Good lord that escalated quickly. I honestly think my heart rate increased as I read.
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Sic transit gloria mundi. While it saddens me that the AAR is coming to an end, that last chapter was brilliant. It is nice to see that revolts can actually overwhelm a player, even if it must have been somewhat frustrating to play through.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Damn it everything was looking so good! Why can't we continue as a socialist state? Why?
Let it be known to the royal family and Britannians across the nation that there are still those who are loyal. Who always will be.
We will look upon our great empire with fondness, and hope that in the shattered remains a new Britannian state may rise.
To those left, do not revolt: durate et vosmet rebus servate secundis.
Damn it everything was looking so good! Why can't we continue as a socialist state? Why?
Let it be known to the royal family and Britannians across the nation that there are still those who are loyal. Who always will be.
We will look upon our great empire with fondness, and hope that in the shattered remains a new Britannian state may rise.
To those left, do not revolt: durate et vosmet rebus servate secundis.
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Noes! I've been waiting so patiently for the end of the war with Amazonia and I get the end of the AAR instead 
(and Amazonia's bitter defeat too).
May our megalomaniac reactionary emperor live in peace.
ALL HAIL BRITANNIA!
(and Amazonia's bitter defeat too).May our megalomaniac reactionary emperor live in peace.
ALL HAIL BRITANNIA!
Please not the monarchy! ANYTHING! This is not the end, look at Russia in 1917. Watch.
You'll see.
You'll see.
What an epic ending. I'd love to read about the crazy civil war that will inevitably break out between the liberals/republicans and the communists once the monarchy is purged.
If the military had any sense, they'd have realised the crazy reactionary emperors needed to go for the sake of stability and deposed the monarchy ages ago, just like Brazil IRL. But now they get this fun civil war to deal with.
If the military had any sense, they'd have realised the crazy reactionary emperors needed to go for the sake of stability and deposed the monarchy ages ago, just like Brazil IRL. But now they get this fun civil war to deal with.
Britannian Imperialism is......d-dead?
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sadly, it is.
More of a bitter than sweet, I would say.
I know! I believed them as well
.Thanks! I tried my best.
Me neither. But after the third rebellion I started to be a bit suspicious.
Good that you enjoyed the music
.Yeah, this is not exactly the British Empire, isn't it? And there are surely analogies with the Russian Civil War.
Well, the rebellions are now much better than when V2 hit the shelves, that's for sure.
Noes! I've been waiting so patiently for the end of the war with Amazonia and I get the end of the AAR instead
May our megalomaniac reactionary emperor live in peace.
ALL HAIL BRITANNIA!
All hail Edward!
Thank you profusely
!See the epilogue
.Yeah, these emperors...who need them?
I am sad that this is over, too, but see the author's note for explanation.
Author's note: Well, a lot of people have asked in the thread after the last chapter why I don't continue as a republic, why I don't try to restore the monarchy...summed up, why I don't continue the AAR. The real reason is that what really happened is different from the events I described in the last chapter:
It was February 6, 1895. Due to my lax reaction to the rebellion's threat, I suddenly found the Empire covered with red-and-black rectangles and just lost the battle for Camelot. That meant that I wouldn't be able to make it there in time and my country was under an immediate threat of losing to Jacobins. And I certainly didn't want that! That would be the end of the Pendragon's hegemony and also a pretty bad development for the AAR. Getting overwhelmed by the rebel forces, I committed the cardinal sin. I enacted the 'landed voting' reform, hoping to gain some time. I was thinking, like, landed voting is better than universal, isn't it?
In real life, the ongoing rebellion would probably not be stopped by this petty act, with armed radicals literally knocking on the door to the House of Lords, it would maximally make the liberals a bit less keen to fight. But in Victoria 2, with her not-really-flawless engine, the rebels, all of sudden, just...dispersed. Not only the Jacobins but the majority of the 800,000 Amazonians also. Only the staunchest Communists remained sieging the southern provinces.
At that moment I was happy. I quickly crushed the remainders of the opposition and proceeded to continue the game. Britannia emerged from the crisis unscathed,with her industrial and military potential intact and aside of the enacted enfranchising of the upper strata, nothing reminded me of it.
The first election turned out to be a ridiculous banality. Among the Empire's population of 42M, only 227.97k were male aristocrats and out of this count, only 3.6% were true Beornians. And since the election was run under the baton of the Imperial Party (in game the National Democratic Party), only they were entitled to vote. 8,207 legal voters (0.02% of the population), majority of them rock solid conservatives or even members of the Party. And for this more than a million people had risen up and hundreds of thousands had given their life.
Later on, I would enfranchise even the middle strata but the conservatives would continue to win the elections all the time to 1936 with me needing to intervene and change the election's result only twice during the period...the gained militancy from doing that evaporated during like a month both times.
------------------------
Time went by and Britannia continued her march. I established protectorates wherever possible, seized two Castillan states and later enforced sphering upon them, retook Grand Chaco from the Incas together with the state of Talca and in 1907 finished the Fortress Britannia by entering the city of Cuzco and ending the Incan sovereignty once and for all - a goal unaccomplished since the times of the Spanish conquista.
I also continued claiming more and more African sand and sphered minor nations from Iraq to Griqualand to Zhourao, effectively enveloping the world and forging an Empire on which the sun never set, protected by a massive dreadnought fleet and a massive regular army (the latter mostly aimed at protecting the government from the citizens of the Empire). Inferiority complex, anyone?
But then, roughly around the 1910s, I realised that the game was no longer interesting. It was just a long string of victories followed by even more victories. And I don't know how about you, but I quite dislike AARs focusing on victory marches. Also, the well of pseudo-humour which I had been drawing from at the beginning went dry as I am not really capable of making funny stories out of unfunny events. And so I began to actively take part in world crises, tried to intervene in Europe but, alas, still nothing interesting occurred. In 1920s I gave 'Realpolitik' a completely different meaning when I allied with the Dual Monarchy, creating a powerblock of the #1 and #2 (yeah, Britannia had risen to #2!) great powers.
Serving as the bastions of the old order, standing fast against the fascist and communist upsurges throughout the world, we had enough diplomatic and military weight on our side to decide literally every conflict, like when I in the 1930s dissolved the People's Republic China, formerly known as the Heavenly Kingdom of Taiping, out of foppery and whim. However, none of the conflicts I engaged in was interesting enough to be reported and even with my best efforts, no world war got unleashed upon the world (I am a monster and I blame it on you, Paradox!), mostly due to the sheer power of the Paris-Camelot axis.
And so I started to search for an earlier ending, an ending that would provide a climax to the story of the Holy Britannian Empire. It was soon clear that the rebellion of 1895-6 is the right choice as no later revolt caught me or my pretty massive homeland security force unprepared. And so the choice was made.
But all of this is unimportant. Because for all we know, the story of the Holy Britannian Empire ends during the last years of the 19th century...
The liberals seized full control of Camelot in early February of 1895. They swiftly established the Republic of Britannia, electing Louis Napier the first president. During a string of accelerated trials they sentenced majority of the former government members to death with the rest being arrested. The new governing body also promptly established the Republican Army, hoping to crush the communists who refused to accept their administration. But the army was more of an undisciplined mob lacking proper command than a defensive force and the new Republic soon found itself in a very dire situation. Without effective means to fight them, they were threatened to the south by the Reds who continued in their battle for the rule of the proletariat. Aside of that, General Dundas had been pretty much successful in re-establishing order in Lotharingia, making Fort Lothére his temporal HQ and Smith-Dorrien with his remaining troops was still somewhere out there in the countryside.
In March, Charles Buller, the last acting General in the former Amazonian territory, signed a peace deal with Tournehem which officially confirmed the fact that Amazonie was once again in Federation's hands. He then took the remnants of the invasion force and moved to support Dundas. Meanwhile, the Republican Army suffered a disastrous defeat against the Reds in the battle of Cuthred and retreated to Avalon. The liberals were now clenched between two enemies, anxiously waiting who would arrive at Camelot sooner.
The answer was found out pretty soon, when Dundas and his Imperial Army overwhelmed the capital in April, ending the two months of republican governance of the realm. At about the same time, Smith-Dorrien discovered the hideout of the Imperial dynasty at the Eastgate castle. All Pendragons were found dead.
Actually, in November 1895 there was still hope for the Empire to survive the storm. But then the remaining liberals in their stronghold in Chané, afraid of the loyalist armies' advance, officially requested help from Cuzco. The Inca entry to the conflict pretty much shifted the power balance. The subsequent war would drag all the way to 1897, when the exhausted loyalists signed a white peace with Tawantinsuyu after ferociously defending their positions for more than eighteen months. Even though the Incas were more numerous, the Britannian technological and organisational edge effectively countered that. The civil war practically ended that year with the communist armies having lost their momentum when Smith-Dorrien, reinforced by the arriving African Corps, countered their first, respectively second invasion in 1896.
But the impact on the Empire was irreversible. The country was heavily indebted, forced to repay the loans by selling her African and Indonesian possessions and declaring bankruptcy in 1898. The industrial base of the Empire, formerly supported only by massive government subsidies, negative tariffs and the flow of raw materials from the colonies, collapsed. Famine and lack of even the most basic goods crippled the country leading to further violent conflicts between Beornians and other citizens. Stability was only achieved by military suppression and martial law. In the grim reality of 1899, military was the only working structure in the country, effectively governing it. Nicholas Dundas declared himself the Regent of the Imperial Crown in August, only to be deposed in a coup d'etat by Stanley Jellicoe in December. Jellicoe would hold onto this position till 1914, only to be replaced by another dictator then.
At the dawn of the 20th century, Britannia entered a descending spiral of poverty, social and political unrest, military oppression and economical instability. While the official name of the country was still 'The Holy Britannian Empire' and the military dictators stylised themselves as the Regents of the Imperial Crown, no one outside of the country took it seriously. Britannia was slowly rendered insignificant on the world's stage, eventually falling into obscurity in the 1930s.
The period between 1870 and 1890 is nowadays considered an oddity in Britannian history, when a megalomaniac autocratic ruler drove his country to total collapse and sometimes serves as a proto-example of the fascist and irredentist conflicts that plagued the first half of the 20th century. Other than that, no one in Britannia really likes to talk about that era. There are some who view Edward Pendragon as a national hero who elevated the backwater Kingdom of Beornia to a glorious Empire but many others see him simply as a despot who started a period of misery lasting almost five decades which the country has not healed from yet, both on the sociopolitical and the economical level.
All in all, the topic is generally considered taboo in Britannian society and only when some Beornians get a bit nostalgic, they might sigh and wonder what could have been, had history gone differently. While it may sound a tad sentimental, you really can't avoid feeling like that when you sit in a café on one of the former great boulevards in the shadow of an old dilapidated palace from the Imperial era, sipping maté with a stray dachshund basking nearby...
It was February 6, 1895. Due to my lax reaction to the rebellion's threat, I suddenly found the Empire covered with red-and-black rectangles and just lost the battle for Camelot. That meant that I wouldn't be able to make it there in time and my country was under an immediate threat of losing to Jacobins. And I certainly didn't want that! That would be the end of the Pendragon's hegemony and also a pretty bad development for the AAR. Getting overwhelmed by the rebel forces, I committed the cardinal sin. I enacted the 'landed voting' reform, hoping to gain some time. I was thinking, like, landed voting is better than universal, isn't it?
In real life, the ongoing rebellion would probably not be stopped by this petty act, with armed radicals literally knocking on the door to the House of Lords, it would maximally make the liberals a bit less keen to fight. But in Victoria 2, with her not-really-flawless engine, the rebels, all of sudden, just...dispersed. Not only the Jacobins but the majority of the 800,000 Amazonians also. Only the staunchest Communists remained sieging the southern provinces.
At that moment I was happy. I quickly crushed the remainders of the opposition and proceeded to continue the game. Britannia emerged from the crisis unscathed,with her industrial and military potential intact and aside of the enacted enfranchising of the upper strata, nothing reminded me of it.
The first election turned out to be a ridiculous banality. Among the Empire's population of 42M, only 227.97k were male aristocrats and out of this count, only 3.6% were true Beornians. And since the election was run under the baton of the Imperial Party (in game the National Democratic Party), only they were entitled to vote. 8,207 legal voters (0.02% of the population), majority of them rock solid conservatives or even members of the Party. And for this more than a million people had risen up and hundreds of thousands had given their life.
Later on, I would enfranchise even the middle strata but the conservatives would continue to win the elections all the time to 1936 with me needing to intervene and change the election's result only twice during the period...the gained militancy from doing that evaporated during like a month both times.
------------------------
Time went by and Britannia continued her march. I established protectorates wherever possible, seized two Castillan states and later enforced sphering upon them, retook Grand Chaco from the Incas together with the state of Talca and in 1907 finished the Fortress Britannia by entering the city of Cuzco and ending the Incan sovereignty once and for all - a goal unaccomplished since the times of the Spanish conquista.
I also continued claiming more and more African sand and sphered minor nations from Iraq to Griqualand to Zhourao, effectively enveloping the world and forging an Empire on which the sun never set, protected by a massive dreadnought fleet and a massive regular army (the latter mostly aimed at protecting the government from the citizens of the Empire). Inferiority complex, anyone?
But then, roughly around the 1910s, I realised that the game was no longer interesting. It was just a long string of victories followed by even more victories. And I don't know how about you, but I quite dislike AARs focusing on victory marches. Also, the well of pseudo-humour which I had been drawing from at the beginning went dry as I am not really capable of making funny stories out of unfunny events. And so I began to actively take part in world crises, tried to intervene in Europe but, alas, still nothing interesting occurred. In 1920s I gave 'Realpolitik' a completely different meaning when I allied with the Dual Monarchy, creating a powerblock of the #1 and #2 (yeah, Britannia had risen to #2!) great powers.
Serving as the bastions of the old order, standing fast against the fascist and communist upsurges throughout the world, we had enough diplomatic and military weight on our side to decide literally every conflict, like when I in the 1930s dissolved the People's Republic China, formerly known as the Heavenly Kingdom of Taiping, out of foppery and whim. However, none of the conflicts I engaged in was interesting enough to be reported and even with my best efforts, no world war got unleashed upon the world (I am a monster and I blame it on you, Paradox!), mostly due to the sheer power of the Paris-Camelot axis.
And so I started to search for an earlier ending, an ending that would provide a climax to the story of the Holy Britannian Empire. It was soon clear that the rebellion of 1895-6 is the right choice as no later revolt caught me or my pretty massive homeland security force unprepared. And so the choice was made.
But all of this is unimportant. Because for all we know, the story of the Holy Britannian Empire ends during the last years of the 19th century...
Epilogue
The liberals seized full control of Camelot in early February of 1895. They swiftly established the Republic of Britannia, electing Louis Napier the first president. During a string of accelerated trials they sentenced majority of the former government members to death with the rest being arrested. The new governing body also promptly established the Republican Army, hoping to crush the communists who refused to accept their administration. But the army was more of an undisciplined mob lacking proper command than a defensive force and the new Republic soon found itself in a very dire situation. Without effective means to fight them, they were threatened to the south by the Reds who continued in their battle for the rule of the proletariat. Aside of that, General Dundas had been pretty much successful in re-establishing order in Lotharingia, making Fort Lothére his temporal HQ and Smith-Dorrien with his remaining troops was still somewhere out there in the countryside.
In March, Charles Buller, the last acting General in the former Amazonian territory, signed a peace deal with Tournehem which officially confirmed the fact that Amazonie was once again in Federation's hands. He then took the remnants of the invasion force and moved to support Dundas. Meanwhile, the Republican Army suffered a disastrous defeat against the Reds in the battle of Cuthred and retreated to Avalon. The liberals were now clenched between two enemies, anxiously waiting who would arrive at Camelot sooner.
The answer was found out pretty soon, when Dundas and his Imperial Army overwhelmed the capital in April, ending the two months of republican governance of the realm. At about the same time, Smith-Dorrien discovered the hideout of the Imperial dynasty at the Eastgate castle. All Pendragons were found dead.
Actually, in November 1895 there was still hope for the Empire to survive the storm. But then the remaining liberals in their stronghold in Chané, afraid of the loyalist armies' advance, officially requested help from Cuzco. The Inca entry to the conflict pretty much shifted the power balance. The subsequent war would drag all the way to 1897, when the exhausted loyalists signed a white peace with Tawantinsuyu after ferociously defending their positions for more than eighteen months. Even though the Incas were more numerous, the Britannian technological and organisational edge effectively countered that. The civil war practically ended that year with the communist armies having lost their momentum when Smith-Dorrien, reinforced by the arriving African Corps, countered their first, respectively second invasion in 1896.
But the impact on the Empire was irreversible. The country was heavily indebted, forced to repay the loans by selling her African and Indonesian possessions and declaring bankruptcy in 1898. The industrial base of the Empire, formerly supported only by massive government subsidies, negative tariffs and the flow of raw materials from the colonies, collapsed. Famine and lack of even the most basic goods crippled the country leading to further violent conflicts between Beornians and other citizens. Stability was only achieved by military suppression and martial law. In the grim reality of 1899, military was the only working structure in the country, effectively governing it. Nicholas Dundas declared himself the Regent of the Imperial Crown in August, only to be deposed in a coup d'etat by Stanley Jellicoe in December. Jellicoe would hold onto this position till 1914, only to be replaced by another dictator then.
At the dawn of the 20th century, Britannia entered a descending spiral of poverty, social and political unrest, military oppression and economical instability. While the official name of the country was still 'The Holy Britannian Empire' and the military dictators stylised themselves as the Regents of the Imperial Crown, no one outside of the country took it seriously. Britannia was slowly rendered insignificant on the world's stage, eventually falling into obscurity in the 1930s.
The period between 1870 and 1890 is nowadays considered an oddity in Britannian history, when a megalomaniac autocratic ruler drove his country to total collapse and sometimes serves as a proto-example of the fascist and irredentist conflicts that plagued the first half of the 20th century. Other than that, no one in Britannia really likes to talk about that era. There are some who view Edward Pendragon as a national hero who elevated the backwater Kingdom of Beornia to a glorious Empire but many others see him simply as a despot who started a period of misery lasting almost five decades which the country has not healed from yet, both on the sociopolitical and the economical level.
All in all, the topic is generally considered taboo in Britannian society and only when some Beornians get a bit nostalgic, they might sigh and wonder what could have been, had history gone differently. While it may sound a tad sentimental, you really can't avoid feeling like that when you sit in a café on one of the former great boulevards in the shadow of an old dilapidated palace from the Imperial era, sipping maté with a stray dachshund basking nearby...
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Well, I wouldn't have minded the real story tbh, but your story works too. Thanks for entertaining us!
Thanks for entertaining us!
I second your decision to let it end. The turn the revolution took was too ridiculous. Thanks for the time you kept me entertained with your story.
So sad to see this end.
Out of curiosity, do you know where I might be able to watch Code Geass?
You can normally find it on most anime websites, though I found both seasons in the english dub on watchcartoononline, just google it and the first few options are normally good.
Sad to see Britannia end, but alas it was a spectacular end, ALL HAIL BRITANNIA!!!
Sad to see Britannia end, but alas it was a spectacular end, ALL HAIL BRITANNIA!!!
However bitter as it may be, with that last chapter it became one of my most favorite AAR's.
I agree entirely with this sentiment. A fine bit of work and definitely not the usual sort of ending one sees around the place.Well, I wouldn't have minded the real story tbh, but your story works too.
What a horrific collapse!
Besides the tragic fate of Britannia, are there any other interesting developments in the world that you think might happen in the "official" timeline? For instance, would Amazonia recover from its brief occupation?
Anyways, it was a great AAR while it lasted, and I hope to see something new from you soon.
Besides the tragic fate of Britannia, are there any other interesting developments in the world that you think might happen in the "official" timeline? For instance, would Amazonia recover from its brief occupation?
Anyways, it was a great AAR while it lasted, and I hope to see something new from you soon.