King
Wolfang II of Hesse died in 2016 at the age of 53 following a long battle with kidney cancer, leaving behind his wife and five daughters. He was succeeded as the monarch by his eldest daughter,
Friederike. Friederike had married Archduke
Humphrey, Duke of Windsor, at the age of 18 in 2008. Together, they had six children. Their eldest is Archduchess Hedwig Sybille of Hesse, Countess of Athlone, who is the heir to her father's British peerage. After her came a set of triplet girls, Cecilia Renata, Maria Anna and Katrina Eugenie. Finally were two sons, Crown Prince Wolfgang August and Archduke Moritz Adolf. Friederike makes few public appearances and speeches, as she was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder at a young age.
Modern Hessian politics is instead dominated by her husband, Prince Consort Humphrey. Hessian politics have, in recent years, been wracked by a series of political scandals, corruption, maladministration and political polarization that culminated in a series of violent protests in 2024 and 2025. Four successive elections over a 20 month span failed to return a a government eroded people's faith in electoral politics. With little other choice, Humphrey was named Minister-President of Hesse in the autumn of 2025 due to his wife's unwillingness to take the reigns of government herself. Humphrey, aided by political advisors from Great Britain and Prussia, has managed to steady the ship of state, though often at the expense of civil liberties (the government has instituted strict laws against public demonstrations and gatherings, and have enforced said laws with advanced facial recognition software). His support in the Hessian Landtag has coalesced into the Hessian United Front, though he remains a nominal political independent. Recent polling indicates that a majority of people want Humphrey to step down as Minister-President, and the preferred replacement is Ernst Christoph II, Prince of Fulda and First Minister of the East of England.
The Kingdom of Tuscany has long an unusually weak central governments, even by Italian standards. Many foreign political scientists consider it an example of a minarchist night-watchmen state, providing limited criminal-justice and legal services for its citizens. It's only financial regulations are those imposed on it by the Italian League and the Pan-European Community so that its banks and financial systems can interact with those in foreign countries. The use of most types of narcotics is decriminalized, and Tuscany has become a notorious for its loose laws regarding sex. All of this has meant that Tuscany has had a long history of organized crime, a problem that has only gotten worse in the past 40 years as many of the more prominent Neapolitan and Sicilian crime families have moved north following the reinstatement of the death penalty for drug dealing and organized crime in the Hapsburg Empire (nearly 300 people have been executed in the Kingdom of Naples in the past 10 years alone).
The ongoing
2027-29 Tuscan protests were sparked by the weak government's inaction (or rather, inability) to effectively fight organized crime within Tuscany. For years, the criminal cartels only targeted each other, but more recently, collateral damage has become more and more common. Hundreds of innocent citizens are killed or wounded every year as a result of battles between the criminals. This problem has become exacerbated as the larger syndicates have acquired cheap, off-the-shelf military drones that they have adapted into suicide drones. The increased danger to civilians have coincided with a significant drop in tourism to Tuscany, once one of its economic pillars. The protests started in Florence but quickly spread to other cities in Tuscany. Four successive governments have fallen due to political pressure from the protestors, and the political gridlock has only become exacerbated by three elections in a 16 month period that have failed to create a stable government. The British Empire (as an observer member of the Italian League) has begun to support Tuscan law enforcement with millions of pounds of equipment and additional training. Many protestors are now looking to the young Queen Pia Augusta to create stability in Tuscany again, similar to what has happened in Prussia and Hesse. She has so far been hesitant to, but as the protests carry forward (many protests have become incredibly violent, as protestors have accused the government of employing barely-trained mafiosos as goons), she may be left with no other choice.
Maxim Ustaev is the current Prime Minister of the Federative Russian Empire, and is the longest-serving Prime Minister since the end of the Russian Revolution in 1931. For the 19th and early part of the 20th century, Russia had long struggled with absolutism and despotism, occasionally flirting with liberal, constitutional monarchsim before reverting back due to counter-revolutions. The Russian Revolution of the 1920s was triggered by the disasterous Great Baltic War that saw Finland, Poland and the Baltics become independent states, and the inability of the Russian government to get its citizenry to support the war effort lead to long-lasting changes. As a result, Russia has become one of the most consistently liberal states in the world, having become essentially a crowned republic in the eyes of many British political scientists.
Ustaev was originally trained as an architect and urban engineer, before entering politics as a member of the State Duma for the Constitutional Democratic Party in 1999. He had been recruited by then-Prime Minister Anatoli Minashvili to serve in his cabinet as Minister of Industry and Trade. The average Russian government lasts only about 2 or 3 years before it gets replaced, and the churn allowed Ustaev to climb the political ranks. By the end of the decade, he was elected the leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party. Since that time, he has lead them to electoral victories in 2014, 2018, 2021 and 2025. His governments have been marked by pragmatic centrism of low tax rates, low government spending and social liberalism. He has long attempted to bring the long-simmering social unrest in the Caucuses to an end, and while things have settled down for the most part, there is sitll occasional outbursts of violence. Rising medical debt and out of control cost of university tuition has challenged the government in recent years, and his government's decision to remove fee caps have been sharply criticized by the opposition. Ustaev announced at the end of 2028 that he would not lead his party into a fifth election in 2029, so ahead of the summer election, the party will have to select a new leader. This has proven difficult as Ustaev has managed to remove most of his political enemies from the Imperial government due to his preference for apolitical technocrats in his cabinet, while policy is decided by a cabal of unelected advisors. There are three primary candidates who have lined up to replace him: former Imperial Plenipotentiary Envoy to the Volga Federal District Oleg Yefimov, Prime Minister Oksana Moskalenko of the Kingdom of the Ukraine, and First Minister Aslan Tarba of the Grand Duchy of Abkhazia. Moskalenko is said to be Ustaev's preferred successor, but Aslan Tarba has come on strong as a surprising dark horse, supported by party activists. However, whoever wins will face a tough election in 2029 as the opposition has managed to come together in opposition to the Constitutional Democratic Party for the first time in more than a decade.
