The King in Yellow and Other Stories: A President Lovecraft Weird Fiction Timeline in Several Acts
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Thanks! I just hope people are enjoying it! At the very least I want to knock out A Wine-Dark Sea before I take a week or so off this TL to try and put work into my long-gestating novel set in my Power Without Knowledge setting 😅 Then when I come back to this we'll get the Rational Anarchists! In the meantime any questions are appreciated- reader questions have helped me approach my ideas from new angles and made this TL much better in the long run!
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"Fate Laughs at Probablities": The Great Divide
Even a century on from the POD the Balkans were still destined to be a powderkeg, whether President Bryan knew where they were or not*. Dissatisfaction with the status of the European Ottoman territories had seen them seized in 1912 by an alliance between Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria in the First Balkan War but Bulgaria found herself slighted, receiving an even smaller portion of Macedonia than had been achieved OTL. Although the First Balkan War had only been over for a month, in July of 1913 Bulgaria would launch an attack on Greece and Serbia, immediately igniting the Second Balkan War.
Though only fully independent of Ottoman control for four years by the start of the conflict Bulgaria had already garnered a reputation as a militarized and belligerent nation, often unflatteringly described as "the Balkan Prussia". Longing to unite all ethnic Bulgarians into one nation, the kingdom chafed at the rival Greek and Serbian claims to Macedonia. Seeking a quick victory over the exhausted cobelligerents on the back of its half-a-million man army Bulgaria had badly miscalculated, not only in failing to foresee Ottoman and Romanian participation in the conflict but also on a far more robust response from a Greece that had been steadily militarizing under its latest king. Although the Bulgarian Army looked strong on paper not even such a massive force could survive a four-front war. In a matter of weeks the Balkan Prussia found itself invaded on all sides and gradually dismembered. Within two months of the start of hostilities the nation had gone from the cusp of fulfilling its national destiny to being completely extinguished.
The aftermath of the Second Balkan War would see Bulgaria completely destroyed, with the Ottomans getting modest gains and the lion's share split between Serbia, Greece and Romania. In the Ottoman Empire the conflict would bolster their later position of neutrality in European affairs while in Greece it would only fan the conflict between Royalists and Republicans, a tension that would boil over within a year with the outbreak of what was known at the time as the Great War. Although Viktoras was British by descent he had thoroughly aligned himself with the cause of Greek nationalism, seeing an alliance with the Central Powers as the best way to ensure lasting Greek dominance in the region. He found himself in stark contrast with Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, whose Liberal Party plainly favored an alliance with the Entente.
-The once and future Prime Minister
The conflict between the two men would lead to a period of crypto-civil war known as the National Schism. Largely concentrated in the north of the country, Venizelos saw his cause undermined by a failed insurrection among the Greek Bulgarians and by a heavy Vril Society presence in the Aegean Islands that kept them from joining the Republican side. With a battle cry of suppressing the Bulgarians and securing the north Royalist forces would largely secure victory by late 1916, driving Venizelos into exile and pushing into Serbia to gain the rest of Macedonia. Greek and Italian aid to Austria-Hungary would ironically make the Balkan front of the Great War the most successful one for the Central Powers- even though they had lost the war as a whole Austria-Hungary was stable enough in the aftermath to quash the 1919 Hungarian Revolution while Greece had succeeded in her aims to acquire Macedonia and crush secessionism and republicanism in the north. Unfortunately the National Schism was not extinguished, merely smoldering.
*He did not. In real life he was famously asked about his thoughts on events in the Balkans and didn't know what his interviewer was talking about.
Though only fully independent of Ottoman control for four years by the start of the conflict Bulgaria had already garnered a reputation as a militarized and belligerent nation, often unflatteringly described as "the Balkan Prussia". Longing to unite all ethnic Bulgarians into one nation, the kingdom chafed at the rival Greek and Serbian claims to Macedonia. Seeking a quick victory over the exhausted cobelligerents on the back of its half-a-million man army Bulgaria had badly miscalculated, not only in failing to foresee Ottoman and Romanian participation in the conflict but also on a far more robust response from a Greece that had been steadily militarizing under its latest king. Although the Bulgarian Army looked strong on paper not even such a massive force could survive a four-front war. In a matter of weeks the Balkan Prussia found itself invaded on all sides and gradually dismembered. Within two months of the start of hostilities the nation had gone from the cusp of fulfilling its national destiny to being completely extinguished.
The aftermath of the Second Balkan War would see Bulgaria completely destroyed, with the Ottomans getting modest gains and the lion's share split between Serbia, Greece and Romania. In the Ottoman Empire the conflict would bolster their later position of neutrality in European affairs while in Greece it would only fan the conflict between Royalists and Republicans, a tension that would boil over within a year with the outbreak of what was known at the time as the Great War. Although Viktoras was British by descent he had thoroughly aligned himself with the cause of Greek nationalism, seeing an alliance with the Central Powers as the best way to ensure lasting Greek dominance in the region. He found himself in stark contrast with Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, whose Liberal Party plainly favored an alliance with the Entente.
-The once and future Prime Minister
The conflict between the two men would lead to a period of crypto-civil war known as the National Schism. Largely concentrated in the north of the country, Venizelos saw his cause undermined by a failed insurrection among the Greek Bulgarians and by a heavy Vril Society presence in the Aegean Islands that kept them from joining the Republican side. With a battle cry of suppressing the Bulgarians and securing the north Royalist forces would largely secure victory by late 1916, driving Venizelos into exile and pushing into Serbia to gain the rest of Macedonia. Greek and Italian aid to Austria-Hungary would ironically make the Balkan front of the Great War the most successful one for the Central Powers- even though they had lost the war as a whole Austria-Hungary was stable enough in the aftermath to quash the 1919 Hungarian Revolution while Greece had succeeded in her aims to acquire Macedonia and crush secessionism and republicanism in the north. Unfortunately the National Schism was not extinguished, merely smoldering.
*He did not. In real life he was famously asked about his thoughts on events in the Balkans and didn't know what his interviewer was talking about.
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For the curious the timeline's new POD is mildly nicer weather for a few weeks in the early 1800s 🤔
😂😂😂 It's hugely significant, but you likely won't get any actual context until my double secret fifth TLIAW. In the meantime feel free to puzzle out all the possible divergences that could've happened because of nicer weather
Okay to be a bit less obtuse our divergent string of better weather occurs within the timespan of the Napoleonic Wars, I won't give any more hints than that 😅
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"The Pen is Mightier than the Sword": The Coming Race
The aftermath of the First Clash of Civilizations was a mass of contradictions for the Greek nation. On the one hand, the Kingdom had achieved all of its war aims by suppressing the Republicans, crushing the Bulgarians, and conquering the whole of Macedonia from Serbia. On the other hand, despite the overwhelming success of the Central Powers in the Balkans they had still lost the war as a whole, with all the retaliatory economic and diplomatic pressure that that entailed. This left Greece in a very delicate and uncomfortable balance- they had retained their conquests in the aftermath but economic damage and the sheer cost of occupation put increasing pressure on the nation's economy.
Although the Russian Revolution prevented interference from the east, the British and French had never lost the urge to meddle in Greek internal affairs. Driven into a panic by the tide of revolutions sweeping the Central Powers and jumping at phantoms that the same could occur in Greece the two stepped up their efforts to remove Viktaros and replace him with a leader that would look to London and Paris first. To that end they would ironically repeat the same trick that had indirectly birthed the Soviet Union in the first place, smuggling Venizelos back into the country and kicking off the next stage of the National Schism.
The Liberal Party historiographers would call the resulting conflict the Second Greek Revolution and by 1925 economic crisis and rising food prices would see much of the nation solidify behind the new Hellenic Republic of Greece. Driven into exile, the Royalists and the Vril Society would establish a rival Atlantean State from Crete, taking the Aegean Islands with them. In the aftermath the two nations would diverge sharply, with the mainland chafing under Allied demilitarization even as the islands beat the drum for a reconquest and grew increasingly centralized and autocratic.
-The face of Atlantean conservatism
Although the constitution of the Atlantean State theoretically enshrined multiparty democracy it became clear in the early years of exile that the conservative and militarist Freethinker's Party was always intended to be the new nation's natural party of government, with party founder and leader Ioannis Metaxas becoming Prime Minister by the grace of the sovereign from the inception of the new government. Even as the military on the mainland began to subscribe to a myth of a Liberal stab in the back dissatisfaction began to grow in Atlantis as well by the start of the thirties. With five years of conservative leadership and nothing to show for it many were willing to look for new options. Many would settle on Freethinker backbencher Nikos Kazantzakis.
-The vanguard of Atlantean Fascism
Born in 1883, Kazantzakis had served in the Balkan Wars as a younger man and had quickly fallen into the orbit of the Vril Society in the aftermath. Although he was a firm supporter of the Society and of the monarchy it served, he found what he saw as the closed mindedness of the government and military leadership as the yoke that had sunk them in the first place. Kazantzakis had been inspired by the achievements of the growing Fascist movement, establishing a long running correspondence with Lovecraft and Szukalski. Although keen to preserve his power base, by 1933 Metaxas had lost the crucial support of the monarchy, while Kazantzakis's connections within the Vril Society would pave the way for his ascent to the office of Prime Minister.
As the Hellenic Republic floundered in the doldrums of the Great Depression Kazantzakis saw the golden opportunity the Atlanteans had been waiting for, launching an invasion of the homeland within the year. The monarchy's traditional base of support in the south quickly rallied to the cause even as mass mutinies broke out among the Hellenic military, dooming the brief interlude of Greek liberal democracy to the history books. Rather than reinstate the original monarchist constitution it was decided that more radical reform was needed. With the stroke of a pen on March 6, 1933 the Republic of the Hellenes was no more. Declaring themselves the natural inheritors of the ancient Atlantean mantle of civilization, the Second Atlantean Empire would do away with the parliamentary system altogether, with the new constitution establishing what was for all intents and purposes a modified presidential system, with Viktoras serving as Emperor and head of state and Kazantzakis exercising governmental power through the new office of Ethnarch.
Although the Russian Revolution prevented interference from the east, the British and French had never lost the urge to meddle in Greek internal affairs. Driven into a panic by the tide of revolutions sweeping the Central Powers and jumping at phantoms that the same could occur in Greece the two stepped up their efforts to remove Viktaros and replace him with a leader that would look to London and Paris first. To that end they would ironically repeat the same trick that had indirectly birthed the Soviet Union in the first place, smuggling Venizelos back into the country and kicking off the next stage of the National Schism.
The Liberal Party historiographers would call the resulting conflict the Second Greek Revolution and by 1925 economic crisis and rising food prices would see much of the nation solidify behind the new Hellenic Republic of Greece. Driven into exile, the Royalists and the Vril Society would establish a rival Atlantean State from Crete, taking the Aegean Islands with them. In the aftermath the two nations would diverge sharply, with the mainland chafing under Allied demilitarization even as the islands beat the drum for a reconquest and grew increasingly centralized and autocratic.
-The face of Atlantean conservatism
Although the constitution of the Atlantean State theoretically enshrined multiparty democracy it became clear in the early years of exile that the conservative and militarist Freethinker's Party was always intended to be the new nation's natural party of government, with party founder and leader Ioannis Metaxas becoming Prime Minister by the grace of the sovereign from the inception of the new government. Even as the military on the mainland began to subscribe to a myth of a Liberal stab in the back dissatisfaction began to grow in Atlantis as well by the start of the thirties. With five years of conservative leadership and nothing to show for it many were willing to look for new options. Many would settle on Freethinker backbencher Nikos Kazantzakis.
-The vanguard of Atlantean Fascism
Born in 1883, Kazantzakis had served in the Balkan Wars as a younger man and had quickly fallen into the orbit of the Vril Society in the aftermath. Although he was a firm supporter of the Society and of the monarchy it served, he found what he saw as the closed mindedness of the government and military leadership as the yoke that had sunk them in the first place. Kazantzakis had been inspired by the achievements of the growing Fascist movement, establishing a long running correspondence with Lovecraft and Szukalski. Although keen to preserve his power base, by 1933 Metaxas had lost the crucial support of the monarchy, while Kazantzakis's connections within the Vril Society would pave the way for his ascent to the office of Prime Minister.
As the Hellenic Republic floundered in the doldrums of the Great Depression Kazantzakis saw the golden opportunity the Atlanteans had been waiting for, launching an invasion of the homeland within the year. The monarchy's traditional base of support in the south quickly rallied to the cause even as mass mutinies broke out among the Hellenic military, dooming the brief interlude of Greek liberal democracy to the history books. Rather than reinstate the original monarchist constitution it was decided that more radical reform was needed. With the stroke of a pen on March 6, 1933 the Republic of the Hellenes was no more. Declaring themselves the natural inheritors of the ancient Atlantean mantle of civilization, the Second Atlantean Empire would do away with the parliamentary system altogether, with the new constitution establishing what was for all intents and purposes a modified presidential system, with Viktoras serving as Emperor and head of state and Kazantzakis exercising governmental power through the new office of Ethnarch.
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Literally this entire second TLIAW grew out of my realization during the first one that I had accidentally given Polithuania a flag nearly identical to Bulgaria and had to mention offhand that it was easily confused with the "former flag of Bulgaria". I had originally meant to imply it was a second stringer in the Comintern but I think this little Greek interlude is far more interesting 😂
"The Almighty Dollar": The Lost Empire
With the Second Atlantean Empire firmly secure at home Enthnarch Kazantzakis turned to new allies in the Fascist movement for aid stabilizing and strengthening the Atlantean economy. While the resulting trade deals and rising economic tide did much to endear the populace to the new government perhaps the biggest factor in the expansion of the Fascist sphere before the outbreak of the Danubian Civil War was cultural- simply put the Fascists were on the cutting edge of art and culture meant to counter the stuffy and arrogant works of the Franco-British and the Esperantist dreck produced under the banner of Marxist-Trigonism.
-Fox Feature Syndicate would become the dominant American comic book producer in the thirties, eventually reorganizing into FC Comics. Their most popular offering from the beginning was Stardust the Super Wizard, though the success of their other characters would prompt the creation of a superhero team called the Mystery Men. The FC equivalent to "the Trinity" is the trio of Stardust, Fantomah and Blue Beetle.
While each member of the loose alliance brought their own contributions to the table it was simple fact that the United States stood supreme in the Fascist cultural sphere through sheer output and technical sophistication alone. People all over the free world were reading American comic books and watching Hollywood movies. Artist exchanges were common, with Polithuanian sculptors, Chinese painters and American cinematographers circulating abroad to hone their craft. Not to be outdone the Atlantean government sponsored a project of their own combining all the best innovations that the Fascist world had to offer. The result would be The Lost Empire, a big budget epic adventure film that featured a multinational cast in a high stakes adventure to rediscover the sunken ruins of Atlantis.
Featuring the discovery of a remnant of the first empire preserved within the Hollow Earth, the crew of the expedition, made up of a Greek linguist, Polish demolitions expert, Chinese doctor and American mechanic are forced to fight to protect the Atlanteans from their unscrupulous teammates. The conflict of the film revolves around the massive Vril artefact preserving the civilization, with the reveal that the Italian leading the expedition is secretly a mole for the Comintern even as his British second in command was plotting to double cross him to steal the treasure for the Tolkien government.
The film's technical innovations, memorable designs and action-packed plot won it enduring popularity both among the Fascists and even among those given less than flattering portrayals by the film. One notable example would occur during the Second Clash of Civilizations when the Atlantean navy recovered a crate of The Lost Empire film reels from a blockade runner of the Italian Social Republic. With an accompanying dub in Esperanto the films had been intended to reach Comintern forces in Danubia as some much needed entertainment to accompany all the guns, bullets and bandages.
-Fox Feature Syndicate would become the dominant American comic book producer in the thirties, eventually reorganizing into FC Comics. Their most popular offering from the beginning was Stardust the Super Wizard, though the success of their other characters would prompt the creation of a superhero team called the Mystery Men. The FC equivalent to "the Trinity" is the trio of Stardust, Fantomah and Blue Beetle.
While each member of the loose alliance brought their own contributions to the table it was simple fact that the United States stood supreme in the Fascist cultural sphere through sheer output and technical sophistication alone. People all over the free world were reading American comic books and watching Hollywood movies. Artist exchanges were common, with Polithuanian sculptors, Chinese painters and American cinematographers circulating abroad to hone their craft. Not to be outdone the Atlantean government sponsored a project of their own combining all the best innovations that the Fascist world had to offer. The result would be The Lost Empire, a big budget epic adventure film that featured a multinational cast in a high stakes adventure to rediscover the sunken ruins of Atlantis.
Featuring the discovery of a remnant of the first empire preserved within the Hollow Earth, the crew of the expedition, made up of a Greek linguist, Polish demolitions expert, Chinese doctor and American mechanic are forced to fight to protect the Atlanteans from their unscrupulous teammates. The conflict of the film revolves around the massive Vril artefact preserving the civilization, with the reveal that the Italian leading the expedition is secretly a mole for the Comintern even as his British second in command was plotting to double cross him to steal the treasure for the Tolkien government.
The film's technical innovations, memorable designs and action-packed plot won it enduring popularity both among the Fascists and even among those given less than flattering portrayals by the film. One notable example would occur during the Second Clash of Civilizations when the Atlantean navy recovered a crate of The Lost Empire film reels from a blockade runner of the Italian Social Republic. With an accompanying dub in Esperanto the films had been intended to reach Comintern forces in Danubia as some much needed entertainment to accompany all the guns, bullets and bandages.
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And with that media update (and only a couple of delays 😅) that's the end of A Wine-Dark Sea! As I said the other day I'm going to be taking a week or two off this TL to focus my energies on writing prose, but I'll of course happily answer any reader questions as they arise here and I'll be back after that time with Raise the Black Flag: A Jersey Devil TLIAW! Nothing supernatural I promise, but hopefully a lot of fun all the same 😂
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Just a weird little something that occurred to me, I'll probably never do a thing with it but it's still fun 😅
I was taken with my own idea so for the sake of lore this ASB version of The King in Yellow exists as an in-universe novel from the author of The Cosmicist Manifesto in the world of Power Without Knowledge. It's not really relevant to this TL per se but an interesting example of the way my brain cross-pollinates ideas 😂
FC Comics runs the roost when it comes to superhero comics in the thirties but by the end of the 2CoC they finally have some lasting competition in the form of Entertaining Comics, which is able to cobble together a superhero stable by buying out some defunct competitors but still focuses primarily on horror stuff. Although they're the Big Two of this universe FC and EC coexist pretty well since their strongest offerings are in different genres from one another and with no Comics Code it's a far more diverse medium.
Extra- Rational Anarchist flag and Jersey Devil symbol
I've been having a lot of fun with this timeline but I'm slightly stumped on how I want to proceed with the next TLIAW and I've made a new years commitment to myself to buckle down on writing my novel and find a decent job. As such I'm going to put this on a temporary hiatus until I have a better idea of how to move forward with it and I've made at least some measurable progress on my resolutions. It isn't dead by any means and questions about the world are always welcome but I've got to rebalance my priorities to make progress toward my more pressing goals. In the meantime I'll leave you with these two teasers for the next one!
-The flag of the Rational Anarchist movement, an American outgrowth of Stirnerite Egoism and Illegalist Anarchism also commonly called "unterrified Jeffersonianism".
-The symbol of the vigilante known as the Jersey Devil. The identity of the Devil has never been conclusively proven, though the length of his (?) career and frequent brushes with death and debilitating injury almost certainly imply a character adopted by unconnected individuals.
-The flag of the Rational Anarchist movement, an American outgrowth of Stirnerite Egoism and Illegalist Anarchism also commonly called "unterrified Jeffersonianism".
-The symbol of the vigilante known as the Jersey Devil. The identity of the Devil has never been conclusively proven, though the length of his (?) career and frequent brushes with death and debilitating injury almost certainly imply a character adopted by unconnected individuals.
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@John Spangler and @Dune nominated this timeline in the Best Colonialism and Revolutions (Pre 1900) category for the Turtledoves! Thank you both so much!