Well that's easy, you just make the magic word "ABABAB" and he turns into triple-Aaron Burr! Instead of the Wizard you could have Father Abe give him powers as a Patriot-Saints Day present lol.
Oooo, I like the Father Abe part! I might change the acronym to be the names of holy figure to the AFC.
B - For the Wisdom of Aaron-Burr!
A - For the Bravery of Benedict Arnold!
W - For the Power of George Washington!
E - For the Stamina of Edward Everett!
M - For the Invulnerability of Milo Miles!

With these powers bestowed upon him by Father Abe, C.C. Batson becomes MAJOR MIGHT!

Also, after coming across this neat little picture from a proposed relaunch of OTL Shazam as a black kid, I'm making Major Might black too. Cause even the RU needs more black heroes in pop culture.
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As for the Iron Man/Adam Strange/Zap Zephyr idea, I'm thinking of calling them Astro American
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Another idea I had:

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Miss Zed, real name: Zara Tobiason. Eldest granddaughter of the great Mr Tobias, since a young age she has shown a prodigious intellect and a great proficiency for Christian Magick. Currently under the employment of the Council of Jehovah, her mission is to wipe out supernatural threats to the Union wherever they arise. She has also made a vow of chastity until marriage, preferring to preserve her precious Pinnacle Fluids for the right Pinnacle Man.
 
I really hipe that Oswald will lax the cultural suppression of Japan so that we have our Samurais and Banzais once again.
 
I really hipe that Oswald will lax the cultural suppression of Japan so that we have our Samurais and Banzais once again.
I have a feeling that so many years under the American heel will warp the Japanese public perception of samurai into something more like English knights
 
From The Same Cloth: The Origins of Proto-Supercatholicism and Boulanger


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Georges Michel Jean-Marie Boulanger
Brigadier General and War Minister of Europa


As much as any devout Supercatholic would insistently refute, there is quite a bit of inspiration from the Republican Union, Second Sons of Liberty, and Manifest Destiny Party that has manifested (pun intended) into the schools of Perraultist and Hitlerist Supercatholic thought, much as they would argue about the differences of such ideologies. Much of this can be traced into the "far-right leagues", civilian founded organizations that very often received support from the government and military to combat "subversive individuals and groups that, if given the chance, would undermine and overthrow the Imperial family and government". These leagues would hold rallies, hold protests against whatever they deemed immoral, and, interestingly enough, held events like soup kitchens and fundraisers for orphanages and schools. The origins of these leagues actually began with the Bourbon royalists. During the chaos of the revolutionary period, undercover funding was done to support the individual militias collectively known as the "Catholic and Royal Armies", which were mostly concentrated in the Vendee region. These royalist militias, when pitted against the equally inexperienced republican conscripts, won through their knowledge of the terrain and the practice of asymmetrical warfare.

Much as they were effective, they were still just disorderly, if motivated, militias. So when the full might of the republican army descended upon them, the region as a whole was, for lack of a better term, savaged. It can be succinctly summed up by General Francois Joseph Westermannś infamous reply to his superiors, ¨I have exterminated them all." This did not kill reactionary thought however, rather, it drove it underground, waiting for the right time to sprout and thrive anew, and it thrived when it switched it´s allegiance to a new monarch, this time from a king to a Caesar.


Georges Boulanger was born in Rennes in 1837, on April 30th at 1:04 in the morn. At this point in his life, he was like many other children at the time, and enjoyed a rather uneventful childhood, one that was again like many other children at the time, playing pretend soldiers. You see, Georges grew up during the Pax Napoleonica, which ironically meant an expansion and glorification of the army. The army was often joked to be Napoleon I´s other child, with how coddled and cared for it, and it showed quite a bit. The money set aside for the military was a truly staggering amount, with the expenditures for everything from paying wages to funding for technological research was one that could send the finance minister into heart palpitations. The amount of state-produced propaganda was also something to behold. With the constant need for soldiers and the necessary expansion of the armed forces of the Franco-Spanish Empire for the new colonies they had acquired, a bit of...encouragement was needed. As such, one of the most effective recruitment campaigns, second only to the RU, was launched. Pamphlets and novels were written, describing war stories and the glory and valor of decades past. Patriotic songs and slogans were whistled and cheered at rallies and on the street. Veterans were actively encouraged to speak about their experiences, with more emphasis on the good aspects rather then the more...discouraging parts. The result was not only a rate of volunteers second only to the RU (once again), but a culture that was dangerously enamored with warfare and imperialism. As such, Georges, and thousands of other young boys like him, had their futures all but preordained for them.

Georges eventually managed to get enrolled at the prestigious military academy at Saint-Cyr, where he studied and drilled until Caesars Crusade. Due to the need for capable officers for the biggest war since the ¨Great Wars for the Empire¨, the classes were prematurely graduated and shipped off in secret to the east. For these new officers, this was the literal opportunity of a lifetime. These men, some of whom had barely grown their first mustache, had drunk in tales told by everyone from their father to the beggar on the street (although the sight of a begging veteran was quite a rare one at the time). Tales of grand conquest, battlefield valor and camp camaraderie. They wanted it all, and more. And as they sang songs aboard the ships, even among the filth and cramped conditions, their spirits were as high as the stars. Among them was a young, fervent patriot, standing on the deck, looking out into the blue horizon. Land would be coming in sight, that, and glory...
 
So, I'm taking a break from the school stories for awhile, although they'll be back soon. I'm thinking up some more ideas for Carolina, both pop culture and history. Here's what I've got so far, lemme know what y'all think!

  • Some more instances of Cokie "stick-waving" at other powers. Nothing super significant per se, and mainly a way to demonstrate and explore a national inferiority complex I'm pretty certain they have. Also, they'll hopefully be absurd and comedic
  • Along those lines, maybe something like a book excerpt about international perceptions of the Carolinas. It'll show why the Cokies act meaner than a kicked dog.
  • Carolinian pop fiction and comic books. I'm torn between the Cokies having Union knock offs featuring space empires, and going in a more traditional pulp fiction adventure story route. I almost think space stories wouldn't be as popular b/c the Cokies probably don't focus as much on science, and also b/c I think deep down they know/believe that if such exploration were possible, they are simply incapable of doing it on a Yankee scale. That would make such stories unpopular because they remind the Cokies of what they can't have.
  • The rise of a Cokie car corporation
  • Maybe some Carolinian adventures in the Fascist world? Mercenaries, volunteer brigades, etc.
 
  • Carolinian pop fiction and comic books. I'm torn between the Cokies having Union knock offs featuring space empires, and going in a more traditional pulp fiction adventure story route. I almost think space stories wouldn't be as popular b/c the Cokies probably don't focus as much on science, and also b/c I think deep down they know/believe that if such exploration were possible, they are simply incapable of doing it on a Yankee scale. That would make such stories unpopular because they remind the Cokies of what they can't have.
Interested to see what you come up with. I already created a Batman/The Shadow analogue in The Wasp but down to see cokie comics getting more fleshed out.

By the way, if you’re looking for more ideas for Cokie religious topics, may I suggest Ian Paisley as a Cokie? Northern Irish Presbyterian known for his hyper conservatism and opposition to Catholic rights during the Troubles. Not hard to see his family emigrating to Carolina after the war. Granted, he’s still probably just a kid at this point in the timeline but there’s nothing wrong with the Madness getting its claws into him early
 
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Maybe from the POV of a neutral power.

I definitely want to focus on how Carolina is perceived and how that affects their behavior. However, I don't know if there would be a truly neutral power ITTL, just because Carolina is closely tied to Yankeeland, and everyone has an opinion on Yankeeland. Maybe it could take the form of a couple Word of God style wiki articles?
 
So I know Napoleon53 has said that superhero comics aren’t going to be as big as phenomenon as otl, but that hasn’t stopped me doing more pondering on WMIT comics.

So far I’ve created Captain America, Batman, and Wonder Woman analogies, and have been formulating more. I feel like a hero like Superman (basically an alien immigrant) wouldn’t be too popular in the Madness but a hero like Captain Marvel/Shazam (kid calling upon ancient magiks to become an idealised pinnacle of men) would play extremely well into the RU pop culture. All he really needs to a tweak to his acronym away to something a little more AFC friendly.

I’ve also been pondering merging the ideas of Iron Man and Adam Strange to create a competitor to Zap Zephyr. Lance Comet, hard working American industrialist discovers a strange metal and builds himself a powerful suit of armor and becomes The Crimson Comet, defender of Earth, Fundamentalism, and the Republican American Way!

I persoanlly the superhero comics may be bigger in the lummisnt bloc then the american. OTl superman was inspired parlty inspired by nietzsch overman theory and wasn't nietzsch one of the foundiing father of the illumist movement.
 
So, I'm taking a break from the school stories for awhile, although they'll be back soon. I'm thinking up some more ideas for Carolina, both pop culture and history. Here's what I've got so far, lemme know what y'all think!

  • Some more instances of Cokie "stick-waving" at other powers. Nothing super significant per se, and mainly a way to demonstrate and explore a national inferiority complex I'm pretty certain they have. Also, they'll hopefully be absurd and comedic
  • Along those lines, maybe something like a book excerpt about international perceptions of the Carolinas. It'll show why the Cokies act meaner than a kicked dog.
  • Carolinian pop fiction and comic books. I'm torn between the Cokies having Union knock offs featuring space empires, and going in a more traditional pulp fiction adventure story route. I almost think space stories wouldn't be as popular b/c the Cokies probably don't focus as much on science, and also b/c I think deep down they know/believe that if such exploration were possible, they are simply incapable of doing it on a Yankee scale. That would make such stories unpopular because they remind the Cokies of what they can't have.
  • The rise of a Cokie car corporation
  • Maybe some Carolinian adventures in the Fascist world? Mercenaries, volunteer brigades, etc.
I vote for Cokie Car Corporation and Pop Fiction.
 
Wendel's House: Hearts and Minds
In May 1940, a Iowai couple by the name of Carl and Thelma Harper would drive from Centralia, Iowai to Nashville, one of the millions that travelled on the Destiny Road every day. After having dinner at a Smithfield's BBQ and Chicken they rented a room from a local hotel and settled for the night. The next morning the couple would drive to the office of Smithfield's where they would present a handwritten letter to the owner of Smithfield's BBQ, Thomas Montgomery Smithfield. The letter was from Levin and Helena Wendel, owners of Wendel's House and Levin's, and offered Smithfield a unique deal.

The Wendel's had not forgotten how Vanfleet and Daygone had driven a decades old business out of the East Coast in just a few years and were resolved to keep the Wendel's House name going. While the Wendel brothers were content running the grocery stores it would be Helena's mission to revitalize the Wendel's House business. With the growth of Smithfield's chain in Carolina and its challenging of the Vanfleet empire Helena would see a possible ally and a resource source. The letter in 1940 would offer a 'gentlemen's agreement' in which Wendel's would pay a royalty to Smithfield's for it's ideas and that they would not oppose any expansion into towns where Levin's had a presence. When asked about this agreement in 1962 and why it was offered, Helena would response 'It was the Christian thing to do. Neighbors helping neighbors.' With Smithfield's personal response sent back with the Harper's one of the first programs Wendel's would begin would be free coffee for any members of law enforcement and active duty soldiers from now on. Soon every Wendel's would have at least one member of the military or law enforcement having coffee and meals at Wendel's. Soon, a popular joke on the talkiebox from philosopher Walt Richards once said "If you need a cop, call the Wendel's first and then the police station." When the Wendel brothers complained about the cost of coffee Helena defended the decision with these sentences. "For the cost of a few dollars a day we have gained round the clock protection from competitors and criminals. We also have gained the trust of the American public. Let Vanfleet be fast, but who looks out for the men in uniform, we do, people remember that."

Helena would launch a remodeling of the Wendel's House chain. The hotel rooms in existing locations would be closed with a few kept as museum displays for visitors. Lunch counters would be built next to the dining rooms with a limited menu and daily specials would be offered to the busy public. Quality and price would still be important with "Good Food and Good Prices" being Wendel's new slogan. New Wendel's Houses would be built in every major city across the country that had a Levin's and would be decorated in what would be called 'Americana' with items highlighting a local area's history along with American history. Uniforms for women would be simplified but workers would still be held to a high standard and would be paid more than their competitors. Wendel's would also sponsor civic programs such as Rounder teams, Veterans organizations and gardening clubs to 'win hearts and minds of the public' as Helena said.

Wendel's would also invest into talkiebox advertising with sponsoring various programs such as Springfield (Comedy), about a fictional town and its residents; Between Two Worlds (Comedy/Drama), about a young woman making a transition between her humble country background and her wealthy husband's society life and This is Your America (Historical), a travelogue and history program. All three programs would be sponsored by Levin's and Wendel's with only one commercial break. This would be difference compared to many programs and would be used by the shows as a dramatic break or a way to advance the story. This would be a major step in the modern world of advertising.

By 1950, what once was a brand many considered aging and on to a slow death was now prosperous and well known across the country. Helena Wendel's tactics would be studied by business schools across the country and Helena would be awarded and Honorary Doctorate in 1965 from the University of Iowai. She would pass away at the age of 70 in 1970 in Centralia, her hometown.
 
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The Kingdom of South Africa

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The history of Dutch South Africa goes back many centuries. From the Dutch foundation of Cape Town in 1652, to the British Occupation of the Dutch Cape Colony from 1795 until the fall of the British Empire in 1814, to the Great Trek, to the Dutch-Zulu War, it is safe to say that Dutch South Africa has had a long and storied history. It is not surprising that after years of direct rule from Amsterdam and The Hague that the people of Dutch South Africa would want to have control over their own affairs and destiny while still keeping ties with their much-beloved mother country.

The movements for the self-rule of Dutch South Africa began in earnest during the 1890s and 1900s when numerous intellectuals and statesmen throughout the colony began to call for the colonists and denizens of Dutch South Africa to have more control over the running of the colony. One of the events that led to this greater call for self-rule was the Witwatersrand Gold Rush of 1892 [1], the largest gold rush up to the that point in the history of the colony and a gold rush that lead to the rapid industrialization of the colony, the rapid extraction of minerals of all kinds from the colony and the large influx of prospectors, migrant workers and immigrants, both Dutch and non-Dutch, into the colony, with the non-Dutch speaking immigrants being referred to as “Uitlanders”, an Afrikaans word meaning foreigner or outsider. This was much to the chagrin of the mostly impoverished and agrarian population of Boers throughout much of Dutch South Africa, the Boers being the descendants of the Voortrekkers of the Great Trek that settled much of the interior of South Africa during the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s.

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Mining in the Witwatersrand, circa 1895

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Native African and Uitlander Mine Workers, 1894

One other major factor in the movement for South African rule was the development of the Afrikaans language as its own language separate from the Dutch language and not just a dialect of the Dutch language. The Afrikaans language evolved gradually from the Hollandic dialect of the Dutch language, the dialect of the Dutch language most widely spoken by the Dutch settlers of South Africa, and eventually by the African natives that came under the rule of the Dutch settlers, with some influences from German, spoken by the many German immigrants to Dutch South Africa, and as well as the Khoisan languages of southern Africa. For most of the early history of Dutch South Africa, the Afrikaans language was not considered its own language, but was instead just considered a crude dialect of the Dutch language known as “African Dutch” or the more derogatory “Kitchen Dutch.” However, starting in the 1880s, many in Dutch South Africa began to consider their own dialect of Dutch to be a different language altogether. In 1884, the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (Society of Real Afrikaners) was formed in Cape Town by different South African-Dutch/Afrikaner intellectuals, writers and journalists. Throughout the years, members of the society wrote and published through said society a number of books, magazines and journals in the new Afrikaans language or dialect.

One of the most prominent early advocates for South African self-rule was Jacobus Herculaas de Rijk, a South African-Dutch and Afrikaner former army general, veteran of the Dutch-Zulu War and a politician in the Assembly of the colonial region of Transvaal. In 1895, de Rijk and other assemblymen in Transvaal wrote and sent a petition to King Louis Napoleon II of the Netherlands requesting more autonomy for the colony of Dutch South Africa with the advent of new mineral wealth, industrialization, immigration, among other factors. However, the Dutch government of King Louis Napoleon II and Prime Minister Abraham Kuijper refused these requests in no uncertain terms. This greatly angered the aforementioned assemblymen, but they decided to wait and bide their time for a better chance at autonomy and perhaps even self-rule.

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Jacobus Herculaas de Rijk

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Abraham Kuijper

In 1897 and 1898, in what became known as the South African Miner’s Strike, numerous labor strikes occurred throughout the rural and inland regions of Dutch South Africa, the cause of the strikes being low wages, bad conditions in the mines and living quarters and the hiring of foreign nationals over Boers and other Dutch South Africans. On July 11, 1897, things finally reached a breaking point when, during a strike at one of the diamond mines outside of Vooruitzigt [2], soldiers of the Dutch South African Army opened fire on the striking miners after an altercation took place between one of the miners and an infantryman. After that, all hell broke loose, as units of Dutch South African Militia, units of militia raised from local towns for more minor duties than those of the military, and as a result more sympathetic towards the concerns of the locals, joined the striking miners in fighting back against the Dutch South African Army or Nederlands Zuid-Afrikaans leger (NZAL). One influential militia commander Christiaan de Wet soon became the recognized as the leader of the militiamen and miners, and soon afterwards, after a long and bloody fight, the city of Vooruitzigt fell to the rebels, after which a newly made flag of the “South African Republic” or “Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek” was raised over the city. The South African Rebellion had begun.

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Flag of the South African Republic

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Christiaan de Wet

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South African Boer rebels, 1897

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South African Rebels ambush Dutch soldiers, 1897

In spite of this spontaneous start, as well as clandestine funding from both Europa and Portugal through their neighboring colonies, with the rebels managing to capture a number of towns in the Orange region, the South African Rebellion only lasted for nine months, as the NZAL, led by largely by young South African generals such as Andrius Botha, J.M.B. Hertzog and Jan Smuts, and reinforced with forces from the Dutch Army in the Netherlands, has quickly able to suppress the rebellion with their superior numbers, weapons and organization. Christiaan de Wet, leader of the rebellion, was then arrested and soon afterwards executed in Vooruitzigt. Still, the effects of the rebellion were felt as far away as Amsterdam and The Hauge, with the Dutch government fearing a larger rebellion in the future. As a result, the Miners’ Strike came to an end and some months later, on June 1, 1898, King Louis Napoleon II officially granted the Colony of Dutch South Africa a limited degree of autonomy and self-rule with the establishment of a Dutch South African Assembly in the colonial capital of Lodewijksburg [3] and an elected Governor-General, with the previous Governor-General Titus van Asch van Wijck stepping down and Jacobus Herculaas de la Rey unanimously being elected as the first elected and South African Governor-General of Dutch South Africa.

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Titus van Asch van Wijck, last un-elected and non-South African Governor of Dutch South Africa

For the next decade, the South African people were mostly content with the new status of the colony. Still, many, including Governor-General de Rijk, Transvaal Assemblyman and future Governor-General Schalk Willem Burger and NZAL General Andrius Botha, among others, still wanted for South Africa to become its own sovereign nation with its monarchical ties with the Kingdom of the Netherlands maintained and in a relationship similar to the relationship that existed between the Kingdom of Quebec and the Empire of Europa. The South African Republicans, led by former South African rebel leader Gerhardus Maritz, still existed but were a fringe within Dutch South Africa, with their anti-monarchical, reactionary and sometimes anti-semitic rhetoric turning away most Dutch South Africans and Afrikaners.

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Schalk Willem Burger

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Gerhardus Maritz

In October, 1911, the Great World War broke out soon after Europa invaded the Netherlands. With the mother country under attack and being invaded by the continental hegemon of the Empire of Europa, the Afrikaner people of Dutch South Africa were whirled up into a patriotic frenzy, seeing the struggle of their mother country as a struggle for South Africa as well, and this was a sentiment widely promoted in Dutch propaganda in South Africa. Thus, by the end of 1911, over a million Dutch South Africans/Afrikaners volunteered for military service in the metropolitan Netherlands to fight against the forces of Europa, with many of these men signing up to fight in colonial battalions. Some black African soldiers also volunteered and were conscripted into the Dutch South African Army to fight in Europe or Asia, but these soldiers were always put into segregated Native Colonial Battalions separate from white volunteers and conscripts and always led by white officers.

The first Afrikaner soldiers to arrive in the metropolitan Netherlands arrived by ship in December, 1911 in the city of Leiden. Almost immediately after the South African Colonial Battalions arrived in Leiden, they were immediately sent to the front-lines of battle to fight against the Europan armies. Throughout the next three years, the Afrikaner soldiers showed immense bravery under fire and in the line of battle, and they quickly gained a reputation for tenacity, courage, resourcefulness and grit during battle. Other South African Colonial Battalions were sent to South East Asia to fight against the Europans in Dutch Burma. It should also be noted that many South African veterans of the Great World War, such as a number of future South African Prime Ministers, among others, would go on to become famous in the history of South Africa.

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Afrikaner soldiers on the western front of the Great World War, 1912

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South African Generals Andrius Botha and Jan Smuts outside of Maastricht, 1913


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Black and White South African soldiers in Dutch Burma, 1912

All the way back in Dutch South Africa, things remained mostly peaceful aside from a few anti-war protests by radical South African Republicans. All of this changed in March, 1917 with the independence of Mittelafrika during the Germanian Civil War, and soon afterwards, units of the NZAL and South African Militia were deployed to the Dutch South African-Mittelafrikan border, which became the scene of complete and utter chaos in the wake of the Mittelafrikan declaration of independence and then the Carolinian invasion and annexation of the lands along said border. During this time, numerous skirmishes between the South African armies and militias and the rebellious African tribes began along the Carolinian-Dutch borders in southern Africa. By 1920, most of these skirmishes had ended. During the Mittelafrikan War, numerous South African soldiers were also sent to Mittelafrika to assist the Mittelafrikan army in maintaining their independence and suppressing the many revolts by rebellious Africans. Numerous Afrikaners also served as private mercenaries and soldiers of fortune in Mittelafrika, with some remaining in the jungles of Mittelafrika for years after the end of the Mittelafrikan War.

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An South African Army Camp on the South African-Mittelafrikan Border, 1917

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South African Militia Cavalry in the Kalahari desert, 1917

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South African Mercenaries in the Katanga region of Mittelafrika, 1918

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Black South African soldiers in a Native Battalion on the South African-Mittelafrikan Border, 1918

After the Great World War, as a result of many Afrikaners having fought in the war in both Europe and Asia, as well as the Mittleafrikan War, a growing number of Afrikaners continued to call on the mother country for a greater level of autonomy, the number of those wanting as such increasing more and more over the years. In 1915, the Dutch government finally recognized Afrikaans as its own language separate from the Dutch language, but this was still not enough [4]. By the end of the decade, Queen Louise Napoleona of the Netherlands, as well as several of her advisers, decided that the time had finally come to give the Afrikaners some self-rule. On September 24th, 1919, Louise Napoleona announced that "By the end of 1920, our brethren in South Africa will have their own self-ruling government tied closely to our monarchy and state." As such on May 21st, 1920, the Kingdom of South Africa was declared with Queen Louise Napoleona as its monarch, while the nation elected its own "self-ruling and sovereign government" from the capital in Lodewijksburg. Jacobus Herculaas de la Rey was asked to be the first Prime Minister, but he declined due to his own poor health. As a result, Andrius Botha, a longtime general in the Dutch South African Army and veteran of the Great World War, became the first Prime Minister of the Kingdom of South Africa. Meanwhile, tensions between white South Africans and the native black Africans remained tense, with the native black Africans still being relegated to the status of disenfranchised second-class citizens with no political representation and limited political rights.

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Andrius Botha

The first fifteen years of the history of the Kingdom of South Africa was a time of peace and political consolidation. Only a few years of independence, Prime Minister Andrius Botha died of a heart attack on his 60th birthday on September 27, 1922. As such, he was succeeded by his political protégé and former general Jan Christoffel Kemp, although Kemp only served for less than a year before the next elections were held, after which Tielman Roos of the Conservative Party was elected Prime Minister. Roos served as Prime Minister for most of the rest of the 1920s, and his premiership was marked by a further industrialization of South Africa, the construction of new railroads, an increased white settlement and development of rural areas, increased immigration from Europe and a large-scale crackdown on the South African Republican movement, after which the movement became largely irrelevant with its leader Gerhardus Maritz being imprisoned for life on charges of high treason.

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Jan Christoffel Kemp

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Tielman Roos

In 1929, Prime Minister Tielman Roos lost the election of that year to James Barry Munnik Hertzog, leader of the Classical Liberal Party and a former general and veteran of both the South African rebellion and the Great World War. J.B.M Hertzog served as Prime Minister for the next six years, during which relations were greatly improved with the Mittelafrikan Reich under Führer von Bachenheim. As both South Africa and Mittelafika were white-run minority rule states in Africa, and were both in the Fascist Sphere, the two naitons had a vested interested in maintaining good relations and working together to suppress unruly native African tribes that would revolt from time to time. One other interesting development of the Hertzog premiership was the rise of new and extremist political parties in South Africa. These included the Fascist Party of Great War veteran and former Foreign Minister Oswald Pirow, modeled on the Manifest Destiny Party of the Republican Union of America and supporting the Strong Man Theory, Scientific Marxism and Spiritual Marxism, and the Radical Socialist Party of the English-born trade union leader Wilhelm Hendryk Andrews, modeled on the Eduists of Brazil and Patagonia.

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J.B.M. Hertzog

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Oswald Pirow


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Wilhelm Hendryk Andrews
It should be noted that the Kingdom of South Africa did not bear the same prejudices as their other Protestant allies, and while its government and population still desired to keep Black Africans as second-class citizens and completely subservient to the white population, they welcomed any and all peoples from Europe, even those from Ireland, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe and the Balkans that would have not been accepted in either the Republican Union or Britannia. This also included the Portuguese refugees from the parts of former Portuguese Angola and Mozambique now under the control of the Confederation of the Carolinas that were dispossessed of their land and possessions. As a result, South Africa saw a lot of immigration from these parts of Europe and Portuguese Africa in the years after the Great World War. Still, in an effort to “fit in” with the rest of South African society, many of these immigrants, soon after their arrival in Dutch South Africa, adopted Dutch given names, and sometimes even surnames, and then converted to any number of forms of Protestantism, Dutch or otherwise.

In the election of 1935, Jan Smuts of the Classical Liberal Party, another former general and veteran of the South African Rebellion and the Great World War, as well as a close friend of J.B.M Hertzog, became Prime Minister of the Kingdom of South Africa after defeating Tielman Roos of the Conservative Party, as well as Oswald Pirow of the Fascist Party and Wilhelm Hendryk Andrews of the Radical Socialist Party, in a landslide victory for the premiership. As a result, the future of the Kingdom of South Africa seemed destined to remain with the status quo for the foreseeable future.

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Jan Smuts

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[1] IOTL the Witwatersrand Gold Rush took place in 1886.

[2] OTL's Kimberly.

[3] OTL's Johannesburg.

[4] As a result of this, the NZAL was renamed in Afrikaans as the Nederlandse Suid-Afrikaanse leër (NSAL).
 
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Not sure, if I should upload it given how short it is, but...sigh, ok here's something I thought of writing but i'm such a lousy writer and I have little ideas where to go , but nevertheless here's my 2nd alternate-history work Note: Only a preview to something I might work on, not official.

The Southern Judas: The Woodrow Wilson Story
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Quarter-Master Woodrow Wilson 1913.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson, known mostly as Woodrow “Woody” Wilson (1856-1925) was a virginian-born later american politician. A member of the Manifest Destiny Party, he served as Quartermaster General of the Republican Union from 1883-1925. As Quartermaster General, he oversaw funding the American military during the immolation of Mexico and the Great World War. He was also infamously one of many attendees to the Kissimee Conference in 1914 which led to the Cleansing Month of the Inferior Population.


Early Life:


Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born to a Scots-Irish family in Staunton, Virginia Republic. Despite his family coming to America from Ireland, they made sure to play up their Scottish pinnacle blood and denied any possible Irish ancestry, though accusations of being a crypto-irishman would plague Wilson for the rest of his life.


The Wilson family originally settled in Ohio in the Republican Union before migrating south to Virginia after the Wilsons, devout presbyterians grew suspicious of the growing American fundamentalist faith spreading westward. Despite his virginian birth, the family moved around a lot due to his father’s missionary work and by the 1860s, the Wilsons were residing in Georgia. Wilson would describe his earliest memory being the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in Savannah, Georgia on September 5, 1861. The 4 year old Wilson was among the crowd sitting on his father’s shoulders when Lincoln’s carriage came under attack from Heinrich Wirz’s Riders of the South. Wilson would describe it in his memoirs:


“Though I may have been just a toddler, I still remember the loud boom and the carriage carrying father Abe being ruthlessly torn apart. Soon after, screams and yells dominated the soundscape as my father clutching me tightly, fled the scene while guards began yelling orders incomprehensibly as chaos took hold in the streets. It was but the first sign from Jehovah to me that the South was a savage land that needed the mighty yankee to civilize.”


Wilson’s parents had come to fully sympathize with the Southern way of life and were not big supporters of the north especially once American fundamentalism began making inroads after the conclusion of the Great American War (1858-1861). They were slave-owners but were forced to emancipate them as per the new government’s orders which also didn’t help with their liking. Young Wilson was ingrained with a romanticized view of the south, seeing the South as a bastion of old chivalry and traditional values compared to the decrepit and blasphemous north. He suffered from dyslexia which hindered his reading for which his father regularly abused him for. Wilson learned eventually to cope with his disability and was able to learn to read through sheer willpower and to spite his abusive father.


His childhood was also dominated in the environment of Reconstruction. Throughout the South, Wirz’s Freedom Riders and other pro-southern groups resisted Union rule and attacked both whites and blacks. The turning point in Wilson’s life came when he was 11. Wilson attended school in Atlanta, Georgia and during his time there, he was walking home from school alone when he saw a preacher speak to the throngs of people. This was William Walter White (born 1831), a pastor originally from Boston, Massachusetts who had come down south to convert the southerners to American Fundamentalism. He was nicknamed “WWW” for his alliterative name.

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Lincoln's assassination would have a profound impact on the young Wilson and his views on the south.


 
Not sure, if I should upload it given how short it is, but...sigh, ok here's something I thought of writing but i'm such a lousy writer and I have little ideas where to go , but nevertheless here's my 2nd alternate-history work Note: Only a preview to something I might work on, not official.
Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself. Your work looks good and was enjoyable to read. And there’s nothing wrong with needing a little brainstorming to inspire more ideas.

If you’re looking for ideas, maybe play up the relationship he had with his wife and the rumours that she was the one really pulling the strings in Wilson’s later life; Edith Wilson, Pinnacle Strong Woman, descendent of the first Virginian settlers, secret mastermind. There is also his career as president of Princeton University, so you can play up him pushing some of the weird theories in WMIT or formulating some of his own
 
This is the start of a series of India posts. I'll not be going all the way to the 1930s-- I'll leave that open-ended, Nap might have some of his own characters he's planning to bring out.

Vivek Anand is Vivekananda. His role as someone who bring Hinduism to the attention of the West is gonna be kinda similar to OTL but his life's very different.

THE FIVE-RUPEE STORY

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From the Atmacharitra of Vivek Anand
I was delivered into the world in the year the West reckons as 1863, to a long-suffering father and mother living in an adopted city under adopted names.

My grandfather, I have since learned, was a pen-pusher of some note in the chancellery of the Bengal Presidency. He was a Datta, of the Kayastha caste—the scion of a veritable dynasty of pen-pushers. All the years of administration, however, did not make him a smart politician. His decision to support the Nutter Nabob Greer’s short-lived English Empire ruined him. Scampering ahead of the French Company’s inquisitors, he burrowed deep in the city of Lucknow, and unfortunately lost himself in slum pubs and other sensual pleasures. He burned away all the savings of his prior life, but at least he stayed out of the house most days, and allowed his wife to raise my father as an honest, devout, and simple man. In all his life my father never rose above the status of a foreman of a small troupe of construction workers, laying bricks for this chateau or that factory. But a year after I learned how to read and recite prayers with my mother, he said his goodbyes to this meager band of trusted friends, and moved us to Calcutta so he could seek work in the textile mills. It was this wage which paid the admission fees for the 3rd Ward’s St. Denis Catholic Mission School. It was this wage alone that paid for my education—my father had brought me along to the homes of many members of our extended family, telling them of my grandfather’s woes. Some did not remember him, and doubted our tale. Some did, and resented him for making the French suspicious of them and hindering their own social mobility. Some accursed misers felt no danger from us at all, save that we might rob them of their wealth. My father and mother bore it all in silence, but in them I could sense a quiet rage, and a determination to make of me an educated Bengali—a true Datta, as my grandfather was.

On the second or third day of cours moyen, a large mass hit me from behind, and in arresting my fall I scraped my hands on the pavement. The wound was starting to sting, and I whipped around to tell whoever had bumped into me to watch his step. A look at his face froze my tongue. Though he had bumped into me, his expression was more aggrieved! Snapping his head away, he marched stiffly on. I noticed he had a new crisp new uniform on. I was still using the one from last year. Perhaps that had something to do with it...

In time I learned that he was a Bose, also a Kayastha, and that his family indeed possessed greater fortune (in both senses) than mine. In another life he could have been a friend, but in this life he was a bitter enemy. The old nuns were always close by, switches in hand, but they couldn’t stop us from competing for the highest grades or badmouthing each other to other students. It continued like this for some years, too many years, boiling like rice in a pot— but boil rice too long, and it overflows.

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My twelfth birthday was a joy: I led the class in grade rankings, the nuns were finally starting to like me, and to cap it off I’d found a five-rupee coin on my desk just as I was about to leave school. I have no idea who left it there. Perhaps it was even a girl, a few of them knew quite a bit about me by that time. But this mystery could be pondered later, I thought—now was the time to buy some ice cream. Flipping the coin high in the air as I walked, I felt a large mass hit me from behind… but this time I knew who it was, and that he’d done it on purpose.

“What a shiny pebble you’ve got there! I bet it’s not yours.”

Indeed it wasn’t, and I might have conceded the point and moved on had he not continued, “Then whose purse did you take it from, Vivek? Can’t have been your mother’s, unless she earns her own keep while your father’s off at work.”

I stopped silent for a moment. Then, channeling my memories of my father’s roughneck employees in Lucknow:

“Enough of this. You push and prod, but if you really want to sort things out like a man... we just passed an alleyway. No one will interrupt us there.”

“As if I’d stoop to your—”

“Come on, you big baby. Someday you’ll hire people to fight for you—that’s what you’re always saying, right? This might be your last chance to do it yourself.”

We crossed into the alleyway, the sun slipping out of view. Hands up, I stayed wary—but my opposite number delighted at the opportunity for violence more than he let on, and his leg connected solidly with mine, nearly buckling me right then and there. Fine then, I had fire enough in my belly to match him—and while he was getting his footing again I closed the distance and aimed right for his nose… but he turned his head and my knuckles glanced off. Replying cleanly with a hit to my stomach, he sent me reeling. But he was advancing too fast, his upper body too far forward. Grabbing his head, I slammed my knee upward into his face. He might have gotten the first hit, but I now drew first blood. Throwing him back on his behind, I grabbed him by the collar—and a laugh cut through the scene.

A teenaged Frenchman, the brown chin fuzz already becoming a proper beard, peered out from the passenger seat of a coach and laughed freely. When his eyes met mine, he let out a loud whoop and tossed bills of various colors out of the vehicle. His driver, looking first to his young charge and then to me with nearly the same disgust, cracked the reins. Our audience clip-clopped away, leisurely enough but not so slowly that my exhausted body could keep up. I looked down on my fist then, and thought it a small thing.

Not merely for improper nourishment—no, I could be a musclebound bull and it would still be a small thing. Not worthy of fear. Not worthy of pride.

***

When I was fourteen, I had the gift of seeing a free performance by a theater troupe then in its ascendancy. The ringmaster, whose name is now known through Asia and Europe, was an experimental fellow, with great love for foreign opera and for the arts of his native land. They were adapting a well-known story.

Thousands of years ago, in a time when the only literature possessed by men was the God-granted Vedic scripture, a bandit hid in the forests, robbing and killing travelers for money. One day, he held up a traveling sage and demanded he hand over all his possessions.

The sage replied that he had only a lute, which surely was not worth killing over. This incensed the bandit, so the sage asked why he was so desperate. The bandit answered that by robbing he earned his family’s keep. The sage asked if the bandit’s family would prefer to be accomplices to his deeds, but when the bandit made to answer he interrupted and said “No, no—go and ask them yourself. If you suspect I’m using this as a distraction to escape, tie me to this tree here.” Thus secured, the sage watched the bandit go on his way. The bandit asked each family member in turn about the rightness of his actions, and each replied that they had not known him to be capable of such things, and denied any responsibility in his bad choices. Defeated, the bandit returned to the sage and fell at his feet, asking the sage to show him a different path. The sage told him of the story of Rama, an incarnation of the god Vishnu who was cast into a forest to live in exile, and wandered through various wildernesses for years in search of his lost love, but then defeated the Lord of All Demons and returned to his homeland a victorious king. This story captivated the bandit, and the sage advised him to chant to name of Rama so as to remember the story always. But the bandit’s heart was still so filled with ingrained disdain for religious sentimentality that he could not get such a holy name out of his throat. Sighing, the sage advised him to chant the syllables reversed.

And the bandit did exactly that! He sat and meditated upon the inverted name, on what it meant to him, what he knew and what he had yet to learn. All the while he remained utterly still, for so long that a great termite mound grew up around him. When he was finally dug out, he was a man renamed and reborn. For Valmiki, named in reference to the mound, was now a sage worthy of saying Rama’s name, and of chronicling his life in the First Poem that mankind ever composed for itself.

A man’s fist is a small thing, but his mind is limitless...
 
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THE HISTORY OF ALASKA:
FROM RUSSIAN COLONY TO ILLUMINIST FORTRESS

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Flag of Russian North America (1743-1917)

The story of the Russian colony in North America began in 1743 with the arrival of the first russian settlers in the area , following the successful conclusion of the Second Kamchatka Expedition.
Since the beginning this land was plagued by violence: the russian settlers in particoular began to fight against the native Aleuts and eslave them.
Surprisingly the imperial governmend didn't care about Alaska for most of its history, seeing it more as source of pride to show to the other colonial powers than an ecomic opportunity.
Even after its expansion following the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, Czar Alexander I showed little concern for his new territories.
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A painting showing a russian assault against british positions during the war of 1812

The situation for Alaska improved around 1855, after the discovery of gold mines in the Klondike region.
Czar Alexander began investing heavily in his colony and he appointed the capable Ivan Sergeevič Turgenev as new governor of Alaska, starting a new golden age for the country.
During the same period the inhabitants of Alaska began to learn about Lincoln and Custer's persecution of Slavs, mostly thanks to russian regugees escaping from the Republican Union.

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Ivan Sergeevič Turgenev

This golden age unfortunately ended with Viktor's rise to power in 1891: not only he considered Alaska a backwater region of his empire, but he even refused to consider its inhabitants russians.
In 1892 he fired Lev Tolstoj, Turgenev's successor, and replace him with Akim Sokov, more or less openly ordering him to turn Alaska into a giant gold reserve for the Tsar's future wars.
Sokov quickly began to impose numerous and unpopular new taxes and he dismantled many of Turgenev's popular reforms, going so far to order the nationalisation of all the gold mines in the country in the effort of supporting Viktor's partecipation in the Chinese civil war.
Ironically under Viktor's reign Alaska became one of the the most free territories of the Russian Empire: Viktor's disinterest towards the colony meant that the ITP was almost nonexistent in Alaska and many of Viktor's critics or potential victims moved there to escape persecution.
The New Illuminati quickly decided to use this situation for their advantage: in 1906 Otto Werner sent a small Second Order cell in Alaska to taste the water for a possible Illuminist revolution in the colony.
While Sokov's government harshly persecuted and punished any alleged member of the Illuminati, this didn't stop the popularity of the new ideology between the youth of Alaska.
One the young men who embraced Illuminism was Nikita Ilyn, the son of a rich fur merchant and the descendant of some of the original russian settlers that had colonised Alaska in the 18th century.
Ilyn in particoular began to call for the creation of an indipendent Illuminist Republic Of Alaska and even called for a war against the Republican Union to protect the slavs living in its territory.
While his activism caused his arrest in 1910 and his sentence to forced labor near the city of Shelekov, he quikly became a national hero thanks to his efforts in improving the general conditions of Alaska and harsh criticism towards the colonial adninistration.
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Akim Sokov

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Nikita Ilyn

In general Alaska was mostly left untouched during the Great War: by the time Russia had declared war against Europa, Canada was already fighting for its life against the Republican Union and Alaska's partecipation in the war was limited to a series of skirmishes along the border.
The situation however worsened considerably immediately after the conclusion of the war: in an effort to revive the imperial economy, Tsar Viktor tried to impose a new series of taxes all over Alaska, but this quickly led to widespread riots and protests all over the country, that were barely contained by the colonial army.
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The execution of two edunist agitators arrested after the riots of 1913

Following the start of the Russian Civil War in 1915, Akim Sokov immediately seized the opportunity and on 6th January 1917 he crowned himself the new monarch of the "Tsardom Of Alaska", declaring indipendence from Russia in the process.
Unfortunately for himself, he overstimated his popularity.
On 13th January 1917 a series of riots and protests engulfed Alaska again, after it was discovered that Sokov was planning to hand his catholic subjects over the Republican Union as a sign of goodwill.
On 15th March 1917 a group of rioters,led by war hero Roman von Ungern-Sternberg ,attacked the prison of Shelekov and freed Nikita Ilyn.
On 16th March 1917 Ilyn officially proclaimed the creation of the Illuminati People's republic of Alaska and called for armed resistance against Sokov.
A new civil war had begun.
Surprisingly there was almost no foreign involvement in the conflict: Europa was too worried about the German and Russian civil wars, while Steele was too busy dealing with his political opponents to care about a small conflict near the RU's borders.
The war officially ended on 7th July of 1919 after Sokov was shot in the back by his own bodyguard.

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General Roman von Ungern-Sternberg


After meeting a series of russian officials sent by the new Illuminati People's Republic Of Russia and under pressure by Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, Ilyn renounced to making Alaska an indipendent nation and proclaimed the country "an automous territory of the Russian Republic": he officially recognised russian soverignity over Alaska in exchange of more autonomy in its internal matters.

Of particular concern for both Ilyn and Sternberg was the shared border between Alaska and the Republican Union: by 1920 everybody had realised that something very wrong had happened to the "Inferiors" living in the RU and the slavs living in Alaska were afraid of being next.

In 1921 Ilyn launched the so-called "Great Leap Forward" program, a series of reforms aimed to improve Alaska's military situation.

The main points of the program were:
  • Women and men alike from the age of 13 to age of 60 could be recruited into the army of Alaska.
  • Trying to avoid the draft and/or escape from the battlefield without a direct order from the commanding officer was punishable with death
  • Even outside the army, civilians were openly encouraged to own firearms and/or other weapons
  • Civilians too young or too old to join the regular army had to be organised into "background battalions". In case of a successful invasion by the Republican Union and/or other powers, their duty was to rise up to harass and obstruct the enemy's war effort to give the regular army time to reorganise itself
  • To stop the population decline caused by the Beckie Flu and the civil war, couples were encouraged to have as many children as possible. Couple with four or more children were eligible to financial help and tax exemptions
The new government also invested heavily into the creation and the improvement of new industries and infrastructures in preparation of an eventual war againt the Republican Union

By 1922 Alaska had officially become an army with a country.

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A group of newly recruited soldiers of the People's Liberation Army Of Alaska (PLAA) pose for a series of official photos following the start of the "Great Leap Forward" program.
 
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