The American Monarchy

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In terms of the succession, you might look to have George Washington succeeded by the descendants of his aunt, Sarah Haynie nee Ball (mother's sister). She would have to be grandfathered into the Royal Family (born 1778), but she has living descendants even today (myself among them, though too far down a series of female lines to be relevant to the succession assuming continued male primogeniture). I believe at the time of George Washington's death she was his closest blood relative (and only her children were also his blood relatives).


I hope I'm not getting the family tree confused. I have it on a computer, but not this one.

[Verily]

In terms of the succession, you might look to have George Washington succeeded by the descendants of his aunt, Sarah Haynie nee Ball (mother's sister). She would have to be grandfathered into the Royal Family, but she has living descendants even today (myself among them, though too far down a series of female lines to be relevant to the succession assuming continued male primogeniture). I believe at the time of George Washington's death she was his closest blood relative (and only her children were also his blood relatives).

How accessible is such information? Is it on the internet?

You might be able to find bits and pieces of it. My grandfather was huge on genealogy, so we have my mother's side of the family throughly mapped centuries back, even in England before the 1600s. I think he did it mostly by researching birth, death and marriage certificates in places where the family was known to have lived.

If I find the family tree or can get it from my parents, I'll post more about Sarah Haynie and her relatives; I remember that the Blackburns were a prolific family, and that Elizabeth Blackburn had something like thirteen children, then the one of those I'm descended from had another houseful of children, and on for three or four generations before a Blackburn girl marries a Gough and branches off towards my family. That provides a very large family from which to draw royalty.

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There are other issues, too. As we move further and further west, it becomes less and less likely that states will be admitted as they were in real history. The Plains and Mountains were broken into small states purely for electoral advantage (initially for the Republicans, though those states have benefited both parties at various points in history). Similarly, there are problems such as what to do with West Florida (the coastline of MS and AL), which should at the time still be Spanish but was admitted to the Union as part of Mississippi in this timeline. (And I find it unlikely that MS and AL would be admitted as separate states without West Florida, though backtracking and calling MS and AL one state would work fine, I suppose.)

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I figured that MS and AL would be added as separate states to increase the number of slave states. Remember that in this period, Ontario and Quebec are two extra free states putting the Union out of balance.

Given the more pressing external issues, it's not clear just how much slavery would have been an issue, especially as no one party in particular seems to be "the party of slaveowners". (The Nationals sort of, but they also have the most seats in free Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and New Hampshire) while apparently having few or no seats in slave Maryland and Delaware.

At this point, I don't see slavery being an issue simply because everyone is too focused on other issues for any abolition movement to exist.

This also assumes that slave and free states split as historically. It would have been entirely possible historically within the bounds of this alternate history for New Jersey to remain a slave state or North Carolina to become a free state, either of which would throw the whole idea of balance into chaos in the first place.

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It would be neat to annex Florida soon and start seeing how far northwest the Kingdom will go in Louisana.

With Ontario in the country, I think Michigan is the most likely next state, and I think the inclination would be to expand in the northwest (eventually seizing the British territories there).

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Just a small quibble, Florida would probably have been admitted as West Florida [everything below MS and AL] and (East) Florida rather than one state.

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I agree with Colin on the name "Republican Party", which, especially at the time, would have carried powerful anti-monarchist overtones.

Also, on Wisconsin, I think it more likely that the western border would be drawn along the upper Mississippi rather than at an arbitrary longitude; I could draw it onto the map if you'd like.

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Constitution is a much better name, I agree. I can't believe I didn't think of that.

I had originally drawn the border along the Mississippi, but the state looked so ugly and misshapen that I just drew a straight line.

Honestly, it looks more ugly and misshapen now

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I like the first one. No less misshapen than, say, Texas or Michigan or New York or Maryland or Virginia.

I could also then imagine Iowa later getting extended northward to include all of real-life Minnesota from the Twin Cities south.

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Great update, by the way.

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I would think also that the small population of Canada relative to the rest of the country would simply make it unlikely that a leader would emerge, much as it is unlikely for a US President to be elected from, say, Kansas. Additionally, the incorporation of Ontario and Quebec into the Union would reduce the impetus to develop urban centers such as Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal as they would not serve as the major business hubs of a nation the way they did in Canada, meaning that Ontario and Quebec are probably less populous than in real history.

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BOO, Breckenridge!

(Have I said how much I like this TL enough yet?)

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It needs a cooler name than the Civil War.  The War of the American Succession would be much better.  Why let the Spanish and Austrians have all the fun?

It's not a succession war, though. At least, the succession was never in doubt.

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Dakota seems kinda awkward, I'd recommend dividing it into two seperate states to make it look better.

Actually, I have the opposite criticism. The reason the West was broken up into many small states in real history was because the Republicans saw dividing it up as being to their political advantage because they were strong there. (This has changed over time, of course, though the Republicans are indeed strong there now.) Since Liberty was very weak in the area, I find it unlikely that they'd have admitted "Montana", "Idaho" and "Wyoming" as separate states, given that doing so surely helped empower the Populists.

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Maps please! I love maps. No maps obviously makes me very very sad.

As for the format I liked the previous format better. This format seems more dry than before. Plus having written things in both timeline form and "history textbook" form I seem to like the latter better than the former. It also seems easier to write, I didn't have to spend time figure out dates for events to occur.

There are maps, just not in-thread.

I foresee a split in the Populists, with Debs leading a Socialist (Social Democratic?) Party out of its ranks. This timeline just isn't content with only two parties at once! (Not that I object, of course.)

As for format, I much preferred the old style, though the new style is okay, too.

[Verily]

Dakota seems kinda awkward, I'd recommend dividing it into two seperate states to make it look better.

Actually, I have the opposite criticism. The reason the West was broken up into many small states in real history was because the Republicans saw dividing it up as being to their political advantage because they were strong there. (This has changed over time, of course, though the Republicans are indeed strong there now.) Since Liberty was very weak in the area, I find it unlikely that they'd have admitted "Montana", "Idaho" and "Wyoming" as separate states, given that doing so surely helped empower the Populists.

At the same time, I doubt that the government would have been willing to create such a colossal state, as it would be ungovernable. One of the reasons in our history that Dakota territory was split up was that the two population centers of the territory were on opposite ends of Dakota.

It's smaller than Texas and not much larger than Dakota or California. Plus, almost no one lives in the northern third of the combined state at this point; the big industries are ranching in the south and mining in the center.

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One minor quibble.  Why was New Mexico renamed Arizona?

I'd figure it would be renamed; perhaps it could be named Washington, similar to Hamilton? *evil grin*

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Bump.

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Robert II must be really getting on in years at this point, mustn't he?

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Even though they were allied, I can't see the Germans, Austrians and Americans actually rewarding the Ottomans with territory grants from Greece. More likely, they'd ignore the Ottomans in the negotiations or even try to give them a bad deal. No one liked the Ottomans; they were only part of the Central Powers for convenience (and politically they would have been too weak to protest an Austrian-German-American attempt to bully them into not seeking any territory).

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Is Meighen actually supposed to be from Ohio now, or from Ontario? (I suppose since he lived in Ontario but represented Manitoba, it wouldn't be entirely unprecedented...)

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1) If the Senate members are elected using districts like in our House of Representatives, where on earth is there enough centralized Prohibition support to win a seat (or in the last election, two seats)?

With three major parties, they would only need about 30% of the vote. I could see that happening in a lot of semi-rural areas in the Midwest and South, and maybe in parts of New England as well.

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Are the new Canadian states supposed to reflect the real boundaries (such as the BC-Alberta border), or are they different ones?