner VOLUME I: THE GATHERING STORM (1981)
 

Thande

Donor
(Part #250.5)

Kailua, Kingdom of Gavaji (de jure)
March 1st 1900


Rangatira Wehihimana opened his eyes.

No, not just Rangatira. He was a king, an emperor, a man who possessed power for which the Mauré language had no word, only those imported from French. King Kalaninui, the man who had held such a title in his mind but had been a mere puppet of the distant Tsar, had been captured and bowed the knee to Wehihimana over a year now. The last Russians had fled or surrendered shortly afterwards. Though their advanced fleet was not vulnerable to Wehihimana’s more basic ships, he had correctly calculated that they could not remain on station indefinitely with the Gavajski islands—so, so isolated, even by the standards of the Pacific—firmly within Wehihimana’s hands. Engines must be fed eventually, and all the coaling stations on the islands had been seized by his men.

He had won. He had humbled one of the world’s largest and most powerful empires. He, a Mauré, a mere native, an object of contempt by the Europeans. He had learned to make them fear. More, he had raised himself up within his own people, so that his name would eclipse even those of his great forebears like Apehihmana. His would be the first name that Europeans and Novamundines thought of when they thought of the Mauré. It was an unmatched achievement. Everything that Admiral Hughes had promised him had come true, and more.

There was just one question Wehihimana had wished he had asked Hughes when he’d had the chance:

“And then what?”

Wehihimana didn’t realise he had said the words out loud till he felt the air of his breath on his cracked lips. He ran his tongue over them, sighed and glanced at the plate beside his bed. Skewers of pork and pineapple, picked clean. Gavaji had been agriculturally developed by both the natives and the Russians, so that it would be hard to starve here, providing the farmers could be kept in line: tropical fruit as a rival to the Meridian-owned Meridian Fruit Company, pig farming, fisheries, sweet potatoes. There were even a few sugarcane plantations, though the ambitious experiment of one Russian industrialist had ultimately failed to compete with the Batavian and Feng Chinese powerhouse producers of that crop.[18] All the same, Wehihimana had heard the European theories—and stories of his own people—about a limited diet lacking some vital principle that could lead to disease. Like the long-distance sailors living on salt pork and biscuit, who had suffered rickets due to, so the Europeans thought, lack of fruit. Well, Wehihimana had enough fruit, but there was a persistent empty feeling in him that told him not all was well.

Maybe that wasn’t anything to do with the food. Maybe it was just the sense of impending doom.

The door burst open and Wehihimana’s hand was immediately on his knife. He relaxed when the dim morning light illuminated the newcomer’s face: his lieutenant, Kauri. “What is it?” he asked sharply, knowing Kauri would not wake him for no reason.

Kauri licked his own lips: also cracked, Wehihimana noticed. “A steerable,” he reported, using the French word, dirigeable. Some purists hated all the French import words into the Mauré language and wanted to come up with proper native replacements, sometimes drawing upon the figures of ancient mythology. But to Wehihimana those had always sounded rather silly.

“A steerable,” he repeated, quickly dressing himself as he spoke. “The Russians? An advance scout?”

Kauri hesitated. “Probably not,” he said. “There wasn’t enough light to be sure through the spyglass, but they are approaching from the south.”

The south. Well, well. “I always suspected this day would come,” Wehihimana muttered and, far more than the sense of an approaching Russian fleet from the north had, he found this meant he was suddenly aware of his own mortality. That would be hard to explain to a non-Mauré.

His men, with help from those locals they trusted the most, had already raised the steerable mooring mast by the time he arrived at the flattened field outside the capital of Kailua. The Russians had only occasionally docked steerables here: it was a long flight for them to make from the nearest Russian possessions of Yapon or New Muscovy.[19] Big Kikawe passed Wehihimana the spyglass and the Rangatira frowned as he focused it. “French colours,” he said briefly, his tone showing no surprise. “Fleur-de-lys on the fins…and a white flag on either side. Parley. Neutral.”

“The French are here,” Kikawe repeated unnecessarily. The Mauré had a number of disparaging words for the French. Kikawe didn’t need to use any of them, with the venom he put into their true name.

“Let them dock,” Wehihimana decided, ignoring the imp of the perverse that suggested he should just shoot this ship down as well, might as well go to war with France while he was at it.

Despite the circumstances of a long crossing, a rarely-used mast and an inexperienced makeshift ground crew, the docking went without a hitch. Maybe at least one of those factors was wrong, Wehihimana thought as he stared at the bulbous shape of the steerable and its red-outlined fins. It was always hard to judge the size of anything in the air, but…Kauri echoed his thoughts: “That steerable looks too small to have flown here from the Great Sunset Land,” he said. “Less than a hundred toises long, I’d say.”[20]

“Agreed,” Wehihimana says. “So either it flew from the deck of a ship…” There were some steerables like that, he knew, but conversely it tooked too big for that.

His thoughts were interrupted as a rope ladder was dropped from the now-docked steerable, the weights on the end almost knocking Kikawe out as they fell. A single figure in a blue uniform emerged and, nonchalantly, clambered down the ladder despite the alarming swaying motions of steerable, mast and ladder itself. A cool customer.

The man in blue dropped the last half-toise or so from the ladder, bending his knees to take the impact. He had dark hair, a little longer than was usual in the French Army, grey eyes, no moustache, and a blank, unreadable expression. “Kia ora, Rangatira Wehihimana,” he said, pronouncing the name quite well: clearly a Frenchman long experienced in Pacific colonial service.

Bonjour, mon Capitaine…” Wehihimana replied, pausing politely.

“D’Août,” the captain said briefly. “And I may say I am glad,” he continued in the same anodyne voice, pointing at the white flags trailing from his steerable, “that you at least chose to obey one of the strictures of the Ratisbon Convention.”[21]

Wehihimana stiffened and Kauri’s hand was on his knife; Kikawe, whose thoughts ran more slowly, took longer to figure out that this was an insult. “To what do you refer, sir?” Wehihimana asked coldly in French.

Captain D’Août stretched his arms and Wehihimana heard the pops and cracks as he released the tensions built up crammed into a steerable gondola seat for a long flight. “I am afraid, Rangatira, the state of the camps in which you keep your Russian prisoners of war has become globally notorious.” There was something insolent about the bland, emotionless tone, as though this man was reading from a library book, imparting inarguable information.

“The Russians were offered a prisoner exchange many times,” Wehihimana said bluntly. Of course, towards the end it could not be like-for-like, as the Russians had no Mauré prisoners, and perhaps it wasn’t surprising that the Tsar hadn’t looked on his alternative requests with fondness, but—

“Nonetheless,” D’Août said. “Doubtless you will say that the stories are exaggerated, mere propaganda—but they are believed.”

“You kéroi would tell any lies of us to confirm your own prejudices,” Kauri snorted, then fell silent when Wehihimana gave him a look.[22]

D’Août shrugged. “I am not here to tour your camps. I mention this only for context: a warning that the world watches, and the public opinion of that world is not on your side.” He blinked once, slowly. “There is a Russian fleet approaching. It will arrive in two days’ time, or so we estimate.”

That keyed with Wehihimana’s own guess, based on the early reports from Nikau in Yapon before he had fallen silent. But, of course, there was a lot of guesswork involved; since the cutting of the Lectel cables, only a few boats carried news across the Pacific, and that always out of date and of questionable veracity. He doubted D’Août had any newer information than him. “Unsurprising,” he said. “And now, I understand, the Tsar has no more foes but me. I am the last to keep fighting,” he said, and spoke the words as a boast to D’Août, yet found himself oddly affected by them as he said them.

“And the last to be defeated,” D’Août said bluntly. “For you will be. You cannot stand up to a major Russian fleet and soldiers now freed from their war with the Americans.”

“I wonder what Admiral Hughes is doing now,” Wehihimana said, as much to buy time with an unexpected twist to the conversation while he guessed at D’Août’s motives.

D’Août raised an eyebrow. “Yes, you met with him, didn’t you?” He shook his head. “Admiral Hughes won a significant victory for the Americans at Tehuantipec some months ago. However, since Britain rose in revolt against America, he has since been imprisoned due to concerns about his loyalty.”

Wehihimana actually smiled. “So his homeland was freed in the end. He has that, at least, no matter what happens to him.”

D’Août raised an eyebrow. “Of what significance does this have to our discussion?” he asked, sounding honestly puzzled.

Wehihimana slowly walked around D’Août, giving him a measuring glance. Overhead, the steerable’s engines continued to thutter, meaning that his faux-confidential whisper became a shout by necessity. “Let me save us some time and your vessel some fuel, Captain. One, you were sent here to inform me that the Hira Hui has finished agonising and has voted to condemn my invasion, that it was nothing to do with them, and that all the brave young men who flowed here to help me were acting of their own accord.” He theatrically counted on his fingers. “Two, fearful of a Russian revenge attack and Autiaraux finally falling into the Tsar’s sphere of influence as some of the Orthodox Kéroi-Mauré have always wanted, they have run to France for help—and fallen into your trap.” He stared deeply into D’Août’s grey eyes. “Thirdly, you might be able to keep Gavaji under our control and dissuade the Russians from attacking—if I go along with your plan.”

D’Août opened and closed his mouth, very quickly, very subtly. He recovered well, but Wehihimana had clearly surprised him. “Well—yes, aside from your third point being rather optimistic. The Tsar would not accept you continuing to lord it over the Gavajskis after the prisoner camps outrage—” D’Août raised his hand to forestall Kauri’s heated objection, “—as it is seen.” He scratched his hair under his cap. “All that our Foreign Minister was able to extract was a faint hope that Gavaji might be allowed to become a neutral, third-party kingdom in truth, with equal influence of France and Russia.” He looked at Wehihimana with a penetrating gaze. “If you support us. The Mauré have always had a special relationship with France. This is an opportunity for you to—“

“Allow me to forestall you there,” Wehihimana said, his voice low and dangerous. “Am I correct in saying that, thanks to the Hira Hui resolution you implicitly confirmed, any action I take will not be taken as the act of the Federation of Autiaraux?”

D’Août frowned. “Well, I suppose, no—”

Wehihimana slapped him hard across the face.

The shock on Kauri’s and Kikawe’s faces formed a tryptich with the sudden, incongruous red anger on D’Août’s as he recovered himself. “Rangatira, if this is all you have to say—”

“It is,” Wehihimana said. “Please do not take this as a slight against yourself, but against your nation and its Government.” He spread his hands. “Ever since La Pérouse arrived on our shores, we have always known that France wanted to dominate the Mauré people and take away our freedom. We resisted, for a century and more, but you have finally seized your opportunity.”

He shook his head angrily. “I do not blame you. You are only fulfilling your kéroi nature, your guiding imperative, to destroy, to conquer. I blame the weak Rangatiras in name only who have sold our freedom because they are afraid of the Tsar. We deserve this fate for elevating such cowards.”

Kauri’s hand was on his arm. “Not all. There is one Rangatira who stands. You.”

Wehihimana nodded. “Quite so.” He glanced around the watching Mauré on the field, who had collectively paused in their tasks to look at him. He raised his voice. “If there is any of my Mauré who wishes to throw in with the French, probably to sell me out and give the Tsar my head so that you may live—you may do so.” Before they could cry a negative, he quickly added: “Or if you wish to hide your tattooes and pretend to be ‘loyal Gavajski peasants’ and bow and scrape to the Tsar for the rest of your life—you may do that, too.” He paused. “It is the same thing.”

Now came the roar of denial. He turned back to D’Août, the red handprint still showing on his pale skin. “Do you have any other questions?”

D’Août gave him a long, hard look. “It is easy to be bold when the Russians are still beyond the horizon,” he said, as softly as he could over the engine sounds. “Will you say the same when they are not?”

Wehihimana reached out, grabbed the rope ladder, and passed it to D’Août. “If I cannot be a king, Captain, I will at least be a legend. A story. An inspiration, fifty or a hundred years from now, to encourage my people to rise up and throw off you oppressors, you vultures who will not fight yourself but only loot the corpses of the brave.” Acid came into his tongue. “Your forebears who served Lisieux—at least they knew how to fight.”

D’Août’s hand was on his sword, his eyes burning. “May you all perish at the Tsar’s hand,” he bit out.

Wehihimana smiled. “Better to die on our feet than live on our knees.”




[18] In contrast to OTL, where the sugarcane industry dominated Hawaii for a while.

[19] In OTL the first major transoceanic flight by an airship was the crossing of the Atlantic by the British airship R34 in 1919. In TTL, due to the earlier advancement of balloon aeronautics, this was achieved in 1886 and is considered a possible, and not surprising, but also not trivial or common occurrence at the turn of the twenty-first century.

[20] OTL: about two hundred metres.

[21] Anachronism by the author: though there were existing internationally recognised laws of war and some even signed in Bavaria, the ‘Ratisbon Convention’ was not signed until after the end of the Pandoric War.

[22] This sequence is the author’s reference to a later Heritage Point of Controversy over the Mauré’s treatment of Russian POWs during the Gavaji occupation, with some arguing the reports of brutality were exaggerated by the Russians after the fact.
 
This may go badly, but damn it if Wehihimana Zapata can't turn a phrase. Makes you want to jump through the page and pick up a rifle next to him, doesn't he?

Go Mauré! Take an arrogant hegemonic power (represented here by d'Août) and all its "special relationships", which always turn out to mean expecting other nations to behave as its servants, and throw it down into the dirt.

I don't know whether he will succeed or whether he'll fail and some later Gavajski/Mauré leader will win out, but the fact that it becomes a Heritage Point of Controversy tells me that his cause will succeed in the end—at least to the extent that the Mauré will rule Autiaraux, though the Russians might continue to oppress Gavaji.

I'll admit there's one thing—only one—which disappointed me in this chapter. When I first read the scene where Wehihimana hits d'Août and grabs the ladder, it looked to me like he was being confronted by a great-power arsehole trying to tell the Mauré what to do and responded by knocking him out and stealing his airship to use against the Russians. Of course that would have been a terrible idea in the longer term; but good God it would have been an inspiring scene. :D
 
I don't know whether he will succeed or whether he'll fail and some later Gavajski/Mauré leader will win out,

It definitely looks like the latter.

Wehihimana reached out, grabbed the rope ladder, and passed it to D’Août. “If I cannot be a king, Captain, I will at least be a legend. A story. An inspiration, fifty or a hundred years from now, to encourage my people to rise up and throw off you oppressors, you vultures who will not fight yourself but only loot the corpses of the brave.”
 
Looks like Spain will be to the French, what the (late) Kingdom of the British was to the ENA.

Speaking of the French, I am with Captain D’Août.
May the Mauré Boulanger perish.

Go Mauré! Take an arrogant hegemonic power (represented here by d'Août) and all its "special relationships", which always turn out to mean expecting other nations to behave as its servants, and throw it down into the dirt.

Thing is the "arrogant hegemonic power" has legit reasons to push the Mauré "into dirt".
The latter are not some hapless locals, but an expansionist power who have expanded into the French part of Antipodea and armed French rebels.

I don't know whether he will succeed or whether he'll fail and some later Gavajski/Mauré leader will win out, but the fact that it becomes a Heritage Point of Controversy tells me that his cause will succeed in the end—at least to the extent that the Mauré will rule Autiaraux, though the Russians might continue to oppress Gavaji.

Gavaji would be better off if this Mauré had left them alone.

...in 1878, the Kingdom of Gavaji (or Hawaii) had been the most distant vassal of the Emperor of All Russias for seventy years, longer than almost any of its inhabitants could remember. On the whole, this relationship had been good for the Gavajski people (though doubtless a Heritage Point of Controversy could be made of any objections to this). Gavaji was simply too far away for the Russians to exert much authority there. Some would argue that its paradisical climate was also scarcely amenable to bloody civil war, but to do so is to ignore the islands’ own earlier history and the fact that it had been just such a civil war that had brought the Russians – with assistance from the freebooter John Goodman – into such a position of power in the first place.[6] Regardless, the Russians had introduced valuable new crops, some traded from the Novamund and some from Asia. Some Russians, Yapontsi, Coreans and others had settled on the islands to farm there, though by agreement with the King their numbers were controlled lest the Gavajski people be outnumbered in their own islands. The Russians were not too concerned about such a restriction providing that the Gavajskis agreed to maintain a naval base for the Russian fleet—particularly important as coal began to displace sail.
#225
 
Looks like Wehihimana is pulling a page from Boulanger's playbook and consciously turning himself into a symbol of defiance. While I doubt his last stand will end with anything but failure, it is deeply satisfying to see someone spit in the vulture's eye. And if this does become a Heritage Point of controversy, well, perhaps it is better to live forever immortal in a people's memory then reign as a king.
 
Now that we've got another mention of Heritage Points of Controversy, let me take this opportunity to say how much that entire concept existentially horrifies me. The Diversitarians have decided that in order to stop Societism they need to destroy the concept of historical truth, and from what we've seen, for the most part the people of Diversitarian nations are totally cool with this. I never would've thought a cultural Cold War would be worse than the governmental/economic one we had OTL, but HPC's were when I realized it was. And now we finally get to see the other side(after our in-universe author gets done dragging the French, of course).
 
Now that we've got another mention of Heritage Points of Controversy, let me take this opportunity to say how much that entire concept existentially horrifies me. The Diversitarians have decided that in order to stop Societism they need to destroy the concept of historical truth, and from what we've seen, for the most part the people of Diversitarian nations are totally cool with this. I never would've thought a cultural Cold War would be worse than the governmental/economic one we had OTL, but HPC's were when I realized it was. And now we finally get to see the other side(after our in-universe author gets done dragging the French, of course).

This is my feeling exactly.

HPCs are the equivalent of OTL protesters and counter-protesters fighting each other, but (a) it's not only entirely legal but actively encouraged and (b) effectively a national holiday.
 
Now that we've got another mention of Heritage Points of Controversy, let me take this opportunity to say how much that entire concept existentially horrifies me. The Diversitarians have decided that in order to stop Societism they need to destroy the concept of historical truth, and from what we've seen, for the most part the people of Diversitarian nations are totally cool with this.

Indeed. I should also note this reference to TTL articles and journals being “linguistically restricted” - a needless restriction on free speech.

As well, you can imagine how regularly scheduled riots can become “real” riots or even pogroms in places with heavy ethnic/religious divisions. For instance, if OTL India were to have regularly scheduled riots, it would result in thousands of people regularly dying in them.
 

xsampa

Banned
All is not well in Spain. If the King dies and nationalist discontent boils over, we may well see the roots of Sanchezism as Spaniards tired of being oppressed by nation take refuge in the triple eye.
 

xsampa

Banned
Rereading AAPA, it seems that the Combine is similar to rvbomally's American Empire. Conquest for the sake of conquest, forced population transfers to destroy national identity (zonal rotation) and the promotion of a master 'mixed'/panhuman identity, among other things.
 

Thande

Donor
Wait, @Thande actually remembered the footnotes this time?

WHAT MADNESS IS THIS? :winkytongue:
I actually forgot them again but just realised quickly enough to fix it this time :p

Thanks for the comments everyone. I like the fact that people are taking different things from it - which is, of course, exactly what the Diversitarian censors who approved The Discerner's Pandoric War stories would want!
 
How's Palentology doing ITTL?

You know, I was just wondering that myself, since I've been reading a book on the Mesozoic aquatic reptiles that has some anecdotes about their discovery. Early paleontology in OTL was full of weird misconceptions, and it wouldn't surprise me if TTL had some different but equally bizarre ones. And the political changes will have effects too - for instance I would expect a lot of South American material to be found a lot sooner than OTL, given the development of the UPSA.
 

Thande

Donor
How's Palentology doing ITTL?
I'm going to put this in a retroactive interlude in Volume VII, but basically (this has already been implied) one of the historical ironies I want to do in LTTW is having dinosaurs be seen as this boring dry subject that kids complain about having to learn about in school; in part because they were seen as 'basically just big flightless birds with teeth' from the start, because unlike OTL some of the earliest fossils found preserved images of feathers. That's probably not too realistic a course of events, but I like the idea of it too much.
 
I'm going to put this in a retroactive interlude in Volume VII, but basically (this has already been implied) one of the historical ironies I want to do in LTTW is having dinosaurs be seen as this boring dry subject that kids complain about having to learn about in school; in part because they were seen as 'basically just big flightless birds with teeth' from the start, because unlike OTL some of the earliest fossils found preserved images of feathers. That's probably not too realistic a course of events, but I like the idea of it too much.

You evil, evil person. You've just made an enemy for life!

Sauropods would make for weird birds though.
 
I'm going to put this in a retroactive interlude in Volume VII, but basically (this has already been implied) one of the historical ironies I want to do in LTTW is having dinosaurs be seen as this boring dry subject that kids complain about having to learn about in school; in part because they were seen as 'basically just big flightless birds with teeth' from the start, because unlike OTL some of the earliest fossils found preserved images of feathers. That's probably not too realistic a course of events, but I like the idea of it too much.

I could tolerate mandatory state-sanctioned riots. I could tolerate alternative truths being accepted by a multitude of countries. But dinosaurs being viewed as boring - that I cannot tolerate.
 
On one hand, that would be really interesting - I wonder whether Ornithischians and Saurischians are seen as separate categories entirely, rather than being grouped as Dinosauria. For additional allohistorical irony, have an ATL cousin of noted ornithologist John Audobon as their discoverer? And if South American phorusrhacid "terror birds" are discovered early on, that might also help obscure the issue. Some of the best feathered dinosaur fossils have been found in northeastern China, so that would be another place to direct early paleontological efforts for this effect. (RPLC agents, perhaps?)

(Also, I can imagine dinosaurs being obscure, but I have a hard time imagining them being boring - kids' fascination with dinosaurs seems like a natural extension of interest in animals of all kinds.)
 
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