In Look to the West, Ireland is a separate kingdom to, but in personal union with, the Kingdom of Great Britain. Ireland has produced many of the greatest “English” statesmen and soldiers, but is itself considered a backwater by most Britons, not least those same sons who have turned their back on it. Ireland's chief problem in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was that it is divided between a Catholic majority and a Protestant minority, the former not trusted by the Protestant English, who consider them a likely fifth column in the event of a French or Spanish invasion. The Catholics were not permitted to vote, as was also the case in England, but the fact that the Protestant Irish nobility had power over them led to much greater misery.

Many exiled Irish Catholics served in the armies and states of France, Austria and especially Spain.

Ireland was particularly controversial in the question of Catholic emancipation, but a rising in the early part of the 19th century changed all that…

The Kingdom of Ireland uses the cross of St Patrick as its national flag, red saltire on white.