The Empire Parnell Built
- Thread starter Rattigan
- Start date
A divisive referendum that actually solves nothing but pushing the problem down the line? *gasp*
Who ever could have predicted such a thing?
Who ever could have predicted such a thing?
Wait, so the Russians, despite being Republican and despite having been invaded by a country led by the Hohenzollerns, kept the Hohenzollerns as rulers of their Prussian puppets?
And on that note, wouldn't the Wittelsbachs or something like that be better potential monarchs for Germany here as it has more or less West German borders?
The Russians probably don't care about what kind of government their puppets have as long as they're easy to control.
As you say, who'd have thunk...A divisive referendum that actually solves nothing but pushing the problem down the line? *gasp*
Who ever could have predicted such a thing?
At some point, yes...
The complicated constitutional status of Germany arose basically out of a compromise between the British (who wanted Germany as a united state to act as a regional counterbalance to Russia) and the Russians (who wanted to chop it up into little bits). From the British POV, the Confederation was meant to be in a position to grow and become a regional economic power/partner without, from the Russian POV, threatening Russian primacy. Obviously, that plan has rather gone out the window, in no small part because of negative Russian influence and Britain's diplomatic reorientation towards Asia and the Americas.
Also, to say something about Russia's republicanism, it's a republic but that doesn't necessarily make it egalitarian or Soviet-style. As you will have seen from several of the presidential candidates, plenty of members of the Russian aristocracy remain prominent in Russian politics, science and culture and their titles are still recognised by the state: so their principled opposition to aristocracy isn't exactly deeply held. (Although we haven't been looking at them too much, this remains the case in the other European republics too, most of which are, in practice, oligarchies.)
It was certainly something mooted, both in the aftermath of the Nine Years War and around the time of the referendum. It wasn't offered during the referendum because of the risk that it would divide the pro-royalist vote and it fell apart in the negotiations ahead of the creation of the Confederation for reasons which nobody can quite remember (as is the way in this kind of great power politics).
This is absolutely true. In practice, Prussia is governed by a 'Viceroy', who is heavily reliant on the large Russian military presence in the country to keep an eye on things. The Russian navy has a large presence in Pillau. The Hohenzollerns and most of the rest of the German aristocracy mostly reside as absentee landlords in Berlin, drinking schnapps and either reminiscing about the good old days when the uppity Slavs (by which they also mean the Poles and the Yugoslavs) didn't boss them around or hatching half-cut conspiracies with these selfsame Slavs to launch coups in Germany itself.
Andrey Gagarin is real person, Russian Phisican and, yes, he is a Prince and head of the Gagarin Noble family. No relations to Yury Gagarin.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Гагарин,_Андрей_Петрович
But Zhirinovsky cannot born in TTL. His father Wolf Eidelstein, was Jewish Industrialist from the Western Ukraine [on territories, which TTL is Polish, as I understad], who was arested and departed to Kazakhstan after 1939. His Monther, Alexandra Zhirinovskaya nee Makarova, was born a peasant in Mordovia, and went to Kazakhstan in 1940 with her first husband, NKVD officer. It would be REALLY hard for them to meet each other ITTL.
I didn't know all that stuff about his family. I'll have a think and decide whether I want to use him for later on (in which case we'd have to chalk his birth up to a series of movie-esque coincidences) or whether I can get swap him out for someone else.
Is Quebec a republic, or is it going to hold a separate referendum on the monarchy?
Quebec isn't part of the Empire in TTL's present day, so it's safe to assume that they're a republic now.
It's a parliamentary republic with a symbolic head of state appointed by the assembly. A compromise position of it as a separate imperial realm was mooted after the referendum (to use TTL Brexit as an analogy, think of the people who wanted to leave the EU and join EFTA as an example) but nothing really came of it.