New STGOD Ruleset

[Ezekiel]

Haha wow. Gamist, province/power-hungry losers really are the same everywhere.

[Hadrianvs]

Gamist, province/power-hungry losers really are the same everywhere.

If I would expand Russia into Iran there would be a corresponding withdrawals from Eastern Europe and/or Siberia. As for my comment on Magi's nation, it's mostly due to the specific geography of the Mississippi River Valley, which in my opinion tends to encourage one power to control the whole course. But if he doesn't want it he doesn't want it.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Gamist, province/power-hungry losers really are the same everywhere.

If I would expand Russia into Iran there would be a corresponding withdrawals from Eastern Europe and/or Siberia. As for my comment on Magi's nation, it's mostly due to the specific geography of the Mississippi River Valley, which in my opinion tends to encourage one power to control the whole course. But if he doesn't want it he doesn't want it.

He is referring to my taking of the southern german states of Bavaria, Wurtenberg etc. Apparently he had plans for them as NPCs(read: war of aggression/puppet state, whichever) that I ruined when I claimed them and he threw a bitch fit.

Oh, and he objected to my nation being run out of Zürich rather than Vienna.

[Steve]

Yeah, he was okay with you having them if you were just Austria and and Bohemia, but once I gave you Poland plus Austro-Hungary 1914 he pitched a conniption.

That and he also utterly dislikes Sunhawk's polity and was mad Sunhawk picked up Hong Kong... even though 'hawk agreed to leave it to him and take something else with his colony points.

A final note. Initially, though I'd forgotten, we were going to do frigidmagi's system of tech research. People say what they want to research, apply 25/cash quarter for each, and we roll quarterly to determine success as well as informing them of the result their research will give. Then I forgot and started trying to construct a tech tree.

So, which do people want. You say the tech you want and we approve and roll dice for success quarterly, or an actual tech tree with a few dozen or so techs for navy, army, industrial stuff, etc.?

[Hadrianvs]

Well, Ben's nation is rather monstrous for that area of Europe, but then so is Rome.

[Steve]

Well, Ben's nation is rather monstrous for that area of Europe, but then so is Rome.

If Zeke's out he's going to change it.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Well, Ben's nation is rather monstrous for that area of Europe, but then so is Rome.

If Zeke's out he's going to change it.

Yeah. If he is actually out, I will drop most of the hungarian empire (with the exception of the Czech republic and the extreme north adriatic) and Poland, picking up the northern german states, Holland, and Belgium.

[Hadrianvs]

I hope Zeke's not out though, would be a shame to start losing players while we're still picking out nations.

[General Havoc]

Rome is a GP, intended to be a bit unwieldy. And most of my "territory" is water.

[Hadrianvs]

Rome is a GP, intended to be a bit unwieldy. And most of my "territory" is water.

I wasn't criticizing, was just noting that we have a game of big nations. Nothing particularly wrong with that.

[Charon]

My vote is for the tech tree. I don't know nearly enough about the technology of the age to say exactly where I want to go with something without a map to show me the way. We can keep the roll to see when you accomplish the next thing on the tech tree.

[Steve]

There was a lot of tech proliferation in the era though, so odds are that within 6 months to a year of a discovery, everyone will know of it.

It might instead be easier to have the mods, every quarter or two quarters or even yearly, roll to determine if a specific key breakthrough from the period is made (Stuff like timing gear for aircraft, turbo-electric drives, small tube boilers, etc.) and then roll to see who gets it first. Then it gets disseminated to everyone over the course of the next game year. Then we don't need a tech tree and people who lack knowledge in the actual technical advances of the day are not punished for that.

[Sunhawk]

There was a lot of tech proliferation in the era though, so odds are that within 6 months to a year of a discovery, everyone will know of it.

It might instead be easier to have the mods, every quarter or two quarters or even yearly, roll to determine if a specific key breakthrough from the period is made (Stuff like timing gear for aircraft, turbo-electric drives, small tube boilers, etc.) and then roll to see who gets it first. Then it gets disseminated to everyone over the course of the next game year. Then we don't need a tech tree and people who lack knowledge in the actual technical advances of the day are not punished for that.

How about instead of a tech tree have tech concentrations, areas that given countries specialize in and thus are likely to advance in faster. Have three, one military, one commercial and one industrial. Then just have lists of all techs in those concentrations.

[KlavoHunter]

Okay, with what's left on the map, I want a Franco-Spanish (+Portugal) Empire, that also includes Ceylon. And I'll want bits of Africa, to be decided upon when my head isn't so fuzzy. Or more or less simply as historical.

[Hotfoot]

I am tentatively laying claim to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and the United Kingdom.

[Dark Silver]

Acadia
Tier: Regional Power


Population 3 (50 Million)

National Resources 3 (National Self-Sufficiency is 60% )

Colonial Territory 2 (100 Colony Points, +5 million population, 200/400 Colonial Army Points, 90 cash/quarter)

Industry 3 (300 IBPs/quarter)

Economy 3 (2 years of war mobilization, 600 cash points/quarter)

Infrastructure 3 (4 weeks to mobilize Ready Reserve, 4 months to mobilize Second Line)

Navy Power 3 (1200 Navy Points, 4 Dreadnoughts/Battlecruisers permitted)

Army Size 4 (3000 Army Points)



55m Total Population
690 Cash/Quarter, 300 IBPs/Quarter

Government: Semi-Presidential

Territory:
Central and south Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennesse, North and South Carolina and the Virginias


Colonies:
Costa Rica
Nicaragua (Grande Bayou de Nicaragua connects Pacific and Atlantic Oceans)
Honduras

[Steve]

Silver, I'm assuming you meant Industry 4 and not Industry 3 by marking 400IBP/quarter?

Anyway, everyone recheck the map please to make sure your claims are as desired.

http://stgjr.com/libarcw/map1.png

(Note India is still colored, I'm not sure what'll happen there yet. Would like to get an India player so there's more player influence on goings-on in India.)

[General Havoc]

Klavo, we should have a discussion concerning our respective histories. The Alt-History I built for Rome is heavily involved with fighting wars with France and especially Spain.

And as to the map, my claims extend over Palestine and Jordan as well.

[Dark Silver]

Actually, it's indusry 3, I forgot to grab the corrected point value before I posted last night

I'll get it fixed

.

[frigidmagi]

The United Republics

Pop: 3
Nat Res: 3
Col Ter: 0
Indus: 4
Eco: 4
Infra: 4
Navy: 1 (Great Lakes and Mississippi)
Army 5


Here's a question does having the canal give DS any ingame benefits?

[Charon]

The United Iroquois States of the Free East

Population: 3
Natural Resources: 2
Colonial Territory: 1
Industry: 3
Economy: 4
Infrastructure: 3
Navy: 3
Army: 5

[Steve]

I'd consider possession of the canal to give a cash bonus every quarter, probably something like 25-50, depending on world trade levels. If there's lots of conflict and trade disruptions then it'd go down.



Now, a history I've been writing all day. First bit is general, relevant to a bunch of people. It's only preliminary, needs approval for all involved.

Alternate History

(Relevant to Steve, Hotfoot, Charon, Frigidmagi, and Sunhawk)

1058-1093: Malcolm III, of the House of Dunkeld, rules Scotland. Faced with an English-backed opposition in the family, Malcolm counter-balances the English by inviting the Nordic King (Hotfoot will fill this in) into Scottish affairs in exchange for his support.

1100-1690: The history of Britain progresses almost as historical, though slight points of diversion occur due to repeated Nordic involvements in the affairs of Scotland, Ireland, and even England, including Nordic aid to Robert the Bruce in the early 14th Century's wars of Scottish Independence. Since he never weds Catherine of Aragon in the first place, Henry VIII never breaks with the Catholic Church and England remains majority Catholic. Eventually, as in history, the House of Stuart rises to the English throne with the end of the Tudor line - their reconversion to Catholicism by James VII and II will prove unpopular in Nordic-influenced, heavily-anti-Catholic Scotland, however.

The main diversion comes with Princess Mary's husband; she does not marry Willem of Oranje but rather a prince of the Nordics, as part of an effort by Charles II to ward off Nordic interferences in Scotland. However, James does not have his second marriage to Mary of Modena as historic, but rather to an ahistoric princess of the House of Braganza - the Infanta Maria Dona - who will give birth to James' son and heir after his coronation. A plot in the Parliament to invite the Nordics to overthrow James II in favor of Mary, and thus thwart a Catholic succession, is thwarted only by a desperate James II, remembering his father's fate, agreeing to sign a Rights Bill in both English and Scottish Parliaments that placates the worries of the Whig factions and anti-Catholics.

1690-1800: James II only delays the reckoning. In 1692 the death of James II's brother-in-law make James II's son the immediate heir to the crown of Spain. The prospect of the Stuarts having the stalwart Catholics of Spain, and their rich empire in the Americas, to call upon to reimpose Catholicism upon the Protestant sections of England and Scotland is too much to bear and the Whigs again plot to have Mary assume the throne. James II is in the middle of negotiations to have his second son by Queen Maria made the English heir when he dies. James III is crowned King of England and touches off the War of English Succession.

The War of the English Succession becomes a major European War: the Nordic Kingdom, Holland, France, and Rome on the side of Princess Mary and her Scottish and north English supporters versus Spain, Austria, Poland, and Bavaria siding with James III; of the Great Powers of Europe only the increasing Russian Empire remain uninvolved, occupied by their campaigns against the Turks (Rome, victorious in Constantinople before the war, will eventually be distracted eastward again as well). For ten years the war ravages England and rages in the Mediterrenean and northern Europe. Due to positioning Franco-Nordic troops are successful in driving James III and his supporters out of England entirely, forcing him to pull back to Scotland, where an attempt at a ferocious campaign nevertheless fails with a severe defeat at the Battle of the Boyne. James flees to exile in Spain. The war continues on, however, sustained by the belligerents' remaining rival claims and issues with one another, with Russia becoming a belligerent due to its own disputes with the Nordics and Romanov ambitions to gain an outlet to the Baltic.

When the reigning Nordic King dies childless in battle with Tsar Piotr, defeated at Poltava, the succession there devolves onto Mary's husband and thus to her son. Faced with the unpalatable prospect of England merged dynastically with the Nordics instead, Holland backs out of the war, followed by a Rome increasingly occupied by campaigns against the Turks settling peace with Spain. A series of peace treaties between the belligerents follows in which Mary and her progeny are granted the English and Scottish thrones, but the Nordics are forced to cede much of Ireland back to the Stuarts - with the exception of the "Scots-Irish" counties around Belfast - with James III crowned as King of Spain and of Ireland. The Nordics also lose territory to the Russians but regain the Kingdom of Denmark as well as confirming ownership of parts of Canada for the Iroquois from the French (gotta consult with Charon). France is compensated by gaining Florida at Spanish expense to attach to Louisiana.

The extreme anti-Catholicism of the Nordics causes an exodus of Catholic Englishmen, joined by a succession of men like John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, who remained loyal to his Catholic King despite conversion. Spain does not easily take to these culturally different men and Ireland cannot sustain them all. James III considers resettlement to the Americas but the Spanish ministers prove resistant; they do not want the English overrunning New Spain and Peru. Instead he is prompted to award land grants for settlement in the un-touched lands of California and so thousands of "Jacobite"s begin the long trek by boat and trail to the Pacific ports of the Americas and settlement in Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay.

As Kings of Spain, James III and his heirs prove disappointing to the Spanish nobility. Traditionally Spain's enemy was Rome, abhorred for its anti-Catholicism and Christian heresies as well as holding Aragon and preventing the unification of Iberia under a unified crown. But for James III the main enemies are the two powers that drove his family from their ancestral homeland of Scotland: France and Scandinavia. James III makes peace with Rome and encourages them to focus on finishing off the Turks and on being his ally against France, giving him clear openings to begin plotting to regain England and Scotland for the House of Stuart. He only shrinks back from an outright alliance with Rome under threat of Papal sanction.

Eventually, in 1730, the fueros and the Pope force James III to step down from the throne and retire to a monastery. His young son Charles is crowned King Carlos III of Spain and of Ireland but also, defiantly, King Charles of England and of Scotland. Raised mostly in Spain, it was imagined that he would be more amenable to Spanish interests. But he was raised primarily by English nannies and English instructors, so Charles proves no more willing to give up England and Scotland than his father did, continuing to ignore openings to attack Rome and to risk Spain's colonial holdings in potential conflicts with either France, the Nordics, or both. When his own son Henry, who further enflamed Spanish passions by proclaiming himself Henry IX and I instead of Henry V (thus ignoring the Castilian line that the Spanish Kings had recognized in part up to now), drags Spain into war with Scandinavia after the English-Nordic defeat in North America, the fueros are enraged; the war results in Spanish defeat and the loss of more Irish counties to the Anglo-Nordics.

The war, however, also causes fissure in the Anglo-Nordic kingdom. To finance the war the Nordic Court demanded high taxation from England and Scotland, but Parliament refused to vote the taxes into law. When Nordic officials attempted to enforce them by royal decree the English civil service refused the orders and Parliament rebuked the King. This fomented the occupation of London by royal troops and the forced dissolution of Parliament. Unwilling to spark a civil war and give an opening to the Stuarts to come back, the Nordic Court exiles the worst offenders amongst the radical Whigs and lets the others go; a wave of "Parliamentarian" emigration follows to Iroquois-held New England (where the Iroquois Nations were attempting to encourage English re-settlement), to a colony at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, and even some switching allegience to the Stuarts and settling in Spain, Ireland, or California.

When Henry's son James IV (Jaime II), again raised by Englishmen primarily, continues "the English Obsessions" after his coronation in 1780, the fueros have come to the final straw. A plot begins in which Prince Philippe, Duke of Orleans and the heir to the French throne, is invited to claim the Spanish throne as well through bloodline rights (his grandmother was the eldest daughter of James III). James IV gets wind of it but his attempts to arrest the conspirators fail miserably. The noble-led army prompts an uprising, joined by popular revolts against "the English kings" by a countryside that demands "a Spaniard or at least an enemy of Rome" in the throne. James IV attempts to hold Madrid with the aid of his Irish regiments but numbers press him away. In 1785 he is forced to flee for his life to Ireland, joined by those Spaniards who remained loyal and his Irish followers.

But no succor awaits him there. The Nordics, unwilling to countenance the continued existance of the Stuarts in Spain, invade Ireland immediately to get rid of the Stuarts once and for all. The Irish regiments, depleted from fighting in Spain, are unable to fight off the attacking Anglo-Nordic forces. By 1787 the King again flees, enduring an arduous trans-Atlantic voyage with his Court in which his heir and his wife die of illness. In the New World there is little rest; King Felipe V has gained the loyalty of the Viceroy of New Spain, who is instructed to "send the English King on to his rabble". Taken prisoner in Havana, James IV is sent on to the small town of Los Angeles, where James III had settled Englishmen nearly a century before, far from where he can threaten the legitimacy of the new Kingdom of France and Spain.

In California, James IV remarries - to the daughter of one of his loyal retainers - and will have two sons, in 1798 and 1799, the first of which dies from illness as well. He continues to hold all his ancient claims, and accepts the continued loyalty of the Spanish governor in Manila, but all of his losses take a heavy emotional toll. When he is offered the crown of California by California's Parliament, as a distinct title, he refuses, not out of refusing to accept his loss of Spain but out of sheer weariness.

Despite his relative youth, in 1800 James IV, worn out by sickness and heartache, dies; his sole surviving infant son Henry is immediately recognized as the King of California by a defiant Californian Parliament. With this coronation, the history of the Kingdom of the Pacific begins.

[Steve]

And now my state's history, in brief, and with holes to permit reaction to world events.


1800-1900: California, by 1800, was known to be valuable. Gold was discovered in 1798 by English settlers and inspired a flood of gold-seeking Creoles and Mestizos from New Spain, as well as attracting, further, the attentions of immigrants from Europe seeking to flee the outbreak of the Bourbon-Roman War and the painful consolidation of the Nordics in England.

Political control of California had been held by the Spanish Viceroy in New Spain; Los Angeles had thus been picked as the point of exile for James IV and the Stuarts, most of whom were deported from Spain unless they swore allegiance to the Bourbons (only a handful did). But when the Englishmen and Irish of Los Angeles and the many communities dotting the central Californian Valley up to San Francisco defiantly proclaimed James IV's son as their King upon James IV's death, it provoked an uproar in Mexico City. An army was raised amongst the creoles, under peninsular officers, to put down the revolt and re-establish central control.

But California was no fringe colony. Having been settled for about 90 years, the rich farmland had drawn settlers from across New Spain and Europe proper, with further immigration waves coming from England during the Parliamentary suppressions by the Nordics. Without the gold of New Spain to discourage native manufacture, the English had carefully cultivated a local capacity for gunsmithing and other manufactures; with this they were able to outfit an army. When the Spanish forces arrived in 1803, they were quickly met on the coast and routed by the English settlers. And due to the disaster that was war with Rome, now under Napoleon's Republic, the Bourbons were under no condition to outfit another. Conditions in Mexico proper, in fact, would soon prompt an uprising of creoles, mestizos, and indianos to overthrow the Viceroy and proclaim Mexico, setting off instability throughout Spanish-held America and ensuring more immigration to California.

The energies of the newly-born Californian Kingdom turned inward. The young King had to be raised; a Regency under William Pitt would do so. Pitt, the son of an English Parliamentarian driven out by the Nordics, would ensure the chidl King was raised to appreciate the role and need for Parliament in the English system, thus ending centuries of Stuart antagonism toward legislatures. California was organized along English constitutional lines, though a concession to the Spanish population, including those Spanish nobles that had remained loyal to the House of Stuart, meant that the rights of the Spanish fueros were honored in the House of Lords so long as they did not contradict English common law rights (enabling the women peers of California to sit in the House of Lords, for instance).

As California expanded its population, enjoying not just a high birth rate but immigration from Europe and the rest of North America by sources as diverse as German liberal aristocrats, Polish noblemen, and Roman aristocrats, it expanded its hold. The Scots and English settlers of the far north, in the forested lands of the Columbia River and the Cascade Mountains, swore their loyalty to the new King as well, establishing the Kingdom of Cascadia in 1812. Settlements on the distant islands of Zealandia (New Zealand and New Caledonia) and Australia joined the new Kingdom (in the case of Sydney it was to spit in the face of the Nordic Court, which exiled a new wave of Radical Whigs to Van Diamen's Land in 1775-1800).

Finally, though the Spanish governors of the New World uniformly sided with the Bourbons, those in distant Manila and Spain's Pacific island holdings remained loyal to the Stuarts, resisting calls to return home and accept replacement by Philippe's faction. When news of California's defiant act reaches them, these governors swiftly proclaim their colonies as adhering to the Californian Crown.

James V reaches his majority in 1817. He gains a reputation, quickly, for a wise rule and carefully dealing with the complex relationship between the Houses of Parliament and the Crown. Due to the English majority of both Cascadia and California (Though California quickly reaches Spanish plurality between Spaniards and Mexican immigrants of various social class) the new Kingdom of California and Cascadia continues the precedence of the English Common Law. He married Aurelia di Rienzus, a granddaughter of one of the last Kings of Rome, and has his heir James VI by her before she dies in childbirth. In turn he fell in love with and married Lady Caroline Juarez-Stuart, a distant cousin from another branch of the Stuarts that married into the Spanish creole lines. They will go on to have four more children.

In 1840, James V's life is rocked by Caroline's death in a late childbirth, with the child also dying. Distraught over losing his soulmate, James V becomes a recluse. His final act is to name the palace in the newly-built capital of Sacramento, northeast of San Francisco, after Queen Caroline, after which he abdicates in favor of his son and retires to a monastery.

James VI is a young and brash King by contrast. Less refined than his father, enamored of hunting and physical activites as well as the stories his maternal relatives regaled him with of his Roman ancestry, he rankles the Parliament by behaving "as if he were a Caeser of Romans and not a King of Englishmen", in the words of Whig politician Thomas Macaulay. He amasses a royal debt hosting his elaborate hunting parties and foments conflicts with the Indians of the continental interior, as well as nearly provoking war with Mexico over the border in Sonora and provoking diplomatic disputes with the Roman Republic by declaring himself "the rightful King of Rome" as the great grand-son of Rome's last King, Quintis III (Parliament steadfastly refused to authorize changing his styles to include 'King of Rome'). He marries the daughter of a Spanish duke of southern California but spends more time hunting and campaigning than he does seeking to father an heir.

Finally James VI goes too far. Ignoring the pleas of Parliament and his half-siblings, he takes the lead of an army expedition to retaliate against native raids on settlements in distant Montana. In battle with the Dakota in the summer of 1847, he is shot through the head in a cavalry charge he boldly led personally, dying childless.

With James VI's death the Crown falls onto the first of James V's sons with his beloved Caroline. Charles IV is as different from James VI as night was to day. Raised almost directly by his parents, but mostly his mother, Charles IV was a soft-spoken, bookish man who cared more for his scientific inquiries than the vagarities of politics. But he loved his parents' memories dearly and, upon taking the throne, Charles IV devoted himself to the twin duties of leading his nation and fathering heirs, of which he had already provided some. Like his father he had married into the former Roman nobility, having fallen in love with the young, orphaned Duchess Julia of Modena four years before his coronation when she was a 17 year old cousin of the ill-fated Aurelia and thus a Rienzo as well. The royal couple went on to have plentiful issue, with six children in their first 10 years of marriage and four more in the following ten.

The 1850s and 1860s were an exciting time for the Kingdom. The North American War between the Iroquois Confederacy and United Republic reveberated through the continent, with the Kingdom managing a careful neutrality, while it also had an opening to consolidate claim on Saskatchewan (Aided by the fact that neither belligerent wanted the other to have it) and adding to the desirable, rich farmland in the Kingdom's borders. In the Pacific the Kingdom of Wa and the Empire of Vietnam began the stirrings of modernization that would eventually make them rival Pacific powers, while China descended into vicious civil war. An attempt to consolidate control over the south of the Philippines cost the government thousands of precious pounds due to the ferocity and violence of the Islamic Moros' resistance, eventually prompting the KIngdom to maintain only a coastal presence and opening the way for the eventual annexation of Mindanao by the Wa

Colonization of Australia and Zealandia accelerated as gold discoveries in both spawned immigration from many lands, Europe and North America in particular. The explosion of population caused issues with the administration of the colonies, as well as difficulties with local natives that would be settled by treaties between the Crown and the various tribes, culminating in acceptance of the Crown as overall suzerain in exchange for political autonomy and rights to land sections. Continued settler-native tensions and other political issues soon left the Government with the uncomfortable realization that a major overhaul in how government functioned. After years of Parliamentary debate, careful negotiation with Australian and Zealandian leadership, and a personal intervention by Charles IV in the issue, the Reformation Act of 1874 is passed. The Act creates a regional Parliament for Australia and Zealandia and organizes them as Kingdoms in their own right, creating civil services to operate independently of those in California and Cascadia (which were already separate due to the concentration of Spanish speakers in California). Charles IV's titles and styles are reorganized to make him "By the Grace of God Ruler of the United Kingdom of the Pacific, King of California, of Cascadia, of Australia, of Zealandia, of England, of Scotland, of Ireland, and of Spain". The nation takes on the formal name of the United Kingdom of the Pacific.

Settlement in North America proves somewhat slower. Mormons from a heretical branch of Christianity settle in the outermost fringe of the Kingdom, in the land of Utah, in the 1840s, and through the 1850s they wage a brief rebellion in an attempt to create a "Republic of Deseret" that must ultimately be put down by the Army. Charles IV is encouraged to back a Government initiative to expel the Mormons or resettle them to Australia, but Charles IV instead supports them to remain in Utah and seeks to integrate them into the Kingdom by naming leader Brigham Young to the peerage as Duke of Utah. Young rejects the peerage but, seeing that the alternative to integration was inevitable repression and a need to conduct another "exodus", requests and receives permission to be made Territorial Governor in Utah and encourages the appointment of another Mormon theologist to the House of Lords as a Lord Spiritual, through which he promotes the creation of the title "Duke of Utah" for the Crown instead. An internal Mormon theological struggle over Young's integrationist policies sees the most radical defeated by Young's moderates, causing the Mormon church to splinter and the creation of multiple "Fundamentalist" Mormon sects that remain an annoyance across southern Utah and northern Sonora (OTL Arizona) to the modern day.

The Mormon issue does rankle many, and promotes condemnation from Catholics, resulting in Charles IV addressing the Parliament directly and, for the first time, having a Royal statement directly given to newspapers for public release. "The Issue of the Policies In Utah" becomes one of the most famous speeches in the history of English common law, as Charles IV traces the lineage of English common law back to Magna Carta and states that as King, his highest duty is to secure the peace of his lands for his subjects so that they might prosper, even if it means accepting the presence of "a branch of religion the vast many deem Heretical" in his lands. Tory Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli openly supports Charles IV's policies and the issue of the Mormons is allowed to quiet.

As he approached his 60th birthday in 1882, Charles became aware that his life could not continue forever, and so he sought to settle the final issues of the Kingdom as he saw them. For nearly two centuries the Stuarts had styled themselves the Kings of lands that they had not ruled. England and Scotland were distant memories; Ireland and Spain rather far as well, and as James IV had died when his heir was an infant there had been none to continue the Stuart practice of inculcating their heirs with a longing for regaining their ancestral thrones. It had not been a major issue through much of the 19th Century, with the energy of the Stuarts consumed in expanding and raising their new kingdom, but with the Pacific Kingdom on a solid foundation Charles IV felt the time had come to settle the issue.

Treaties were arranged with the Nordic and Bourbon realms; the Bourbons had never relinquished the Spanish claims on California and the Pacific colonies and the Nordics had on occasion threatened expeditions to "reclaim" Australia. But issues in Europe were consuming attentions and the time was ripe for Charles to end "the family obssessions", by which he meant treaties in which he relinquished the ancient titles of the Stuarts to the two European realms in exchange for their recognition of those he physically controlled. After some negotiating, with issues of compensation bandied about, the treaties were finalized and ratified. Charles IV and his heirs relinquished their titles in Europe. Mixed reactions would be had from the populace, as many Tories yet harbored fantasies of returning to either Spain or England in event of major calamity in Europe and a public reaction to the current dynasties. But Charles IV rigorously defended his decision on the grounds that the future of their nation lay in the lands they held and worked, not those that ancestors had once lived in. "We must remember our roots, Lord Landsowne, but we must not be enslaved by them" he informed one member of the House of Lords when inquired about the treaties.

Ironically, just as these old Stuart issues were settled, those relating to his wife's family suddenly came about. His wife's uncle Quintis finally died in 1886 after a long life, without issue, and so the male leadership of the House of Rienzo, the line of Roman Kings stretching back to Cola di Rienzo, fell upon his son and heir, Henry Quintis. Roman nobles who had moved to Pacifica and gained peerages for service to the Stuarts agitated for Charles IV to support his son's claim to Rome's ancient throne, but Charles IV would hear none of it. He publicly denounced the idea of trying to enforce the Rienzo claim, instead remarking that the Kingdom had already recognized the Roman Republic as created by Napoleon Bonaparte and this would not change.

One final crisis came about in 1889. European and American-descended planters in Hawai'i attempted to overthrow the Kamehameha dynasty, which had recently unified Hawai'i with the Polynesian islands of Samoa. Hawai'i's island of Oahu had the harborage of Pearl Harbor, which the Royal Navy considered the most important anchorage in the entire Pacific, a vital link in the lines of communication from the ports of California to Australia and Zealandia. The prospect of a new oligarchial, planter-backed government that was loyal to one of the American states was danger alone, but Charles IV, who had befriended David I of Hawai'i, took a personal interest in the situation and worked with the Salisbury Government of the time to ensure a swift and prompt intervention. At the outbreak of the uprising the planters, intending to impose a constitution on David by point of bayonet (causing the term "Bayonet Constitution" to be coined), had encircled and Royal Palace in Honolulu and taken over government buildings. David had been prepared to acquiese, to prevent civil war, but after being informed by telegraph that the Kingdom of the Pacific was ready to support him he resisted the planter demands. Before the planter-armed militia could commit further violence, a detachment of Marines from a squadron of Royal Navy ships marched into the streets of Honolulu, and prominent planters found their beachside homes the target of naval cannon. The uprising fell apart and the Kingdom of Hawai'i and Samoa was preserved.

Due to the situation, and continued planter seething, the Salisbury Government proposed that Hawai'i accept the Pacific Kingdom as its protector and sign a treaty to that effect, turning Pearl Harbor into a Royal Navy base and obligating the Stuarts to support the continued existance of the Kamehameha Dynasty. The treaty, when signed, effectively made Hawai'i into a subordinate protectorate of the UK, though it remained domestically autonomous.

In 1890, with the treaty in force, a motion was raised in Parliament. Charles IV was now King of four Kingdoms spread across the vast Pacific; the United Kingdom included the Philippine Islands, the jungles of New Guinea, the islands of Hawai'i, and all sorts of islands in between. The King of Hawai'i, an internationally recognized sovereign, had recognized Charles as his suzerain. Clearly Charles was no longer simply a King and should be elevated to the title of Emperor. The notion caught fire and the Houses of Parliament soon supported it, as did Prince Henry, but Charles was initially reluctant, considering it too arrogant. But upon appeal from Lord Salisbury and Prince Henry, he acquiesed. On New Year's Day, 1891, a new coronation was held in St. James Abbey, and King Charles IV was proclaimed 'Emperor of the Pacific'.

It was the last time the King was seen as such. As the 1890s continued his health sadly deteriorated from his advanced age. His public appearances were few and far between, confined to occasional waves to crowds from the balcony of the Caroline Palace. Attempts to rebuild his health with summer holidays in Baja and Los Angeles mostly proved failures. Nevertheless the stubborn old king held on until the turn of the century. On January 24th 1900, at the age of 77, King Charles IV, Pacific Emperor, passed away in the Caroline Palace, attended by his surviving children and grandchildren as well as Prime Minister Joseph Chamberlain.

For the people of the Pacific Kingdom the death of Charles IV was the end of an era. He had led the Kingdom through its tumultuous mid-century consolidation and industrialization, providing a stable figure around which the nation's growing foundations could be laid. He was the first monarch to visit the overseas territories, making a Royal tour of the Pacific in 1884 that drew massive crowds to Honolulu, Auckland, Wellington, Sydney, Campton (RL Noumea), and Manila, as well as the Vietnamese capital of Hue. He had supported the Act of Reorganization, the Mormon Integration Act, and the Native Tribes Act as a means to settle the issue of excluded minorities in a Kingdom that was already multiethnic and multicultural, while the California Acts ensured Spanish-speakers would get access to government service and have government sides they could understand. The Advancement of the Sciences Act created the Royal Institute of Natural Science in San Francisco, the Royal College of Berkeley, and a number of other universities and organizations; Charles IV remained a patron of the sciences for his entire reign. The Industrial Labour Safety Act and the Child Labour Act were the first "labor regulation" laws to be passed by an Industrialized nation. While it would be unfair to men like Benjamin Disraeli, Albert Shackleton, and Lord Salisbury to give all the credit to Charles IV - Pacifica being a parliamentary monarchy in which Parliament was key in all these things - Charles IV spent his lifetime keeping partisan tensions dampened and encouraging competence and civility in the public services. Many considered Charles IV to be the greatest ruler of the century and he was certainly one of its most iconic; without him, there was a slight sense of uncertainty that spawned some dread in a populace that had grown up knowing nothing other than "Good King Charles".

1900: At 57 years of age, King Henry X had waited his entire life to succeed his father. He was not the same man Charles was, but he didn't have to be, or so it appeared at least. Joseph Chamberlain had continued Lord Salisbury's work of maintaining a "Unionist" government, uniting moderate Whigs and Conservatives into a bloc that dominated Parliament and kept political discourse civil through party discipline. Reforms were enacted where required and once made plainly necessary and the civil service was prompt in identifying problems. Henry X could thus enjoy the fruits of his father's labor, and for the intellectually timid, quiet King that was sufficient.

He would not, however, enjoy his father's happiness. His wife, Princess Louise Victoria von Wittelsbach, was an unpleasant person who, as Queen, attempted to degrade and ostracize politicians she disapproved of through refusing invitations for them or their wives to attend social events. She was not a supportive wife but bristled under Charles IV's liberal monarchy, as she had been brought up in Catholic, conservative Germany; she pointedly refused to even recognize the Lord Spiritual position granted to the Mormon Church and once proclaimed Charles IV should be excommunicated for "permitting such vile, horrid heresy". Louise bore Henry only three children, all sons, during the course of the 1860s through 1880; Charles, Edward, and Frederick, the first two of whom ended up being raised in part by Henry's Rienzo relatives and inculcated with the Roman aristocracy's obsession with regaining their homeland. She would die in 1884 of illness, having already ensured her two eldest sons were raised by stern, illiberal Rienzos.

The Rienzos were another matter. They were unreconcilable with Henry continuing his father's policies of recognition of Rome, one cousin even proclaiming that if Henry did not support House Rienzo's goals they would simply relegate the authority to his brother James, Duke of York. When his son and heir Charles, now turned 37, pointedly demanded why he was abandoning Queen Mother Julia's family and their Roman heritage, Henry would lament that the Stuarts appeared doomed to "pursuing crowns we have ancient claim to but no chance under Heaven to ever attain again".

An issue of further heirs came up, at least for Henry's direct line. His son Charles was married, to Duchess Henrietta of Sydney, but their marriage had produced no issue and doctors were beginning to suspect that Henrietta was barren. Edward had not married yet and pointedly insisted on holding out for a "proper match" - he was purported to desire one of the Russian Grand Duchesses, Maria, having met her while visiting his uncle Prince Richard in Saint Petersburg. The youngest child, Frederick, had no children yet either, but born in 1881 he was only in his early 20s and was waiting for permission to wed the Lady Larissa Pallis, a descendant of the Greek nobility and only daughter of the Earl of Klamath.

With his wife having already died, Henry X soon sustained further loss. The Queen Mother, Julia of Modena, passed away in 1903, having lived three years past her husband's death and having devoted herself to aiding her son rule in that time period. The loss of his mother was a stern blow to the King, who spent four months in isolation from his depression. A half year later, in February 1904, his son Prince Edward was lost when his ship, the cruiser HMS Resolute, went down with all hands in a fierce Alaskan storm.

The near final blow for him came just a year later. With the Duchess Henrietta still without issue, Charles caught typhoid fever while in Australia. The best of care in Australia nursed him back to apparent health, but his decision to return to America proved unwise. Four days from Hawai'i, the Prince fell deathly ill again, and would die a day out from Honolulu.

All that Henry had left was Frederick. Suddenly the young, unassuming prince, formerly the third-in-line to the throne, who spent his time writing love letters to the Lady Larissa and studying general science at the Royal College of the Sciences in Los Angeles, was the Heir-Apparent. With his health declining Henry X moved quickly to secure permission for Frederick to marry the Lady Larissa from the Earl of Klamath, hoping to see at least one grandchild born before his death. At the very least he secured the never-ending adoration of his son, for Frederick - who had been distant from his father for most of his life, spending his time being doted upon by his grandparents - became what what observer called "the most loyal son a father could ever have. Though he could very easily have remained in Los Angeles with his newlywed wife, Frederick moved into the Caroline Palace with her, gave up his science studies, and served as his father's aide, assistant, and confidante for the next three years.

The politics of the United Kingdom warranted such. The Unionist Party of Lord Salisbury frayed at the seams over the issue of land taxation and further labor regulations, as well as the power of the House of Lords. The capitalists and entrepreneurs of the Kingdom remained loyal to the Tory side while the Whigs defected en masse to the Liberal Party, which won so many seats in a 1904 General Election that the Conservatives could only organize a government by aligning with the National Party, a coalition of archconservative Roman and Spanish nobility, which required pandering to their interests and giving them Cabinet seats.

Already in his mid-60s, afflicted by his personal losses and the growing political pressures caused by the injection of arch-conservative politics into the mainstream by the current Coalition, Henry X slowly ground down under the strain. Prince Frederick begged him to step back from politics, but Henry X was being dragged into them as the Conservatives stubbornly held on in the face of a hostile public, a rancorous Opposition, and a coalition partner that was becoming venomous in of itself.

During a private meeting with the Prime Minister, Lord Curzon, on 19 June 1908, Henry X suffered a debilitating stroke. An effort to relieve the pressure on his brain failed, and as his sole surviving son and daughter-in-law watched at his bedside in the Caroline Palace, Henry X succumbed to the brain injury and died at the age of 66. With the coronation only hours away, Frederick agonized over his choice of regnal name before deciding on something that he felt would reassure the populace. Having considered before taking the regnal name of Alexander to honor the Tsar of Russia that had ended serfdom, the needs of his people persuaded Frederick to reconsider, and at his coronation he was proclaimed King Charles V, by the Grace of God Pacific Emperor.

Within two months, the young King was so incensed with Lord Curzon's refusal to reign in his archconservative allies that he took a radical step and demanded the resignation of all Ministers from the National Party. Though many Tories encouraged Curzon to let them go and to work out the operation of a minority government until the next General Election, Curzon was incensed at what he considered an inappropriate, ill-considered royal intervention in his Government, and instead offered the King his own resignation. This signaled the fall of the National-Conservative Government and the calling of new elections.

Six months later, in February 1909, the Liberal Party won a resounding victory. The King invited the Rt. Honorable Stephen Garrett, MP Astoria and a former First Lord of the Admiralty under Chamberlain, to form His Majesty's Government, and the son of South African Republic immigrants agreed. A Liberal Cabinet was formed and approved for the King, with two positions - Chancellor of the Exchequer and Secretary of State for the Foreign Office - granted to members of the House of Lords to relieve concerns in that body about Liberal governing intentions.

As 1910 dawns, the United Kingdom of the Pacific has policies internal and external to concern itself with. North America is a continent of volcanic potential in terms off conflict while, in East Asia, the Empires of Wa and Vietnam are contending for influence in China and may come to war over the Wanese possession of Celebes. The people of the Philippines are clamoring for more rights in the Pacific Kingdom with some fearing an outbreak of nationalist violence there inevitable. The Liberals entertain thoughts of a Second Reorganization Act to induct the Philippines as a full Kingdom, but the structure of such and opposition from many corners may kill it. But with a young, nationally popular King that seems to embody the legacy of his beloved grandfather on the throne and a vigorous Liberal Party at the head of HM Government, the United Kingdom of the Pacific is as ready as possible to navigate the turbulent currents of our time.

[Hadrianvs]

Okay I'm laying down a solid territorial claim now, since I decided I wasn't going to play Russia.

Khaganate of the Golden Horde under the Giray Dynasty (provisional name)

I'm not sure how I'm going to break it up into home and colonial territory, since the history I have in mind is somewhat complicated. So I'll just list the parts that are under their control for now.

Middle East: Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, East Turkey, Trans-Caucasus, Trans-Jordan (if not Roman)

Central Asia: All of it as defined by the Colonial Territory list

India: Baluchistan

Black Sea: Caucasus, Circassia, Modern Ukraine (minus Galicia), Bessarabia, pre-WWI Rumania.

Eastern Europe: Russia, the Courland, Livonia, Estonia, the parts of Belarus East of Berezina, Karelia, rest of Finland (unless Hotfoot asks for it).

Siberia: Western Siberia

[frigidmagi]

So should I post the timeline for the Brother's War then?