The Kingdom Of Quebec/Le royaume du Québec

When we think of Quebec in alternate history,we usually think of Quebec as being part of the United States Of America. I was talking with a French friend of mine,when the topic came up. The idea is that Quebec is either under British and later Canadian control..or it breaks ranks and joins the Thirteen Colonies during the American Revolution.

This is where it gets interesting,we began to throw some ideas as to how Quebec could be independent of both Canada and America. Be its own nation...is this too much to think? What would have to happen for Quebec to be its own country,and possibly its own form of a monarchy?

Would something have to happen like exiled French royalty flee to Quebec and reestablish there? Or would some prominent French aristocrat declare his family to be royal? Or could a commoner become a king or queen of Quebec?

Is the idea crazy..or does it sound possible?
 
This is a little ASB but here's a possibility. After the French revolution Louis XVI escapes to Quebec where he is welcomed by the local French speakers. His presence begins to stir up large amounts of French nationalism so the British attempt to arrest him. The action has the opposite effect however and Quebec quickly descends into civil war following a few big riots and eventually gains its independence with Louis XVI as king.
 
This is a little ASB but here's a possibility. After the French revolution Louis XVI escapes to Quebec where he is welcomed by the local French speakers. His presence begins to stir up large amounts of French nationalism so the British attempt to arrest him. The action has the opposite effect however and Quebec quickly descends into civil war following a few big riots and eventually gains its independence with Louis XVI as king.

OK, that's a bit ASB (at least you admitted it) - if the French royal family fled to Québec City after being ousted, I would think that the British wouldn't mind his presence (though the Canadiens would be a bit disgusted - after all, he abandoned them in 1763, n'est-ce pas?). Louis, however, would most likely be pro-British if he flees.
 
OK, that's a bit ASB (at least you admitted it) - if the French royal family fled to Québec City after being ousted, I would think that the British wouldn't mind his presence (though the Canadiens would be a bit disgusted - after all, he abandoned them in 1763, n'est-ce pas?). Louis, however, would most likely be pro-British if he flees.

The British I imagine would make use of him as propaganda, and make him Duke of Quebec or the likes, and use him as a claim to Louisiana for "The Frankish Duchy within the Empire" or whatever... but anyway you get the idea, Brits making it look better to be Semi-Autonomous within the Empire than under the rule of a dictator or against the Empire.
 
IMO the fleeing of the Portuguese royalty to Brazil in 1810-ish has subverted the minds of alt-historians to thinking that monarchs regularly wanted to flee to their colonies in times of crisis. They didn't. They usually thought of the colonists as insignificant low-life peasants and certainly viewed them as being incapable of supporting their grandiose lifestyle, and this definitely goes here. On top of this, you have to consider the mindset of the royals. If you lose your throne and are fleeing, unlike some people here who might think of the idea by asking themselves where they would flee to if their country was battered by a hurricane and they wanted to go to a different continent to chill in the sun for a while, the fleeing royals still had an agenda to pursue even as they fled. They wanted their country back - this meant they had to work hard to get it back. It meant going where they had the best chance of being listened to. Hence, in the 1640s, Prince Charles (later to be Charles II of England) fled to the Netherlands, where he was in a great position to observe events for a possible (and the eventual) degradation of the Commonwealth, and where he would be treated better than in France. In 1917, the Russian royals who survived fled IIRC to London before spreading out to Germany and France, hoping that they would be able to gain the support of the governments there to be reinstalled upon the end of the Communist rule which ultimately outlived them. In RL, the surviving French royals fled to various local powerful rulers in Germany, again probably expecting the French Republic to collapse on itself and welcome them back. If the French royals flee to Quebec then they will be months away from returning, they are totally unable to lobby European governments for support and there's no way they're going to be able to raise an army to support their bid to regain the throne. It would be the same as publicly announcing that they'd given up on the idea of ever getting France back and would prefer to be pretend kings on the far side of the world than trying to win back their throne in Europe.

I'm not saying this Kingdom of Quebec idea is impossible, but I really think the idea of the French royals fleeing there to escape the Revolution is totally uncharacteristic of both the mindset and the logic of this period.
 
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