Thank you, especially about the believability of the basic outline. As to the saga of Austria, it's going to be a whole arc lasting the rest of the seventeenth century. In some ways is plays with the same basic questions as the history of our own process of German unification. Specifically, what are the religious dimensions of a specifically German identity? Majority-Protestant territories are not going to have much objection to the Second Realm, especially with the constitutional settlement that's going to be to a certain extent imposed on Saxony. And with the ecclesiastical states and free and imperial cities mostly gone (there's a fun distinction btw between a free and an imperial city, that might become significant at some point), the surviving Catholic territorial states are not going to be as interested.
One thing that is going to complicate this further is the fact that institutional recognition of religious freedom is already further along in OTL Saxony than it was in much of Europe at this point in the early 17th century. And we're about to hit some significant events in this continuing evolution as the stresses of the war start to bear down on Saxon society. So it will be interesting to see if the result of this is creates a post-war situation more congenial to the German Catholics of the south. Or, shall we say, more congenial enough.
But there are also several important differences in the OTL process of German unification. Prussia did its thing in the nineteenth century partly as the historical consequence of the stomach-churning carnage of the Napoleonic Wars in Germany. The great lesson everyone took from that is that if Germany is not united and strong then it is the playground of the other great powers making war and seeking advantage against the others. While there's certainly going to be foreign involvement in the First General War, and it will end with people seeing the necessity of some kind of central authority and rule of law, it's not going to be anywhere near the same kind of visceral, emotive need to lock down the matter of a single German state.
And it's in this context that one of Erste's maxims will translate as "We do not want to dance with those who do not want to dance with us," meaning that the political components of the Second Realm will participate volitionally. No one's getting strong-armed in. And as gets hinted in the last update, Bavaria won some very significant concessions in exchange for its accession. I was already thinking about a post on the Wittelsbach Veto, and that might come sooner rather than later.
But then with Austria you have additional complications. It's not just that the Habsburgs thought of both the imperial throne of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Bohemian crown lands, as theirs by inheritance. The Second Realm is repugnant to them, not just because it takes what they think of as theirs but because of the dual political and religious nature of Holy Roman Empire political institutions. Obedience to the institutions and offices of the empire, though oddly haphazard in moments like the Brother's Quarrel, had a religious and specifically Catholic dimension. And so, to the Catholic Wittelsbach and Habsburg princes at the end of the First General War, the question is going to be with respect to the Second Realm, not whether they want to be a part, but "what right does this monstrosity have to exist?" Some might object to participation in such a thing as an offense to their immortal souls.
And you know, Francis II came to the decision he did with respect to the title of emperor in the specific context of the Napoleonic Wars, which is to say following the French Revolution, which is to say following the Enlightenment. If in the early seventeenth century a Frenchman were to tell the princes of the Holy Roman Empire that it didn't exist any more, they would think he was crazy yes, but they would also think he lacked the authority to do so, and more importantly, they would object to the religious dimension of the offense of trying to destroy what they held to be a sacred institution (le saint-empire).
So one significant difference between this and the earlier version of the timeline is that I rolled too quickly on the question of what happens to the Holy Roman Empire. What I am tempted to do, and yes I know it will require substantial revisions to the work we've done so far in this timeline, is less some Austrian-specific title than, you know, some permutation of Chiang kai-shek in Vienna with the imperial regalia, continuing the regnal names and numbering from the time of Charlemagne.
And the possibility of an HRE today? Maybe. Just not in the complete original footprint.
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