This is the first of my maps for this month's
map contest (there are two required). I haven't even started making the other one, but had so much fun making this one that I thought I'd share it.
In this timeline, East and West swap places, with Roman Empire avoiding dissolution and China never unifying after the fall of Qin. Consequently, constant rivalry between the warring Chinese states leads them to civilization and technological progress, whereas Europe lags behind, staggering under the weight of imperial bureaucracy. The Roman empire goes through a cycle of civil wars and dynastic changes, much like China did in our timeline. During one of these upheavals Britain emancipates itself from Roman administration and becomes its own feudal kingdom. Meanwhile the Chinese kingdoms, most notably Han and Chu, develop their own identities and eventually become nation states.
Fast forward two thousand years, and the world is in the midst of a Second World War (called the Second All-Heavens War in this timeline). On the one side there are the Axis powers of Han, Yan and Britain; on the other, the allies: Chu, Nippon, New Zhengguo (Chu’s former American colony), Union of Tartar Equalist Councils (a socialist republic established after the fall of the Great Khanate in the First All-Heavens War) and the United Roman Front (a temporary coalition of warring factions, among them the Spartikist Revolutionary Party and the Nationalist Party). United Roman Front puts up a desperate defense against the British invaders, at one point blowing up dikes on the river Rhenus in order to stop their advance. The British, on the other hand, commit acts of incredulous cruelty against the Romans, whom they consider as inferior people.
The map is a British propaganda poster, aimed at boosting morale of British troops in the ending stages of the war. In fact, at this point war was all but lost for them. War in Asia was coming to an end, with Tartar forces closing in on Han’s capital, Luoyang and New Zhengguoian nuclear programme being weeks away from developing a new weapon of unseen potential.
