Talk Elections

RIP

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48020480

Good a time as ever to abolish Luxembourg

Maybe Napoleon III is still interested in buying it.

It's about time, I can't imagine living for almost a century like that.

Luxembourg is a genuine country with real history, as opposed to artificial creations like Liechtenstein or Monaco. Those are the ones that should be abolish.

Luxembourg has existed in some form for over a thousand years. That alone should give it enough reason to exist.

They should appoint windjammer to succeed him.

RIP

If Belgium were to be partitioned, one of the options for the German-speaking parts would be to merge with Luxembourg.

The thing is though, the German-speaking part of the country doesn't share a border with Luxembourg, all the areas on the Belgian side of the Belgium-Luxembourg border are French speaking (long story short, Luxembourg lost most of its territory to Belgium in 1839: the Luxembourgish (Franconian German dialect) speaking parts of Luxembourg stayed part of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, while the Walloon (Langue d'Oil/French dialect) speaking parts became the Province of Luxembourg in Belgium. The Eupen-Saint Vith cantons (the German speaking part of Belgium) are in Liège province along the border with Nordrhein-Westfalen (Germany).

Is Luxemburg the only sovereign Grand dukedom left in the world?

Yes

In Europe; Liechtenstein, Monaco and Andorra are principalities; I'm not sure what exactly the Vatican is but it's an elective clerical monarchy (those used to be common in the Holy Roman Empire, they were called Prince-Bishoprics, but I'm not sure what the Vatican in particular would be called); Luxembourg is a Grand DUCHY (not dukedom), but other than that all the other surviving monarchies in Europe are Kingdoms (those would be the UK, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Sweden).

Given how much damage it does to the rest of the world, I'm not particularly bothered by its "legitimacy" as a nation or whatever.

How so?

The tax thing.

When the Papal States were still a thing, the Pope was being frequently refereed to as the "Pope-King", although I'm not sure if there was any official title for them as sovereigns of the Papal States, independently from the title of the Pope.

RIP.

This is true, but couldn't a similar charge be levied at a certain alpine nation as well? ;)

Well, that would be why I am voting "No" in May :)

He was actually a former Grand Duke, as his son Henri has ruled the country since 2000.

Exactly, and Henri had ruled as regent for the two years before his father formally abdicated.

Swiss are lucky. When the tax/banking things are mentioned you guys can always point at Liechtenstein.

Generally what happens is, the EU tries to get Switzerland to clean up its act -  and the response here is a load of outraged people in the media going "Well, why don't they do any thing about Luxembourg/The Netherlands/The UK/Ireland hmm? why not clear up their own back garden before attacking us?"

Which, well, I imagine in we had joined the EU, then the powers that be would have been a lot more indulgent of the banking secrecy and dodgy profit shifting rules and all the rest....

So the funny thing is that I was watching a CK II Let's play and I noticed in the Let's Play that a Capetian had become Duke of Luxemburg and while I had recalled reading such before I wanted to be sure and thus I looked up the last several Grand Duke's of Luxembourg to make sure I was correct, and yes I was. While Luxembourg has like the British and the Dutch continued to use the same dynasty name regardless of the throne passing through females, and thus nominally House of Nassau-Weilburg, the Jean is an agnatic descendant of Hugh Capet as is his son Henri.

This all happened basically a day or two before he passed away.

I was waiting for a CK II comment to pop up in this thread. I just got back into the game and took a little spin trying to restore the old Persian Empire as a Zoroastrian. Abbasid aggression and the Seljuk event ended up ruining me but such is the joy of the chase.