Separated at Birth: America and Drakia
- Thread starter Ephraim Ben Raphael
- Start date
The lack of quotation marks around accidentally makes me think this was a legitimate accident. Which is one of the more darkly hilarious things in this TL
Betting that while a legitimate accident, it leads to a Militarist becoming the leader of Drakia.
Did he accidentally shoot himself seven times in the head?
It might have legitimately been an accident.
But no one is going to believe it, and it doesn't matter anywho. There's no Drakian tradition of peaceful transfer of power.
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Peaceful transfers of powers are for pussies of the AfD, real men take what is rightfully theirs by the only metric that matters: strength of arms.
I was hoping that they do eventually create a bunch of super humans right before the Final War/collapse, with most of them either dying in the chaos, getting raised by families in the Alliance or growing up to be professional killers.
Brilliantly put, and I'm depressingly sure that you're absolutely correct. The Drakians have done their damnedest to create a society where a psychopathic lunatic sex predator is most likely to succeed.
I'm absolutely sure you're right, too. This entire thing kicked off over a chair (or was it a ladder?) in the wrong place. An actual accidental death fits perfectly and hilariously.
I've really enjoyed this timeline, and the story that EBR has told here. You might as well call it "Because Reality Ensues: Why Being a Slave-Owning Genocidal Racist Fascist Is Not Only Wrong But A Really Really Bad Idea" but that wouldn't fit on the TV Tropes page very well, I suppose. Again and again we've watched how the Drakians have epically sabotaged themselves, and it's just been a joy, really it has. I hope you don't mind if I make a confession? The Draka Saga is about the only one of SM Stirling's works that I haven't read, because the whole thing just seemed far too depressing. The bad guys win. Frankly I'm not sure I'm ever going to read it, especially now that I've read such an epic deconstruction. It just wouldn't seem ...realistic... enough, if that's the word I want.
I'm not sure how this is going to end. But I think that EBR has shown us one thing, at least: whether it's Stirling's Draka or his own Drakians, pursuit of power over others (whether it's Naldorssen's Purpose of Power or the Custodial Master Race) is really just an epically bad idea, doomed to failure.
Those militarists are going to lead Drakia to their doom. Indeed, they've been hoist by their own petard.
And so we see the drawbacks of trying to fight the world single-handedly as a continent-sized Apartheid South Africa/North Korea hybrid. Their few allies will help, but unless they pull some sort of wunderwaffle out of their ass they're gonna lose the final war hard.
BTW how much success have the two blocks had in creating orbital weaponry? Since getting kinetic kill vehicles was the motivation behind the space race after all.
And so we see the drawbacks of trying to fight the world single-handedly as a continent-sized Apartheid South Africa/North Korea hybrid. Their few allies will help, but unless they pull some sort of wunderwaffle out of their ass they're gonna lose the final war hard.
BTW how much success have the two blocks had in creating orbital weaponry? Since getting kinetic kill vehicles was the motivation behind the space race after all.
I feel dumb, but I do not know where this went. Unless it's foreshadowing China getting nukes and/or ballistic missiles?
Holy shit, this is a common market that basically spans three quarters of the world. This is BIG and I wonder how much domestic economic strife it will cause. More than a mere Alliance, I could see this becoming something of a mega-EU if not outright world government.
How does France get to be a Big? Haven't they lost all their colonies and been devastated by war or something?
Err this sentence feels off I think something's missing.
Oh man, that's a major aquisition for the pact of blood, gives them a great ability to menace East Asia. Japan's navy probably survived their strife, but given they lost their empire it must have been hard to keep modern. What is the state of the IJN? Speaking of that, what's naval tech like without guided missiles? Does Drakia have a surface fleet worth speaking of? (I half-expect them to have built some superbattleships as prestige projects.)
Britain is definitely going to be the AfD's token evil teammate, and if they don't collapse from the stress of war they'll probably end up like a miniature form of OTL mainland China. But in any case this is a stinging blow to Drakia's power in the North Atlantic. Interdicting convoys to Europe will be hard.
Sounds interesting. I do hope the state of the environment will get some attention later in this TL. Perhaps after the Final War, as a general update on how badly messed up the biosphere is after the planet faced two centuries of Drakia existing?
Was some random piece of furniture involved in THIS war starting too? Ehehe, it's time to end this rodeo!
I just realized that Japan is still probably destined to get nuked first.
Well, this is maybe one of the few timelines where there could be a somewhat amenable and unopposed world order, well if China does not get all ultranationalist.
Who would be interested to make-up the opposition to the AfD, then? Situationist China doesn't really give a fuck unless the Confederation fucks themselves over. Colombia could be if not for the fact that the whole Atlantic is still a Grand Alliance lake, and Japan's just got bombed by nukes again. The Drakian successor states won't be able to project power overseas again and Russia would only be a barely middling power at the very best.
The end of history's conception therein is one jostled by the Americans, by the French, and by the Indians, with the Chinese annoying them with its own antics and claims against Mukden, and it could feasibly be: after all, it's far more economical to expand and compete in space from now on. Ad Astra, per Aspera could feasibly be the norm of the day, and the sheer emptiness of place would ensure that Societism would never have its place there if just for the sheer need for egalitarianism.
Former Russia and Central Asia could prove to be quite a contention, however, between the Alliance-backed Confederation and the Situationist "upstarts".
EDIT: They may not admit it, but the Confederation's artists must admire the attitude of Free China in regards to its culture and see their country as a complementing foil to its wackiness, the government and the other countries' opinions aside.
Who would be interested to make-up the opposition to the AfD, then? Situationist China doesn't really give a fuck unless the Confederation fucks themselves over. Colombia could be if not for the fact that the whole Atlantic is still a Grand Alliance lake, and Japan's just got bombed by nukes again. The Drakian successor states won't be able to project power overseas again and Russia would only be a barely middling power at the very best.
The end of history's conception therein is one jostled by the Americans, by the French, and by the Indians, with the Chinese annoying them with its own antics and claims against Mukden, and it could feasibly be: after all, it's far more economical to expand and compete in space from now on. Ad Astra, per Aspera could feasibly be the norm of the day, and the sheer emptiness of place would ensure that Societism would never have its place there if just for the sheer need for egalitarianism.
Former Russia and Central Asia could prove to be quite a contention, however, between the Alliance-backed Confederation and the Situationist "upstarts".
EDIT: They may not admit it, but the Confederation's artists must admire the attitude of Free China in regards to its culture and see their country as a complementing foil to its wackiness, the government and the other countries' opinions aside.
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So first of all, I just love that it's Situationist China that pushes for National Parks. Teddy Roosevelt would be proud.
Secondly, learning about musical roads was fucking awesome. I think I like Free China even more!
Honestly, since there is supposed to be a failure state for the AfD if the dice betray them, I bet that domestic strife is going to be a big part in bringing them down if we end up down that path.
Honestly, I would bet that in a AfD win cenario, Free China could aggressively start marketing Situationism to the new states in Drakia's ruins, of which many Bonded-descendant states may be highly sympathetic to the idea. I don't know how the AfD would react to that though. Would they be like "Eh, whatever" or would they say "We must stop the choas of Situationism from rising"? Hopefully it would be former option.
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No nuclear power. So the big capital ships are probably smaller and less self-sufficient than OTL, not bigger.
Guided shells probably mean that battleships persist as a surface combatant, but I'd still expect aircraft carriers to dominate strategy in a missile-free environment.
Drakia's navy...The naval and industrial disadvantage is closer to Cold War USSR than IJN but it's still not great and there's a series of long coastlines to protect. India and France might possibly be threatened by sea in the early stages, but projecting naval power all the way to the Americas is right out.
Probably leans submarine heavy, and oriented around coastal defense and commerce raiding/seaborne interdiction.
In fact, if I were Drakia I'd be adopting a defensive strategy in general. Conquest is not a realistic prospect in any direction so long as the Alliance holds together, but there's a lot of Africa to retreat into and if a broken-back war can be forced that could prove key to survival.
Literally a lunatic.
Because they're on the Moon.
Sorry. I couldn't resist the mental image.
Well, Situationism's proven themselves to be harmless so far, and the stuffy assholes in Washington, Paris, and Calcutta must be reminded that it has just done good on China's part.
If anything, the world must accept the inevitable China-pop that it will bring, and China's not even being belligerently aggressive at it: they just couldn't help it! The most opposition would give would be from the Confederation who would be interested to pretend to resist such an "encroachment", basically a partnership akin to WMIT's Confederation of Carolinas, or South Korea and Japan, if we happen to look to the two giants' relations in a bad day.
However, I wonder how the governments have set up the skyhooks: for one, they must have used traditional rocketry to set those up, especially the thrusters to stabilise its orbit.
The world must have entered its Shuttle-on-rocket-booster-punk phase for the meantime.
Computer technology, though, would make for guided missile technology on par with present-day already; the only thing they have to catch up from now on are optimising better engines, perhaps for hypersonic missile technology.
EDIT: Also, I've just realized that the Empire of Japan still has significant holdings in South East Asia, including Moluccas, Palawan, and fucking Sulu?
I couldn't believe I'm saying this, but even the Philippine government, with all its sympathy on Moluccas locals (well, the oppression of Catholics and Christians would be the thing that rouses them) and Moro brothers, would be the first one to call a jihad on those occupiers. And I could confidently say that such a struggle would have its ranks filled in with like minded Borneans, Insulindians, and Timorese Crusaders.
As a native of one of those proudly democratic countries who resisted such subjugation, all I can say is: Nippon delenda est!
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This is probably what starships will look like in universe post final war... only you know replace the windows with TV's (or holoscreens) and ultraviolet gardens.
One thought is that after the Fall of the Dragon the Alliance may slowly break apart as the member states start jockeying for power and getting a bigger slice of the pie.
One thought is that after the Fall of the Dragon the Alliance may slowly break apart as the member states start jockeying for power and getting a bigger slice of the pie.
Am I the only person nerding out over quasi-self-sufficient lunar colonies? I'd been thinking earlier on that the R&D situation would handicap space travel ITTL, but I guess it just goes to show that if you just keep funding the right agencies to the gills, you'll get what you want and more! It's also great that Free China managed to get up in space and pursue their unique brand of social benevolence. I love how you always pack in these obscure ideas from OTL like the ionosphere needles and musical roads that I'd never heard of before.
More ideas on Medieval Drakia...
- Madagascar has recently given rise to an almost Viking esque culture of sea fairing raiders and traders. With their trade routes reach from the Cape all the way to India, which has also regressed to it's pre Colonial days.
- Technology is actually closer to the Renaissance and Early Modern Period. With the armies of the Old World making use of Arquebus, early cannons and pikes alongside more traditional medieval weapons crossbows, swords and shields.
- This has led to warfare between the more developed states in post Dominion Africa being reminiscent of the Hussite Wars in terms of tactics... says the cloth armor for obvious reasons.
- There's actually a leftover river way connecting the Nile to the African Great Lakes that was constructed by the Drakian's.
- The damns responsible for Stoker Lake are finally starting to break down... much to the concern of everyone in the region.
- There are hot air balloons and even crude airships making use of wooden frames and human operated cranks to run the propellers.
Naw, it would be way better if they're an isolated island littered with human-eating giants! Well, maybe its Drakensis king have forever forsaken war.
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RIP in peace, Ghouloons. So sad that the truths of a totalitarian system made your creation impossible.