[50+ Likes] Princessverse, by FesteringSpore
Prefix: I should be studying for university and/or writing my novel, but I'm not doing either of those. Instead, I'm presenting you ladies and gents with my latest alternate historical creation....
My relationship with princess movies is complicated. No, not Disney princess movies—the weird kind of princess movie where a plucky American girl either ends up inheriting the throne of a fictional European country or marrying into their royal family, with The Princess Diaries and The Princess Switch being prominent examples of what I'm talking about. And in a lapse of time between either writing my novel (which I should really be doing) or studying (even more so), instead I had an idea—just make it so that more European duchies and kingdoms make it into the modern day!
The divergence from our timeline begins in 1889 when Kaiser Wilhelm II impulsively volunteers to have famed female championship shooter Annie Oakley shoot the ashes out of a cigarette in the Kaiser's mouth. Historically this did actually happen, but as we are all aware the Kaiser survived this and went on to become the neurotic man we are so intimately familiar with. Here, though, Wilhelm isn't so lucky and is shot and killed by Oakley. Oakley herself ultimately was merely arrested and eventually extricated by the American government after a few harrowing months in German prison, but her career was cut short and she spent the rest of her life in an asylum, perhaps from the pressure of her own guilt in the matter or the investigation that followed—or both.
In Germany the throne passes to Crown Prince Wilhelm, a boy of seven, now Wilhelm III. Wilhelm II's brother Heinrich is appointed Prince-Regent, but real power lies with the new Kaiser's grandmother Dowager Empress Victoria. Bismarck for his part keeps his position as Chancellor for a while, and focuses on foreign policy in his later years as the government he set up was running pretty smoothly. He renews the German defense treaties with the Russian Empire—this alarms the Austrians who fear Russia, and like a jealous partner implored the Germans to choose between either them or St. Petersburg. When that didn't work, the Austrians press an ultimatum threatening to restart the Austro-Prussian war and unify with the Catholic south German states such as Bavaria and Baden should the Germans sign the pact with Russia. Bismarck ruthlessly leaks this ultimatum and proudly signs the treaty with Russia anyway. Austria, humiliated, backs down, but France, desperate to break out of Bismarck's cordon sanitaire, makes overtures to Austria, thus leading to France and Austria creating the Entente Cordiale in 1896. Bismarck himself tries to outmaneuver the new Entente, but facing opposition from a resurgent Reichstag as well as the Dowager Empress, the stress of being Chancellor catches up to him and he dies later that year.
With Bismarck's death Germany's political calculus changes—under the guidance of the reformist Dowager Empress Germany makes true constitutional reforms, while abroad Germany offers her quiet support to the British when they come to blows with France over Fashoda, leading to a slow Anglo-German understanding where there was IOTL Anglo-German discord. France strengthens her Entente and adds Italy and Spain to the membership to oppose these developments. The Ottomans are defeated in an alternate Balkan War and lose more of their European territories (though not as totally as OTL) and a second Balkan coalition organized to deprive the Ottomans of these remaining lands blows up into World War One—with Britain, Germany, and the Turks on one side and France, Austria, Italy, Spain, and the Balkans countries on the other. Russia stays out due to a worse defeat in an ATL Russo-Japanese war (Russia lost all of Sakhalin) and is angry that their "little Slavic brothers" were fighting on the same side as Austria, Russia's hated enemy, as well as deft diplomacy on the German part as opposed to OTL's nationalistic blundering.
The war goes predictably, as a war with these fighters would go. Austria-Hungary basically dies, the Ottomans manage to hold their own and grind the Balkan league down with the aid of Romania, France ends up getting exhausted fighting a colonial war against the British and a European war against Germany, and Italy and Spain pretty much do nothing, although the former ends up joining the Anglo-German-Turks to carve out choice bits of Austria-Hungary for itself once it's clear the Habsburg empire is on its last legs. From the ashes of Austria-Hungary arise Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Galicia-Lodomeria as well as Yugoslavia (Serbia betrayed the French bloc when they saw Austria-Hungary collapsing). Though Habsburgs do end up the thrones of Croatia and Galicia-Lodomeria, ultimately the new states are pulled into Germany's orbit, a sort of alternate Mitteleuropa, except instead of dismembering Russia it's dismembering Austria-Hungary.
The world moves on. France tries to develop its colonies and wash the bad taste of being defeated by those Germans twice out of her mouth. Germany finds her place in the sun without pissing off everyone at once under Wilhelm III, who while not exactly being a liberal (he supported Hitler's rise to power, after all!) is less manic than his father, and with his uncle Heinrich's influence (Heinrich was noted to be a humble and open-minded guy, a good diplomat and pragmatic) Germany charts a prosperous but largely peaceful path as the person holding the lions' share of the spoils from World War I. The British are of course miffed that their policy of ensuring that Europe has no continental hegemon backfired, but Wilhelm III's Germany is a lot less hostile towards the British than Wilhelm II would be, and in time the British get over it and pursue normalization with Germany. The Ottomans manage to reform and consolidate their holdings, becoming an oil giant and supplying oil to Europe at cheap prices (Romania, with her own oil industry getting surpassed by the sheer quantity of Ottoman oil, ends up feeling bad they helped the Ottomans). Russia becomes kind of like Europe's China, as the various European socialist parties drive up labor costs and protections, forcing European big corporations to ring up Russia's huge and untapped cheap labor potential in order to produce lots of things cheaply and at a cheap cost.
The Europeans also end up fighting a colonial cold war with the US, which has caught a severe case of "end colonialism" and funds independence groups against the European colonial empires. France, Britain, Germany, and the other European colonial countries are forced against a wall to deal with the American onslaught. As the decades go by and the mounting costs of fighting colonial wars all across the globe show their strain on European economies— to say nothing of the cheap availability of Russian labor and Turkish oil—decolonization begins to sweep the globe throughout the 70s and 80s with the exception of Namibia, a few offshore islands and the OTL Spanish exclaves (Namibia, through the sadly unbutterflied Herero genocide, was majority-German by the time decolonization started). Disgusted by American duplicity, Germany launches the EU to compete with the American colossus, and most of Europe ends up joining, even France, which decided that the interests of Germany more closely aligned with their own than the anticolonial US. The Russians did not join, and there was relief on both sides—bringing the Russians would subject them and their vast continent-spanning empire, as well as by definition force the Russians to do further reforms which the Tsars were not ready to grant, and besides, the vast size of Russia makes it so that Russia is almost a bloc in of itself. Ultimately, Russia has stayed out, content to subsist off its vast GDP (it is as of TTL's present actually the world's largest economy) dependent on Europe and now increasingly the United States to provide its economic wealth...
The world is not entirely European or American-dominated. The Ottomans are increasingly a significant player, with their credos of having defeated European colonial powers in the Great War and their oil money being used to fund clerics and scholars sympathetic to their form of Islam increasing their prestige across the Muslim world. India, which the British played divide-and-conquer with, eventually wound up producing a vengeful nationalist republic aiming to reunite the other British-broken off bits of India, and China having united in spite of Japanese attempts to meddle with their unification (the following Korean colonial war was Chinese payback for such meddling) and now eyes Japanese Taiwan in a perverse mirror of OTL's cross-strait tensions. Democratic but highly nationalistic and determined to avenge its humiliation at the hands of the Europeans (Americans, to the Chinese eye, are viewed as patronizing and basically the same as Europeans), China has created the Pan-Asian Group, its answer to the EU, and reclaim its place on the world stage. Their economy is more focused on internal markets than OTL and (like the US in 1900 OTL) more protectionist. Some Chinese talking heads speak grandiosely of expanding the Pan-Asian Group to Indonesia, India, and even the Ottoman Empire, but first they'll have to get their incoming diplomatic collision with Bharat out of the way...
Europe in the present day is both strangely familiar and not so. They still have a strong social safety net, but the stereotype of Europeans in this timeline is that they are a bunch of conservative, classist jerks with more nobles than you can shake a stick at. (Never mind that Albania, France, Spain, Czechoslovakia, Ireland, & Hungary are republics, the denizens of those countries grumble). The US is somewhat more left-wing than OTL, but with Europe still remaining a lot more of the vestiges of old feudalism the stereotypical contrast between business-prizing Americans and aristocratic and snobby Europeans isn't as stark as OTL's various "got'em" comparisons on both sides of the Atlantic.
Recently, however, that divide is being breached. A shocking number of American women are marrying their way into European (specifically, Germany and its various sub-royal states) royalty, and in one case has inherited a European throne [1]. Meanwhile in the Third Empire of Haiti [2] intrigue and romance go hand in hand. Crowned heads everywhere are scratching their heads on how the Americans have managed to worm their way into THEIR royal dynasties. It's a fun time to be an American woman, you never might know if the dashing man you've fallen head over heels with is actually a European duke or grand prince, and find yourself whisked away to become a reigning consort of some European nation or part of Germany.
[1] Literally the Princess Diaries
[2] Founded by an illegitimate member of the House of Orléans
Also, Ottoman internal border credits go to SRegan and this one map he made a looooong time ago; that’s some useful stuff there re: the Ottomans
My relationship with princess movies is complicated. No, not Disney princess movies—the weird kind of princess movie where a plucky American girl either ends up inheriting the throne of a fictional European country or marrying into their royal family, with The Princess Diaries and The Princess Switch being prominent examples of what I'm talking about. And in a lapse of time between either writing my novel (which I should really be doing) or studying (even more so), instead I had an idea—just make it so that more European duchies and kingdoms make it into the modern day!
The divergence from our timeline begins in 1889 when Kaiser Wilhelm II impulsively volunteers to have famed female championship shooter Annie Oakley shoot the ashes out of a cigarette in the Kaiser's mouth. Historically this did actually happen, but as we are all aware the Kaiser survived this and went on to become the neurotic man we are so intimately familiar with. Here, though, Wilhelm isn't so lucky and is shot and killed by Oakley. Oakley herself ultimately was merely arrested and eventually extricated by the American government after a few harrowing months in German prison, but her career was cut short and she spent the rest of her life in an asylum, perhaps from the pressure of her own guilt in the matter or the investigation that followed—or both.
In Germany the throne passes to Crown Prince Wilhelm, a boy of seven, now Wilhelm III. Wilhelm II's brother Heinrich is appointed Prince-Regent, but real power lies with the new Kaiser's grandmother Dowager Empress Victoria. Bismarck for his part keeps his position as Chancellor for a while, and focuses on foreign policy in his later years as the government he set up was running pretty smoothly. He renews the German defense treaties with the Russian Empire—this alarms the Austrians who fear Russia, and like a jealous partner implored the Germans to choose between either them or St. Petersburg. When that didn't work, the Austrians press an ultimatum threatening to restart the Austro-Prussian war and unify with the Catholic south German states such as Bavaria and Baden should the Germans sign the pact with Russia. Bismarck ruthlessly leaks this ultimatum and proudly signs the treaty with Russia anyway. Austria, humiliated, backs down, but France, desperate to break out of Bismarck's cordon sanitaire, makes overtures to Austria, thus leading to France and Austria creating the Entente Cordiale in 1896. Bismarck himself tries to outmaneuver the new Entente, but facing opposition from a resurgent Reichstag as well as the Dowager Empress, the stress of being Chancellor catches up to him and he dies later that year.
With Bismarck's death Germany's political calculus changes—under the guidance of the reformist Dowager Empress Germany makes true constitutional reforms, while abroad Germany offers her quiet support to the British when they come to blows with France over Fashoda, leading to a slow Anglo-German understanding where there was IOTL Anglo-German discord. France strengthens her Entente and adds Italy and Spain to the membership to oppose these developments. The Ottomans are defeated in an alternate Balkan War and lose more of their European territories (though not as totally as OTL) and a second Balkan coalition organized to deprive the Ottomans of these remaining lands blows up into World War One—with Britain, Germany, and the Turks on one side and France, Austria, Italy, Spain, and the Balkans countries on the other. Russia stays out due to a worse defeat in an ATL Russo-Japanese war (Russia lost all of Sakhalin) and is angry that their "little Slavic brothers" were fighting on the same side as Austria, Russia's hated enemy, as well as deft diplomacy on the German part as opposed to OTL's nationalistic blundering.
The war goes predictably, as a war with these fighters would go. Austria-Hungary basically dies, the Ottomans manage to hold their own and grind the Balkan league down with the aid of Romania, France ends up getting exhausted fighting a colonial war against the British and a European war against Germany, and Italy and Spain pretty much do nothing, although the former ends up joining the Anglo-German-Turks to carve out choice bits of Austria-Hungary for itself once it's clear the Habsburg empire is on its last legs. From the ashes of Austria-Hungary arise Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Galicia-Lodomeria as well as Yugoslavia (Serbia betrayed the French bloc when they saw Austria-Hungary collapsing). Though Habsburgs do end up the thrones of Croatia and Galicia-Lodomeria, ultimately the new states are pulled into Germany's orbit, a sort of alternate Mitteleuropa, except instead of dismembering Russia it's dismembering Austria-Hungary.
The world moves on. France tries to develop its colonies and wash the bad taste of being defeated by those Germans twice out of her mouth. Germany finds her place in the sun without pissing off everyone at once under Wilhelm III, who while not exactly being a liberal (he supported Hitler's rise to power, after all!) is less manic than his father, and with his uncle Heinrich's influence (Heinrich was noted to be a humble and open-minded guy, a good diplomat and pragmatic) Germany charts a prosperous but largely peaceful path as the person holding the lions' share of the spoils from World War I. The British are of course miffed that their policy of ensuring that Europe has no continental hegemon backfired, but Wilhelm III's Germany is a lot less hostile towards the British than Wilhelm II would be, and in time the British get over it and pursue normalization with Germany. The Ottomans manage to reform and consolidate their holdings, becoming an oil giant and supplying oil to Europe at cheap prices (Romania, with her own oil industry getting surpassed by the sheer quantity of Ottoman oil, ends up feeling bad they helped the Ottomans). Russia becomes kind of like Europe's China, as the various European socialist parties drive up labor costs and protections, forcing European big corporations to ring up Russia's huge and untapped cheap labor potential in order to produce lots of things cheaply and at a cheap cost.
The Europeans also end up fighting a colonial cold war with the US, which has caught a severe case of "end colonialism" and funds independence groups against the European colonial empires. France, Britain, Germany, and the other European colonial countries are forced against a wall to deal with the American onslaught. As the decades go by and the mounting costs of fighting colonial wars all across the globe show their strain on European economies— to say nothing of the cheap availability of Russian labor and Turkish oil—decolonization begins to sweep the globe throughout the 70s and 80s with the exception of Namibia, a few offshore islands and the OTL Spanish exclaves (Namibia, through the sadly unbutterflied Herero genocide, was majority-German by the time decolonization started). Disgusted by American duplicity, Germany launches the EU to compete with the American colossus, and most of Europe ends up joining, even France, which decided that the interests of Germany more closely aligned with their own than the anticolonial US. The Russians did not join, and there was relief on both sides—bringing the Russians would subject them and their vast continent-spanning empire, as well as by definition force the Russians to do further reforms which the Tsars were not ready to grant, and besides, the vast size of Russia makes it so that Russia is almost a bloc in of itself. Ultimately, Russia has stayed out, content to subsist off its vast GDP (it is as of TTL's present actually the world's largest economy) dependent on Europe and now increasingly the United States to provide its economic wealth...
The world is not entirely European or American-dominated. The Ottomans are increasingly a significant player, with their credos of having defeated European colonial powers in the Great War and their oil money being used to fund clerics and scholars sympathetic to their form of Islam increasing their prestige across the Muslim world. India, which the British played divide-and-conquer with, eventually wound up producing a vengeful nationalist republic aiming to reunite the other British-broken off bits of India, and China having united in spite of Japanese attempts to meddle with their unification (the following Korean colonial war was Chinese payback for such meddling) and now eyes Japanese Taiwan in a perverse mirror of OTL's cross-strait tensions. Democratic but highly nationalistic and determined to avenge its humiliation at the hands of the Europeans (Americans, to the Chinese eye, are viewed as patronizing and basically the same as Europeans), China has created the Pan-Asian Group, its answer to the EU, and reclaim its place on the world stage. Their economy is more focused on internal markets than OTL and (like the US in 1900 OTL) more protectionist. Some Chinese talking heads speak grandiosely of expanding the Pan-Asian Group to Indonesia, India, and even the Ottoman Empire, but first they'll have to get their incoming diplomatic collision with Bharat out of the way...
Europe in the present day is both strangely familiar and not so. They still have a strong social safety net, but the stereotype of Europeans in this timeline is that they are a bunch of conservative, classist jerks with more nobles than you can shake a stick at. (Never mind that Albania, France, Spain, Czechoslovakia, Ireland, & Hungary are republics, the denizens of those countries grumble). The US is somewhat more left-wing than OTL, but with Europe still remaining a lot more of the vestiges of old feudalism the stereotypical contrast between business-prizing Americans and aristocratic and snobby Europeans isn't as stark as OTL's various "got'em" comparisons on both sides of the Atlantic.
Recently, however, that divide is being breached. A shocking number of American women are marrying their way into European (specifically, Germany and its various sub-royal states) royalty, and in one case has inherited a European throne [1]. Meanwhile in the Third Empire of Haiti [2] intrigue and romance go hand in hand. Crowned heads everywhere are scratching their heads on how the Americans have managed to worm their way into THEIR royal dynasties. It's a fun time to be an American woman, you never might know if the dashing man you've fallen head over heels with is actually a European duke or grand prince, and find yourself whisked away to become a reigning consort of some European nation or part of Germany.
[1] Literally the Princess Diaries
[2] Founded by an illegitimate member of the House of Orléans
Also, Ottoman internal border credits go to SRegan and this one map he made a looooong time ago; that’s some useful stuff there re: the Ottomans
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