The 131-foot tall statue of the Immortal Genghis Khan, in the city of New Karakorum on Earth T19 - the capital of what used to be the Khanate of the Golden Mountain, but is now simply The Great Khanate, this vast and sprawling city sits upon the Golden Gate itself.
The origins of the Great Khanate were forged in the Mongol Conquest of Japan, under the Great Kublai Khan. With the addition of the islands to the Mongol Empire, as well as the later conquests of Java and other islands, over time the thought was raised: could the Western lands be reached by sailing directly due East from Japan? Thus, in a somewhat haphazard fashion, exploration to the East was gradually conducted, as ships found first vast archipelagoes of smaller islands, then finally - during the late 1200s by the Christian calendar - making landfall on a vast continent.
Conquest of the continent, initially named Golden Mountain and later Fusang, proceeded methodically over the coming decades, with armies of Mongols, Chinese and Korean vassal-soldiers being landed together with settlers - though the Chinese were not settlers by temperament, Mongol families had traditionally travelled in the wake of the armies and this was no different...and some Chinese and Koreans saw opportunities in the East, as did others within the wider Mongol world as news spread. Between disease and comparative backwardness, local tribes and powers were either forced to pay tribute to the Khans or were utterly destroyed. The city-states of the lands south of the Great River, for instance, were broken entirely...and one, whose rulers sacrificed Mongolian emissaries on their stepped pyramids, was so thoroughly destroyed that no trace a city ever existed may be found where once it lay.
While the Yuan dynasty and the wider Mongol Empire in Asia would fall, the lands across the seas remained a bastion of Mongol power. One that would only grow, as great armies marched north, and south, and due East. Territories that other worlds would call California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Mexico, Central America, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru...by the year 1500, all of these were either occupied by or within the orbit of what was now the Great Khanate. It was also during this time that an awareness grew of European exploration of and presence on the continent, which would see a growth of trade...and the ground being lain for wars.
Today, the Great Khanate extends across the the Western half of Northern Fusang and all of Southern Fusang - and, with the Global War, has managed to lay claim as far as the Great Lakes, wresting that land from the hands of its French and Italian-descended rulers and inhabitants - and the islands of what in other worlds would be the Pacific, and has compelled into tribute Aotearoa, the islands of the Indonesian Archipelago, the Sultans of Sulu and Korea, while Manchuria and the Mongol homeland are reckoned part of the Great Khanate. However, while in the 1700s the Great Khans had managed to yoke their older conquests back into 'the Mongol World', the Global War saw the Southern Chinese ruling dynasty and the Nipponese firmly and decisively throw off Mongol influence. However, the Great Khanate remains one of the dominant powers of its world, and leads the world in space development, having established settlements on its Moon and sending explorers beyond, as well as having constructed the 'Mirrors of Heaven', which supply power to the Great Khanate via solar collection (and could also theoretically burn enemy cities...). Its armies are the largest in the world, and among the most technologically-advanced...though the creation of sunbombs means that size alone is not a deciding factor anymore.
The Great Khanate remains culturally Mongolian, and the greater part of the population of Fusang consider themselves Mongol, though it should be noted that biologically many also are descended from the continent's original population - many tribes intermarried with and were culturally assimilated by the Mongol conquerors, as well as absorbing other aspects of culture from Chinese, Korean and other sources.
The Great Khanate has possibly reached the limits of its power on its own Earth. But with the discovery of inter-dimensional travel, it has many empty worlds to expand to...and other worlds to trade with, to draw into its orbit...maybe even conquer.
A Buddhist monastery in Northern Fusang. The Great Khanate, for all its bloody and conquering origins, is an incredibly religiously-diverse and tolerant nation. Across the length of Fusang, monasteries, Christian churches and mosques may be found, while the mountains are held to be sacred places to Tengri. In addition, many ancestral religions of those peoples who became tributaries of the Mongols are still practiced, while a large Jewish community exists in the coastal cities of Northern Fusang (this began to emerge in the 1600s as Jews fled Europe under another round of persecution). All religions are permitted, but inter-religious strife is vigorously curbed.
For their part, the ruling dynasty are a mix of Tengriist and Buddhist, though also honouring various regional traditions.
Bayarmaa,
Khatun of the Great Khanate, here pictured attending the wedding of a cousin. As the oldest of several daughters and the child of her father's seniormost wife, Bayarmaa took power following the death of her father Togrul Khan, who led the country in the Global War. Since taking power, she has worked strongly to restore the Great Khanate, as well as intensifying efforts to expand Mongol power in the areas of trade and economic development - in particular, investing in poorer nations in exchange for alliance and resources - and with a renewed interest in space travel. Bayarmaa is a realist - another Global War could break the Great Khanate even if they do win, sunbombs being a great equaliser in those terms. Thus, she seeks to grow her empire's power in other ways...and the opportunities offered by inter-dimensional travel are practically limitless.
Bayarmaa is also representative of the ethnic diversity of the Great Khanate. Though her 'dominant' ethnicity is Mongolian, and culturally she identifies as a Mongol and a Tengriist, her grandmother was a Japanese noblewoman, and she also descends from Chinese and from the Taos peoples who have dwelt in Northern Fusang since before the Mongols came - they rapidly became tributaries of the Mongols, and particularly trustworthy ones at that, still existing as an autonomous realm within the Great Khanate to this day.
Though Bayarmaa is the first woman to rule the Great Khanate, she is
not the first woman to hold authority in it. Even in the past, Mongol culture both respected and afforded power to women, and through the history of the Great Khanate women have held positions of power in various parts of the empire, as well as fighting in war - initially in times of necessity, and in later times holding military rank. By the present day, it is a roughly egalitarian society in that area, though remaining traditional.