Albion, where the Sun never set

[Deleted member 77383]

When was the war with Oregon and Mormons during the Cold War? And when was the Rockies rebellion? What other insurgencies and wars occurred in North America?

 

[Deleted member 77383]

Also what was civil unrest and terrorism like in the USSA during the Cold War before the present day? Before it was under control

 

[Peppe]

When was the war with Oregon and Mormons during the Cold War? And when was the Rockies rebellion? What other insurgencies and wars occurred in North America?

I am planning an update talking about Oregon and the Mormons there where I can go deeper on the matter, but in general every few decades or so there's at least some mess involving the two. The Third Uprising occured in the middle of WWII, and the Fourth as in the 70s, the Fifth (the most recent) started in the middle 2010s and is now mostly a simmering pot of skirmishes and lowkey insurrectionism.

The Rockies Rebellion occurred in the 80s on Colorado following the Threepark Nuclear Disaster, which resulted on the deaths of many and the radiation poisoning of tens of thousands. It was a mix of separatist war and popular insurrection that sought to break free from the USSA as an independent people's republic and for a while even managed to do so before the US' government managed to strike back, retaking their territory and starting a renewed effort to control the population

I will admit that I can't think of every single small conflict that happened in North America, but outside of those who I already told about and those I plan on writing about (including the Cartel War), I think the only conflicts that happened were years of tension and fighting on the vein of the Years of Lead and the Troubles, the only literal wars that happened were the USSA conquest of Texas (although I said earlier on they annexed their zone of control on Mexico, they de facto had to conquer the entire thing due to the Texans not desiring to become a part of the USSA) and some minor uprisings and border skirmishes on the regions near the Canadian-American borders

Also what was civil unrest and terrorism like in the USSA during the Cold War before the present day? Before it was under control

Basically what I said above in relation to civil unrest during the Cold War, with it in general being a lowkey version of the Years of Lead or the Troubles (with a dash of guerilla fights here and there) and involving all sorts of political non-conformists, revolutionaries and freedom fighters as the government moved from a not perfect but still fine democracy (if with a somewhat intrusive government) into a hardline single party dictatorship. Terrorism only happened in the early years of the USSA when the country was still trying to gain its footing and the government still had to deal with resistance against social and racial equality

 

[Peppe]

So, firstly, I ask for your forgiveness for leaving this TL without any sign of life for over a month, I either was drawn towards other projects or got myself distracted half-doing updates on various ideas without focusing on a single one to the point of it being updateable. Secondly, happy pride month.

Now, to the update, I known it isn't much - and I do have some other updates related to this on the works - but I felt the need to post something now, even if it is a rather small and underdeveloped update. Because of that, for anyone disappointed about this, please wait a bit while I work on the others, and to everyone reading, feel free to ask anything you want

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1835 – James Pratt (1805-1864) and John Smith (1795-1853) become the last people in Albion to be condemned to death for “buggery”, their sentence is commuted to life imprisonment and they are later pardoned by a Royal Decree in 1850
1842 – Patrick Kelly and Samuel Moore become the first me to be criminally convicted of sodomy in Canada, they are also the only to receive the death penalty before being granted a royal pardon
1852 – John Martin paints The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorah, sparking a short-lived public discourse over if the sin committed by the town that caused its destruction was homosexual acts or breaking laws of hospitality and rape
1861 – The death penalty for “buggery” is abolished
1866 – The trial of Hyde v. Hyde and Woodmansee establishes marriage as being the willing union between a man and a woman
1879 – Jeremy Bentham’s essay on the liberalization of homosexual sex, “Paederasty (Offences Against One’s Self)”, written circa 1785, is posthumously published, it is the first known argument for homosexual law reform in England
1883 – The Gwynedd House Scandal occurs after a raid on a male brothel adjacent to the residence of the Duke of Gwynedd, ending with the ousting of several aristocratic clients, including the then second-in-line to the throne, Prince Arthur of Wales, who was caught on bed with a rent boy
1885 – The Labouchere Amendment, which would make any kind of sexual acts between men illegal, is nearly passed through the Commons, the death of Prince Arthur of Wales (at the time the face of “the fairies” in Albion) from a prolonged and public battle with extrapulmonary consumption ends up serving to kill the proposal on its tracts (in special after his secret interview with The Morning Post, done mere days before his death, was published posthumously, bringing a wave of goodwill among the masses due to its tone and dealing with the subject matter of his personal life, religion and sexuality). From 1886 to 1895 five versions of the amendment would be proposed but failed to go through Parliament as the moralizing panic that gave its first version momentum was never truly regained
1891 – The Cleveland Street Scandal occurs, causing a new wave of moral panic to gain control of London, interestingly the main source of said panic is not the matter of the sexuality and gender of the involved, but instead over the age of many of the telegraph boys doing part-time work on the brothel, causing one of the first “Paedo Hunts” in Albish history
1895 – Due to Royal interference a scandal involving famous author Oscar Wilde and the 9th Marquess of Queensberry is quietly swept under the rug before it had the chance of becoming a thing, many theorize that Empress Victoria got involved mostly to spite the marquess (she was known for disliking him due to his personality, marital history and outspoken atheism, the latter of which made her cheerfully give his eldest son an earldom in 1893 to show her disdain for Queensberry)
1906 – Oswald Valentine FitzArthur, 1st Duke of Merioneth and illegitimate son of the late Prince Arthur of Wales, returns to Albion after a two-years-travel to the Continent accompanied by Imre Borbély, an officer in the Hapsburg Army, with whom he spends the next four decades in a very public relationship
1912 – The Goldenkalbeshöhle, the oldest cabaret in London specifically catering to gay and lesbian clients, is open by Maria Cornelia Uhl in Heddon Street as an underground venue. It is still open in modern times and is considered a historical landmark
1917 – Emperor Henry passes the Imperial Decree on Buggery, establishing it as being punishable by a fine of upwards of 10 pounds for anyone caught doing it on a public setting that could be converted to a corresponding time of public work. Although not officially saying it, the decree de facto decriminalized homosexuality on the private level. From 1917 until its repeal in 1962 the edict saw a total of 2061 individuals be persecuted through it, with most being fined between 2 and 5 pounds
1936 – Mark Weston (born Mary Louise Weston), becomes the first known transgender man in Albion to undergo a surgical transition, although he did not undergo phalloplasty
1938 – Sir Victor Barker (born Lillias Irma Valerie Barker), a Colonel in the Imperial Air Force, becomes the first known transgender man in Albion to undergo phalloplasty, he was also the first openly transgender politician to serve on the House of Commons, being an Imperialist MP for Brighton from 1935 to 1944
1949 – Dame Roberta Cowell, a fighter pilot in the IAF becomes the first Albish woman to undergo a sex reassignment surgery
1950 – Last recorded filing of a fine for “buggery”
1959 – Bolton v Forbes-Smyth establishes Lord Coke’s Institutes of the Lawes of England as to have created a precedent in the common law for the recognition of transgender individuals as being of their identified gender, declaring the treatise of hermaphroditism as being valid to their situation and establishing the meaning of “the sex which does prevail” as being in specific the way they present (look) in society and not the genitalia they have. This also establishes a precedent for hermaphrodite individuals to be capable of choosing the gender they identify as instead of having to do with the one that is most present on their bodies
1962 – The Sexual Offences Act 1962 officially decriminalizes “buggery” (identified on the act as being “anal sex of any kind”) in a record speed; that same year the Sexual Hate Act 1962 establishes the first law against discrimination based on one’s sexuality
1973 – Monroe v Edmunds establishes a civil partnership as being “a union based on the long-term cohabitation of two individuals”, opening it to be done between people of the same sex
1991 – Fairbrooke v Millender-Hastings overturns the decision made by the court at Hyde v. Hyde and Woodmansee
1995 – The Marriage Act 1995 establishes a civil marriage as being “a willing union between individuals”, legalizing same-sex marriage within the Commonwealth and, due to a typo, accidentally doing the same for polyamorous marriages
2005 – Creation of the first egg made from a male stem cell and of the first sperm made from a female one
2012 – First successful tissue engineering of a working set of female reproductive organs made from male stem cells
2016 – Shivarao Ghorpade, Yuvraj Sahib of Sandur, become the first baby born of a trans woman in Albion (the Raja of Sandur, Shivashanmukha II)

 

[Analytical Engine]

Awesome.

 

[Peppe]

The Imerina Royal Coat of Arms, until 1945 the Malagasy Coat of Arms​

Tracing their history back to the early 16th century with King Andriamanelo of Alasora, the Imerina Dynasty (which is sometimes known as the "Hova Dynasty" or even the "House of Andriamanelo") came to rule over Madagascar in the early 19th century, when, inheriting from his father's work on expanding the Imerina Kingdom, Radama I united most of the island under his authority, expanding from the Central Highlands to directly control most of Madagascar. Since 1810, when Radama I ascended to the throne, twelve of the dynasty's members have hereditarily ruled over the island; of them, only three have been male, with the times between 1890 and 2011 officially seeing only women sitting on the Malagasy Throne.

Originally caused by Madagascar's lack of official succession laws and political machinations within the Merina, the succession of women to the Malagasy Throne has become the prefered manner of inheritance in the kingdom since 1937 when then Crown Princess Elizabeth Razafinandriamanitra gave birth to the Prince of Menabe

Although by law all Malagasy Monarchs are considered to be of the Imerina Royal Line, they have, ever since time reign of Ranavalona IV, mantained the custom of tracing and awarding some level of acknowledgement and respect to their paternal ancestry. Due to the often long names given to Malagasy Royals, most monarchs listed bellow have both a regnal name chosen upon their ascension and a personal name given at birth or chosen at some point in adulthood

[1] Although officially the son of King Radama I, Radama II’s father was probably Prime Minister Andriamihaja, his mother’s lover and de facto husband and Madagascar’s first PM, whose lineage was probably from the freeman (Hova) class of the Merina and not of the Royal Line
[2] The son of Prince Henri Razafinkarefo (nephew of Queen Ranavalona III through her older sister, Princess Rasendranoro) and his African-American wife (whose father was the American Consul to Madagascar from 1891 to 1905), his parents married as teenagers (Henri was the older one at nearly 17) and died young during the Franco-Hova War, and he was raised by his maternal grandparents, paternal grandmother, and grandaunt
[3] Born Prince Jean Marcus de Bourbon, a member of the House of Bourbon-Condé-Rohan and a son of Ranavalona IV’s sister
[4] Although the House of Bourbon-Condé-Rohan is considered to be non-dynastic to the main House of Bourbon, they are nonetheless agnatic descendants of Hugh Capet and a part of the Capetian Dynasty
[5] The name most often used for the Royal House of the Antankarana Kingdom, meaning “Children of Silver”, it was originally the name of the Antankarana People, being used when they were still a subgroup of the Sakalava People
[6] Although not of a Hova line (as it would technically be if she was a male-line descendant of Radama II), as Grand Prince Randriamahazodama’s mother was a granddaughter of Radama II while his father was a minor male-line descendant of King Andramasinavalona

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Radama III (John Augustus Rakotomanratsifendrihama; born 26 April 1987) is the King of Madagascar. Ascending to the throne in 8 October 2006 upon the abdication of his mother, Queen Ranavalona VIII, he was named Ranavalona IX until 23 June 2011, when he officially transitioned.

Born during the reign of his great-great-grandmother, Queen Ranavalona V, as the eldest child of then Princess Marianne Ranazafinankatemapianitra and her husband, Prince Anthony Randriamahazodama, at birth Radama was the 5th in line to the Malagasy Throne after his mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. From 1988 to 1993 Radama's position on the succession steadily rose with the deaths of his grandmothers, becoming at the age of 6 the Crown Princess of Madagascar in 18 September 1993 with his mother's ascension to the throne.

Beggining to show signs of gender disphoria during his late-childhood and early teens, it was only after his mother's nearly-fatal airplane crash in 2003, which forced him to de facto become the regent of the Malagasy monarchy, that Radama III openly started to show his preference for male-style clothing and looks. Reaching majority in 2006, that same year, after nearly 4 years as Regent, Radama III ascended to the throne with his mother agreeing to abdicate in his name. Generally prefering to continue the tradition of the Malagasy monarchs of holding a neutral stance in national politics and focusing on public relations, social works and environmental preservation, Radama III has become known for frequently using his royal prerrogative of overseeing debates at the Malagasy Parliament[1], as well as for using said prerrogative to, between 2007 and 2011, passing the legislature nescessary for his legal trasitioning.

Married in 2005 to his third cousin once removed, Prince Marcel Rahanitraniriamantsoa of Iboina[2], with whom he had been in a relationship since 2001, the King's heir is their eldest daughter, Crown Princess Ravaloarakotoanarimandriafindradama (coloquially known as Ranavalona X), born in 2009.

The first openly transgender monarch in the world (to not be the ruler of a subnational or autonomous monarchy[3]) and a bisexual man, Radama III nonetheless holds a fairly high level of popularity among the traditionally conservative Malagasy population, although that does not mean he hasn't had seen backlash based around his gender or sexuality, having to deal with more than one failed attempt to depose him (see the Malagasy Silent War for more), 8 assassination attempts and innumerable personal attacks by politicians and social personalities alike, the latter of which have caused a faction of the population to support the return of Madagascar's lèse-majesté laws.

[1] A right given to Ranavalona III after the end of Prime Minister Rainilaiarivony's administration in 1906, before Radama III (who has become famous (or infamous) for his wide array of silent reactions to debates and comments he dislikes) queens mainly enacted it during debates over the passing of major or monumental legislation or in the first session of a new government
[2] A prince of the Kingdom of Iboina (the largest of the four autonomous kingdoms of Madagascar) and a direct descendant of Prince Rakotobe, the nephew and original heir of King Radama I
[3] That honor goes to Brunhilde, Landgravine of Hesse-Homburg, who was born Ludwig II, and did so in 1937

 

[TheBeanieBaron]

Who is current youngest reigning monarch? Are there any other countires that had long periods of female monarchs?

Also I know this is not related to the timeline but are there going to be more updates for the Edward VI lives longer graphic timeline? I find it really interesting, as mush as this.

 

[Peppe]

Who is current youngest reigning monarch?

That is a good question that i hadn't yet really put though it, so thanks for the motivation.
Now, since it all depends on how we consider the monarch and their power, we have some "options", or "categories", to choose from:
1. If we want to go with the absolute youngest current monarch one of the current Dalai Lamas in the War of the Tibetan Succession is a toddler of 3 whose reign started due to him being the proclaimed reincarnation of his predecessor (who was also a contested Dalai Lama and died at the age of 11)
2. Now the youngest hereditary and non-contested male monarch is the current Prince of Liechtenstein, who is 5 as of 31 December 2020
3. His female counterpart, on the other hand, is the Queen of Haiti, who is currently a young girl of 7
4. Both of the above are not de facto rulers of their states, so the youngest female monarch who holds actual hard power is the current Queen of Sine, who is 15 and begun ruling by herself at the age of 14 (another two young female monarchs are the current Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, who is 22 and became monarch at almost-3, and the Queen of Bosnia, who is 17 and inherited her throne at age 10.)
5. Her male counterpart is the current Emir of Qatar, who holds power at the age of 15 as well (others like him are the Omukama of Tooro, who is 19, and the Prince of the Couto Misto, who is 23. The Omukama of Bunyoro is 13, but currently he has no political power)

In relation to major world powers we have also some relatively young monarchs, with the Empress of Japan beign only 23, the Emperor of Ethiopia 25, the main Chinese Emperor barely reached his 30s, the Hapsburg is only 35, and the German is 40 but became a monarch at age 10

Are there any other countires that had long periods of female monarchs?

Well, the Rain Queens exist since the early 1800s as rulers of the Lobedu People and have a solely-matrilineal succession, which was carried over when they became the rulers of Mpumalanga/the Transvaal.
The Wang Dynasty of China (the landlocked salmon blob on Northern China) is also matrilineal, with the dynasty's founding ruler being a female warlord
Of countries whose inheritance laws are not matrilineal but have had a long string of female monarchs we have:
- The Kingdom of Sine, who has only had female monarchs ever since the death of Mad a Sinig Mahekor Juuf in 1969
- The Netherlands we already know, but of the states born from its colonies, Indonesia has only had female monarchs
- Luxembourg, between 1912 and the present, only had Grand Dukes during the period of 1956 to '84 (another country similar to that is the Nordic Federation, as Denmark in specific has only had one male monarch since 1916, and the guy only ruled for 5 years)
- Mozambique, like Indonesia, is in part lacking male monarchs due to its young age, with its queen being its first ruler and set to be succeded by one of her granddaughters
- Myanmar/Upper Burma has had mostly Queens ever since King Thibaw was dethroned in 1885 with the end of the Third Anglo-Burmese War
- Colombia is on its third queen since 1957, and since the 1930s Anziku has had a plethera of female monarchs, although they most of the time are intercalated by male ones
- And, from among the Albish Imperial Kingdoms, we have some who have only had female rulers for some time: The Carnatic (3 queens since 1950), Berar (under a Queen since 1955 and whose grandmother ruled from 1912 to 1928), The Bahamas (3 queens since 1959), Assam (current queen is the only one, but has ruled since 1960), the Straits (same as Assam, in this case since 1961, although she had her husband as a co-monarch until 1963) and Kiribati (whose second and current ruler, a queen, has ruled since 1965). Sierra Leone, Seychelles, Quebec, Papua-Solomons and Belize, also to note, have only had a single monarch, which is a queen

Also I know this is not related to the timeline but are there going to be more updates for the Edward VI lives longer graphic timeline? I find it really interesting, as much as this.

I do have plans to return to it (in special since I ended up making a "rewrite" on timeline with a major help/influence from @KellanSullivan), I haven't done that yet due to being focused on other ideas but I'm not abandoning it by any chance (I'm actually thinking of making it into a thread at some point in time to make it easier to manage)

 

[Peppe]

A double posting and two of the pride month ones I said I was working on
Lili Elbe

Lili Ilse Elvenes (born Einar Magnus Andreas Wegener, 28 December 1882 – 7 January 1945), better known as Lili Elbe, was a Danish painter, model and transgender woman, being one of the earliest recipients of sex reassignment surgery as well as one of its most famous.

Born on 1882 in Vejle, Denmark, to the merchants Mogens Wegener and Ane Thomsen, and studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Lili was a well-known painter even before her transition, being somewhat famous on Denmark and Germany due to her talent in depicting landscapes as well as her work as an illustrator to books and magazines, and in 1907 won the Academy’s Neuhausen Prize for her paiting “Uvejr trækker op” (or “Storm pulls up”). Meeting Gerda Marie Frederikke Gottlieb, then a priest’s daughter, as a student in the academy, the two of them were close friends and paintings partners, and married on June 8th, 1904, when Lili was 22 and Gerda was 19.

Beginning her career as a portrait model with Gerda, where she first dressed as a woman and took the name “Lili”, until the 1920s it remained a “part-time affair” for Lili and Gerda, who until 1922 still lived in Denmark as a couple and gained their pre-transition fame, but by 1915 Lili had already come to identify as being more a woman than a man. On 1922, with the end of the First World War (which had ruined their plans of moving to Paris to live among its famous artist community), the two of them moved first to Dresden and then to Berlin with their daughter, Johanna (born in 1905), and Lili finally begun living openly as a woman, posing as Gerda’s sister-in-law, while Gerda herself could live as an active lesbian. It was during that time that Lili took the name “Elbe”, and in 1925 she had a short-lived relationship with Annika Grünbaum, a cabaret dancer with whom she had a daughter, Valkyrie.

In 1930 Lili surgically transitioned, going through a series of operations first at Berlin under Magnus Hirschfeld, who removed her testicles, and then in Dresden under Kurt Warnekros who did the remainder of the procedures. On October of that year she and Gerda her divorce approved by a Danish court, and on December 9th of that year she changed her legal gender and name to “Lili Ilse Elvenes”, although she remained known as Lili Elbe. During the months of the transition Lili became famous for being the first known woman to (at least publicly) go through sex reassignment surgery in a non-experimental procedure (in absolutes she lost to Dora Richter by a few weeks), giving interviews to newsletters from as far as Brazil and Japan, and even became a fashion model for a few months due to her fame. She also met during that time the Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg[1], with whom she became a lifelong friend.

Having her fourth surgery, a uterine transplant and a vaginoplasty, on June of 1931, Lili nearly died after the transplanted uterus was rejected by her immune system and she developed a serious infection during the follow-up surgery to take it out, suffering from a heart attack on September 13th that nearly took her life. After surviving her near-fatal surgery, which left her with permanent sequelae, and seeing her relationship with Gerda slowly disintegrate over the years, Lili decided to return to Denmark with Valkyrie (as Annika had left the girl with her before dying of breast cancer in 1930) to get away both from her bohemian life and the pollution (which was dangerous to her debilitated lungs), settling on countryside of Funen.

Still working as a painter for the rest of her life, Lili became known once more mainly for her paintings, working on over 30 paintings commissioned by the Danish Crown, mainly as a part of the “Et maleri: Danmark” project, as well as a few that caused her to travel outside of her newfound home-region, visiting Britain twice, Germany over a dozen times (often also to visit her friends on the country), Norway thrice and Greenland and Iceland once. Still giving a few public appearances about her transition well into her older years, she died at the age of 62 in early 1945, from what is believed to be some sort of complication involving her 15-year-old ovarian transplant.

Remembered to this day as a main figure of transgender history and as a model, as well as for the fact that she received little persecution over her identity in an era where prejudice and violence against “others” is seen as being rampant, Lili’s semi-autobiographical novel “Man into Woman”, which had been published by commission since 1933 under a pseudonym, became a worldwide bestseller following its posthumous publication under her real name by her daughters in 1946, being known as one of the most in-depth narratives about gender dysphoria, transitioning and the life of a transgender individual in the early 20th century, and has been adapted to theatre and various times to film since then.

[1] At the time of the first visits between the two Ludwig II of Hesse-Homburg was still known by her birth name and gender (he was born in 1891, and served on the African Fronts of the First World War), being recently widowed of their wife, Princess Annelise of Anhalt-Köthen and Anhalt-Bernburg, and was due to their interactions that she finally came to accept herself as a woman, transitioning legally and physically to Brunhilde in 1937 (which caused quite the hassle at the time due to the Hessian Salic Law)

Oscar Wilde​

Sir Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wils Wilde, 1st Baronet (October 16th 1854 – August 15th 1916) was a Albish-Irish poet and playwright who became known during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as one of the most popular playwrights in London and the Albish Home Islands. He is best remembered for his many epigrams, plays, his hit novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and his personal life.

Wilde’s parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin, who instilled in him an interest for the classics and the motivation to learn to speak fluent French and German. Studying firstly at Trinity College Dublin and then at Oxford, Wilde demonstrated himself and exceptional classicist during his university years before entering the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin, which he became a spokesman for.

Moving to London following university into the fashionable cultural and social circles of the time, from the 1880s to the early 1890s Wilde dabbled into a variety of literary activities, publishing a book of poems, working prolifically as a journalist in London and even lecturing in Canada and the then United States on the new “English Renaissance in Art” and interior decoration, the latter being a minor passion of his. It was also during that period that he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art through a series of dialogues and essays, incorporating themes of decadence, duplicity and beauty into what would be his most famous novel, The Picture of Dorian Grey (1890). Firstly entering the world of playwrighting in 1891, when he wrote Salome while staying in Paris (which would be refused a license for Albion until the turn of the century due to its portrayal of Biblical subjects), Wilde soon became one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London through his comedies, of which the most well-known is probably The Importance of Being Earnest.

Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skills, which made him one of the best-known personalities of his day, Wilde was also marked by his personal relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas (the third son of the 9th Marquess of Queensberry) and Sir Robert B. Ross, who became his companions and partners in the years of the late 1880s and early 1890s. Known as a nearly-open secret among Albish high society of the time, the decades-long relationship of the three men, which lasted until Wilde’s death, was marked by the enmity and rivalry of the man’s two lovers, as well as for his enmity with his “father-in-law”, the Marquess of Queensberry, whom he mutually shared a sense of contempt. Said mutual feeling nearly led to Wilde’s downfall in 1895 when the marquess, enraged by a new flaring-up of talks about his son’s relationship, came within inches of suing him for buggery as well as for “being involved in sodomy with boys”[1], which only came not to be due to direct interference by Empress Victoria, who is said to have been motivated mainly by spite.

Possibly shaken by his near-encounter with consequences, or maybe by his near-fatal encounter with a gas explosion in 1898 (which left permanent scarring and physical damages as well as leaving him a widower), Wilde ended up leaving London in 1901 to an estate brought in part by his lover’s inheritance in Windermere, where he would live for most of his remaining life. Made a baronet in 1907 and given a knighthood in the Order of Saint Patrick, Wilde took a more luddite, if sometimes also more carnal and bacchanal, turn on his woks in his years in Windermere, writing a total of 11 novels (six of which had explicit erotic contents) during his years there, most of which would be published posthumously. He died in 1916 at the age of 61 from meningitis, being buried on his personal cemetery on his lands.

Married in 1884 to Constance Lloyd, a union which would last until her death in a gas explosion in 1898, Wilde had two sons with her, Cyril and Vyvyan, who became known for their own legal battles with his partners over his literary estate as much as for their vicious pursuing the unauthorized publishing of novels under his name.

[1] A note must be made that, although Wilde and his lovers seem to have never partaken in sexual activities with preteens (which was what Queensbery was specifically insinuating), they are known to have done so with at least two 16-year-olds, one of whom may have begun to have encounters with them when he was either 15 or 14, which, since the bar was raised from 13 to 16 in 1875, was definitively illegal

 

[Peppe]

An extra update inspired by a map I saw on reddit about a surviving kingdom of Beaver Island​

The Beaver Islands, officially the Most Holy Kingdom of the Beaver Islands, is an Irish Gaelic[k] and English-speaking microstate situated on the north of Lake Michigan in North America surrounded by territorial waters of the USSA. The kingdom is officially the only theocracy in the Americas, being an absolute monarchy under the King of the Islands as well as the state of the Strangite Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, whose Prophet is at the same time monarch of the Beaver Islands. De facto the kingdom is somewhat like a confederacy, with its towns and settlements all having a high degree of local autonomy from the capital and many being de facto like autonomous petty states, with the king’s actual powers being more in line with serving as a national “overseer” and a unifying figure and individual within the country, as well as being the commander of the kingdom’s military.

One of the smallest countries on the Americas with a land area of only 284km2, the kingdom is both an island nation and a landlocked country, being located entirely within one of the North American Great Lakes and theoretically being an enclave within the United Socialist States of America, which it lacks any bridge connection to. Geographically the kingdom is comprised of nineteen islands or islets divided between the Beaver Archipelago (15 islands) and the Fox and Manitou island pairs, while administratively it is made of twenty-three towns, with only Beaver, High and North Manitou islands having more than a single one on them. The largest town, St. James, which is also the kingdom’s capital, houses nearly 9,000 people, making it over three-times as large as the second-largest town, Peaine (also on Beaver Island), which has a population of 2,783.

De facto established in 1847, when James I settled with his followers on what is now St. James (his church having broken from mainstream Mormonism in 1844), the kingdom officially began in a manner in the 8th of July of 1850, when its founder crowned himself the king of his church. In 1855, while serving as a member of the Michigan House of Representatives, James I created the County of Manitou, comprising the territory of what is now the kingdom, and de facto established an autonomous state within the American state of Michigan. Historically antagonistic in relation to the nearby non-Strangite populations, the 1850s saw the kingdom survive the brutal murder of its founder, the hasty ascension of his son, and a war against its neighboring counties and settlements, which resulted on its de facto independence from Michigan with the Treaty of Charlevoix.

Officially, the kingdom as a territory was finally established during the First World War, when King Gabriel I Charles, using the Albish advance into Lake Michigan to his favor, asked for Albish support and recognition of his small state’s independence from the United States in exchange for surrendering it peacefully for their occupation. The then commander of the Albish forces on the Great Lakes, the future Emperor Henry, agreed to it with surprising ease, with the then named “State of Manitou” becoming a Albish protectorate in December 4th, 1914. Renamed in 1920, the kingdom remained a Albish protectorate until 1961, when it became a member of the Commonwealth, but its strategic position on the Great Lakes has made it remain under some level of Albish military administration to this day[l].

Remarkably green, with over 70% of its land area being covered by original vegetation, due to the Strangite mandate of conservationism, the kingdom is often characterized as being underdeveloped, with its economy being centered mainly around its capital being a stopping point for ships traveling to and from Lake Michigan and around fishing and fish farming. Nonetheless, the kingdom is remarkably well-off in relation to modern pleasantries and commodities[m], and besides the services industry somewhat focused on the local Albish garrisons the kingdom has a growing tourism industry, with its forest and lake-side resorts as well as its scenic views[n] attracting thousands every year; the kingdom is also a popular filming location due to similar reasons.

Originally inhabited by the mostly white followers of James I, the kingdom is, in modern times, considerably multiethnic, as the Strangite openness for non-whites, as well as the diminishing of the kingdom’s original population in the 1850s and 1860s[o], made it an attractive destination for Irish and Black immigrants, with almost the entirety of the country’s modern population boasting at least some Black or Irish (and often times both) ancestry.

Religiously the kingdom is a made-up by a majority of Strangite Mormons, the smallest of the “main” churches of the LDS and a church that has been tied to the kingdom, quite literally, since the beginning. Known for permitting plural marriages of both the polygynous and polyandrous manner (unique to it), as well recognizing women as being of full equal status to men (a characteristic shared with only a few other Mormon groups), the Strangite Church is infamous for having a troubled when not antagonistic relationship with most other Mormon churches since its inception, in great part due to its founder’s hard-headedness, its fundamentalism[p] and its unique customs[q], with it officially supporting Oregon in all but the first Mormon Uprising.

Spoiler: NOTES

[a] Established by the country’s founding king in 1844, the Strangite Church of the Latter Day Saints is the official state religion of the Beaver Islands, and until 1978 was a prerequisite for anyone applying for a citizenship
|b] Generally used only for the member of the kingdom’s official church
[c] de facto a decentralized federal theocratic executive monarchy (while some towns are in some level of monarchy as well)
[d] The full title being “His Holiest Majesty, King of the Islands of the Beaver, Fox and Manitou and Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ and of the Latter Day Saints and by Right Lord of the Northern Waters of Michigan”, the office and title are unisex
[e] The highest religious office of the Strangite Church after Prophet, they serve basically as the king’s main advisors, seconds-in-command and representatives. Traditionally there are always three viceroys in the church (although this number is not actually a thing set in stone), and for most of the church’s history one of them has always been the heir presumptive or apparent
[f] The official representative of the Imperial Crown on the kingdom, de facto he is another advisor of the king as well as something of an unofficial secretary most of the time
[g] As mentioned before, the highly decentralized nature of the kingdom means that, outside of a few (and mainly religious) laws, most legislation is made on a town level by their local town councils (whose numbers can vary from the entire population of the town to a single individual)
[h] James I specifically made himself the “King” of his faction of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (basically changing the then title of “president”, which is still retained by most Mormon churches for their heads), whose members at the time included nearly the entire population of Beaver Island
[ i] Manitou County, named for the then uninhabited Manitou Islands
[j] A written declaration made by James III where he basically told the Michigan House of Representatives that they would have a real civil war on their hands if they dared dissolve his county (at the time the state was going through its third “Little Civil War”)
[k] A mix between Irish Gaelic (mostly from Connacht), Louisiana Cajun and Canadian-Influenced American English (but obviously with a larger percentage of Irish Gaelic), it became one of the official languages of the kingdom in the 1930s, after already being a de facto one since the 1900s
[l] The kingdom was nearly conquered by the USSA during the October Crisis, and to this day it has a standing Albish garrison made of 6,500 troops (mainly from the Navy) while the kingdom itself has an overarching law requiring every citizen to be militarily trained
[m] In great part due to its strategic position on the Great Lakes, the Albish government has a standing order for the kingdom to receive an overly-favorable treatment in relation to imports and off-country resources (for example, both electricity, water and internet access are free)
[n] Besides the natural beauty, most towns on the country seem to be, in some way, eternally locked on the past in their looks, with many having their buildings look straight out of Victorian history books while St. James in specific is known for resembling a mix between a medieval citadel and a Victorian town
[o] The War of Survival of 1856-57 killed 958 of the island’s then 2800 inhabitants, while a back-to-back attack by the flu and the measles killed a quarter of the population, who by 1871 of 1,382 people
[p] By which it is meant to say that the church is extremely non-negotiable in relation to its set of beliefs
[q] Besides the already mentioned polygamy and openness to women (and not squirting around being monarchical like most Mormon Churches, believing that the position of Prophet is hereditary), the Strangite Church is also known for its slightly altered views on Free Agency, its practice of animal sacrifice, its incorporation of folk Irish and Black (and in specific Cajun) beliefs and its lack of endowment rituals

 

[Peppe]

Sorry for the month and a half of radio silence on this TL, as a sort-of-compensation, here's my last update based on the ideas of the pride month and bellow it will be one following the "list" of updates I had on page 4

THE FAIRY PRINCE, ARTHUR OF WALES
For some reason this update just did not like to flow easily, so, in the end, outside of the first paragraph it is closer to a small biography in structure than any sort of Wikipedia article​

Prince Arthur of Wales (Arthur Alexander George Frederick Albert; 28 April 1864 – 25 July 1885) was during his lifetime the eldest child and son of the Prince and Princess of Wales (late Emperor Arthur of Albion and Empress Consort Alexandra) and grandson of the reigning British/Albish Monarch, Victoria. Born the second in line to the Albish throne, Arthur never became Emperor, dying when his grandmother was still the holder of the position, and is instead most commonly known for his status as an openly gay man, and for his role on the earliest developments in relation to homosexual rights on the Albish Empire.

Born on early-to-middle 1864 as a sickly and small baby, Prince Arthur (known commonly as “Alex” to his family and friends) grew up a relatively sheltered and, while not spoiled, pampered child, being marred by bouts of sickness and near-encounters with death due to his weak health. Close to his parents and siblings, he seems to have never been that interested on becoming monarch on the future, and, in fact, was extremely close to his younger brother, the future Emperor Henry.

Finally leaving home (in a sense) as a 12-year-old, when he entered the Navy, Prince Arthur spent only a few years there (his disposition making him at best a capable member of the communications division), but during that time traveled across the Albish Empire with his younger brother, coming also to discover his homosexuality during that time, becoming romantically (and later sexually) involved with some of his friends and colleagues at sea.

Both fearless and fearful about the matter, whom he for quite a while only disclosed to his brother (who was known for his overt loyalty to him) and then to his mother (who discovered it through a bout of sherlockian deductiveness), it was only after returning to the Home Islands in 1880 that Arthur truly came to terms with his sexuality, coming to the open about it to his relatives on the holidays of 1879-1880, who, to quite a surprise, received him with open arms, Empress Victoria in particular having been swayed by the at-the-time recent publication of Jeremy Bentham’s “Paederasty”.

Living with his grandmother at Buckingham following his return, Prince Arthur’s personal life is relatively unknown from 1880 to 1882, with the Empress’ diaries being responsible for most of the knowledge about him for the era. During that time, the prince opened to her as well over his opinions about his position on the succession, revealing his belief that, for the monarchy of his grandmother, Arthur would be more of a hinder on the throne than a boon, and that he considered his younger brother a much better candidate (which culminate on his brother’s birthday in 1881, when the prince, after discussing the matter with both Henry and their grandmother, declared matter-of-fact that he would not marry, and that his reign would simply be him as a placeholder while Henry would be the heir and de facto ruler of the empire). In the matter of relationships, Prince Arthur doesn’t seem to have had any lover until 1882, preferring to have a few recurring sexual partners.

On the Lent of 1882, Prince Arthur also came open to the Dean of Windsor of the time, Gerald Wellesley (who had actually already known about the matter, having been for years a friend and close confidant of the Empress), who would help him through some of his worries about his Faith and his sexuality[1].

It was also during late 1882 that Prince Arthur came to meet Daniel Seams, then 21-years-old during his visits to brothels on London, taking the then male prostitute to Buckingham Palace on a drunken whim and, as romantics always like to mention, falling in love with him over the course of the night, being so infatuated by the next morning that he officially invited Seams to become his paramour. Although rather one-sided and awkward at the beginning, even if, again, surprisingly accepted by his family, the relationship between Prince Arthur and his paramour soon blossomed from one motivated by sexual chemistry and money to an actual love-based one, the two being drawn closer especially by the birth of their first children in 1883[2].

The relationship (which was marked by the prince’s fondness for periodically still visiting brothels and orgies while his partner seems to have gone the opposite route) lasted until Arthur’s death, and the two had three children together.

It was finally in 1883 when Prince Arthur’s sexuality became known to the empire at large, after he was found sleeping with a rent boy[3] during a raid on a brothel near Gwynedd House on September 19th, 1883, causing a scandal of levels so extreme that it could be considered awe inspiring, causing even the confidence on the monarchy on the empire to wobble for a bit while Albion herself saw a wave of anti-gay rhetoric, including the nickname of the prince as “The Prince of the Fairies”[4]. For the remainder of that year, and for much of 1884, Prince Arthur and his family became de facto exiled to Balmoral Castle, sent there by Empress Victoria in the hopes of letting him weather away the storm.

Sadly, it was also during the “waiting” at Balmoral that Prince Arthur’s health slowly begun to fail, as he contracted consumption at some point during the Winter of 1883-84 and not even the cold weather could help as it developed into an extrapulmonary one over the months. By 1885, the prince was marked by a gaunt appearance, a sallow and pale complexion and a bloody cough, and he had been forced to stay mostly on a wheelchair due to the level of wasting suffered by his body.

One (basically the sole) boon given to Prince Arthur through his disease was public support, as, in a rather grim and cynic manner, he and the Imperial Family, wishing to make the best of a horrible situation, used the prince’s grim image as a way of raising public sympathy and support for both him and homosexuality, as even moralist attacks grew lesser and weaker over time due to the rather awkward position that condemning a man already on a living hell for one of the few pleasures he could theoretically have could place the speaker on[5].

The Prince’s fight finally ended in July 25, 1885, when the consumption finally took him, but even at the end the prince ended up helping his case and homosexuality on the empire, as at the time the infamous Labouchere Amendment was being discussed on Commons as a part of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, and, feeling his days ending, the prince did a detailed interview with the Morning Post on July 21, which was published just over a week later, on the 29th, four days after his death.

Remembered as a figure of great importance for homosexual rights across the Empire, with his death and interview serving to break any momentum for anti-gay laws and being even honored by Emperor Henry on his 1917 Decree who de facto decriminalized homosexuality on a private level, Prince Arthur’s life, death, and meaning are commemorated annually on the anniversary of his death, which is also the first day of Pride Week on the Albish Empire.

[1] Although there are various texts on the Bible used to condemn homosexuality (seven being the most commonly said number), Wellesley himself perceived them on a different light to the traditional readings, believing that the condemnations made on them were not over specifically homosexual acts and relationships but, instead, over non-consensual, prostitution-based, predatory and/or “pagan” homosexual acts.
[2] A transgender man, it was only on his much later years that Daniel actually went through a phalloplasty, and during the entirety of his relationship with Arthur the two were surprisingly comfortable in having vaginal sex
[3] Then 17-year-old James John Corbett, who had been working as a rent boy to help pay his living as a medical student
[4] A common slang of the era for homosexual men
[5] Even among the moralist crowd condemning Prince Arthur during his later months was seen as social suicide to many

THE 1ST DUKE OF MERIONETH, HIS LOVER AND HIS DYNASTY​

Imre Xavier Borbély (1883-1951), photo dating to the late 1900s​

Oswald FitzArthur, 1st Duke of Merioneth, 1st Duke of Methven, KT, KCB, KCVO (25 March 1883 – 3 August 1957) was the illegitimate eldest son and child of Prince Arthur of Wales and his paramour, Daniel Seams. A member of the peerages of the Empire and of New Zealand, he is the most recent Albish royal bastard to receive a dukedom, as well as the first member of the Imperial Family to be openly gay or bisexual.

Born on Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire, as the first illegitimate child to the then eldest son and heir of the Prince of Wales, the duke was, originally, only a lord by courtesy, being raised on a private and almost secretive manner by his parents until the death of his royal father.

Raised by his father and paternal grandmother, who gave him and his siblings titles when they were three, the duke was a remarkably sheltered child, living on an environment marked by his grief-stricken surviving parent and equally somber great-grandmother, the Empress. He was extremely close to his grandparents, uncle (the future Emperor Henry) and had a close relationship with both his younger sister and brother, as well as with some of his cousins by marriage.

Married at the age of 17 to one of his cousins by marriage, Wilhelmina Rothschild (daughter of Alfred de Rothschild and Lady Philippine Stanhope, sole daughter and heiress of the 8th Earl of Chesterfield), with whom he was a close friend. The two were always cold on the marital bed (even if warm on non-carnal interactions), and after having a pair of twin sons they rarely slept together before 1904. In 1925 Wilhelmina also was made a Baroness on the peerage of New Zealand.

Studying at Eton and then at Oxford, from where he graduated with a Master’s Degree in Arts, on 1904 the duke left to Europe on a Grand Tour, where, in 1906, he would meet Imre Borbély at a café while staying in Budapest. The duke spent some good months on the city, being often visited by his Hapsburg cousins, and during that time became first a friend and then a lover of the Hungarian military officer.

Returning to the Home Islands in late 1906 with Imre by his side, who was readily accepted by Lady Wilhelmina, who seems to have already known the truth about her husband’s preferences before the man himself new, the duke and his family only spent a few more years on there, during which his relationship with Imre became an open secret among the Imperial Family, before moving to Aotearoa shortly before the outbreak of the First World War.

Settling into a large seaside manor on Cape Foulwind on the Southern Island, during the war the duke was made the Lord Lieutenant for the region of the Westcoast, a position he held until death, but otherwise saw little difference. On 1925, the same year his wife became a Baroness, the duke was granted a secondary dukedom, Methven, this time on the peerage of Aotearoa.

Spending rather peaceful times during the interwar years, although the Swiss Flu would nearly kill him and his entire family, it was during the 1930s that his relationship with Imre, de facto a common law marriage to many, entered the public knowledge, with many comparing the duke to his late royal father. He even published a book on the matter “Imre: A Memorandum”[1], based on his diary records of his stay in Budapest.

The duke’s later years were relatively marked by sorrow, as Imre died in 1951 from a pulmonary cancer, and the duke himself died during the Second World War, when an Allied bombing raid hit Moorvent Park, confounding it with a marine base and lighthouse, collapsing half of the manor on top of him and his family, although the duke was the only one killed, suffering grave burns as well as dramatic internal hemorrhage caused by being smashed by falling debris when he pushed his wife (who broke her legs and was partially blinded of an eye by the flames) out of harm’s way.

He was outlived by both her, their children and his father, and became a symbol for the war in Aotearoa.

[1] An actual real-life book published by Edward Prime-Stevenson in 1906, it is considered possibly the first gay novel where the ending sees the homosexual couple both united and happy (I have never read it, but I liked hearing about it so Oswald and Imre are a reference to it)

List of Dukes of Merioneth and of Methven (1886-)
1. Oswald Valentine FitzArthur-Windsor, 1st Duke (1883-1957)
2. Thomas Daniel FitzArthur-Windsor, 2nd Duke (1901-1965)
3. Gregory Matthew FitzArthur-Windsor, 3rd Duke (1930-2005)
4. Henry Lawrence FitzArthur-Windsor, 4th Duke (1955-2007)
5. Valerian Arthur FitzArthur-Windsor, 5th Duke (1959)
Heir Apparent: Oswald Imre FitzArthur-Windsor, Marquess of Nullarbor (1994)
The FitzArthur-Windsor Family
Arms – Escutcheon of Prince Arthur of Wales, crossed by a bend of ermine and gules
Country – Albish Empire (Home Islands, Canada, Jamaica, Aotearoa)
Origin – Albish Imperial Family, illegitimate branch
Agnatic House – House of Windsor (House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Wettin)
Founded – c.1883
Founder – Prince Arthur of Wales, Daniel Seams
Current Head – Valerian Arthur FitzArthur-Windsor, 5th Duke of Merioneth and of Methven
Titles – Duke of Merioneth, Duke of Methven, Duke of Ardudwy, Marquess of Nullarbor, Earl of Westmeath and Moydrum, Earl of Westport, Earl of Rolleston, Earl of Chesterfield, Viscount of Reefton, Viscount Burghfield, Baron Stanhope, Baron Stanhope of Wellington, Baron of Denniston, Baron Cartier
Branches – Seven Families (including “Stanhope-FitzArthur-Windsor”, “Stanhope-Windsor” and “FitzArthur-Jones)
Motto – per sanguinem unitum (united through blood)

SOME SHORT NOTES THAT I COULDN’T MAKE INTO REAL UPDATES
The reason why I couldn't is because I am pretty sure I would end up fucking somethign up in the process of writting these, and even now I'm not 100% sure I didn't do so in some level (and so I feel a preemptive apology to anyone who is negatively affected by this in some way is nescessary, so, I apologize, and ask for your forgiveness)
THE LGBT+ COMMUNITY AND BEING LGBT IN ALBION
Note: this is specifically about Albion, outside of it there are countries just like, better and/or worse than OTL
In the Albish Empire, being LGBT+ (or being straight either) isn’t seen nearly as much as being a part of your identity and sexuality in general is seen as being something domestic and personal (think of it as “your grandmother isn’t going to silently judge a gay couple making out on the park for being gay, but for making out on the park, and if she sees a straight couple making out shell just judge them as well”), and in general the top-down manner through which decriminalization and rights came about in Albion, as well as the earlier timeline of many of them, have caused the matter of sexuality, gender, and anything of that area to be a much “mellower” matter. The LGBT+ community isn’t nearly as much of a “community”, and the closest analogy I can get on what it is would probably some sort of bridge club where the baseline uniter is not being straight.
Pride and Discrimination, though, still do exist, even if both are on relatively different manners. The “Pride Week” that happens at the end of July is less about commemorating the fight for gay rights and discrimination and much more about remembrance of both landmark moments and historical figures, in part due to the less-rocky history of the government on non-straight matters (speaking of less-rocky histories, AIDS, or at least the variant known to OTL, doesn’t exist[1]); I could best describe a Pride Parade as a livelier version of a funerary procession.
Discrimination, in turn, is different in its style, size and public perception, as, for example, while low-key discrimination (generally through stereotyping) is still a thing, massive attacks against gay or trans people aren’t, and someone spouting homophobic/transphobic rhetoric in front of others will probably end with them at minimum receiving the stink eye, if not being shunned and ostracized.
This general reaction has also something to do with general societal norms and the old stereotype that “British People Are Emotionally Constipated”, and in general any sort of sudden and very public displays of opinion, in special in matters that most people would consider “not any of your business”, will get the people doing it a stink eye out of principle for being a nuisance without a drop of self-awareness.
Religion as a motivation to discrimination in relation to sexuality has also fallen out of favor in the Empire at least, which was greatly caused by the development of the train of thought that the Bible doesn’t condemn homosexuality in general during the reign of Empress Victoria and the purposeful spread of said stance across the Anglican Church and the Empire over the 20th century. Religion used to discriminate transgender individuals also did fall out of favor due to a similar train of thought to the above.
An interesting thing about the relation between families and not-being straight is that the Albish, in many ways, took a page of the book of Chinese culture on the matter. Generally speaking, unless they are predisposed to shun their child for not being straight or cisgender (or aren’t worried about genetic descendants), parents place a greater focus on the matter of grandchildren than on the matter of sexuality or gender identity, in special in cases where their child is an only one. No-one is quite sure when this development truly started, but, in broad terms, a parent whose child discovers themselves as gay or trans will probably try and just convince them to either donate/freeze gametes[2] or help them find a “reproductive partner”[3].
Among the gentry and peerage of the empire, a similar manner of this is often seen to occur, with many families, when their heir is gay or even trans, purposefully setting them with a spouse (often times of similar “inclinations”) so they can have children and either live separately or divorce.

TL, DR, being LGBT+ in Albion is a bit of a dizzy, and this writer’s feelings and emotional and social constipation are showing themselves​

[1] Although the HVI that causes the OTL AIDS exists, due to alternate developments the virus is much weaker, and instead of causing the progressive failure of the human immune system by destroying its cells it causes a great deal of damage but never manages to do a complete job, with the best analogy being that if the virus infects a 22-year-old, it will cause them to have the immune system of a 55-year-old. Often times the human immune system even manages to fight the disease off without the help of medication, but it takes about one decade and often times results on an autoimmune disease
[2] In special if the child is trans, the mother or a sibling often offering themselves to be a surrogate
[3] In the ancient Albish tradition of parents networking to help their children find a spouse/partner, as it never truly fell out of favor, in special within suburban communities and outside of the great cities

CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ON LGBT+ MATTERS
While most Christian religious groups prefer to simply not comment or have a neutral stance on the matter, and others are specifically against any sort of homosexual activities and transgender individuals (and some are even an in-between, condemning one and supporting the other or something on that vein), there are some with a specifically accepting stance on the matter.
As mentioned beforehand, the legacy of Dean Gerald Wellesley of Windsor was the creation of a line of thought among the Anglican Clergy that identifies the bible as not condemning general acts of homosexuality, and, instead, the more specific sins done on the scriptures (rape, breaking of guest rights, prostitution, pederasty, etc.). Said line of though spread through the church over the late 19th and early 20th century, and even outside of the Anglican Church to other churches within the Empire, resulting on the official stance of the Church to be changed less than a month after homosexuality was decriminalized in the Empire, with the Church opening marriages to same-sex couples a while later. Nowadays (ITTL 2020) the general stance of many churches within the empire has been this one.
In relation to being transgender, a similar thing occurred before and following the Bolton v Forbes-Smyth landmark judging in 1959, and by the 1990s the official stance of the Anglican Church became that the binary of men and woman was in specific relation to sex, and that gender itself was created by God as a spectrum (a branch of that thought was that also that even if being transgender was a development not within God’s plan that occurred after the Fall from the Garden of Eden, God had shown Himself to accept them as part of His creation).
Other Christian churches of note with similar positions (some even influenced by the Anglicans) are the national Churches of the Nordic Federation, some Eastern Orthodox, Syrian and Coptic Churches, and some minor protestant churches in Europe, Oceania and the Americas. The Catholic Church itself is, while not entirely and officially has a neutral stance, with most priests and officials deflecting when asked on the matter), accepting in some level, and has, surprisingly to some, slowly come to align itself with the Anglicans in the matter ever since the reforms of the mid-to-late-20th century.

TL, DR, this author's periodical religious turmoil has shown itself (and will now show itself out)​

 

[Peppe]

And now to a completely different matter. This update have been cooking-up for a while, and now I have completed it (although, fair warning, it may read a bit wonky)​

The Mexican Cartels War (also known as the Mexican Crusade, Fourth Mexican Civil War or the Revenge War; Spanish: Guerra contra el narcotráfico, Cruzada legítima por el futuro de nuestros niños) was a 5-years-long partially-asymmetric military conflict between the Mexican government and various criminal (mainly drug trafficking) syndicates (or “cartels”) and separatist groups. Known for its dramatic legacy on both Mexican society, government and international relations, and for being the first open military conflict in the country since its third civil war in the 1960s, the war is also seen as in a way marking the de facto end of the Cold War, the rapprochement the Mexican government and the country’s autonomous crowns and the beginning of an era of more direct and antagonistic approaches by governments in relation to organized crime.

To begin explaining the war, one must firstly go to its background, and the state that Mexico saw itself in at the mid-1990s, the last decade of the so-called “Age of Crime”.

Existing ever since the Third Mexican Civil War, when the petty warlords of the North used drug-trafficking (at the time mainly opium and cannabis) as a source of income and continued with it and other manners of crime as one of the basis of their revenue following the reunification, the Mexican Cartels, during the reign of Empress Maria Josepha, only grew in power, using governmental oversight and endemic corruption to establish de facto fiefdoms throughout Mexico, and basically controlling the country’s north by the late 1980s.

In 1988 the empress died, and her son and successor, Maximillian III, saw the spread of organized crime and corruption throughout Mexico as both a stain on the nation’s honor and a sickness that needed to be cured, and soon took a strong stance against the cartels, becoming infamous for his fervent speeches condemning them and his’ and his sister’s increasingly-autocratic moves in their fight against both them and the corruption. This resulted on the emperor’s reign to be cut short, when he was assassinated by agents of The Federation (La Federación), the shadow alliance between most of the cartels, on his son’s 8th birthday, Joaquín, when they smuggled a rotary gun onto the party and opened fire, killing the emperor, 7 other people, and maiming dozens.

With her leg mangled by bullets, Maria Antônia became regent for her nephew, who, on the Christmas of that same year, abdicated in favor of his aunt, who, on the New Years’ Eve, made her infamous “Plagues” speech on the steps of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico City, officially declaring war onto the cartels.

Already on the year of 1996, the first of the war, the conflict expanded outside of just the cartels and the government, as at the time most separatist groups within Mexico were also involved with the organized crime (as a source of revenue) and, funded and convinced by the cartels, separatist insurgencies and states sprung-up on the country, their main ones being the PAY (Popular Army of Yucatan) and the Tejan Insurgents, while in Veracruz a communist group rose and established a short-lived socialist dictatorship.

It is here that the autonomous crowns firstly came into play, as while some of their governments and militaries were actually in favor of becoming independent, most were also mortally against the groups supported by the cartels, causing the government of Yucatan, in special, to come fiercely to the side of the central government, sending their forces to help fight the cartels while locally fighting a de facto civil war with the backing of Mexico City.

From 1996 to 1998, the war saw its fighting mainly in the south of the country, occasionally even spilling into the nearby countries through skirmishes and assassinations, as the government, led by the Empress Maria Antônia herself together with Chancellor Floriano Orville Llamas, focused on squashing the minor separatist uprisings (doing an especially vicious suppression of the Neo-Zapatists and Veracruz) and ending the Gulf Cartel, who controlled most of the organized crime outside of the Federation, as well as any minor cartel who didn’t offer to surrender. On the North, fight was mostly in the way of police skirmishes and the occasional assassination and drug-busting, as the local cartels’ entrenchment made try to deal with them directly rather difficult, resulting on many massacres against the police and armed forces by the cartels during that time.

Some like to say that it was in 1998 that the war took a turn for the better for the government, when the Viceroy of Baja California, Frederico Walden, having been in secret talks with the cartels for months after they begun to stroke his ego and ambition, declared the secession of both Baja California and most of Northern Mexico with the support of most cartels, establishing the “Free Republic of Mexico” as a de facto narco-state led by him as a “provisional-president” and the cartels.

Nowadays, for us who have hindsight, the reaction that much of the population of the north had to this development may seem obvious and expected, seeing as how the fear of an American invasion has been a part of the northern Mexican psyche ever since the 19th century, but, we must remember, at the time said fear wasn’t as widely seen (and neither was the underrated loyalty many felt to the central government out of self-protection) and the cartels, possibly high in overconfidence due to their victories against the government, did not even take a time to think on how their “subjects” would perceive the action of separating from the rest of Mexico.

Said reaction was shock, horror, and then anger. Most civilians (and even some sicarios) were loyal to the cartels out of a mix of fear and gratitude (seeing as how many cartels engaged in public works for the poor to help raise their image), and to them the cartels deciding to completely abandon the central government (until then in the north the war was much more akin to a gang war than anything resembling a traditional conflict) was the deepest kind of betrayal, after all, now that they “broke away”, what could guarantee that “those damn Americans” wouldn’t ride south and do what they did in the 1840s and conquer them (and then probably expel them like they did with most Mexicans on Texas).

And so, in 1999, a new player, loyal to the government, appeared: the civil militias; and as the war died in the South, it became a true one in the North, with the “Free Republic” being dotted and patchworked by disputed territories. The atrocities committed by the cartels (and technically the Tejan Insurgents, but those had been dying down with Californian and Oregonian help), who rose steadily and then dramatically from 1995 to 1998, only helped diminish their reputation, as the death of civilians only fueled the feelings of anger and betrayal felt by people. The militias in many ways focused on guerilla and ambush tactics, taking out members of the cartels (now separatists) in small numbers that built-up over time, and in 1999 itself they managed to capture and brutally kill the “provisional-president”, their actions in the Sonoran Desert being retroactively made an official execution later on

Ironically, on the year 2000, it was the time for members of the Federation to turn sides, with a group of relatively minor cartels (led by the Familia Gaona of Sonora), most of whom were a mix of both legal and illegal businesses, offering to surrender to the government with as many secrets and resources as they could take in exchange of a level of amnesty, protection, and the help to turn the illegal possessions into legal ones (or exchange them for those confiscated from the still “rebelling” cartels). As the group, while minor in direct power, held the control of some of the most strategically located towns on the west of the cartel-controlled areas, the government accepted the deal. Nowadays most of those families are part of the northern Mexican aristocracy, and some even have entered politics.

With their power diminishing, the cartels became even more desperate as 2000 and early-2001 rolled on, becoming more vicious and discriminate in their attacks and even dabbling in mass-scale terrorism. The war finally ended in the middle of 2001, de facto doing so in the 15th of April of that year, when, on the Sunday of Easter, the La Muerte squadrons of the Imperial Special Forces of Mexico, under orders of the Empress, permission from the government and absolving from the Pope, attacked the center of command of the cartels, who, on that day, had their leaders, top-members and their families all together in the main estate of Héctor Salazar, the de facto leader of their forces. Across the cartel-controlled territories a few other attacks also occurred, many on the residences or places of worship of high-ranking sicarios and cartel and separatist leaders.

The Sunday Easter Massacres, as they came to be known, were a bloodbath, with the city of Torreón, the center of the cartels at the time, being marked by the blood running through the streets and the fires and smoke caused by the bombing of some of the buildings housing forces of the cartels.

The war officially lasted a few more months, as the last few stragglers were captured and/or killed and the army finished taking control over the region, with it being declared over by Empress Maria Antônia, through her speech “New Beginning” on the 3rd of August, 2001. Many members of the cartels and separatists were executed, and many more are in prison to this day, while a few leaders and their families, who either surrendered or (in the case of families) were given a greater pass, were exiled, most living in the Caribbean or Europe under Mexican watch to this day.

In the end, the war caused the almost complete death for the crime syndicates of Mexico, organized crime now being reduced to a few remaining minor cartels (most of whom disbanded or went legal) and gangs, while the military would remain in Northern Mexico until the mid-2010s, the economy, damaged greatly by the war and the crime before it, took a while to recover. In the government, the war saw the strengthening of the monarchy, with Empress Maria Antônia being called a dictator by many and the Constitution being rewritten to specifically give her much more overarching powers, and also saw the strengthening of ties between the nation at large and its autonomous crowns, a union created by fighting together for half a decade. Corruption was also tackled, with the constitutional rewrite making it “low-level-treason”, and the government of Baja California saw a complete overhaul as well as a purge of its political class, with the kingdom becoming a region run semi-absolutely by the Imperial House of Mexico for decades to come.

Today, nearly 20 years after the wars end, the Mexican Cartels War is remembered as both a high and a low in the country’s history (and it often depends on who you talk to), but one thing that most agree on is that its effects are still running their course and the direct legacy of the conflict will still take many years to be completed.

 

[Peppe]

Hi everyone who reads this, so, at the moment I'm finishing an update on the Imperial Kingdoms and am doing the three that follow them on the list (Prince of Wales, Judy Dench, and Tolkie & Churchill) and am with a bit of ideas running on my head that developed recently and that I'm curious to see which one would have more interest for you to read after I finish those. The ideas are:

1. A large post on the USSA, its government, and its breakup (which would be about the TL's in-universe future)
2. The La Llorona Virus, its spread and its effects together with WWII on the population, history and cultures of North America
3. A Song of Iron and Blood (which is probably a placeholder name) by Jorge Rodrigo Ramirez Martíns
4. What is the current state of Antarctica (and what is the Eternal State of Agartha)
5. Animal Species (well, subspecies) that have appeared/developed in the world as an effect of the TL

also, once again sorry for the hiatus (I always say to myself it won't happen and I still end up not adding anything to this for over a month), I'm in a bit of a Tolkien and ASOIAF mood recently (in part due to the maps by @Daedalus, but I had some projects on the backburner that I'm finally working through) and was beforehand on a Star Wars binge and ended up starting/restarting some works based around them and ended up losing my focus here.

 

[TheBeanieBaron]

Hi everyone who reads this, so, at the moment I'm finishing an update on the Imperial Kingdoms and am doing the three that follow them on the list (Prince of Wales, Judy Dench, and Tolkie & Churchill) and am with a bit of ideas running on my head that developed recently and that I'm curious to see which one would have more interest for you to read after I finish those. The ideas are:

1. A large post on the USSA, its government, and its breakup (which would be about the TL's in-universe future)
2. The La Llorona Virus, its spread and its effects together with WWII on the population, history and cultures of North America
3. A Song of Iron and Blood (which is probably a placeholder name) by Jorge Rodrigo Ramirez Martíns
4. What is the current state of Antarctica (and what is the Eternal State of Agartha)
5. Animal Species (well, subspecies) that have appeared/developed in the world as an effect of the TL

also, once again sorry for the hiatus (I always say to myself it won't happen and I still end up not adding anything to this for over a month), I'm in a bit of a Tolkien and ASOIAF mood recently (in part due to the maps by @Daedalus, but I had some projects on the backburner that I'm finally working through) and was beforehand on a Star Wars binge and ended up starting/restarting some works based around them and ended up losing my focus here.

I think I will go with option five.

 

[fluttersky]

Sorry for the month and a half of radio silence on this TL, as a sort-of-compensation, here's my last update based on the ideas of the pride month and bellow it will be one following the "list" of updates I had on page 4

THE FAIRY PRINCE, ARTHUR OF WALES
[snip]

Hmmmm, I wonder if any people nowadays argue that the Dukes of Merioneth and Methven should in fact be on the throne, as Arthur would surely have married his partner had it been legally allowed.

(Although, thinking about it marriage might have technically been allowed given Daniel would have presumably been unable to change his legal gender– though it surely wouldn’t have been approved of)

 

[Peppe]

Hmmmm, I wonder if any people nowadays argue that the Dukes of Merioneth and Methven should in fact be on the throne, as Arthur would surely have married his partner had it been legally allowed.

(Although, thinking about it marriage might have technically been allowed given Daniel would have presumably been unable to change his legal gender– though it surely wouldn’t have been approved of)

Some people probably do, and in the past it was a bit more mainstream (in the times of WWI there was even a planned coup by people who wished for the duke to be made emperor, his younger brother was actually the one to "infiltrate" and dismantle it), but Prince Arthur's open disinterest for inheriting the throne and his descendants similar stance (besides the changes of the laws of sucession later on) makes it about as popular as arguing in favor of the Jacobites in OTL modern times

 

[TheBeanieBaron]

Did Juliana of the Netherlands had a regency in her later reign?

Where was Marie Louise Dowager Princess of?

How is Princess Theodora Alexandrovna of Pontus related to the rest of the Pontus Royal Family?

Are there any European monarchies that not have their rulers descended from Victoria?

Did any member of the Japanese Imperial Family marry a descendent of Victoria?

Who is the current Jacobite claimant?

Why did George VII become King of Bengal if they already have their monarchy?

 

[Peppe]

Did Juliana of the Netherlands had a regency in her later reign?

No, although ITTL she reigned from 1952 to 1984, Juliana abdicated due to both a desire to "retire" and wishing to pass the main royal duties to her eldest daughter, who at the time was the only one of her daughters not to already be the a monarch. If she had remained on the throne until her death, in 2011, then she would probably have needed a regent, since she started showing signs of dementia in the late 1990s, even if it was a gradual onset

Where was Marie Louise Dowager Princess of?

Dowager Princess Marie Louise of Orange, the commenting on her was a reference to real-life history, as she was (besides being the most recent ancestor to all currently-reigning Europan monarchs) the regent firstly to her son, William IV of Orange, from 1711 to 1730, and then to her grandson, William V, from 1759 until her death in 1765

How is Princess Theodora Alexandrovna of Pontus related to the rest of the Pontus Royal Family?

Theodora Alexandrovna of Pontus is the half-niece of Philip I of Pontus, her father, Prince Alexander, was the illegitimate son of the Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, whom Andrew legitimized after becoming the Pontic monarch. As she was her father's only child and he died during WWII neither him nor her appear on the line of succession to the Pontic throne

Are there any European monarchies that not have their rulers descended from Victoria?

Azerbaijan is the only one that I can say from the top of my head, with Macedonia and Adakale being some that I'm not 100% sure but are a maybe

Did any member of the Japanese Imperial Family marry a descendent of Victoria?

Yes, the highest ranked member of the Japanese Imperial Family to marry a descendant of Victoria was Shigeko, Princess Teru, daughter of Emperor Showa, who married the heir apparent of Oregon, Michael, Prince of Vancouver, she didn't become Queen consort of Oregon though, since her husband died only two years before his mother

Who is the current Jacobite claimant?

Well, for this one I had to actually see who was the claimant at the mid-to-late 1890s and then do a bit of thinking, since I hadn't yet theorized about this, ITTL the jacobite claimant line goes this way (including those pre-POD since I'd feel weird just listing the ones after 1840):
1. James II & VII (1633-1701) - House of Stuart - Lawful king from 1685 to 1688, Jacobite claimant from 1688 to 1701
2. James the Old Pretender (-1688-1766) - Stuart - Jacobite James III & VIII from 1701 to 1766 - son
3. Charles the Young Pretender (1720-1788) - Stuart - Jacobite Charles III from 1766 to 1788 - son
4. Henry, Cardinal Duke of York (1725-1807) - Stuart - Jacobite Henry IX & I from 1788 to 1807 - brother

---End of the Direct Stuart Line and Stuart Pretenders---None after this actually have claimed the Abish Thrones
The Successors from this point forward are the seniormost legitimate descendants of Princess Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orléans, younger sister of James II & VII and Charles II, through male-preference primogeniture

5. Charles Emmanuel VI of Sardinia (1751-1819) - Savoy - Jacobite Charles IV from 1807 to 1819
6. Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia (1759-1824) - Savoy - Jacobite Victor from 1819 to 1824 - brother
7. Maria Beatrice of Savoy (1792-1840) - Savoy - Jacobite Mary II from 1824 to 1840 - eldest daughter
8. Francis V of Modena and Reggio (1819-1875) - Austria-Este - Jacobite Francis I from 1840 to 1875 - eldest son
9. Maria Annunciata of Modena (1843-1878) - Austria-Este - Jacobite Mary III from 1875 to 1878 - daughter and only child - Also claimant of the Duchy of Modena and Reggio as Maria I
10. Françesku I of Berat (1863-1937) - Hapsburg-Lorraine/Austria-Este/Berat - Jacobite Francis I from 1878 to 1937 - eldest son - Also claimant of the Duchy of Modena and Reggio as Fracis VI until 1924
11. Françesku II of Berat (1902-1956) - Austria-Berat - Jacobite Francis III from 1937 to 1956 - eldest son
12. Rupertus of Berat, Archduke of Curciau (1927-1963) - Austria-Berat/Hapsburg-Korytsa - Jacobite Robert I & IV from 1956 to 1963 - eldest son - Abdicated his rights to the Berati/Aromanian Throne in 1948
13. Erzsébet, Archduchess of Curciau (1958) - Hapsburg-Korytsa - Jacobite Elizabeth II & I - eldest daughter

So, interestingly, if it was ruled by the Jacobites Albion would be under a Queen Elizabeth II

Why did George VII become King of Bengal if they already have their monarchy?

George VII became King jure uxoris of Bengal, his wife, Elizabeth III, the Queen suo jure, made him her co-monarch

This was fun (three of the questions actually had me go and develop their answers within the TL because they hadn't gone through my head before, and the post in general made my day a bit)

 

[TheBeanieBaron]

This was fun (three of the questions actually had me go and develop their answers within the TL because they hadn't gone through my head before, and the post in general made my day a bit)

Thanks, and I might ask some more questions in the future.

 

[Peppe]

Thanks, and I might ask some more questions in the future.

Feel free to do so