The King in Yellow and Other Stories: A President Lovecraft Weird Fiction Timeline in Several Acts
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I edited the OP with a nicely mysterious table of contents to give you all some vague hints 🧐
Would his superracism contribute to his campaign or detract from it?
People love to blame others for their problem.
People love to blame others for their problem.
As I've said, the ripples of the POD only accelerate Lovecraft's OTL shift in politics, they don't butterfly or drastically alter them...
Imagine my surprise when I was putting together a chronological list of Robert W. Chambers weird fiction and the titles vaguely hinted at the installments I had already planned to write 😱
I saw this when I thought a POD for make his work good sale.Maybe I should serious believe Al Gore is a alien puppet
The Maker of Moons: The Fall of the Cruel Empire
The Empress Dowager Cixi reigned in the latter years of the decadent Qing and effectively controlled the Chinese state for a span of 47 years. Though her character has undergone something of a reappraisal in recent decades, for the people under the yoke of the nation's backward system she was in effect the face of an oppressive and incompetent government, having repressed dissent, slowed the pace of reform, centralized power under a string of mysterious circumstances, and effectively put her nephew the Guangxu Emperor under house arrest for twenty years. But all that was about to change- it was November 13, 1908, and the Dowager was dead.*
The vast machinery of the empire began to turn. The Guangxu Emperor was free and he was cleaning house, one executed courtier at a time. While those on the outside of the court could see the ripples of the purge, only those closest to the Emperor knew that he had barely survived a poisoning carried out on the orders of his aunt and that he had come to the conclusion that the only way to ensure his safety and the health of his reign was to cleanse the government in one stroke and implement long-delayed reforms. Many of the most conservative hardliners lost their stations and their heads in the early days, but it was only a matter of time before someone struck back.
Enter Yuan Shikai. After playing a pivotal role in sabotaging the Hundred Days Reform Yuan had devoted his energies to modernizing the Chinese military and (secretly) planning contingencies for a shift in imperial administration and it certainly showed. When he received world that the will of the emperor demanded his death Yuan's long simmering plans came to fruition- declaring the Qing Dynasty "a crawling chaos over the land", Yuan invoked the Mandate of Heaven with the backing of a major contingent of his newly modern army, naming himself Hongxian Emperor of the Empire of China. The Wushen Rebellion had begun.
-Flag of the northern Empire of China ("Yuan China")
With the Qing fractious in the wake of the purges and the Empire of China still consolidating territory the republican movement was at a crossroads and faced with a choice between three options:
The emperor agreed to the terms. Under the agreed-upon framework China would be reformed into a constitutional monarchy with Sun as Prime Minister of the new Republic of China, with a raft of reforms to be implemented in the aftermath. It was a Frankenstein solution but all involved agreed it was the best available as republican militias came to the aid of loyalist units of the New Army, eventually forcing a stalemate to the grueling four year conflict. Attempts to create the promised constitutional monarchy would be undone by the death of the Emperor at last from the complications of his brush with death, but by that point Sun held the high ground and was finally able to tear off the fiction of a surviving Qing and usher in a truly republican China.
-Flag of the southern Republic of China ("Sun China")
While the Japanese and the European powers were wary of the two Chinas (neither of which seemed likely to knuckle under in the face of their demands), the United States greeted Sun's government with rapturous applause, viewing the triumph of republicanism as a moral victory even as the Republic's embrace of the Open Door Policy gave America greater economic access to the Chinese market. Despite this, some American conservatives, among them former president William McKinley**, were concerned with Sun's policy of land redistribution and taxation. President William Jennings Bryan would receive the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the formal end to the conflict, temporarily splitting China into two competing states...
*Two days ahead of schedule
**His lack of assassination being the (original) POD
The vast machinery of the empire began to turn. The Guangxu Emperor was free and he was cleaning house, one executed courtier at a time. While those on the outside of the court could see the ripples of the purge, only those closest to the Emperor knew that he had barely survived a poisoning carried out on the orders of his aunt and that he had come to the conclusion that the only way to ensure his safety and the health of his reign was to cleanse the government in one stroke and implement long-delayed reforms. Many of the most conservative hardliners lost their stations and their heads in the early days, but it was only a matter of time before someone struck back.
Enter Yuan Shikai. After playing a pivotal role in sabotaging the Hundred Days Reform Yuan had devoted his energies to modernizing the Chinese military and (secretly) planning contingencies for a shift in imperial administration and it certainly showed. When he received world that the will of the emperor demanded his death Yuan's long simmering plans came to fruition- declaring the Qing Dynasty "a crawling chaos over the land", Yuan invoked the Mandate of Heaven with the backing of a major contingent of his newly modern army, naming himself Hongxian Emperor of the Empire of China. The Wushen Rebellion had begun.
-Flag of the northern Empire of China ("Yuan China")
With the Qing fractious in the wake of the purges and the Empire of China still consolidating territory the republican movement was at a crossroads and faced with a choice between three options:
- Revolt- The most clearcut choice, though undermined by the real fear that the victor in the struggle between the Guangxu and Hongxian emperors would use the existence of an independent republic to unify remaining imperial forces against a common enemy.
- Support Yuan- A non-starter. Though the Yuan's forces were majority Han the simple fact was that the Empire was intended to be a strong one, which would be antithetical to the goals of the republicans no matter who was in charge.
- Support the Qing- In times of crisis ideas can go from unthinkable to merely distasteful, and the idea of supporting the Qing was one of them. A serious case could be made to use the chaos to extract reforms.
The emperor agreed to the terms. Under the agreed-upon framework China would be reformed into a constitutional monarchy with Sun as Prime Minister of the new Republic of China, with a raft of reforms to be implemented in the aftermath. It was a Frankenstein solution but all involved agreed it was the best available as republican militias came to the aid of loyalist units of the New Army, eventually forcing a stalemate to the grueling four year conflict. Attempts to create the promised constitutional monarchy would be undone by the death of the Emperor at last from the complications of his brush with death, but by that point Sun held the high ground and was finally able to tear off the fiction of a surviving Qing and usher in a truly republican China.
-Flag of the southern Republic of China ("Sun China")
While the Japanese and the European powers were wary of the two Chinas (neither of which seemed likely to knuckle under in the face of their demands), the United States greeted Sun's government with rapturous applause, viewing the triumph of republicanism as a moral victory even as the Republic's embrace of the Open Door Policy gave America greater economic access to the Chinese market. Despite this, some American conservatives, among them former president William McKinley**, were concerned with Sun's policy of land redistribution and taxation. President William Jennings Bryan would receive the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the formal end to the conflict, temporarily splitting China into two competing states...
*Two days ahead of schedule
**His lack of assassination being the (original) POD
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I think that might be partially my fault since I love the concept and I've returned to it in one form or another like three times 😂 In any case he was a Georgist in real life, the Nationalist Party in its earliest form was a Georgist republican party and the Germans ran their Chinese concessions on a strictly Georgist basis, so it's not like it's coming out of the blue. Also, considering he's not competing with Yuan internally he gets to implement his policies from the ground up, and without a warlord period to boot.
The Independence Party that in time will elect Lovecraft is premised on a successful progressive party based on the extrapolation of what progressivism meant in the early twentieth century; Georgism was bound up in that so it seems natural from an authorial perspective that I'd give it a bit of room to grow off to the side. With no warlord period and no (generation long) civil war Sun China will be in an excellent position come the eventual midcentury hostilities.
So i guess that without Theodore Roosevelt's presidency the Progressive Party is actually in a stroger position than OTL?
I quoted a post on the history of the Independence Party in the OP but I'll summarize for brevity- the Independence Party has a bit of a struggle in its early years between the Hearst faction that founded the thing in 1905 and the Roosevelt-Wood faction that joined the party in 1907. This struggle combined with the sheer unpopularity of President Charles Fairbanks clears the way for Bryan in 1908. With the Republicans in effect reduced to an increasingly conservative corporatist shell and the Populists in thrall to Bryanism, the Independence Party becomes the natural home of urban reformers and those segments of the working class not quite there on the Socialist Party, but it won't be until around 1910 when they start building strength in Congress.
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Also not to worry, this post was crucial to establish early international divergences and set up a fun reference for down the line but tomorrow's is all about the man, the myth, the legend. IÄ! IÄ!
Since Lovecraft focuses on writing nonfiction TTL a lot of the overt Mythos references are going to be innocent little nods like this, though the Church of Starry Wisdom paramilitary is going to come up with some... interesting ranks in a deliberate effort on their part to mock the Klan 🤔
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My favorite part of coming up with a new timeline is feeling all the little pieces click into place! I had a random thought while raking leaves that will fit perfectly into Day 4 of this little project!
