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In the books, as I dimly remember, the "Happy" serfs depicted were domestic and the sex was consensual.
The fact that any child born by a serf was automatically a serf (combined with Drakia psychopathy) likely made "abandon your children to slavery" an acceptable arrangement for the Master Race in universe.
 
HAPPY is probably relative.A personal slave in a mansion compared to a slave toiling away in fields,rice paddies,orchards,mines,factories for 12-15 hours a day
 
The fact that any child born by a serf was automatically a serf (combined with Drakia psychopathy) likely made "abandon your children to slavery" an acceptable arrangement for the Master Race in universe.

"Abandon your children to slavery" was common enough with white American slaveholders OTL.
 
I very seriously doubt that sex was ever really consensual or that any of the slaves, serfs or bondsmen chosen as sex slaves were ever actually happy anywhere except Stirling's worst fantasies. Maybe some were glad to be in a relatively soft position, compared to 16 hour workdays in the heat while strung out on meth. Maybe not.
"Abandon your children to slavery" was common enough with white American slaveholders OTL.
That's absolutely true; it's even got it's own article on Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_plantation
I might add that, in OTL, mixed-race slaves (often the master's or overseer's daughters) were considered more valuable as concubines; in fact, they fetched the highest prices for any slaves. I don't know how that works with Drakian Bondsmen (and frankly, I'm not sure I want to?). I'm not sure if I've missed what the Drakian view on interracial relationships and parentage was; have we covered that yet? Does the new Drakian state religion have an official position on what we used to call miscegenation? Just for comparison, in OTL, it was very much a sin, and laws were justified based solely on that interpretation of the Bible.

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

Judge Leon M. Bazile, January 6, 1959
I wonder what our evil twin Drakia has to say about it, if that's where we were only eight years before Loving vs. Virginia?
 
Well, it was "consensual" in the sense Serfs said "yes" and it was a relatively nice moment of sex and no direct violence was involved... BUT still under duress.

It can't be truly consensual between a Serf and Master, for obvious reasons, it doesn't matter if there are feelings or the Serf enjoy the moment etc.
 
Well, it was "consensual" in the sense Serfs said "yes" and it was a relatively nice moment of sex and no direct violence was involved... BUT still under duress.

It can't be truly consensual between a Serf and Master, for obvious reasons, it doesn't matter if there are feelings or the Serf enjoy the moment etc.
"Consent" in these contexts always requires quote marks.
Indeed, slavery often involved/implied sex slavery historically (with a huge difference between men and women). Remarkably, in Arabic and Persian literatures, the Slaver/enslaved love story is a recurrent motif, with the enslaved character (usually a girl) frequently depicted as an active and actually consenting party in the relationship, which is probably a massive mystification of actual power dynamics (however, in those same social contexts, free women were often hardly in a much better position for expressing true consent).
 
That was certainly a horrifying and heartbreaking last update. Unfortunately, with no help from the US/Grand Alliance, it also wasn’t a surprise.

To echo what others have said, Perdue’s reputation will likely worsen, if and when Drakia emerges for most Americans as a true existential threat.

No doubt. Currently though, no one in America is looking on Drakia as an existential threat. An enemy to be sure, a threat to American allies and interests, but not to America itself.

I’m assuming that the recent war and rebellion is being spun by Aurica for the Drakians as a glorious, divine victory over the perfidious Yankee Machine State (never mind that Drakia wasn’t facing a committed and fully mobilized USA/Grand Alliance). This seems to be what this timeline is building towards. I only hope the outcome isn’t the same or worse than in the original story.

I can't comment on how the TL will end, but that's indeed how the recent events were presented by the Drakian government. We defeated the Americans! Ignore all caveats.

It seems we’re being set up for this world’s version of the Eurasian War, possibly featuring a revanchist/expansionist Drakian-Russian alliance of convenience, other European powers willing to challenge the US-led world order, and a Japanese Empire planning to put an end to US influence in Asia and the Pacific.

*non-committal sound*:p

So far this timeline has done a good job of paralleling the original Drakaverse timeline without copying it.

Thank you.;)

I also can’t help but wonder what Arthur Klein’s fate will be in the Country of the Dragon (this isn’t unlike if, say, Admiral Yamamoto had defected to the US after the Pearl Harbor attack). Will the Drakians pump him for information before a show trial/execution? Will Stoker hold a triumph featuring a Klein newly “converted” to Drakia’s state faith and worldview? Or does Klein have something else entirely planned?

I'll cover it in the next chapter, I swear.:oops:

I take it you've been reading Rumsfeldia?

I actually haven't read it yet. Does Jesus end up head of state of a country in that TL?

I'm wondering: in the vanilla Draka series, the Citizens make sure to treat their serfs very kindly unless they revolt, and the serfs in turn have a lot of Happiness in Slavery (barring the ones who were recently enserfed). What do citizen-serf relations look like ITTL?

Ha ha ha.

There has never been a situation in which one group of humans held power over another group of human beings, dehumanized that second group of human beings, and didn't mistreat them. Consider how many problems we have with superiors physically or sexually abusing subordinates in the OTL USA where employees have extensive rights and legal protections intended to safeguard them from exploitation. Drakia does have legal protections for Bondsmen, and there are "chain dog" Bonded collaborators who are quite happy with the state of affairs, but I'll let you draw your own conclusions about how happy the average Bondsman is.

And another thing (sorry for the doublepost): I made a TV Tropes page for this thing at long last. Anyone care to add to it?

Oh very nice! I think that makes this my third TL to acquire a TV Tropes page.:cool:

also, at the end, didn't the draka use north america and it's peoples for a hunting ground for the rich?

Yes they did. That hardly seems conductive to happiness in slavery, although by that point the humans they were hunting weren't slaves so much as... I can't think of a good analogy.
 
I actually haven't read it yet. Does Jesus end up head of state of a country in that TL?
Pretty much yes, with getting to much into it, 1988 of the TL, a radical Christian Fundamentalist party called Christian Values ascends into the presidency and turns the country into a theocratic dictatorship, which sets off a civil war. Amongst other things they enshrine Jesus Christ as the Eternal President.
 
Ha ha ha.

There has never been a situation in which one group of humans held power over another group of human beings, dehumanized that second group of human beings, and didn't mistreat them. Consider how many problems we have with superiors physically or sexually abusing subordinates in the OTL USA where employees have extensive rights and legal protections intended to safeguard them from exploitation. Drakia does have legal protections for Bondsmen, and there are "chain dog" Bonded collaborators who are quite happy with the state of affairs, but I'll let you draw your own conclusions about how happy the average Bondsman is.

Again, I'm just going off from what I remember from the books.
 
Chapter 22
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Chapter 22

France was the last Socialist country in Europe.

In the years immediately following the end of the World War there had been a host of them. The war had left the Conservative and Liberal parties who had supported it discredited, while seemingly vindicating the Socialists who had opposed it from the start. The Socialists promised peace, they promised to fix the mounting problems created by mass industrialization, they promised government that answered to the interests of labor, and they promised radical change. A Liberal-Socialist coalition took office in Britain in 1911, the election in 1915 reduced the Liberals to junior partners in a Socialist government. The new Italian Republic elected them into office in 1912, in France they came to power through the Spring Revolution of 1914. A coalition between the Social Democrats and National Socialist parties (not those guys, just a party formed by uniting regional Socialist parties) governed Germany several times in the teens and twenties. When the Labor Party won a majority in the Portuguese Cortes in 1920 King Alphonso VII dissolved the Cortes entirely and ruled as an authoritarian absolute monarch, for which the Americans kicked him out of the Grand Alliance. The Workers Party ran the Czech State from 1919 until 1929 when the voters removed it from power by a landslide and left France the sole remaining European country governed by a Socialist political party.

To be sure if the French people ever got any say in it there would be no Socialist countries left in Europe at all.

It wasn’t that the Third French Republic wasn’t a democracy- it held regular multi-party elections in which all adults were automatically registered to vote and elections were done using ranked-choice voting. It even let all of its overseas possessions participate. The problem was the French multi-tier electoral system. The country was divided up into 501 Departments and each Department was divided into 51 smaller Councils, each of which had 11 members. The people directly elected the local Councils that governed their towns (or in cities neighborhoods), the local Councils chose one of their members to sit on the Assembly that governed their Department, and each Department Assembly would pick one of their members to sit on the National Assembly. The party with a majority in the National Assembly elected one of its members President and did most of the actual governance of the country. This meant that to win a majority in the National Assembly a party did not need to receive a majority of the votes cast by the French people, or a majority of the 281,061 seats on the Councils, or even a majority of the 25,551 seats on the Department Assemblies, to rule the country. To win the 251 seats it needed to control the National Assembly it simply needed a minimum of 6,526 seats to control majorities in 251 of the 501 Department Assemblies, which could be done with a mere 39,156 seats to control 6,526 of the 25,551 local Councils. In the French General Election of 1932, it was theoretically possible to achieve control over said seats with but 2,388,583 out of a total of 34,177,018 registered voters (assuming every eligible voter participated) or just 6.99% of the total electorate. Since 100% participation is never a thing however, the actual number was probably even smaller. And of course, the National Assembly was responsible for redistricting prior to each election, which allowed the party in power to gerrymander at will.

So much for the natural democracy of workers’ and citizens’ councils.

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There was even a serious attempt during the 1920s to create an international "Federated State of Europe" by the Socialist countries of Europe with a common currency (the "Europa"), common economic policies, and freedom of movement between the members. The FSE struggled to gain traction however, and was dissolved when the Czech State withdrew in 1929, leaving France and Andorra the sole remaining members.

If you find such an electoral system incomprehensible, don’t worry! So did the French voters in 1932 who were deeply incensed when the United Socialist Party (a union of the French Socialist Party and the Socialist Party of France) secured under thirty percent of the vote but retained its majority in the National Assembly. They were so incensed in fact, that they took to the streets and began rioting. The riots were contained, but they boded poorly for the future.

What happened to the Socialist Movement in Europe? Well part of it was nothing more than the way politics always moves in trends, once the Socialists had been in power for a while they started being blamed for various problems that they didn’t or couldn’t fix and popular support shifted towards other parties. Another part of it was that while Europe started out exhausted from the World War, once that exhaustion faded it began to be replaced with anger. The Britons were mad that they had lost their empire, thereby humiliating their country and crashing their national economy, they were also mad about the expulsion of the Protestants in Ulster by the Irish government (most went to Drakia, but a few made homes in economically crippled Britain). The French were mad that after all of the terrible sacrifices they had made during the war, and despite being on the winning side, they had still lost territory in the Metropole and had nothing to show for it but a handful of scattered island colonies. The Germans were mad that after equally terrible sacrifices, and major victories over France and Russia, their leaders had backed down rather than face the Americans and abandoned most of Germany’s conquests. The Italians were mad that- like France- they had lost integral Italian territory in Ragusa and Albania despite being on the winning side and had nothing to show for it except Malta.
The Socialists, with their pacifism and their talk of international brotherhood, had no answer to this anger beyond calls for the people to abandon “national chauvinism”. So, the people looked elsewhere.

But where to look? In the Czech State the public turned to mainstream Conservatism, in the Netherlands and Poland mainstream Nationalist parties took power, but these were countries that had gained their independence as a result of the war. In most of Europe Conservatism and Liberalism were still tainted by their support for the World War and remained unpalatable. Utopianism (TTL’s version of Communism) spiked a little in popularity, but it was too close to Socialism to benefit from the other movement’s decline. Geoism, whether of moderate or radical flavor, was attractive to some and the Green International experienced a swell in membership. No matter where you were in Europe anyone with a radio could pick up Radio Svobodnaya Yevropa, the propaganda station broadcasting from massive transmitters just inside the border of the Rodina Zemlya, calling for the peasants of Europe to rise up and pledge their loyalty to the truncated world government based in Moscow. A few listened- there were farmers’ strikes in Bavaria-Austria, Rumania, and Germany in the late 20s and early 30s- and in 1932 a Socialist/Geoist alliance launched the Revolução dos Sinos against Alphonso VII of Portugal. Although most of the Portuguese Geoists were fairly moderate and only a handful were Pobladistos, Spain intervened in the revolution regardless, crushing the Royalists and installing an autonomous “Portuguese Pobladisto Republic” in Lisbon with a common market, currency, and foreign policy with Spain.

(Brazil occupied the Azores and Madeira, pressing Brazilian Emperor Pedro V’s claim to the Portuguese throne, India occupied Goa and Portuguese India, and so the King was forced to flee to Macau where America had laid down an ultimatum against Japan, blocking any further expansion in China)

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Geoist protestors during the Revolução dos Sinos that overthrew the Portuguese monarchy and inadvertently opened the country to Spanish occupation. Oops.

But Portugal aside, Geoism had no great victories in the 30s. The horrors of Rudnikov’s Peremesheniye in the ZR were too widely known and Geoism was public enemy number one for too many European governments who actively suppressed it in all its forms. Instead, two other radical ideologies gained prominence in Europe; Rex and Societism.

Rex (alternatively the Rex Movement or Rex Thought, never Rexism) grew out of the general anger, frustration, and economic malaise in Italy. Rex was an ultra-nationalist ideology that was also a reaction to modernity. It wanted the “moral purification” of society, a return to the social norms and cultural values of the past, when Europe still dominated the world and the most powerful countries weren’t America, Drakia, and Japan. Rex’s corporatist ideas of a society in which different classes and institutions fulfilled specific vital roles were clearly influenced by Societism, but the Rex Movement was actively hostile towards Drakia and the Societists. To the followers of the traditional forms of Christianity that Rex advocated the Drakian Church was heretical, and the movement managed to be simultaneously ethnocentric and anti-slavery at the same time. First achieving electoral success in Italy, Rex swelled in popularity in Germany, Bavaria-Austria, and Hungary.

In 1934 Italian Rex followers launched an uprising in the Kingdom of Sardinia, seeking to unify the island with the rest of Italy. Sardinia called for help from the United States, but New York had already lost Rhomania from the Grand Alliance when it sided with Italy in the dispute between Rome and Constantinople over the ownership of Ragusa, and President Sandoval was concerned that siding with Sardinia could mean losing Italy as well. The United States therefore announced that it would respect the will of the Sardinian people and the embattled Sardinian government invited Drakia to intervene. Lindsey Stoker agreed, dispatching a Drakian expeditionary force to the island, and the ensuing Sardinian Crisis very nearly triggered the Second Draco-American War early. The internationally recognized Sardinian government had voluntarily invited the Drakians in however, and the United States was too focused on the insurgency in Central America and ratcheting tensions with Japan to be willing to go to war with Drakia. The rebels were crushed, Sardinia became a Drakian puppet state, and an outraged Italy withdrew from the Grand Alliance to form the Pan-European Defense Pact with its fellow Rex powers of Germany and Hungary. The Nationalist but non-Rex countries of the Netherlands, Poland, and Lithuania joined the Pact over the next couple of years, Rex Bavaria-Austria joined briefly before integrating into the German Confederation directly as two new member states. The PEDP was dedicated to the cause of “defending Europe” whether from the RZ and the radical Geoists, Drakia and the forces of Societism, or the United States and the Grand Alliance. European importance had declined since the end of the World War, but the Pan-Europeans vowed to make Europe great again.

Part of that involved creating “fatherlands” to relocate many of the Jews to in OTL Central Poland, and to relocate most of the Roma to in an annoyingly Rumanian area of eastern Hungary. While the total relocation of these communities was impractical, those who weren’t relocated had their citizenship stripped away and were made citizens of their new “fatherlands” regardless of where they actually lived. This wasn’t a prelude to genocide- many in the Rex had sympathized with Judea and its struggle for independence from Drakia. The idea was that minorities like the Jews and Roma needed their own homelands to be loyal to, and that creating such homelands was necessary for those groups to genuinely contribute to the Pan-European Pact. It was less “Nazi resettlement in the east” and more “Soviet-esque population transfer with the end goal of creating Apartheid-era bantustans”.

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It's difficult to explain the Rex approach to stateless minorities. Essentially, if you asked a Rex supporter if he thought that the Jews and Roma of Germany were loyal to Germany he would say "Of course not. But why should they be loyal to Germany when they're not Germans?" By giving such minorities their own little fatherlands, so the thinking went, they would then be loyal to those fatherlands, and that loyalty would naturally motivate them to work and fight for the good of the countries who were their allies and the alliance to which their fatherlands belonged. Of course the "Jewish Fatherland" and the "Cigany Fatherland" weren't really independent countries by any stretch of the imagination.

But never mind that, let’s talk about the Drakian Empire.

Despite the Empire trumpeting the First Draco-America War as a victory for Drakia both it, and the subsequent Judeo-Arab Revolt, had shocked the Country of the Dragon. It was one thing to know intellectually that their navy was inferior to that of the Americans, but it was another entirely to witness that navy casually swept from the Mediterranean in a matter of days. Arguably more embarrassing was the performance of their ground forces. Drakia knew that its navy was the weakest branch of its military, but the Drakian Army was the pride of the Empire. The problem was that it hadn’t faced a conventional enemy since the end of the World War and so its equipment, training, and tactics were entirely geared towards fighting lightly armed rebels and insurgents. Pitted against the US Marines and associated units from the Seven Ducklings (mostly Ireland) it transpired that Drakia was badly unprepared. Officers who had been promoted based on an ability to massacre villages or keep their heads in small unit engagements often proved out of their depth fighting against a force with equal footing, and soldiers who were genuinely good at skirmishing with hostile infantry had no training or experience what to do when confronted by enemy landcruisers and drachenflieger. Most of the Empire’s landcruiser units were armored cavalry reliant on Hond II light landcruisers- Hond II’s were fast, mobile, long-range, and the standard model included a radio to facilitate co-ordination, but they were very lightly armed and armored. Against even light artillery, let alone the “mobile pillbox” Chevalier landcruiser used by the US Marines, they were laughably vulnerable. Hond II’s were also the product of the Bonded Labor System and as such suffered from quality-control issues- during the Judeo-Arab Revolt the rebels discovered that there often small gaps in the poorly-welded armor, and that if you could hit a Hond with a petrol bomb (Molotov cocktail) the burning fuel could leak inside and ignite the landcruiser’s flammable gasoline engine. While the First Draco-American War was brief, it and the Judeo-Arab Revolt highlighted the weaknesses in the Imperial war machine.

To his credit the Autocrat acknowledged this and tasked his Ministry of War with finding ways to fill the gaps. New training, new weapons development, new tactics. Former American Fleet Admiral Arthur Klein- now a convert to the Church of Christ the Savior (Judaism now being illegal in the Empire) and a prized acquisition to the Noble Race- knew the weaknesses of the US Navy better than almost anyone alive and he played a major role in the Empire’s efforts to improve its navy. Building a fleet that could actually threaten American dominance over the world’s oceans was probably outside of Drakia’s capabilities for now, but a navy capable of taking control of the Mediterranean was not, nor was a navy that could at least present a challenge in the West Indian Ocean. Key to Klein’s strategy was the use of land-based air (including long-range heavy strategic bombers) to support the newly launched Imperial warships, and a reliance on fast, maneuverable, small ships and submarines that couldn’t necessarily defeat the US Navy but could seriously disrupt trans-oceanic American supply lines and sea lines of communication. His advice also played a role in the Drakian intervention into Sardinia and the subsequent development of the island as a forward air and naval base in the Mediterranean. The Hond Corporation began experimenting with newer, heavier models of landcruiser (the Empire had a few heavy landcruisers, but the models were out of date), and the Empire’s military-industrial complex turned out a slew of new equipment aimed at fighting national militaries instead of domestic insurgents. As was usually the case with Drakia the new equipment was mostly based on designs used successfully by other countries, with some tweaking and improvements.

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Klein was well aware of how complex and even fragile the logistics required to maintain America's global military presence could be. While development of the Drakian Mediterranean Fleet proceeded along largely conventional lines, the development of the Atlantic and to a lesser extent Indian Ocean Fleets were heavily geared towards the use of small ships and submarines that could be used to throw those logistics into disorder.

While Drakia addressed its military shortcomings it also attempted to address its diplomatic ones.

In 1930 the Empire possessed no allies, its diplomatic isolation had been total since the end of the Anglo-Drakian War. But fighting alone against the United States- and the inevitability of another war with the United States was something all Drakian analysts agreed on- was hardly a winning strategy. What country would voluntarily ally with Drakia though? The Empire was widely despised for its totalitarianism, unorthodox approach to Christianity, and brutal system of de facto slavery, and while its “victory” in the First Anglo-Drakian War had raised its status in the eyes of many, few governments were desperate enough to work with it.

The Rodina Zemlya was however.

The Geoist world government had been devastated by the Peremesheniye in which much of its skilled urban population had been wiped out and Russia forcibly self-de-industrialized until it struggled to maintain basic features of industrial civilization such as railways and agricultural machinery. The National Committee that took over running the RZ after Rudnikov’s death was pragmatic and had settled on the necessary ideology excuses for the reindustrialization of their country. The problem was that they lacked the expertise and equipment needed to industrialize, and the only other country in the world willing to work with the RZ was the Spanish Pobladisto Republic. Spain wasn’t nearly as deindustrialized as Russia, but it still was hardly an ideal source of industrial expertise.

Enter Autocrat Lindsey Stoker.

While a friendly relationship between the Empire and the RZ seemed ideologically unthinkable, both regimes were realistic enough to realize the benefits. Drakia would provide the equipment and expertise for Russia to start repairing the damage of the Peremesheniye, and the RZ would provide the only thing it could that the Empire truly needed; human beings. The Bonded Labor System consumed human beings faster than the Bonded themselves could reproduce, in the huge Imperial industrial parks, in mining, and in vast infrastructure projects such as the Hadrian Plan to dam the Congo River. The First Draco-American War and the Judeo-Arab Revolt had intensified the problem by leaving much of the Drakian Near East depopulated, and the acquisition of further Bondsmen was becoming an economic necessity for the Empire. The RZ had lots of political prisoners however, and plenty of restive ethnic minorities that it was more than happy to dispose of. How better than by selling them to Drakia? Beginning the early 1930s the Rodinaviks began to ship large numbers of Ukrainians, Central Asians, Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Armenians, and Georgians to the Country of the Dragon, technically sending them into an exile that left them indebted to the Drakian government for the price of their tickets. The Empire sent technical experts and industrial machinery north, and while there were paths for some of the new Bondsmen to become Nationals or Citizens (particularly former anti-Geoist political prisoners and Armenians) most were simply integrated into the Bonded Labor System wholesale.

Incidentally this was the development that finalized the growing Russo-Spanish split, as the more orthodox Pobladistos were aghast at the Rodinaviks willingness to compromise their Geoist beliefs so thoroughly as to engage in a de facto slave trade.

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The legacy of the Peremesheniye, the "Resettlement" when the Rodinaviks implemented Khmer Rouge-esque policies, was to further devastate Russian industry after the damage of two civil wars and the World War. Much of the RZ's population lived a 19th century agrarian lifestyle with a standard living worse than it had been in 1900. The National Committee was understandable desperate to address this.
But while Russia made for a valuable trading partner, it couldn’t serve as one of the military allies that Drakia desperately needed. Partly this was because their governments despised each other and co-operated only out of mutual self-interest, and partly this was because the RZ remained so devastated by two civil wars and the deindustrialization of the Peremesheniye that it was of questionable value as a military ally. Fortunately, there were three countries where the Societist ideology was being adopted on a national level and the Empire made overtures towards all three of them.

The first was a somewhat surprising candidate; Rhomania. The neo-Roman/Byzantine empire had never showed much interest in Socialism or Geoism- mainstream Conservatism and Nationalism weren’t discredited for their support for the World War in a country that had expanded massively and acquired Constantinople as a result of its involvement. Like Drakia it was a country where only a minority of its citizens belonged to the dominant cultural group (an even smaller minority when one considered the Rhomanian puppet states), like Drakia it had a history (albeit a more modest one) of ethnic cleansing, and also like Drakia it had a culture that venerated the culture and society of the distant past. The Kingdom of Rhomania was forced to grow steadily more authoritarian by the demands of ruling the entire Balkans Peninsula, and its inability to suppress anti-Rhomanian resistance saw many Romios disillusioned with their traditional political establishment and interested in the radical ideas of Societism. Rhomanian Societism was particularly obsessed with Ancient Rome and Greece (because of course it was), noting the existence of ancient Greco-Roman pseudo- eugenic practices (some invented, some historical), and citing arguments by philosophers such as Plato that some human beings were slaves by nature and others were naturally suited to freedom and leadership. It also drew lots of parallels between the Slavic (and non-Slavic) resistance against Rhomanian rule and the barbarians who had destroyed Rome and corrupted its culture. When territorial disputes between Rhomania and Italy prompted the United States to side with Italy the New Byzantium withdrew from the Grand Alliance and began casting about for new allies- and drifting in the direction of Drakia.

In 1932 a major uprising among Rhomania’s non-Romio subjects dubbed “The Great Slavic Conspiracy” began, in which the puppet governments of Serbia and Bulgaria (the Croatian puppet government remained loyal, although most of its citizens did not) attempted to cast off their shackles and were joined by Bulgarian, Macedonian, Albanian, and Turkish rebels from within the kingdom proper. After some devastating defeats raised the specter that Rhomania might actually lose control over much of its conquests, General Yiannis Athanides marched his soldiers into the Voulí ton Romios (the Rhomanian parliament) and dissolved it, proclaiming the replacement of the Kingdom of Rhomania with the Rhomanian Empire. The new Rhomanian Empire incorporated Societist ideas and language into its new constitution and King Konstantinos I (officially he used the nomenclature “Konstantinos XII”, presenting his rule as a continuation of the Byzantine rulers) added Kaisar Sebastos (Caesar Augustus) to the Roman titles he had already adopted. Athanides actively solicited aid from Drakia to prosecute the war (inspiring the United States and the Pan-Europeans to provide assistance to the anti-Rhomanian rebels) and sought a formal defensive alliance to discourage his Rex neighbors from intervening in the war directly.

The Empire happily supplied both. The Romio-Drakian Treaty of Friendship confirmed that any country that went to war against Rhomania would also find itself at war with Drakia and visa versa, thus warding off the possibility of direct Pan-European involvement in the Great Slavic Conspiracy. Units of Drakian “volunteers” with suspiciously good training and discipline began appearing in the Balkans (similar German, Italian, Polish, Hungarian, and even Turkish units appeared on the side of the rebels) and shipments of arms and munitions arrived in Athens, Thessalonica, and Constantinople. Drakia used the Great Slavic Conspiracy as a way to field test the new equipment (from landcruisers to biological weapons) it was developing, and to provide its soldiers with experience fighting against an enemy that had at least some armor, aircraft, and artillery (most of it courtesy of Krupp Stahlersteller) and the Pan-Europeans did the same. When the Rhomanian Empire finally triumphed over the rebels in 1935 it formally adopted Societism as its ideology of governance and began implementing some Drakian social policies such as Eugenic practices, the transformation of its puppet states into Princely States, and a Rhomanian Agoge. It continued to disapprove of the Jesus thing and stopped short of adopting the Bonded Labor System, but there was substantial use of criminals and political prisoners for forced labor by the state and growing categories of “I can’t believe it’s not slavery” in the private sector.

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Both the Drakian Empire and Pan-European Defense Pact used the Great Slavic Conspiracy as a chance to field test new weapons and weapons systems. The Hond III landcruiser (shown above) was among the weapons Drakia shipped to Rhomania to observe how they would perform in the field. While an improvement over the Hond II, with better armor, heavier weapons, and a less-flammable diesel engine, the Hond III still proved vulnerable to the German 50mm anti-tank guns used by Serbian and Bulgarian rebels. Another common complaint by Hond III crews was that its 2-inch main gun still wasn't powerful enough.
The second country to embrace Societism was of course the Kingdom of Britain.

Britain had been humiliated in the aftermath of the World War. It went from a global superpower with territory on every continent to at best a minor regional power with nothing outside of England, Scotland, and Mann. No longer was the Pound a global currency, no longer was London an international center of banking, no longer was the British economy the largest on Earth. When the Socialists and the Liberals controlled the British government, they had aligned the island with America and the Grand Alliance, but their rule faded quickly as the masses of unemployed Britons, angry and desperate, turned elsewhere. There were still ties between Drakia and her old motherland, family ties, economic ties, and ties of friendship, and it was possible to find copies of I Grant You Dominion Over Them and The Final Society in British booksellers. “Why,” asked the Societists, “had Britain joined its American enemy in waging war against its own dominion? Why had it turned against its progeny who were fighting to preserve the British Empire? What had it gained from betraying its own Empire other than poverty and further disgrace?” Now that Drakia was a world power that eclipsed Britain, it was time for Britain to start imitating Drakia instead of the other way around.

British Societism dismissed objections to the Dragon’s Nest, the Bonded Labor System, the treatment of Aubrey Ratcliff, and the evils described in Black Lamb’s Blood by ignoring them and appealing directly to the emotions of the British masses. “We deserve to rule the world.” It whispered. “We did rule the world. We are the Eugenically superior Anglo-Saxon race, descended from the best of the Roman and Germanic peoples, favored by god to rule the planet, only we allowed ourselves to be corrupted by Liberalism, Socialism, Fascism, and all the rest. We permitted Republican practices to degrade the purity of our Monarchy and allowed Eugenically inferior persons to ascend to positions of authority within our society. We accepted the poisonous lie of equality and the result destroyed us. But if we grasp the ideas and practices that have so well-served our Drakian descendants we can take it all back.” Ironically the British Societists were much more racist than their counterparts in the Country of the Dragon- Britain didn’t need a class of loyal non-white citizens to make its country function- and while they accepted the idea of a Servitor Race and a Custodian Race, they had little room for an Aspirant Race and regarded all Britons (who weren’t disabled, and or homosexual, or non-Societist, or…) to be Custodial.

They did not consider the Irish to be Britons.

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I swear that I had no intention of making Britain into a Germany analogue when I first began the TL (not that they're a total analogue now). In fact I was planning to have relations between the US and Britain normalize until Drakia broke away from Britain in what would have been much more of a civil war within the British Empire. I even meant to have America, Britain, and France on the same side in the World War! Alas, events and dice got away from me.

The first to begin embracing Societism wholesale in Britain were the Ulster refugees kicked out of Ireland, but the ideology found fertile ground among the working classes of the now moribund industrial cities in the northeast. The Societist Party of Britain won its first seat in the House of Commons in 1915, in 1919 it was the fourth largest party, in 1923 it became the junior partner in a Tory government, and in 1931 it won a majority outright. The Kingdom of Britain swung rapidly into totalitarianism- the elections in 1935 still included other parties even if they were rigged, the elections in 1939 took place under a new electoral system that effectively made them symbolic. Like Rhomania Britain made use of criminals and political prisoners for forced labor to build infrastructure and housing that was given away for free to loyal Britons, but stopped short of introducing Bonded Labor. It had too many unemployed workers as it was, it did not need to fill jobs with slaves. British citizens needed a license to have children (a nice little tool of social control for the state), and euthanasia of individuals deemed “social burdens” began. There was an Agoge of course, and universal military service for all men. A slow and cautious re-armament started to reinvigorate the economy- Britain couldn’t move too quickly or too openly lest it draw the ire of the Americans on the other side of the Irish Sea- but it began to rebuild its army and navy. Britain couldn’t openly ally itself with Drakia either- again out of fear of an American response- but British experts helped with the build-up of the Drakian Navy (as “private citizens” of course) and there was no question which way Albion would turn in case of a war.

The only other country where Societism gained significant influence was the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia remained a voluntary British Dominion, nostalgic for the old British Empire, resentful towards the countries that had defeated it, and quite racist towards non-whites. Unsurprisingly Societism picked up a following among certain segments of the Australian population, and the Social Order Association won enough seats in the Federal Parliament to become the third largest party. Support for Societism remained limited to a minority of Australians however, and the Land Down Under was more afraid of Japanese Pan-Asianism than it was of American Fascism. Drakia was too far away to be a reliable ally in case of a war with Japan, and ultimately the Empire’s overtures for friendship were politely declined.

By 1935 America’s only remaining allies in Europe were Ireland, the Czech State, Rumania, and an increasingly unstable France. In New York there was quite serious talk about collective nose holding and a strategic alliance with the Pan-Europeans to counter Societism and Geoism on the European continent. But it was in Asia where the true diplomatic crisis was building towards a peak.

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Thank you to @Falkanner for the subdivisions in South America and the RZ. The results of the Hadrian Plan (aka the "Dam the Congo River so as to Flood the Congo Basin and Destroy about half of the World's Second Largest Rainforest" Plan) are still in their very early stages and so are not shown.
 
Neat! So two major "conservative" ideologies (Societism and Rex) and two major "progressive" ideologies (universal civic Fascism and agrarian Geoism), huh? I think I'll ask what everyone's thinking: does Rex have a faction color? Every ideology worth it's salt should have a signature color, and between Fascism, Societism and Geoism that's blue, red and green already spoken for. Personally I'd recommend a nice yellow to complete the quartet.
 
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I really hope the Draka are busy clear cutting giant swaths of forest in the Congo right now because if they don’t well the malaria and mosquito problem will a be sight to be hold

Anyways props to Klein and the Black-chamber under Richardson for almost single handily gutting the Pax Americana following the Great War and eviscerating the USN. The Legacy of the Perdue administration is going to be a controversial one.

Also let’s see just how many of the Post-Klein era changes to the USN are going to be rolled back when the Great Pacific War occurs
 
I get the feeling the Great Pacific War has the potential to be more deadly than the World War, if the front reaches China or the Home Islands.
 
Looking at that map... I can hear poor Turkey's terrified screaming from here, though I wonder if the Ottomans are still around or if they fell to Republicanism.
 
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