In 1680, with war euphoria still riding high from his defeat of the invading Danish army, King Charles XI of Sweden decided to found a new city. In any normal case, this would be nothing out of the ordinary - Swedish kings had practiced the mercantilist strategy of concentrating local trade by building cities and diverting trade to them for centuries - but there was very little normal about this city. Located on a small island almost two and a half statute miles off the mainland, founded through an illicit land purchase, and grown through a series of heavy-handed measures, the city of Karlskrona was clearly meant as something more than a simple market town. The Navy quickly made it one of its largest bases, the population skyrocketed from a single family in 1679 to ten thousand people (making it the third biggest city in the Swedish realm) in 1700, and there were even rumours that the King planned to move the seat of government there at a favourable juncture.
However, with the onset of the Great Northern War, and the economic struggles that came with it, the city's growth abruptly stopped, and any plans that may have existed for a capital move were scuttled forever. Since then the city has essentially only seen one period of growth - from the coming of the railway in 1870 to the end of the Second World War in 1945, during which it grew from ten thousand to thirty-five thousand souls - and were it not for its military connections and the larger-than-usual number of dialects in the area, the city would be no more significant than any other mid-sized city in Sweden. It lives on as a monument to its own former glory, to a time when it appeared to matter to the country and world at large, and its inhabitants stubbornly refuse to recognise its loss of status. Yes, if the Centauri Republic were a Swedish city, it would surely be Karlskrona.
But what if this were not the case? What if the city really did enjoy the status it could have? Well, that's what this TL aims to explore.
This TL will consist of a number of updates, some penned my Makemakean and some by myself, and accompanying these will be a series of maps showing the city's growth at various points in time. The initial chapter will be one of mine, detailing the effects of the decision on the city itself.
