Wider still, and wider

IOTL "Bonnie Prince Charlie" didn't get married until 1773, when he was 53 years old.
Supposing that he was found a wife shortly before the 1745 uprising instead, say in 1744 (when he'd have been in his early 20s), who would be good candidates?
Must be of roughly comparable age (say 15-25), Roman Catholic, either royalty (but not royal enough for marriage to a prince whose inheritance is actually guaranteed to be likely) or high nobility, and from a pro-Jacobite/anti-Hanoverian -- or pro-French, anyway -- family...

Any suggestions?

EDIT: I've decided that it will be a Polish noblewoman [with a name probably invented by me for this purpose] from the court of Stanislas, Duke of Lorraine.
 
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Monarchs of France, from 1589AD

House of Bourbon

King Henri IV (“Henri of Navarre”) 1589-1610
King Louis XIII 1610-1643
King Louis XIV (“the Sun King”) 1643-1715
King Louis XV (“Louis the Unfortunate”) 1715-1744
King Louis XVI (“Louis the Crownless”,
or “Louis the Very Unfortunate”) 1744 [6 days]

House of Bourbon-Orleans

King Louis XVII (“Louis of Orleans”,
or “Louis the Pious”) 1744-1751
King Louis-Philippe I [Regent 1746+] 1751-1786
King Louis XVIII (“Louis Egalité”) 1786-1791
King Philippe VII (“Philippe the Short”) 1791 (100 days)
King Louis-Philippe II 1791-1798
[captive, & by rivals’ reckoning deposed, 1792-1798]
Queen Claudette 1792-1812
[as co-ruler with Emperor Jean-Charles 1796-1812]
[as co-ruler with Emperor Charles-Louis 1812-1813]

House of Pichegru

Emperor Jean-Charles 1796-1811
Emperor Charles-Louis 1812-1813


House of Bourbon-Orleans-Berry

King Henri V (“Duke of Berry”) 1813-1822
King Charles (“the Strict”) 1822-1835


House of Pichegru

Emperor Jean-Louis 1836-1857
 
"Et tu, Davout?"

(Allegedly the response of Jean-Charles, Emperor, Co-Ruler of France, on seeing that his war minister Marshal Davout was amongst the politicians who'd brought a letter of abdication for him to sign. [5th October, 1812]).
 
Royal Houses of Europe (1913)


Kingdom of Great Britain (includes Gibraltar and also [effectively, & probably soon legally as well] Dunkirk; with its ‘Crown Dependencies’, namely_ Lordship of Mann, Duchy of Normandy [administered as two separate ‘Balliwicks’: Jersey and Guernsey], Lordship of Heligoland); Kingdom of Ireland; Britannic Empire (also relevant for Malta, ‘Minorca & Majorca’, the ‘Ionian Islands’) = House of Osborne*

Empire of Austria = House of Habsburg
Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia = House of Habsburg-Hungary
Kingdom of the Lands of St Wenceslaus = House of Habsburg [“Third branch”]
[The Emperor of Austria is primus inter pares for this trio]

Kingdom of the United Netherlands (including the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg) = House of Orange-Nassau
Kingdom of Denmark-Norway = House of Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg
Principality of Estonia = House of Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg [cadet branch]
Kingdom of Sweden, with Finland = House of Holstein-Augustenburg
Kingdom of Italy = House of Savoy [old ‘main’ branch surviving, not replaced by ‘Savoy-Carignan’ branch as IOTL]
Kingdom of Portugal = House of Braganza
Kingdom of Spain = House of Bourbon-Berwick [civil war in progress vs. republicans]
Kingdom of Greece = Saxe-Coburg [a branch of the House of Wettin]
Kingdom of Jugoslavia = House of Battenberg [with a similar but not identical origin to the OTL family of that name]
Principality of Monaco = House of Grimaldi
Principality of Montenegro = House of Petrovich-Njegosh
Prussia (which is either a Kingdom or [only] a Grand Duchy now, a point about which the diplomats are still negotiating, but in either case has been reduced so far that it consists solely of East Prussia) = Hohenzollern [of the Brandenburg-Prussia branch]

The German League = (the position of ‘Bund-Protector’ is elective, and is currently held by “Augusta II, Prince-Elector of Hanover” [i.e. Queen Augusta II of Great Britain]; most of the states within the League have specific Princes of their own, too)

Regency of Poland = (under discussion _ probably the leading candidate for king, if Britain can be persuaded not to oppose him, is John James Poniatowski-Stuart, the Prince of Fulda, who is descended not only from the country’s last pre-partition king but also from the famous King John Sobieski who led his army to break the Turks’ second siege of Vienna: It’s the fact that that the latter lineage is traced through “Bonnie Prince Charlie” [whose mother was a grand-daughter of King John, and who married at a rather earlier date ITTL than IOTL, and to a Polish noblewoman — from the court of Duke Stanislas of Lorraine — rather than a German one as IOTL] that has the British government slightly concerned)

France (government under rearrangement): monarchist factions = Bourbon-Orleans [‘Egalitéists’], Bourbon-Orleans [‘Legitimists’, or ‘Bourbon-Orleans-Orleans’], Bourbon-Orleans-Berry [‘Vrai-ists’]; imperialist faction = Pichegru

Russia (multi-factional civil war in progress) = ‘Romanov’ [actually Holstein-Gottorp]


__________________________________________________ ___________________


* This dynastic name was proclaimed by Queen Augusta II when she succeeded to the throne in 1908, with the prior approval of her great-aunt & predecessor Queen Augusta I. She made this decision to simplify matters, because although Her Majesty is of Hanoverian ‘Guelph’ lineage through her maternal grandmother (who was Queen Augusta I’s younger sister), her ancestry through [recent] male lines is from the Houses of Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg (via a prince of Denmark) and of Battenberg instead. However her children will still use ‘Guelph’ as their personal surname, not only because of that Hanoverian connection but also because her consort Prince William is himself a Guelph… He is a member of the dynasty’s ‘Brunswick-Heidelberg’ branch [established 1813, by the Congress of Vienna], younger brother to Prince-Elector Frederick of the Rhenish Palatinate.
 

mowque

Banned
The 'national animal' chosen for the Kingdom of America was not the Bald Eagle (and not the Turkey, either), it was the Cougar or Mountain Lion -- "a Lion of America's own, to match the older Lions of England and Scotland" -- instead.

The turkey!
 
The turkey!
Ben Franklin suggested it IOTL, in preference to the bald eagle (turkey is useful, bald eagle is largely just a scavenger and so not a good image, he said...), but ITTL they've gone the 'alpha predator' route instead... and with the continued link to Britain I think that the "American Lion" argument would have been seen as reasonable.
The main order of knighthood associated with the Empire as a whole rather than with any of its constituent parts will be the 'Order of the Three Lions', founded in probably the late 1770s or early 1780s -- before further reforms give the Kingdom of Ireland (with its Catholics emancipated) a seat of its own in the Imperial Council too -- and taking its name not only from the three lions in the traditional arms of the English kings but also from the Lion emblem of England, the Lion emblem of the Scottish crown, and this animal.
 
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Cross-posted from the 'Weekly Flag Challenge' thread _


Original flag for
The Kingdom of America

This nation was established, in personal union and imperial federation with the Kingdom of Great Britain, in the year 1769AD, as a result of prolonged discussions between representatives of British government and of the British colonies in North America. God bless King Frederick!

(OOC: This is my first attempt at creating a flag for the ‘Kingdom of America’ from my still-being-planned ‘Wider Still, And Wider’ [or ‘Earth-Fred’] TL, in which King George II was seriously wounded at the Battle of Dettingen [in 1744] and therefore did not outlive his eldest son Frederick, Prince of Wales, as happened IOTL. As king, Frederick continued to support Pitt and other relatively liberal politicians rather than his father’s old favourites, and they had the sense to begin those discussions with the colonies’ representatives — which initially were about how the colonies’ defence would be financed — during their equivalent of the ‘Seven Years War’ rather than waiting until the period after that conflict when the colonials felt less need to accept reasonable terms. As consequently established the Kingdom had comparable autonomy to OTL Canada c.WW1, but also with some seats in the Westminster parliament [including places for 2 ‘Senators’ at a time per colony amongst the Lords, on a ‘life’ basis] — with it being understood from the start that these American representatives would not vote on any solely ‘British’ matters — and a guaranteed place in the Cabinet for its ‘High Commissioner’: The full-fledged ‘Imperial Council’, meeting separately from the British Parliament, was a later development.)


Explanation

The canton of a Union Flag obviously indicates this kingdom’s British origins and continued connections. The green field for the remainder of the design stands for newness, growth, and hope (OOC: although I’m slightly concerned that in fact the suggestion of using this green field might actually have been dismissed IITL for looking “too Irish”…), with the Sun-and-Waves emblem in the upper fly being the main emblem for the new kingdom and symbolising “A New Day Dawning Across The Ocean”: The smile on the face of the sun represents the friendly nature of the kingdom’s foundation, and IC ITTL was not “borrowed” from the [later, anyway] Argentine flag.
Below that emblem we have a circle [approximately] of twelve stars to represent the twelve colonies that became the nation’s first two ‘cantons’, surrounding a crown to symbolise not only the loyalty that holds them together but also (at least according to later definitions) the American Capital Territory, and two more stars that — paler than the others, but closer to the Crown — represent the 2 additional colonies that were also included in the kingdom but as ‘provinces’ (with less say in the new government, but with more autonomy from it as well) rather than as cantons.
Some people actually go even further with the symbolic interpretation, and assign each of those stars to a specific canton or province, based on their relative positions: Four for the four ‘New England’ cantons (New Hampshire, Massachusetts [at that date still including (most of) Maine], Rhode Island, and Connecticut [which ITTL includes the eastern end of Long Island]) along the top, four for Virginia and the cantons to its south (North Carolina, South Carolina, Guelphia [in OTL terms, basically eastern & central Georgia]) along the bottom, and four in between for the four ‘middle cantons’ that are split 2-&-2 on either side of the ring: The pair on one side are said to stand for the pair of colonies/cantons that had been carved out of the old “New Netherlands”, i.e. New Yorkshire [in OTL terms = New York, less Long Island and the Iroquois lands, but plus northern New Jersey] and New Lincolnshire [in OTL terms a combination of southern New Jersey with Delaware], whilst the pair on the other side represent their western & south-western neighbours Sylvania [in OTL terms, basically eastern & central Pennsylvania] and Maryland respectively. One of the paler, inner stars then stands for Nova Scotia [in OTL terms including all 3 of the Maritime Provinces, plus bits of both Maine and Quebec], and the other for ‘Florida’ [including the ‘West Florida’ lands which that territory lost to other states IOTL].


Later versions of the flag add further stars as the numbers of cantons and provinces increase, up to the 23+5 that were recognised as of the year 1913, with that part of the design stretched out horizontally and moved hoist-wards so that it was centred relative to the flag’s length. Territories, other than the ACT [which consists of the city of ‘Kingston’, with a small hinterland, and occupies the western end of Long Island], have never been represented in the design.


(I’ll have a go at the 1913 design, and post that as well, when I’ve got a little bit more time available.)

KoA flag.PNG
 
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Was there ever a Green ensign? White, Red and Blue were all used navally.
Not officially. The red/white/blue set were originally introduced (and remained until 1864) for use in showing which of the 3 distinct 'squadrons' into which the RN's battle-fleet was then customarily divided it was that any particular ship -- especially any particular flagship -- was assigned to. If a quick search's results are correct then Red = the most senior admirals (in the main body of the fleet), White = next (vanguard), Blue = least senior (rear-guard)... although the Red Ensign was also used for RN ships sailing "under independent command" (and thus with their captains not immediately subject to any officer of higher seniority at all) and then -- by extension from this -- for merchant vessels* as well.
I suppose they could have introduced an additional design -- possibly even a green one -- for use by civilian rather than naval shipping in those days, but they didn't do so: Not officially, anyway.
However various 'Green Ensign' flags do seem to have been designed and used unofficially for some merchant ships whose owners were Irish rather than actually British:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Ensign.


(* The HEIC had a flag, derived from a striped design that had been used by the RN at an even earlier stage, which its ships also used as an ensign... but there were arguments with the Admiralty about how appropriate this was. They seem to have compromised, eventually, on using the Red Ensign in the northern & central Atlantic but the HEIC one when beyond St Helena.)


_________________________________________________________________________________________


That's the situation as far as OTL is concerned, anyway: ITTL there very well might be a Green Ensign introduced officially for the RN's additional 'American Divsion' and then for the Royal American Navy as a separate organisation within the combined 'Imperial' forces.
 
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Not officially. The red/white/blue set were originally introduced (and remained until 1864) for use in showing which of the 3 'distinct squadrons' into which the RN's battle-fleet was then customarily divided it was that any particular ship -- especially any particular flagship -- was assigned to. If a quick search's results are correct then Red = the most senior admirals (in the main body of the fleet), White = next (vanguard), Blue = least senior (rear-guard)... although the Red Ensign was also used for RN ships sailing "under independent command" (and thus with their captains not immediately subject to any officer of higher seniority at all) and then -- by extension from this -- for merchant vessels* as well.
I suppose they could have introduced an additional design -- possibly even a green one -- for use by civilian rather than naval shipping in those days, but they didn't do so: Not officially, anyway.
However various 'Green Ensign' flags do seem to have been designed and used unofficially for some merchant ships whose owners were Irish rather than actually British:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Ensign.


(* The HEIC had a flag, derived from a striped design that had been used by the RN at an even earlier stage, which its ships also used as an ensign... but there were arguments with the Admiralty about how appropriate this was. They seem to have compromised, eventually, on using the Red Ensign in the northern & central Atlantic but the HEIC one when beyond St Helena.)


_________________________________________________________________________________________


That's the situation as far as OTL is concerned, anyway: ITTL there very well might be a Green Ensign introduced officially for the RN's additional 'American Divsion' and then for the Royal American Navy as a separate organisation within the combined 'Imperial' forces.

Very good. Thank you.
 
This thread is for developing the TL that I've already mentioned in the context of its maps. I suppose that some of you might class it as a 'Britwank', especially if you consider the OTL British Empire to have pushed the limits of plausibility anyway, but I don't think that it's really too extreme. The basic idea is that with a change of leadership [from the OTL situation] in Britain the British government and the discontented Americans manage to compromise on something along the lines of 'Dominion' status for the collected colonies -- with both nations' governments also represented in an 'Imperial Council' that constitutionally has potential for expansion to include people from other parts of the Empire too -- at some date in the late 1760s/early 1770s, thus averting the AWI, and that these changes give the Empire just enough of an added edge to help it become even stronger (but yet more stable, too) than IOTL.
The main map that I've been working on, which I'll post fairly soon although there are still few areas that I'd like to fix first (ownership & boundaries of some African colonial boundaries, extent of revolutions in Russia, control over parts of China), is for the year 1912 and will show the situation following the end of a 'Six Years War' -- also called 'the Great War' -- in which the Empire and its allies defeated what was essentially a Franco-Spanish-Prussian-Russian Axis.

The main POD is that King George II is wounded while commanding his army (as the last British monarch IOTL to command an army in the field, at least so far) and that some lingering after-effect from this finally kills him off seven years later which means that his eldest son Frederick, the Prince of Wales, succeeds to the throne. This averts whatever (by some reports an injury from either a cricket ball or a 'real tennis' ball) caused the illness that would have killed "poor Fred" in 1751 if things had still gone as IOTL. With the Guelph family tradition for alternating generations switching their support between political parties (mostly to annoy their fathers) he gets on a lot better with William Pitt [the Elder] than George II would have liked or than OTL George III did when the American crisis arose... and there's even a little bit of historical evidence to suggest that Frederick might actually have been slightly more "reasonable" politically himself anyway than were either his father or his son, too.

Unless people here are too strongly opposed to the idea of TLs having more than one [unrelated] POD there will have already been another and more minor minor change from OTL roughly a century before this, when Britain's newly-acquired lands around New Amsterdam -- as New York was called in those days -- were divided into a number of colonies. I originally decided to write this into TL in order to make placing the Kingdom of America's capital city on the map a bit easier, but having thought further about the matter it would also provide a minor butterfly to help get New York to accept having that city ('Kingston', which is basically located as per OTL Brooklyn) removed from its own jurisdiction when dominion status is being agreed. I don't see any other & more important butterflies necessarily being bred from this POD, so I don't see either its inclusion in the TL or its omission instead as very important: What do you say about it?

Thande's Look to the West TL has something similar.
 
Why Osborne?

Osborne House was a private royal residence that won't necessarily exist under this time line as it was came about in very specific circumstances relating to the desire's and needs of Victoria and Albert.
It was bought by Albert and Victoria and rebuilt to his design in the 1840s and 50s as a summer home for them and their children.
Her son incidentally like several of his siblings couldn't wait to offload it when he became King.
There was no connection to the royal family before then (rather like Balmoral which again was dictated by growing fashion for a mythic highland scotland, walter scott, and the similarity of the landscape to that of Albert's childhood home in Germany).


Monarchs of Great Britain

House of Stuart
Queen Anne (Queen of England & Queen of Scotland, 1702-’07) (Queen of Great Britain, 1707-’14)

House of Hanover (or Guelph)
King George I (King 1714-’27; second cousin of the above)
King George II (King 1727-’46; son of the above)
King Frederick I (King 1746-1807; son of the above)
King George III (King 1807-’34; grandson of the above; genealogically, basically, equivalent to the OTL ‘George IV’)
King Frederick II (King 1834-’57; son of the above)
Queen Augusta I (Queen 1857-1908; daughter of the above)

House of Osborne
Queen Augusta II (Queen 1908-?; great-niece of the above)
 
Why Osborne?

Osborne House was a private royal residence that won't necessarily exist under this time line as it was came about in very specific circumstances relating to the desire's and needs of Victoria and Albert.
I know, but then... "Why not?"

More seriously, I felt that simply using 'Windsor' as IOTL would be too convergent whereas using 'St James' instead would arguably look too RC, and I haven't yet decided on what other royal residences (apart from Brighton Pavilion, built by TTL's counterpart of Prinny, whose existence I'm butterfly-proofing under the 'Rule of Cool'... but which the royals would have given up, for the same reasons that Victoria did, well before this name-change anyway) would have existed ITTL around the relevant date so, as the butterflies don't absolutely require [or forbid, either] any specifc location, any place-name that I used would be subject to "Why?"
And the very fact that Osborne was considered a suitable location for a private royal residence IOTL at least lets me argue plausibly [I think...] that it could also have been considered suitable for one -- if it was [convergently] on the market around the right date -- ITTL as well.

(Also, there's the recognition factor: I'd expect that people seeing the 'dynastic' name mentioned in passing when reading the thread, once I've got some actual TL posts up rather than just notes, would probably be more likely to guess the context from that familiarity than they would be if I'd gone for an alternative that didn't have such an OTL royal connection.)

Still, though, nothing that far from the POD is absolutely set in iron yet: I'm actually willing to change that name if a "better" idea arises.
Any serious suggestions? Establishments of reasonably comparable size, that existed IOTL, within say 50% to 150% of the same distance from central London, that could plausibly (allowing for not too many convenient butterflies...) have come onto the market early in the reign of Augusta I?
For that matter, any suggestions about potential London residences for the royals, as alternatives to Buckingham House and/or Kensington?
 
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