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My Kingdom for a Blenheim [COMMISSION]

Published: Oct 11, 2016

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This is a rather strange one, commissioned by OneHellofaBird. It's based on the Richard III adaptation which moves the setting up to the 1930s. This applies that setting update to the entire world. Many thanks to OneHellofaBird, who helped me a lot with this. If you want your own commission, see this for details.

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Europe

It is the year 1494 It has been nine years since Richard III’s jackbooted takeover of England was crushed at Bosworth Field by Stanley’s Blenheims and the Spider King’s R35s (not that the Rose is better than the Boar, ultimately). Civil wars, economic trouble, and pandemics make this seem plausible. But the centralizing and purifying movement lauded by the early Futurist Petrarch as the “European Rebirth” is only getting started. Unfortunately that means that while women and Jews aren’t being sent to camps, a state-backed homogenization is brewing against them and may lead somewhere ugly in the next century. Elsewhere that means new philosophies and new arts—the geometric designs of the International Style shading into rhythmic forms and colors of the enfants terribles of proto-Mannerism.
After his alliance with England broke down, James III of Scotland kept trying to ally with England. He was eventually killed by his own nobles—ironically while still in French-supplied khakis. The current Scottish regime is far more realistic, in that it’s building fortifications along the English border and is importing materiel from France. The Auld Alliance is coming back, in its own way. James IV is a tremendous figure—secret child experiments at Inchkeith that have proven Hebrew to be the first language, the 80-cm Mons Meg, and the tremendous “Margaret” and “Michael” guns so big Newhaven has to be built around their harbors.
In France, the League of the Public Weal united against Louis XI’s brightly-dressed “Camelots” and were defeated. The networks of informants set up by the Spider King has a tap on every phone and disappears dissidents in the night as French forces push into Italy under his successor, a “Cowl” of terror underpinning the lively Parisian nightlife. The League came back for the recent “Mad War” against the sinister Grand Regent: they’re no better.
After Dmitry Shemyaka’s rising (and poisoning) and the Muscovite Civil War, the modern Tsardom of Muscovy was forged. Now the “Steel Vozhd” Tsar Ivan Vassilonovich’s own blue-capped Special Section enforcers are troubling him despite his conquest of All the Russias. Muscovy is one of the most isolated, anti-Western, and despotic states in the world, where the Grand Duke’s word is law. His hobbies are switching uniforms, swapping nationalities around, sending T-28s to the Ugra, and some light purging. Already, millions of “enemies of the state” have disappeared into Furthest Tartary, where the katorga colonies are located. Everywhere else khloptsy toil away under the watchful eye of the boyars, themselves watched by the Special Section and the commissars of the Ever-Fortunate Army. Muscovy’s “egalitarian” “Orthodox Communialism” is seen as blackest heresy across Europe, a threat to civilization itself—particularly as Muscovy crash-industrializes.
Independent Landsknecht officers strut through the German states in the finest suits in Europe; the black uniforms and skull badges show they mean business. The Holy Roman Empire’s big man “Blauer Max” Maximilian I leads the war against France, where Imperial Panzers are proving less than effective and Fugger debts are piling up, forcing him to sign Executive Order 6102. The dashing airman Philip I of Burgundy promotes grandiose buildings and sends the paratroops whenever things get ... unruly.
The Teutonic “Ordenstaat” is seen as an eccentric offshoot by the rest of the German world. Abiding by a strange form of racialism which holds that the lands to the East are the holy fatherland of the Germanic race, the Order-State buys what it can to expand against Poland and Muscovy. Hugo Boss uniforms and oppression against Slavs and Balts is the order of the day. The rest of Europe is a bit weirded out by the Teutons, but they are willing to use them as a buffer against the Vozhd, though they attack Rebirth powers while pretending to pursue those dirty Commonists.
The squabbling city-states of the Italian peninsula have united against France, for now. A dozen petty half-mercenary “Leaders” make their tiny city-states' armies and air fleets look much bigger than they really are by having them go around the back to parade for the news cameras a second time, each throwing the Roman-revival salute. Intrigue continues as always amidst the new “Roman Rebirth” edifices. Venice’s Agostino Barbarino has evaded the Assassins and filled the Bride of the Adriatic with massive clock towers to remind them that mortals are mere units of the whole and that as death approaches it best be in glorious service to the Island State. Sforzas and Medicis, sure in their duchies’ power, pour money into the life of the intellect: Leonardo creates war machines, Pico and Ficino plot occultist synarchism, Poliziano makes paeans to war, Botticelli’s Futurist works elevate the merest painter’s catamite into a blackshirt suicide-commando Ardito against the enemy of the moment. “Blood alone moves the wheels of history,” a young Savonarola thunders against warrior-Pope Innocent VIII—himself a crusher of heretics, benefactor of human experiments, and a Pazzi Conspiratory. There are even some rumors that the ever-busy Leonardo has mastered the art of splitting the atom, a weapon so powerful that it can level cities.
Sten Sture, the perma-“regent” of Sweden and the Kalmar Union, is happy in his empire’s neutrality after defeating Muscovite forces in Finland and busies himself building up the “People’s Home” program. Hans of Denmark had unleashed the Muscovites so the Swedes are lobbed back “Shchenya Cocktails” and “Chelyadnin Breadbaskets.” His nation sells much-needed raw materials to the Holy Roman Empire, which is causing consternation among the French.
The long-ruling Casimir IV of the Litpol Union promoted the Parliaments—and the generals—ahead of the nobles (as long as they never, EVER cross him). His son John I’s Commonwealth is undergoing heavy industrialism, particularly to catch up with the Muscovites, and “sanation” campaigns against particularly-troublesome szlachta. The Muscovites have invaded Poland before, and the Steel Vozhd seems crazy enough to do it again.
Matthias Corvinus of Hungary had been the most enlightened of autocrats, patronizing scientists, especially on rocketry, which the landlocked “Admiralissimo” Vladislaus II is putting to good use.
Vladimir the Monk is a mere puppet to his impaler brother, whose face stares out over Târgoviște, the focus of a worshipful and strangely protochronist cult of personality. Together, a million worms do make a Dacian Dragon. Muscovite support has allowed to Wallachians have one of the largest armies in Europe, a necessity for their defense of the Motherland against the Ottoman threat. The Wallachians have built some impressive fortifications along their border with the Ottoman Empire. Barbed wire, trenches, machine-gun emplacements, tank traps, pillboxes, bunkers, and the largest minefield on Earth make up the ironically-named "Demilitarized Zone." To add that extra psychological factor, the Wallachians also like to display the mangled corpses of captured Turkish infiltrators along the border and what goes on in Wallachian prison camps would make even the Steel Vozhd's stomach turn.
John II of Portugal declares his ocean-spanning New Order to be the beginning of a “pluricontinental” view of reality. His glossy technocracy is built on blood and thousands of sugar slaves in the African isles: he poisoned a bishop and even personally executed his cousin in 1484. They don’t need big capital ships, just hundreds of cruisers.
Gsmo. Ferdinand and Capt.-Gen. Isabella’s black-uniformed Inquest hunts down the insufficiently pious and patriotic (barring ... certain circumstances, of course). The Inquest lets even shopkeepers stand above archbishops. Iberia made Europe’s first step to true modernity—by forcing the conversion of every Jew and kicking the rest out in 1492. But this is no pogrom: they’re actually the most learned and modernizing faction, the kindliest and cleanest torturers. Indeed, people often WANT to be tried by the Inquirers since they use things like evidence (all of which makes them all the more effective). Overseas, hastily-deputized mercenaries make grandiose claims on the African isles, and even propose a voyage westward to open relations with Turtle Island. The arrival of three tramp steamers in the Lucayans October 1492, met by the local bosses’ P2Ys and SOC Seagull planes and Kodak cameras, heralded something entirely different for the world.

Africa

Overall, Africa is a continent under the dominance of a few native empires. These empires, which industrialized more quickly than their neighbors, wish to “civilize” them and introduce crops for “local” profit.
Sultan al-Ashraf Sayf ad-Din Qa'it Bay leads a nationalist regime in Egypt, and he wants to bring back the glory days of his pharaonic fantasies from his days as a slave. This includes vain wars in Nubia and Anatolia and a lavish lifestyle for himself—only he may have red automobiles. Great concrete pyramids, in a vaguely Islamic style, are erected to house Cairo’s government ministries. Redshirted Mamluk thugs roam the streets, usually filching finery for their dapper and kleptomaniac king.
The Great Mutapa Unity means there’s no room for the wandering monotheistic Lemba. It’s a democratic monarchy, but not within the “provisional” tent camps. They’ll take noble titles from the Portuguese but won’t let them see anything inland.
The Zulu keep their subjects separate from their own “warrior race,” whose wages and welfare are protected and who’re discouraged from marrying non-Zulu. This “apartness” may threaten to become something different if Ulundi thinks Zvongombe is about to put the squeeze on it.

North and South Turtle Island

Considered the “Hermit Continents,” North and South Turtle Island are dominated by mysterious, if equally developed, cultures. Apart from Española, no outsiders are allowed.
The Cahokians, Mississippians, and Coosa, the great powers of North Turtle Island, glare at each other over the fortified Father of Waters. Each abides by a form of elitist classism and xenophobia, each society prone to making unprovable and eternal historic claims to the entire continent. Centralized, industrialized, and stratified, nobody dares fight them. But whether run by proto-Osage urban party bosses or by arrogant “moon-eyed” landed colonel-gentry these countries pride themselves on their meritocracy, honor, and republicanism (even the Coosa).
The Mayans and the Oasis States are fractious burgs and pueblos, not very involved with the rest of the continent unless it bothers them, which it usually does. Anticlerical Red Shirts attack Chontal temples, creating a phenomenon of drifting “xtabentún priests.”
The Carib Commonwealth is “cleaning up” the remaining Taíno, to the anger of even the Amazonians. Cubao, Xaymaca, and Lucayan are, needless to say, on full war footing. The fashion-plate Cotubanamá of Higüey promises to send a whole wing of CW-19s and T-6s south under his playboy son, and flatters his patron Colón by planning a monumental cross-shaped lighthouse in his name so bright you can see it from Borinken.
Ahuizotl of the Aztec Empire had a rather suspicious accession to his regime of formalized bloodshed. The Flower Wars continue, with human sacrifices by the “Mexicanist Action” Goldshirts, eagerly aired over the state radio network. The Supreme Speaker is considering using more esoteric weapons, such as poison gas, next year, though he worries that it’d only be useful in the visual medium. He’s nationalized the petroleum and distributed maize, carefully building a corporatist state.
Wayna Qapaq, Supreme Inka, is rather pro-Muscovite (if at quite a distance) and has de jure adopted “palace societalism” where everything’s taxed 100% and then redistributed from the tremendous ministries and sanctuaries of the God-king—Cochabamba is newly designated a granary city. But under the talk of primordial utopia restored and a country striding along literal “shining paths into the future” is engineered mass rearrangement of communities and classes, corvée labor, scheming regent-tutors, jealous idiot brothers, plotting royals, pilfering kurakakuna, social-climbing yanakuna, naked theocracy, autarkic provinces, total government control, bridling nobles, and that nice big lump of silver at Putuqsi.
Patagonia’s divided between the societalist (but anti-Inka) saber-rattling officers and the “fatherland-societalist” intellectuals. Both sides are unapologetic putschists.

Asia and Oceania

The Ottoman Empire spreads “subversion” throughout the West, though not nearly as much as the tightly-leashed yellow press insists. Most rabble-rousing is done through Interpilgrim, the suspiciously-ecumenical League of the Militant Godly, and the usual telegraph agencies, youth federations, and zakat charities. Deposed Sultan Cem sits on the Italian Riviera with his finely-worked treasures and tries to run the Aq Movement to restore him against the Ummaist “Kizil” regime of Bayezid II. It also indulges in strict sartorial laws and flights of fancy like Turkish being the first human language.
The Greater Delhi Sultanate is starting its own wars of expansion in the Indian subcontinent. Aligned with the nationalist Bengalis, the Delhi sultanate believe they are part of an Aryan “kshatriya race” destined to rule India. The swastika, once a symbol of peace and luck, has been corrupted in India by the Delhi regime, as it is now emblazoned on their war machines and on the armbands of Sikandar Lodi’s endless files of jackbooted conquerors. Hindus are forced to scrub the new public works with toothbrushes, or sent to concentration camps led by the syphilitic and the criminal. The sultan has a habit of having his practice speeches and gestures filmed and photographed for later review. Delhi and Gaur take their arms and uniforms from whoever offers in exchange for Asia’s sweet, soothing laudanum.
Delhi’s targets are vainglorious empires built to last: Gajapati’s Purushottama Deva enforces tales and rumors about his good luck and Ahmad I Nizamshah named his whole capital and empire for himself. Vijayanagara, Kotte, and Bijapur concern themselves with large-scale public works against the slum-expanding rural flight.
The Timurid Empire is a collapsing reactionary dynasty, and there are rumors that the ambitious Safavid revolutionaries are being covertly armed by the Muscovites as fellow “Krasnys.”
Japan is in an amorphous civil war, and to top it off, has been covertly invaded by China. Rival daimyo compete for the islands, while the literally-bankrupt “Grand Marshal” Go-Tsuchimikado is on the run from Imperial Chinese Army “peasant leagues” allegedly protecting the legitimate government. Chinese air forces are ruthless in their bombing campaigns, setting fire to many of the rice-paper houses in Japanese cities with Zhongdao Ki-49s and Sanling Ki-21s and G3Ms. Sengoku poets write about the eroticized strolling amidst the ruins of all Japan burned to the ground and left without its Generalissimo. Rogue officers and warlords indulge in poetic doublethink and cod-feudalist fanaticism. The monolithic Golden and Silvern Pavilions still tower above the smoke and ashes of Kyoto, unmarked by the Onin War that had gotten China secretly involved. The old capital is under the Hosokawa Clan’s eccentric “Great Way” cult.
Ming China is breaking out of its isolation—in the worst possible way. While the Hongzhi Emperor is worshiped as a god and nobody even dares sneeze at court, the eunuch and military regime that rules in his name is doing its own thing: ensuring the dominance of All Under Heaven through military force. At home the Blueshirts, Dazheng Yizan Hui “party,” mandarins, and officers keep a tight ship: relatives and neighbors as well as “perps” are punished for misdeeds. China will be made GOOD. Fearsome Dahe-class mega-battleship (mysteriously named for a Japanese province) is intended to strike terror as far south as ...
...the Empire of the Long Cloud(s), a rather accidental one, emerging as the Aotearoans built trading outposts around Asia. A welfare state of sorts has arisen out of necessity, though it’s usually reserved for Māori. They eventually found themselves with a colonial empire, and one of the most powerful navies in the world. It embarrassingly recently lost to the emus on the continent named for the selfsame constellation.

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EASTFverse

Edited Jul 22, 2023

I wonder if soon, an alt-WW2 will break out, with the Germans, Italians and China's sphere forming the Axis and the Commonists, possibly with assistance from England, France and the Turtle Islanders forming the Allies, or alternatively, all of the European Rebirth forming an alliance to destroy the Turtle Islanders in a merger between the colonization of the Americas and The Man In The High Castle.