A house with many mansions: A Lotharingen TL
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  A house with many mansions: A Lotharingen TL
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Author Topic: A house with many mansions: A Lotharingen TL  (Read 6325 times)
Insula Dei
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« on: December 08, 2010, 10:15:35 AM »

This is just a placeholder to oblige me to make good on my promise to create this thing. If anyone has any further suggestions as to how this thing comes into being, you're welcome to fire your stuff
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Insula Dei
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« Reply #1 on: December 11, 2010, 12:26:16 PM »

Some notes in advance:

1) This TL has no pretention to be completely and utterly realistic. The main goal of this TL is to finish with a Majordomo 2010 election between Berlusconi and Oskar Lafontaine. That should tell you all there is to know about this TL.

2) I will have to guess a LOT in this TL. There will likely be no WWI or II (or at the very least they won't ressemble the real thing). That too should tell you a lot about the liberties I'll be taking.

3) I will shamelessly favour Belgian and Dutch politicians. I can't help it guys, but they're the only ones I am familiar enough with to keep things interesting.

4) This TL will span the period 1815-2010. That should give you a hint as to the content of the first installment, which is due soon.
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Insula Dei
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« Reply #2 on: December 13, 2010, 05:38:51 PM »
« Edited: December 14, 2010, 07:42:12 AM by belgiansocialist »

Part I: The Congress of Amsterdam and the Kingdom of Lotharingen (1815-1816)

As the sun finally set over Waterloo on the evening of the 18th of June 1815, the future of Europe was changed forever.  The Bonapartist menace had been averted and it seemed to be the case that nothing stood in the way of the decisions of the Congress of Vienna to be implemented.

But many of the nationalists and liberals who felt they had been ignored in Vienna’s backrooms were less enthusiastic about the consequences of the French defeat at Waterloo. In early September 1815 a massive wave of revolts erupted across the continent. On the ninth of that month the republic of Lombardia was proclaimed in Milan. Just 3 days later Dutch troops would break a Nationalist revolt in Brussels, killing hundreds and causing more protests to erupt across the Netherlands. Near the end of the month a Bonapartist loyalist shot and killed Talleyrand outside of his Paris mansion. In many major European cities radical liberals caused mayhem.

Wavered by the instability of what they had considered a stable balance of power, the Great Powers agreed to a new conference to fine-tune what should have been a functioning system. In early February 1816 the rank and file of Europe was the guest of King Willem I in Amsterdam to discuss the new world order .

Many factors collided to make the outcome of this congress one of an unprecedented level of surprise. First of all there was the solid diplomacy of the Dutch king, who had many a private conversation with the crowned heads of the Great Powers. Then there also was the British determination to once and for all break the back of France. The French delegate, the Duc de Richelieu, who had proven to be an able diplomat before, fell ill in the early days of the Congress and made an underwhelming impression on the other delegates. One Austrian diplomat was heard remarking that: “We hardly could have expected him to be another Talleyrand, but I don’t know how long it will take a man like this to get Bonaparte in again.”. The Austrians themselves had failed to reinstitute their control over Northern-Italy and the Lombardian Republic had made it very clear that  they did not wish to be returned to the Austrian crown.

All of this formed the background against which the Congress reached it’s shocking culmination over the course of that spring and summer. It was felt that some of France’s territories would have to be relocated to another major Power. Since no of the Great Powers could stomach the idea of one of the others being granted this prize, the doctrine of a so-called ‘6th Power’ quickly gained ground. A good solution to the Lombardian question seemed to be to lump some of eastern France in with the North of Italy. It then was decided by the Prussian-Austrian axis that it might be a good idea to not allow such a vast state to be a republic. This raised the question of who should govern this new country. At long last the Dutch King dropped that if what Europe needed him, he’d not spend too much time fighting this vocation. He seemed indeed to be a decent compromise candidate and all of Europe’s leaders agreed to him being the new King of Lotharingen. (At least they tried to give Europe’s youngest nation a slight whiff of legitimacy!)

On the 11th August of 1816, just 11 days after the end of the Congress of Amsterdam, Willem I was crowned king of Lotharingen in the cathedral of Milan. (he had converted to Catholicism the day before).


Willem Of Lotharingen, First of that Name

Up next: A map, some notes on the reaction of Willem’s new subject to their new monarch and a flying horse!

(Okay, maybe no flying horse...)
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Middle-aged Europe
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« Reply #3 on: December 14, 2010, 06:24:28 AM »

1) This TL has no pretention to be completely and utterly realistic. The main goal of this TL is to finish with a Majordomo 2010 election between Berlusconi and Oskar Lafontaine. That should tell you all there is to know about this TL.

No real-life political system could possibly survive the combined egos of Berlusconi and Lafontaine anyway. Tongue However, it certainly would be a match-up I'd pay to see.
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« Reply #4 on: December 14, 2010, 08:48:49 AM »

Well, I have no real knowledge of foreign politics, however, I will attempt to read this. Hope the rest of the  TL goes well.
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True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)
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« Reply #5 on: December 14, 2010, 09:24:33 PM »

See this, I'm tempted to come up with a slightly less preposterous timeline starting from the same POD.  Instead of a revived Kingdom of Lotharingen under William Frederik of Orange-Nassau as the sith power, how about a revived Aragonese Empire under Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia?
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Insula Dei
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« Reply #6 on: December 20, 2010, 01:31:55 PM »

I was meaning to write chapter II tonight, but am engaged elsewhere.
Don't worry, I won't allow this to die. Smiley
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Insula Dei
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« Reply #7 on: December 20, 2010, 06:26:55 PM »

Chapter II: A map, a Majordomo and the Merovingian Rennaisance 1816-1820


Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp, First Majordomoof the Kings of Lotharingen

Just 4 days after his coronation Willem I appointed the Dutch conservative Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp, who had been crucial in his rise to the Dutch throne, as the first majordomo of the Kings of Lotharingen. Van Hogendorp was also to lead a national congress in composing a constitution for the new nation. The Congress first came together in the city of Amsterdam in November 1816 and was seen by many as heavily tilted towards the Conservative and pro-unionist factions of the elite of the new nation. It’s first task was to once and for all settle the borders of Europe’s youngest power, since the old geo-political divisions where still de facto in use. With the assistance of the brilliant young Canadian cartographer  Gerard L’hermine and after lengthy negotiations with the French provisional government, they composed the following little map:



(credit where credit’s due: this one is all Hashemite’s)

As one can clearly see the nation of Lotharingen contained all of the former United Kingdom of the Netherlands, as well as all of what used to be Piedmont-Sardinia. In addition to this it contains Lombardia, the Veneto and Tuscany in Italy, Most of the Rhineland and Niedersachsen in Germany, and the Alsace, Bourgogne and Lorraine regions of France. Also, as per the Treaty of Amsterdam, the Papal States had been re-instated the September before. The UK of GB was compensated for losing their Hannoverian possessions by acquiring all of France’s former holdings in the Carribean.

Another part of the constitutional congress was the discussion whether or not the new Kingdom should follow Salic Law in determining the succession to the throne. Many liberals argued that all of the former nations within Lotharingen should stick with their existing regulations for inheritance, while conservatives favored one unified rule for the entire kingdom, but were divided on whether or not that rule should be concordant with agnatic  seniority, agnatic primogeniture or some variant of those where women would be able to inherit. In the end the Congress decided to return to the principles that the Lotharingian Kings of old would probably have deemed most acceptable and went with agnatic seniority.
This move introduced a type of policy that would be extremely exemplary of the nation-building effort van Hogendorp and his immediate successors would use to forge unity where there had been divisions before and which would enter history as the Merovingian Renaissance. Using the old  Kingdom as a justification for many policies and actively endorsing a cultural return to the early-medieval period. In architecture and art this was the period of Neo-Merovingianism, which was heavily inspired by the religious art of that period. The Capital city was chosen to be Mainz as it was widely felt that city was most abundant in Imperial grandeur and connotations to be fit as the capital of a new World Power. The linguistic policies of the new state were a more complicated issue, at long last the congress agreed to recognize French and Dutch as official languages and informally allowing Italian and Germany to thrive in their respective locations.

Another major decision at the constitutional congress was to not specifically determine or officially state the role of the majordomo in the constitution, merely advising the king to keep up with the advice of a newly-formed ‘High Council’ with representatives of the Nobility and to lesser extent Clergy and Bourgeoisie.   There was not a single mention of a ‘parliament’ during the entire congress.

Such were the principal decisions of what would come to be known as the ‘van Hogendorp conference’, given his instrumental role in it’s proceedings.  The rest of van Hogendorp’s first term was spent implementing these and many other less important decisions. At the same time van Hogendorp  took the first steps in the direction of a consistently pro-British foreign politics, even if he was at times confronted with the pro-Austrian or pro-Prussian tendencies of many of his closest allies and the general pro-French attitude of many Liberals.
Van Hogendorp resigned on the 15th of March 1820 upon a disagreement with several high-ranking Conservative officials  over a trade agreement with the British he had proposed and wouldn’t be replaced until February of the next year as the King deemed it fit to resolve the ‘crisis’ himself and push through the hotly-disputed trade agreement.

On the whole Conservatives were more than happy with the van Hogendorp years, even if some had hoped for a more neutral course in Lotharingen’s orientation towards the rest of the world. This was chiefly an issue with German conservatives who were very pro-Prussian, and the Italian Aristocratic conservatives, some of whom remembered Vienna’s famed salons with more than passing nostalgia.

Liberals were politically on the fringes during these periods as the momentum of the Lotharingian cause was fueling the Conservatives into total dominance and assured a relatively high level of stability. That said, many of them, most of all the more nationalistically inclined,  were less than disappointed with their government and it’s shunning of the German and Italian parts of their dominion. They were joined by many moderate Protestants who were displeased by the special statute Catholicism had seemingly acquired. Starting from the autumn of 1819 Charles Felix, the brother of the duke of Savoy, would slowly become the most prominent leader of this ‘coalition of dissent’ as he was their most vocal representative in the high council.


Carlos Felice of Savoy, aka Charles Felix of Savoy, prominent member of the High Council
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Insula Dei
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« Reply #8 on: December 20, 2010, 07:25:22 PM »

Oh before I forget: a disclaimer.

This is very much a group effort by The Mikado, Xahar, Hashemite, Kalwejt (to a lesser degree), myself and whoever else offers himself in the Mibbit chat room.
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Psychic Octopus
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« Reply #9 on: December 20, 2010, 11:33:42 PM »
« Edited: December 20, 2010, 11:36:29 PM by N!K »

A revived Lotharingia? I remember Xahar was telling me about this... interesting, to say the least. My relatives live within the Boundries, being part of the northernmost provinces. I'm interested to see how the new nation will handle ethnic nationalism.

What is the population of the nation? How is the military set up? How are relations with foriegn powers, and is there any drive among the French to 'take back' some of the provinces?
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« Reply #10 on: January 12, 2011, 08:47:18 PM »

Bump.
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Insula Dei
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« Reply #11 on: January 16, 2011, 12:43:57 PM »


Currently on-hold untill 3 february Sad
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Хahar 🤔
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« Reply #12 on: November 23, 2011, 03:19:15 AM »

Can we continue this? I miss Lotharingia.
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« Reply #13 on: November 23, 2011, 08:09:44 AM »

Can we continue this? I miss Lotharingia.
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Yelnoc
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« Reply #14 on: December 04, 2011, 12:21:12 AM »

Interesting timeline here.  I'm not sure how plausible it is, but good work nonetheless Smiley
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Insula Dei
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« Reply #15 on: December 04, 2011, 10:53:34 AM »

Actually, while I am a lazy sod who has difficulties with completing projects he started , I do think I should be able to get the ball moving on this again if I were to put my mind to it. It's just that this has been dead for, like, a whole year. So, if there still are people who would be wanting to help a little, why not?
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Jerseyrules
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« Reply #16 on: March 10, 2012, 03:58:29 PM »

Well, I have no real knowledge of foreign politics, however, I will attempt to read this. Hope the rest of the  TL goes well.

This.  [bookmark]
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