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I was thinking about the broad themes behind the concept of the Draka universe. OK it's silly and cartoonish so we tend sometimes to brush over them, but several people have tried to come up with more realistic versions (I believe that's basically how Decades of Darkness got started).

Firstly the idea that the Domination is a sort of "anti-America", with similar origins and comparable cultural influences (all the immigrants from all over + settling the natives' land and pushing them out) but which executes them in an inverted way. This is quite an interesting idea, but several people have said the problem is with Stirling trying to have an anti-America and a more-or-less "normal" America in the same TL. Again, Decades of Darkness explores only the "dark United States" part of this concept, unless you regard New England as a rump "good USA".

The idea I had around this was Latin America. After all, when you're talking about racism against black people...the Nazis ruled for barely more than a decade, the Afrikaners only institutionalised apartheid for less than a lifetime...but Spanish America was ruled by the limpieza system for centuries. So you could make an interesting Draka-type variation if you had all of Latin America staying together and keeping the limpieza system, eventually becoming a superpower. A way to do this might be to have a situation where Spain gets crushed in the 17th or early 18th century (by who, the Ottomans?) and its king and leadership flee to the colonies and rule in exile. This avoids the kind of revolutionary thought associated with the colonies' independence that in OTL led to the abolition of the ancien regime's hierarchy (as well as the fact that under limpieza the highest casta was people not only pure of blood but born in Spain, which became impossible after independence).

Secondly, the Domination is essentially "South Africa made more like the USA" - powerful, expansionistic, broader background of immigrants and more of them, etc. What if we invert this and have the USA more like South Africa?

By which I mean: at some point after lots of English and Scottish colonists are in North America, but before there are so many of them that foreign states ruling over them would be impossible - let's say about 1730 - Great Britain badly loses a major war and France is awarded all or most of Britain's North American colonies at the peace settlement. France takes over with lots of troops and enforces its policies as seen in Quebec and Louisiana - Catholic supremacy, high taxes and centralised rule - and a lot of the Anglo-Scots colonists decide that they can't live like that and go on a Boer-style trek into the American interior, fighting the natives on fairly close terms and establishing independent states deep in the Midwest.

Think any of those concepts have AH potential?
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