AHC : Kingdom of Araucania and Patagonia survives.

The thread's title is quite telling. Make the kingdom survives.

Bonus point if the Aureliano-Antonine dynasty is still ruling up to nowadays.

This is going to piss Argentines so much more than Malvinas :D
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
This seems like the sort of thing Napoleon III could decide to use to get some prestige for France. It's certainly more doable than his Mexican adventure, so maybe he decides to set his sights a bit lower.
 
Despite what the Wiki article you linked to says, I have a very difficult time believing that the Mapuche actually elected this Oriele-Antoine character as their king. Assuming this 'kingdom' survives, it will only last for as long as it takes for the Mapuche to realize that this crazy foreigner they've been indulging for the last few years thinks he owns them.

After which point, Oriele-Antoine's head decorates some Mapuche warrior's pointy stick and the kingdom ceases to be.
 
Despite what the Wiki article you linked to says, I have a very difficult time believing that the Mapuche actually elected this Oriele-Antoine character as their king.

And yet...Puelches et Tehuelches tribes supported him as he tried to actually help them against Chileans. It was maybe a bit crazy, but marking enough to have a patagonian chief coming to him to ask him about taking Patagonia as well.
Assuming this 'kingdom' survives, it will only last for as long as it takes for the Mapuche to realize that this crazy foreigner they've been indulging for the last few years thinks he owns them.
I think you don't see must things about it : he didn't say "MINE" to people unable to understand him. The tribes that supported him "chosen" him (more than actually elect) because he was an european (supposed able to talk and convince the Argentines as part of their kind) and quite supportive of the tribes.

Of course, the tribes probably didn't see this royal position as Europeans did, but even Antoine didn't actually took that too much seriously and was genuily driven by a desire to help the Mapuches.
 
The difficulty I see for this Kindom forming is that the Indians living in Patagonia weren't living under any sort of entity that encompassed them all, so, even if some factions chose Oriele-Antoine as King and support him, others probably won't.

Structures and alliances changed a lot. Around 1870, in what would become Argentine Patagonia, the main "entity" was the confederacy led by Calfucura which extended from the Andes to the center of the modern province of Buenos Aires, across the Pampas. But, North of it, tribes like the ranqueles, in (modern) southern Cordoba, didn't answer to him. And, to the Southwest, in the more densly populated Neuquen, Lonko Saihueque didn-t answer to him, and was instead an ally of the Argentine government. At the same time, the few Tehuelche Indians living from the South of Rio Negro to the Maguellan Strait answered to Saihueque, not to Calfucura's Confederacy. And I guess in Chile, where Indian population was higher, divisions would be more profound, and there'd probably be more entities than on the "Argentine" side of the Andes.

Also, it's not that the Lonkos were Kings that could order anything or crown whoever they wanted. The system was a mix of a sort of feudalism with tribal protodemocracy. On the one hand, the Lonkos were the supreme commanders at war, and could "call the banners" before attacking, but nothing granted that smaller "capitanejos" would come with their men. On the other hand, important decissions like signing peace with Huincas (Christians) or going on a raid were talking after long talks that might last for days, called Parlamentos, where anybody could speak and speakers couldn't be interrupted.

These aren't unavoidable obstacles, but you need to have all (or at least most) of Patagonian Indian groups feel very threatened by Chile and Argentina (which isn't extremely hard, you just need them all to see what devastating effect Remington rifles would have on them) AND to have them ALL believe that crowning this French guy is the only solution for mantaining a sort of independence and preserving their way of life. The second is the hardest part. It might helped if he had been supported by his motherland, and came with a few soldiers and lots of rifles to give in (if, instead, he comes with lots of soldiers, they might see HIM as a greater threat than Chile and Argentina, instead).
 
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