-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
The défilé
Kuipy (Normandy)
" Australia, Greenland, and now the Spanish Coast." the king smiled "Our grandfather would be proud of us," the king observed. Under their balcony the victorious troops marched triumphantly, cheered by the crowd.
"You are not him" his brother Richard thought with some uneasiness. William IV had been a sacred killer and a rake, who balked at nothing and took his throne by force. Even in the frailty of his old age, and although he dotted on his grandons like a wolf on his cubs, he would frighten Richard by his dark, unblinking eyes and his fierce greying bush of a beard. With Robert and him the old man was all smiles and sweets and stories, but to hear the voice with which he could chastise a clumsy servant (or a ministre, or indeed their own father when they were alone) was enough to make the two boys weep. In contrast, Robert sounded more like a boy playing with his wooden soldiers. Richard shook his head. Marching in step, wearing continental uniforms, that was not the Norman way. Robert may as well have asked the men to shave and bathe.
Looking around him, he saw that the two generals were also unimpressed with the king's boasting. Always dutiful and professional, old Wittstock kept his face impassible, as if too absorbed by the parade to notice his king's words. But Svantesson's smirk was downright insolent, a fact to which Robert seemed disappointingly oblivious.
"Look at them !" prince Richard say excitedly, pointing at the splendid Royal Cuirassiers. His elder brother, prince Roger, looked at them in silence, shivering, then started to cough. A pale, sickly youth, he was excessively thin and not much taller at twenty than his brother at eleven, or that his cousin William. Furthermore, having spent most of his early years in the Summer Palace of Nagpur, he did not take well to the cold of London February. Why had nobody seen to giving him a proper coat ? Even a mere fur cape over his shoulders would have kept him warm, and been a very fine gesture toward the troops who wore it in Canada.
"I though the cuirassiers had not fought in Canada," he finally said in a thin voice.
Richard clenched his fists. They had not, and his brother was a royal idiot. As the veterans watched the beautiful outfit ride past them, he watched them in turn. There was a tension in the air, in the way each of lined men grew stiffer by the minute. Obviously the slight of having ribboned shirkers partake in their triumph was not lost on any of the soldiers. All because Robert wanted his défilé to look good.
Richard's eyes met those of Svantesson. The bloody knave was looking at the trembling crown prince with such an expression on his face that Richard felt like slapping him. For all the man's ruthless efficiency and bloody reputation, did Robert have to suffer every impertinence from him ? King William would have known to keep this dog in leash. By then Richard felt restless and irritated, his feet hurting from his prolonged stand in tight boots.
"You would be wise to part with Sao Tome and Australia", he told his brother, maybe a little to bluntly.
" And why is that, brother, pray ?"
" Australia will bring us in conflict with the Sultan of Malacca, Sao Tome with the Emperor of Byzance. All for a few worthless ports. Let us sell them for a good price, and ingratiate the two sovereigns lest they try to take our new conquests by force."
" Let them try. Normandie has a glorious destiny."
" A little prudence..."
" Do you have to spoil everything today ? We are past caring about what lesser nations think of us. Do you know we just received a letter from the president of the Netherlands, suggesting an alliance in all but imploring terms ?"
It was all Richard could do to stare. That he did not know it, despite being present to all state councils, meant the king had deliberately hidden the information for him, and that his position at his brother's side was endangered.
" Netherlands ? There is no trusting Netherlands."
" For me, there is," Robert snapped. Under them the parade was coming to an end, regiments of the génie parading with what few Spanish flags had been captured. "That will be all." He turned and walked back in the ministry of war.
" Not our grandfather," Richard thought. His nephew Roger looked at him with wide, uncertain eyes.
" Salute the people, your highness." he offered. "Let them see their future king."
Norman troops operate in Spanish Canada.
From the catalogue of the L. Museum
Kuipy (Normandy)
A bottle of Loiseur calvados (1841)
The origins of calvados are shrouded in mystery (*). Folk tales go so far as attributing its development to King Geoffroy I (**). Despite its fanciful nature, this attribution to the first king of Normandy denotes the considerable importance of that strong apple brandy to Norman culture and identity.
Made from cider distilled and aged for up to several decades in oak barrels, the beverage is attested from the 14th century onward, but it was not until the 1820s that its production began on a truly massive scale.
In 1827 the brothers Lovell and Léon Loiseur founded the Loiseur company, a network of calvados distilleries in Cornwall which soon became the most famous brand of calvados. By the late 1830s Normandy was the world leading producer of strong alcohol, and calvados one of its major exports. Connoisseurs consumed it worldwide, and non-connoisseur's alternative uses for the 60-proof liquor, ranging from brass polish to lamp oil to last-resort disinfectant, became a staple of Norman humour.
(*) and its present in hagard stupor
(**) also credited with inventing chickens
Inventing chickens?
Who invented then sheepherding in Normandy?
As of 1399 I think this cutting-edge tehcnology had not yet reached most of England if I remember correctly.
JDMS : Nice to have more readers on board.
The Spring
Kuipy (Normandy)
(Londres, 1845)
The baptism of king Robert XI's first grandchild, the son of his second-born Prince Richard. The king looks proud but tired. Grey mottles his once-jet black sideburns. Maybe his weary smile comes only from the relief of knowing his succession at last ensured. His eyes browse the attendance, maybe in search of his absent brother. Richard, the other Richard, has not come ; they have not spoken for years. He livres retired in his Scottish estates, making a personal fortune from sulphur mines and grooming his heir William away from the court.
Near the altar, the crown prince holds up his nephew near his sallow, bearded cheeks. Even a newborn's weight seems to much for his bony arms ; his thin chest throbs with a continual hiss. Few think prince Roger would live long, or beget a son from his own Meschines wife.
The archbishop of Eu raises a ceremonial hand over the boy's head, and baptises him Robert, Hugues, Louis.
Outside of Saint-Hugues cathedral, a cordon of bearded, gold-clad soldiers watch with wary attention the grey famished crowd. London slums, all informants say, are a hotbed of socialist agitation and unrest. Some day, some say, the toiling masses will rise, and when the royalty strolls out of the cathedral, hardly a cheer salute them, only silent glances and mutters. Nervous soldiers observe rows after rows of hard, dirty, proletarian faces. By the time the royal cortège is advancing through the downtrodden populace even Robert is casting nervous looks at it from his carriage, over the strong shoulders of the escort. Roger coughs nervously. The mob looks like a sea roughening before the storm, a gigantic monster groaning in his sleep as the ride past him. Still, the cortège makes way. At last, it reaches the New Palace, passes the ornemental bridge over the moat of waterlilies and disappear past the cast-iron ring. The tension lingers for a moment, decreases. On the fringes of the crowd idlers start to disperse.
And then it happens.
Pressed and nervous a young soldier fins himself cornered by the mob, he looks and see several men between him and his next comrade. He tries to wriggle through the press and cannot. He tries to cry out but the ruckus drowns his voice. His guns gets tangled in something, he tries to pull it ; and the spring of his snaplock fails ; and his rifle shoots ; and for a moment, it seems the whole world holds its breath.
In an instant the riot explodes, guard are pushed back on the bridge, firing several volleys on the crowd. In the palace courtyard, the escort cuirassiers remount and reform, charge and hack through rag prolétariat. The royal family has disappeared prudently. The Spring of Peoples has come.
The tired coursier
Kuipy (Normandy)
(Londres, 1855)
A reception at court. Nobles, parvenus, officers and demi-mondaines buzz through a whole aisle of the New Palace in London. The thin, pallid Roger IX, a king for only three years, walks with a cane, speaking little, but he still smiles when a nurse presents his son, the heir people no longer expected.
The king's brother Richard, no longer the heir apparent, bears with a stiff countenance his change of place. His own son, a lanky boy with delicate features, seems more interested by the drinks and sweets than by politics.
With the change of heirs comes a change in politics. For almost a decade Richard's conservateurs have been unable to quench the trouble in Greater Normandy ; neither a ruinous program of public healthcare, nor the largest police force in Europe has managed to silence the cry of the poor and the lament of the oppressed. And so,for the first time, the king receives and salute sir Parfin, the head of liberals. Hopefully free trade and free speech will suffice to avoid the worst ; and the monarchy will perdure, yet a little more weakened.
At sir Parfin's side stands Richard the elder, the king's uncle, an unlikely alliance if there ever was one. Time has wrinkled his brow and greyed his large brown beard, but people still recognize him and whisper. His son is nowhere to be seen.
In the New Palace of Londres the worst seems to be past, but even as calvados and poiré flows a lone coursier engages on the bridge and ask for urgent admittance without even dismounting.
"What is it ?" a guard asks with a yawn. Only then does he notice the coursier's red eyes, unshaven cheeks and capitaine stripes. "W... War ?" he blunders.
"Yes," the man answers, "with Russia."
(Dramatic music playing in the background)
Well this is a interesting development. I like the way you write. I'll be following.
Well this is a interesting development. I like the way you write. I'll be following.
Paper
Kuipy (Normandy)
(Castle Dyfed, 1857)
A dim light peers through the pulled curtains, but the royal cabinet would be all but dark without the large fire in the chimneyplace, which keeps the chambers in a suffocating heat. In his red velvet armchair sits a ghost of a king, pale and stubbly. At his side stands a tall grey-bearded man, Richard de Normandie, stiff but alert. His eyes follow Roger's trembling hand as he signs a wreath of documents. By these acts he acknowledges Normandy's defeat against Russia, and cedes half of Scandinavia to the latter. A word catches his attention.
"Sundsvall... The treaty is to be signed as Sundsvall," he says bitterly.
"They insisted on it," his uncle answers. " But I obtain to sign it in your stead."
"Good."
The Duke insisted on it as a matter of national pride, but diplomats are starting to notice that the king avoids being seen, and no longer travel overseas or, indeed, beyond the confines of Castle Dyfed. He signs and hands the wreath to his uncle.
" Then there is the matter of Canada."
Roger nods and signs. By the mere document all Norman holdings north of New Holland, including the former New Spain, are granted partial autonomy and attached to Canadian administration. Better than to lost them altogether, now that London cannot spare a single man to patrol these many acres of snow.
"One last signature, Roger." The duke's voice is respectful and kind, his nephew's face pallid and tired. Finally he signs the order to immediately triple the Norman Army.
" Thank you, uncle. That will be all."
" Shall I... informally the Russians of that development?"
" Yes. Please do."
The king's voice trails and he bends forward in a harsh, minute-long fit of cough. Richard winces, but pretend not to see the red stain on his kerchief. With a sad smile he bows and withdraws, papers in hand.
The Norman-Russian frontier
Tyger, tyger
Kuipy (Normandy)
(Nagpur, 1858)
Night falls on the Summer Palace in Nagpur and, in the private salon, lieutenant William de Normandie stands.
Everything in the building is burnt or broken. York crystal, paintings by Bourville and Courseul, chinese porcelain offered by the Mughal sultans lie on the floor, singed and shattered. Vines have overgrown the breached walls, and the air smells of must and must. William remembers a childhood memory of his father Richard sitting by a now-crumbled chimney, in a long-looted armchair of Byzantine velvet. All that remain of the vision is the splendid carpet under his booted feet, now decayed and threadbare.
Five years of abandon would do that to a palace. He turns sullenly and heads out, A black-avised rider, dismounted, yells a challenge when he climbs the stairs down, and he grunts the password. Through the overgrown gardens he strolls, smoking premium tobacco from New Normandy in a new briar pipe. Now and then he stops to stretch his legs fatigued by a hard day's ride.
As dusk settles he looks around, but nobody is to be seen. The palace grounds have been cleared of ambushed Cipayes, and sentries posted all around them. And he is a brave man. With a shrug he mounts on a sandstone terrace to bask in the dying sun, pushing branches aside. From this side of the palace the lands slides slowly downhill and the view is far-reaching. All over the plain mount colons of smoke, dozens of them, each marking a village burnt by loyalists or insurgents. William watches them silently, tugging at his sandy sideburns ; then a noise startles him and he turn toward the tangled mess of canopy that occupies half of the terrace.
Out of the jungle night creeps a magnificent tiger, eyes ablaze. The king's cousin stares wide-eyed at the cat, his fingers inching uncertainly for his ordnance pistol. The beast is but one leap away. On his bony neck hangs a jeweled collar ; for he must have belonged to the old ménagerie. The cat stares back. Wild again, he roars, almost mocking.
"His name was Blanchet, if memory serves."
The voice startles man and cat alike. At the top of the stairs general Stuart has appeared, a slouching greybeard risen through the ranks. Stories abound about his earlier service in India, some even making him a comrade-in-arms of William IV in the first Indian uprising, which would make him over ninety. Faced by two men the cat hesitates and bares filed fangs. In the dying light they can now see his ribs protruding through his lousy fur. In rebel India freedom is the freedom to starve.
" Do you want back in your old cage, cat ?"
With a last growl the tiger disappears in the branches. Freedom to starve, it seems, is still freedom.
" Oh well. I fear this rebellion will never end," the general comments wearily. He taps William on the shoulder. "Better get inside now, lieutenant."
Some active rebels
1882 Byzantium
Letter from the head of industry to the Emperor
Letter from the head of industry to the Emperor
Your Highness Diomedes,
Things have been going well recently, but the most exciting detail may be that we are indeed no longer reliant on imports. We can fully fund and supply ourselves. I realize this came a couple decades later than what you had tasked me with, but I'm appreciative that you have let me continue my work to see it come to this final climax.
In just the last 10 years our industrial power has more than doubled, and our universities are training more people better than we could have imagined just 50 years ago. I'm a little worried that we may start running short of farmers with all the people being educated, but it seems our population has truly kept the romanticism of our ancestors.
General Alexander just told me that he is beginning to be jealous of all the funding my industry department is getting. I hope he won't decide that we must become a warmongering nation again!
If you have any questions, I don't have any pressing duties again until June, so I could probably come to Constantinople in person to see you.
Your friend,
Things have been going well recently, but the most exciting detail may be that we are indeed no longer reliant on imports. We can fully fund and supply ourselves. I realize this came a couple decades later than what you had tasked me with, but I'm appreciative that you have let me continue my work to see it come to this final climax.
In just the last 10 years our industrial power has more than doubled, and our universities are training more people better than we could have imagined just 50 years ago. I'm a little worried that we may start running short of farmers with all the people being educated, but it seems our population has truly kept the romanticism of our ancestors.
General Alexander just told me that he is beginning to be jealous of all the funding my industry department is getting. I hope he won't decide that we must become a warmongering nation again!
If you have any questions, I don't have any pressing duties again until June, so I could probably come to Constantinople in person to see you.
Your friend,
Philander
The more they are educated, the more they see how proper our system of government is, and how improper it is that the French let their people run wild.Educating serfs?
Oh dear!
Indonesia 1869-1882
Indonesia Unleashed
Finally, after a few missed sessions and other problems, Indonesia achieved what it most desired. We became civilized.
This session, the only thing concentrated on was development. Indonesia used all of its basic resources to achieve a dynamic eceonomy.
Here is a pic from the beginning of the session:
After many great developments, my favorite is my Level 4 Lumber Mill, we eventually ended up with the following stats.
We are on the cusp of developing the ability to project power.
Indonesia Unleashed
Finally, after a few missed sessions and other problems, Indonesia achieved what it most desired. We became civilized.
This session, the only thing concentrated on was development. Indonesia used all of its basic resources to achieve a dynamic eceonomy.
Here is a pic from the beginning of the session:
After many great developments, my favorite is my Level 4 Lumber Mill, we eventually ended up with the following stats.
We are on the cusp of developing the ability to project power.
I hope you enjoy having a ind. power level just shy of the largest empire ever known to mankind.