<walks up to the podium>
Thank you very much!
Since I haven't been writing this last week (or the one before that), being chosen WritAAR of the Week was about the last thing I was expecting, and thus I'm even more happy and grateful than I would be otherwise.
I have gone through some rather cataclysmic
changes in my lifestyle lately: after a few laid back years as a recurrent student/housedad/unemployee, I'm now working at a full time job in the Swedish anti-drug coordination program as economy manager, begining about a week before my second son was born. For the last fourteen days, there never seemed to be enough hours in the day for all that HAD to be done, never mind any free time. But now things seem to be adjusting to the New Order (tm) - my older son is slowly realizing he isn't about to be exchanged for a newer model, my younger son is slowly learning to tell night from day and I'm slowly adjusting to this very different life (getting some sleep from time to time helps too).
Hopefully I'll be able to return to some sort of regular writing soon.
"The Eagle and The Lion" is an attempt to explore the what ifs of a German victory in WW1, a possibility that has always intrigued me. To tell the truth it was the back story that I really wanted to write at first, even if I have grown ever more fond of this strange alternate world that grew out of those back story posts.
The seeds of what would become "The Eagle and the Lion" were planted as I watched "Hitler - the rise of evil" with excellent Robert Carlyle playing the title role. I remember thinking when I saw the scenes depicting the brutal supression of the Bavarian Communists by proto-fascist "Freikorps" that it had taken that kind of savagely anti-democratic and militantly right-wing military to push Germany back from the brink of revoultion. But what if Germany had had a more "western" kind of army, with no political agenda of its own? Germany had surely followed the path of Russia.
From there, it was not a long leap to imagine the same post-war revolutionary situation in a defeated France - the seeds were there IRL after the Nivelle offensives. Could France have coped the way Germany did? Could I imagine the French army, the
Republican French Army of a state that cherished its revolutionary traditions, gunning down rebelling workers and disaffected soldiers? No way. Given the same conditions, France was doomed. From there, I had to imagine a scenario where France was defeated - the first that sprang to mind was one where Britain stayed aloof from the war due to Germany standing on the defensive in the west (rather than raping Belgium), which is one of the classic What If's of WW1.
Now I must try to find time to read some AARs in EU2 and Victoria AAR-land, since I may not (if I understood correctly) pick one in the HOI 2 forum. As usual, it will be nigh near impossible to find one more deserving than all others, but I'm sure I will have a really easy time finding a worthy candidate.