Talk Elections

This, good readers, is the final volume of my monumental Histoire de France¹, a two decade labor of love.  It has been a far from easy task, the composition of this work.  I admit that when I began it in the late 1980’s, at the request of my good friend Jacques Pierre DeLacy², who sadly did not live to see this work’s completion, I did not expect it to be as sprawling a work as it has been.  I expected, humorously, to have it occupy just one volume, no more than five hundred pages in length.

This work covers France from the failure of the Great Revolution, and the abdication of Louis l'Echec, to the modern day, concluding with the 80th birthday celebration of Our Most Beloved Monarch, Henri V.  It will, I hope, satisfy both the serious historian, and the reader who, having not opened a history book since his school days, will find enjoyable.

Before I swing open the doors to the main text of this work, I have some people to thank.  First, my wife, Isabelle, for patiently reading this entire work, in its many installations, and for all her help these past twenty years.  My friends, Frederick Cousteau³, Bernard St. Claire⁴, and André Toubon⁵, for all of their wonderful editing to my manuscript, including entire sections which were re-written on their advice.  Finally, my editor, Charles Blanchot, for his extreme patience in waiting for this final volume, and then, once a volume was submitted, for spending even more time working on it, editing it with the same careful eye as he had the previous two volumes.  Without his patience, and his faith in me, this work would have either been never published, or passed off to a speedier writer five years ago at least.

Now, without further delay, I present the final volume in my work; I wish you all a bonne lecture!

¹ Volume 1 The Formation of the Kingdom, from Pre-History to Charlemagne (Royal Publishing, 1990); Volume 2, Dawning Empire, from Charlemagne to The Failed Revolution (Royal Publishing, 1993)
² 1931-2005, Professor of Modern French History at the Faculté des Sciences Humaines et Sociales – Sorbonne from 1962-1996
³ Born 1936, Professor of French History at Oxford University since 1971
⁴ Born 1923, Professor of International Relations at the Université de Genève from 1950-1998
⁵ Born 1927, Professor of International Relations at the Universidad de Madrid from 1977-1992

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There will be a mix of real and imaginary figures that appear in this timeline.  If anyone has any special requests for people in the future, PM them to me, and I’ll see what I can do.  Most of the people referenced in the footnotes, and nearly all of the works, are fictional, and of my own invention.  This will focus very much on France, but if anyone has questions about other countries, feel free to ask in the thread.

I don't see a plausible way that the Ancien Regime could survive considering the abundance of crises that plagued it during the latter half of the 18th century, but I sincerely wish you all the best especially continuing the rule House of Bourbon.

CONTINUE

I will, but this sort of thing takes a lot of time.

It could continue as a Constitutional Monarchy. Of course, even that would be a significant change.

This will happen, eventually.  I promise.

No.

Louis hated the 1791 Constitution as it was, and that wasn't even a constitutional monarchy.

I'm kind of feeling like reviving this.

If you can make it realistic, I'll stick by what I said almost two years ago:

Hopefully I can get it together.

The only way to make this half-way realistic is to have a very early POD, like a hundred years before the onset of the French Revolution or something. Of course this would mean to have a very different Ancien Régime from almost the start.