Thanks for the answer. All of this is very interesting.
Right, that makes sense. I knew there was a marriage to the Romanovs at some point, I just couldn't remember (or find) whether her name was Jelena/Helena.
Helen or Helena works just fine IMO, and from what I've seen she was actually born Helena (so I guess I was wrong, sorry), which, like I said, is a less common alternative to Jelena in Serbian.
For Ioann, I'd say Ivan would work perfectly. First of all, it's used in both Russian and Serbian. While his birth name was Ioann, he would likely be referred to as Ivan by his subjects and may take on the local spelling as many foreign-born consorts do. Ofc that's just my take on it.
Thank you very much, I'm happy to have the input of a Serbian person for Serbian-related linguistic decisions ^^ I will tweak my article and upload the new better version ^^ I know I also found picture of her by typing Jelena of Serbia, and her wikipedia picture is actually filed under "Yelena of Serbia" so I guess spellings just vary, especially as she was consort duchess in Russia.
Ah so it's just a matter of nobody bothering to field a minority candidate. That's a relief. As for the right wing, I'd imagine that's still pretty in 1942, especially in an Eastern European monarchy.
You mentioned a Labor Party. What political parties are there in TTLs Serbia? I'd imagine that the Radicals are still around in the '40s as a major center-right party (not šešeljs modern radicals, the old democratic but conservative'leaning ones), are they less of a major force in Helena's Serbia than they were IOTL in the interwar era?
Pretty much, it's still the 40s after all, even Chancellerie-leading France has a big reactionary party in its Parliament, so Serbia isn't an exception. I didn't really research the political parties to be honest, I needed a central democrat name for the Prime Minister so I used the moderate communist head of the Centrumasi faction as a Prime Minister for the Labor Party, and the Bosniak President of Parliament was a writer OTL. You have the Agrarian Party, that was a Bosniak party but broadened its audience to other minorities, but it's allied to the Labor Party, and then you have diverse right-wing parties that probably includes the Radicals. The politics of this Serbia must be so different to both pre-WWI Serbia and Yugoslavia's that I prefered focusing on the overall structure than the parties.
Ok. Makes sense. I assume that's why they maintained control of much of Vojvodina and, you know, still exist post war. Is Croatia also independent (my guess is yes)? What about Czechia, Slovenia and Slovakia? I expect at least that Slovenia isn't given the empire's more favorable treatment.
Well, they gave up the areas with overwhelming Bosniak, Serbian of Montenegrine majority to Serbia, which includes Vojvodina (I forgot to show it on the map, but all of Novi Pasar is also included in Serbia, despite being partially on the other bank of the Danube). And there are agreements between states in the Balkans to treat each others' minority decently.
Croatia isn't independent, it's part of this wibbly wobbly statey crowney stuff that is the Austrian Empire. Slovenia, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia too ... I'm not entirely sure about how the whole thing organizes itself, but it's not the civil war-ridden hell it could've been without a ruler that actually cared about the well being of the Empire.
I'm wondering about a pro-Dualism monarch getting deposed and replaced by the Hohenbergs (Franz-Ferdinand's kids), either by coup or referendum (or coup-induced referendum, who knows ?)
That seems like a pretty realistic stance. Are they trying to break away or do they just want the autonomy that Bosnia and Montenegro have?
They're not attempting to be independent, but they do insist on getting at least some autonomy from the State of Serbia, if they don't get to be a fourth part of the kingdom in their own right.
Mina, I just want to say, I really like the alternate 20th century you're slowly constructing here. The quality of writing and the stylistics are really high here, but without things being too reliant on the visual "bells and whistles", as they say. I think it's high praise when the "familiar, but definitely quite different in several things" undertone of this ATL reminds me of the likes of EdT's
Fight and Be Right from a decade ago. Well done.
Also, former French colonies in Africa sure loved creating confederations in this timeline.
I do have a question: Is the ATL Chancellery similar in terminological origin to the likes of the British "
Foreign and Commonwealth Office" (the ministry of foreign affairs and the British Commonwealth) ? And several European languages do use a variation on chancellery to mean "office" or "bureau". I should know, my own mother tongue uses
kancelária as the common term for "office".
Thank you very much ^-^ I am glad I can get a result that other people enjoy too !
It is a bit similar, in the way that the term Chancellerie was at first only meant to refer to the governement of the alliance, and not the alliance in itself. The problem of a name that wouldn't center around France was never quite resolved and most instances and diplomats just went with Chancellerie: it'd be like having the Commonwealth being named "Whitehall Office" because they couldn't agree on a proper name. In France a Chancellier is a medieval term for the person in charge of diplomacy, so I guess there's a common origin that must mean "place for written correspondance and negociation" or something of that kind.
The Balkans..as a stable region? What utter madness is this universe lol.
Jk this might be a favorite entry yet. The Romanovs survive and get "adopted" by the Serbs - honestly really wholesome compared to OTL.
I was trying to follow up with the joke, but written sarcasm is a difficult thing to pull off correctly, especially for a person who is used to displaying theatrical amounts of body language and intonations ^^'
I usually aim at "better but still realistic" when I write TLs. Other people pull off grimdark better than I do, and I wouldn't have fun writing it. If it can give my readers the "Aaaw"s sometimes, all the better ^^