Getting a more direct, focused view of the pain the committee has caused makes it hit all the harder.
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You know what they (allegedly) say: “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.”
I remember hearing somewhere that that quote was made by Stalin but I could be wrong.
Beneath the so-called propaganda and lies that the Committee and Jerusalem oh so love to put up lays the bitter reality of their policies and what it did to all non-Germans in the former Reich. Such a tragedy that it was all for nothing Angelica who fought hard and walked miles to find her home destroyed. One thing I find interesting in this chapter is that there are still those who are too stubborn to die in the face of overwhelming odds, even as they are more focused on simply surviving, as in the case of Billy's resistance groups or the few Occitan and French who still remain, hell the Lone Gunmen still continuing their thing opposing Jerusalem is also a good example. By the way, I always considered the Gunmen as part of the OG X-Division crew, even if they really never assisted in most of the X-Divsion arcs, so that's a small consolation I suppose.
Even in the bleakest of times, there are those who still cling to hope and still have the will to protect it.
The Gunmen are certainly part of the “support team” like Walter, Anna, and Annie were. While the main four are off doing hero things, the others get them what they need to be successful. Now they’ll carry on after Anders and keep fighting for the truth.
Life in Pink
The farmhouse
Angelica walked in, her head down and face sullen.
“Are you okay?” Tania asked.
“I just…need some time to rest,” Angelica said.
She left the room. She didn’t want to talk to anybody right now. As soon as she found the bedroom Billy had given her, she loudly shut the door behind her.
“What did you show her?” Tania said .
“We didn’t want to take down all of the bodies,” Billy said, “We wanted to keep proof of Jerusalem’s crimes out in the open. So they can't deny what they did, even after they fall.”
“But we helped her bury her mother,” Ruby said, “It was the least we could do.”
They didn’t have many options for the funeral. They got a coffin after a quick trip to the abandoned morgue. Angelica didn’t want anything gaudy or fancy. She picked something plain and simple. They put Theresa’s body into the coffin as gently as they could. That was more difficult than expected, as the body was very stiff, so Angelica may have accidentally broke a few bones. Her mother was probably muttering her disapproval from heaven. Ruby said a Catalan prayer she had learned from her own mother, and then they buried Theresa. For a tombstone, Billy carved the name Theresa Haus and her years of life onto a relatively flat piece of metal debris. Angelica hung her mother's necklace and ring from a bar attached to the plate.
“I see,” Julian said, “So what’s our next goal?”
“I don’t know,” Billy said, “Hold our position, as we always have.”
“What a lonely existence it must be, searching for scraps on the outskirts of a dead town,” Tania said, “No offense, of course.”
Angelica thought back to before she came across Tania on the beach. It was just her and Julian left after the nuke fell. When they emerged from the bunker, they found Bremerhaven wrecked and abandoned. They had spent the first few weeks scavenging for anything usable in downtown before giving up, as almost everything was irradiated or destroyed. So they went out further, to the suburbs, but they ran into the same problem. At least there was very little radiation here.
“None taken,” Billy said, “We really don’t have any other choice. And frankly, I hate it.”
“Why’s that?” August said.
“When I was young, I was…shall we say, forced into the RSB,” Billy said, “It’s hard to explain what, but it was a nightmare. Every single action I did was controlled. I had almost no free will of my own. And I was made to do many terrible things. Things I still have nightmares about. I almost hurt Angelica and her mother 23 years ago, when I was sent on a mission to this very town, along with Ruby.”
He almost sounded...regretful. She had known there was something off about his behavior back then, but she always thought he had no regrets in the end.
“I was also forced into the RSB,” Ruby said, “That’s how we knew each other before this.”
“Must have been terrifying,” Julian said.
“You have no idea, kid,” Ruby said.
“What does Angelica think about that incident?” Tania said.
What she thought about the incident was being reconsidered at the moment.
“I wanted to apologize to her, but she always stayed away from me,” Billy said, “I didn’t try to force the matter. After the Sentinel scandal, Ruby and I went free. We regained our lives, so we decided to go home. I returned to the station and became chief of police. I hoped I could make up for everything I did. She just wanted to live in peace…”
So that was what he really wanted. He really wanted to make amends. She pushed him away, thinking he was just going to do the same thing again. She shouldn't have.
“Until the comitè decided otherwise,” Ruby said.
“We thought fighting back was the best way to stay free,” Billy said, “A sentiment shared by many of our fellow citizens. The only thing we achieved was being trapped here, surrounded by the bodies of our families and friends. A cage of bones, ashes, and lead.”
“They may not be keeping us in here by force, but we’ve got nowhere else to go,” Ruby said, “The rest of France is crawling with Crusaders, and all of the other fronts have collapsed. At least here we know the terrain.”
Terrain wasn't a good advantage when the enemy had total air dominance, satellites backing them up, and autonomous drones patrolling every block.
“We’re just as trapped and controlled as we used to be,” Billy said, “It sucks.”
“If they’re not keeping you here, you can at least leave,” Tania said.
“And go where?” Billy said. “Jerusalem controls this entire country. Everywhere we go, there will be just as many Crusaders after us. But here, we at least are familiar with the area.”
“You can’t stay here forever,” Julian said, “The town is dead. Eventually, the Crusaders will tire of your games and come down on you, like they did with us in Bremerhaven.”
Angelica suddenly didn't want to sit around moping while everyone was discussing what to do next. She had to do something. An idea crossed her mind. A stupid idea, but something she could do. She got up and went to the kitchen.
“True,” Ruby said.
“Where would we go, though?” Billy said.
“I don’t know,” Julian said, “We’ll have to figure something out.”
---
A sweet smell wafted into the room.
“What’s that?” Julian said.
“What’s what?” Billy said.
“You don’t smell that?” August said.
“Smells like bread,” Tania said.
“Sorry, I don’t smell anything,” Billy said.
“Neither do I,” Ruby said, “Spending so long surrounded by all those dead bodies has made us so used to that putrid smell.”
“First few weeks after the massacre were horrible,” Billy said, “Then you kind of get used to it, but it’s always there. Eventually, we just stopped smelling anything at all.”
“All the more reason to leave,” Julian said.
Angelica walked back into the room, carrying a tray of pastries. When she started her day, she didn't expect to end up baking. But as she put the ingredients together and the pastries took shape, her memories of that summer job at the bakery twenty years ago gradually came back to her.
“I made some brioche à la mode de Alençon,” she said, “Who wants some?”
“Uh…you were baking pastries this whole time?” Tania said.
“I thought you wanted to rest,” Billy said.
“Well, that was the idea, but I got hungry, and I noticed we had the ingredients, and the oven was in relatively good condition, and I had brioche on my mind, so I decided to have a go at it,” Angelica said, “Try it. I haven’t baked this in about 20 years, and the oven isn’t ideal, and I never perfected the original recipe, so…”
Tania picked up a brioche and bit into it. She immediately broke into a nostalgic smile.
“Delicious!” she said. “Just like my mom used to make her own Russian pastries!”
What? She knew she messed at least one thing up. Maybe the eggs were bad, or she didn't have enough flour, or the oven was malfunctioning. She was 100% certain the brioches were only barely edible.
“Really?” August said.
He took the next brioche and started eating.
“Yeah, this is great!” he said. “Reminds me of this high-end bakery I used to go to in Modena.”
Angelica was overflowing with joy. Her eyes started welling up again. She couldn't believe it. Did she...get it right?
“Really?” she said.
Billy took another brioche and ate it.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” he said, “This tastes exactly like the old recipe. Or at least it’s so close I can’t tell the difference.”
“Drop the flattery, I know it’s terrible,” Angelica said.
Yeah, it had to be. No way she accidentally baked perfection.
Ruby ate another brioche. “Stop with the self-sabotage. Something finally went right, and you’re not giving yourself credit?”
“Do I deserve it?” Angelica said. “After failing my mom?”
“You need to move on,” Julian said, “What’s done is done. Your mother is dead. There’s no bringing her back. But you can carry on her legacy. The legacy of this town, even. Move forward for their sake.”
“Like with these pastries!” Billy said. “When I eat this, I feel like a part of Alençon was saved.”
“Really?” Angelica said.
She started laughing. Julian looked surprised, as if he hadn’t heard her laughing in a while.
“I guess you’re right,” she said, “Part of Alençon lives on in these pastries. The Crusaders didn’t take everything away.”
“That’s more like it,” Ruby said.
Billy sat down and took out an old phone.
“What are you doing?” Julian said.
“Service was probably cut long ago,” Tania said.
“It was,” Billy said, “But since I can still charge it with the solar panel we set up on the roof, I still have uses for it. Reminders, notes…a playlist.”
He played a song. Gentle pop music began playing, set to the voice of a crooning Frenchwoman.
“Des yeux qui font baisser les miens
Un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche
Voila le portrait sans retouche
De l'homme auquel j’appartiens.”
Angelica recognized the song immediately, as did Ruby.
“That’s Édith Piaf,” Angelica said.
Her grandparents used to play her songs all the time.
“‘La Vie en Rose’,” Ruby said, “You have an over ninety year old song on your playlist?’
“What can I say?” Billy said. “I like the classics. I’m a bit of a romantic too.”
“Says the guy who never married,” Ruby said.
“Hey, I was kind of busy at the time, and you’re one to talk,” Billy said.
“Quand il me prend dans ses bras
Qu'il me parle tout bas
Je vois la vie en rose.”
“I hate to bring this up…but I don’t speak French,” August said, “What is she singing?”
“The song’s about finding true love and having a happy and peaceful life with the one you love,” Angelica said, “It became popular throughout France after World War II.”
“After the Angeloi were defeated, we began rebuilding,” Billy said, “Looking forward to a more peaceful future. One we could spend with those we love.”
“Il me dit des mots d'amour
Des mots de tous les jours
Et ça me fait quelque chose.
Il est entré dans mon coeur
Une part de bonheur
Dont je connais la cause.”
“We had hope for the future, back then,” Billy said, “We thought the worst was behind us. The Angeloi had no love for us, as you know. We thought the Loyalists would remember us and the many struggles we went through.”
“Then came the next ninety years,” Angelica said, “Things didn’t get as bad, but they didn’t get any better either. Same thing as always for us. Such is our lot. C'est la vie.”
Same thing as always: oppression of some kind. Some decades it was lip service and casual prejudice, other decades it was outright genocide.
“Best we got was the canonization of Saint Bernadette Soubirous—blessed be her name—and the 2029 Uberbowl,” Billy said, “We know how the Uberbowl turned out.”
The Uberbowl...that word brought back bad memories.
“Don’t remind me,” Angelica said, “I was there. The Lille Lilies didn’t deserve that fate.”
If only Olga had shown up there, things could've gone very differently.
“Seems like our destiny—whether we speak Normaund, Occitan, Brezhoneg, or François—is to be always screwed over for things that happened a thousand years ago,” Ruby said.
“But we can change things,” Tania said, “If we can take down Jerusalem, maybe we can build a better future for the French.”
“If things didn’t improve after the Angeloi, I doubt it will now,” Billy said, “We’ve been promised so much over the centuries. Every single time we’ve been disappointed, ignored, or straight up backstabbed. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.”
Angelica watched then continue eating the brioches.
“At least the reservations are gone,” August said, “And the prohibiting of the use of the French languages in public.”
All of the French people in the room stared at him. August nervously put down his brioche.
“You should be more familiar with the Augustinian Code, for a Schweinfurt whose family is oh-so-caring about social equity and fariness,” Ruby said, “The prohibition was inconsistently applied. They rarely enforced it in Normandy and Occitania, but they were more aggressive in the Île-de-France and central France. The Bretons had a complete exemption, for whatever random reason. Guess Friedrich the Glorious was feeling arbitrary or just really liked Celtic music.”
“The prohibition of French was a problem, yes, but not the main one,” Billy said, “Our ancestors were more concerned with the German settlers the Sigmaringens in Paris gave their land to. They stole our land and forced us onto reservations. They took our children from us and forced them to forget our culture and language.”
“Even a thousand years later, the Germans still treat us as second-class citizens in our own land,” Ruby said, “If we leave the lands traditionally designated as the French reservations, even if those legally no longer exist, we face dirty looks, bad credit, police profiling, rejected loans, redlining, and so on. They still stigmatize our culture and language, and these days they’ve brought back the abductions. Children are abducted all over France and taken east to be resettled into German families. They want to eradicate everything French now.”
“But you’re a German nobleman, so I doubt you even knew this was going on, let alone understand it, n’est-ce pas?” Angelica said.
“…touché,” August said, “I spent most of my life in Modena. Wanted to become a doctor and help people.”
“Fat load of good you’re doing, helping people,” Ruby scoffed.
“If you want, I can help treat wounds and stuff,” August said, “I studied advanced first aid in medical school. Could try helping out as a medic.”
“We’ll take you up on that offer,” Billy said, “But right now, we just need some medical supplies.”
“C'est lui pour moi. Moi pour lui dans la vie
Il me l'a dit, l'a juré pour la vie.
Et dès que je l’aperçois
Alors je sens en moi
Mon coeur qui bat
Des nuits d'amour a plus finir.”
After Julian and the others took a brioche each, Angelica finally picked up the thirteenth and final pastry and nervously bit into it. As soon as the bread hit her tongue, she gasped.
“Miam miam!” she said. “It does taste like how it used to! I can’t believe it!”
“What a miracle, that you managed to recreate the recipe after twenty years,” Billy said.
“A miracle indeed!” Angelica said.
“Have you thought about opening a bakery?” Ruby said. “You could share this with everyone. It’s truly brioche to die for.”
“And you could carry on the town’s legacy that way,” Billy said.
“I never really thought about it,” Angelica said, “It was just a summer job in high school, back when Baudet and CB were just minor names in the papers. Really only did it for the paycheck.”
She was being honest now. It was to raise money for studying for the Athanatoi entrance exams and then to pay for academy tuition.
“But you could do so much more with it now,” Ruby said, “This brioche…I could tell you put a lot of love into it. Love for your town. Love for your mother. It would be better called brioche à la mode de Angelica.”
“It’s probably a fluke,” Angelica said, “The next batch will probably be terrible. You know, I’m not cut out to be a baker. Especially after the last few years.”
“We keep telling you to not sell yourself short,” Billy said, “This is seriously something special. You do have talent.”
“I’m an Athanatoi agent, not a baker,” Angelica said, “I shoot people, not bake pastries.”
“Never too late to have a career change,” Billy said, “As I did.”
“Why did you join the Athanatoi to begin with, anyways?” August said. “Did you want to join?”
“Of course I wanted to join!” Angelica said. “My mom named me after Angela Hansen, an Athanatoi agent who investigated a case in my town involving Billy, Mom, and their classmates, and then came back two more times for similar cases. I still have the last selfie I took with her back in November 2015. Agent Hansen was my hero growing up. I heard stories of the cases she and her colleagues in the X-Division went on. And the legendary final case she cracked, the Sentinel scandal. Though now that I see it…unmasking Sentinel was responsible for weakening Merkel and the mainstream political establishment, allowing CB to come to power and eventually aid the Kaiser in his coup in 2030. Funny how Agent Hansen’s well-intentioned casework led to all this. The road to hell is really paved with good intentions, is it?”
“You’re dodging the question,” Julian said, “Did you want to join?”
“Well, I wanted to follow in Agent Hansen’s footsteps,” Angelica said, “It was only natural. She did so much for my mom and me, as well as Alençon, so I had to repay the favor by following her into the service and working under her friend, Director Frank.”
“So you were really only doing it for Agent Hansen,” Julian said.
“Oui,” Angelica said.
“But did you want to do it?” Julian said. “On your own? Not just for Angela Hansen’s sake?”
“What kind of question is that?” Angelica said. “I clearly just said I wanted it!”
“No, you only did it because you felt pressured to repay the favor Angela did,” Julian said, “Pushing aside your own wants and dreams for that. Being in the Athanatoi wasn’t something you strove towards on your own. You were always being pushed to do it by your own preconceived notions of repaying favors, when really you didn’t have to. Angela Hansen didn’t outright expect you to join the Athanatoi in exchange for her help. She wouldn’t have thought any less of you if you didn’t. She was simply doing her job each time she went to Alençon. Her job was protecting you, so you could do what you wanted. I met her in Bremerhaven too, and I remember never once her asking you to repay favors.”
“Un grand bonheur qui prend sa place
Des enuis des chagrins, s'effacent
Heureux, heureux a en mourir.
Quand il me prend dans ses bras
Il me parle tout bas
Je vois la vie en rose.
Il me dit des mots d’amour.”
Angelica thought for a moment. Julian was right, in a way. She had pretty much forced herself into the Athanatoi. All those weeks tirelessly studying for the Athanatoi academy entrance exams on top of her regular high school classes, practicing with a gun—she suddenly remembered how much she didn’t like guns back then—and doing all sorts of outdoors activities she didn’t like doing because she hated getting her hands dirty. And when she got in, she didn’t like the rigid schedules of the academy, or the constant drilling they did, or the combat training. Being assigned to the X-Division should have been a dream come true, but when the day came…it felt like any other. Nothing special. Just another day at the office, only this time she worked under the legendary Diana Frank. And yet she forced herself to go on missions, telling herself it was something she wanted to do, something she had an obligation to to do, and it was the fulfillment of all of her dreams. But she realized she had just been forcing herself to do it, to like her job out of respect for Agent Hansen—er, Angela, she should just call her Angela. The Director—er, Diana—did call her Angelica instead of Agent Haus. Even in the X-Division, she was still stuck up on formalities when they weren’t needed. After Bloody Tuesday…well, she had no choice but to stay in. Diana had entrusted her with all of her work on exposing the committee’s plot. Fat load of good she did. Now it was all futile. They trusted her, but her heart wasn’t even in it to begin with. What Billy and Ruby were forced to do, she had done willingly to herself.
“Look, I totally get where you’re coming from,” Tania said, “Growing up, I always wanted to copy my aunt. She was a cool spy back in the day—”
“Yeah, I know, Olga Kirova and Diana Frank were best friends,” Angelica said, “Almost like sisters. Diana always wished she’d visit. Funny how it works out, us meeting now, long after the Director’s death.”
“Fitting, really,” Tania said, “As a kid, I just wanted to be like her. A cool spy who took down bad guys and saved the day. So I did basically what you did. Forced myself into a military academy, pushed through the training…and then I realized, I didn’t like spy work. It was nothing as glamorous as it was in Aunt Olga’s time. To be fair, a lot of her stories were romanticized and cut out the bloody details, like what she did in Vienna and how exactly she fought her way out of Kiev and dragged Varennikov all the way to the border. All I ever did was file paperwork and stake out targets while playing Crazy Chickens on my phone.”
Crazy Chickens...that name evoked many fond memories from elementary school.
“So you became a sniper in the navy instead,” Angelica said.
“On a whim, I took classes in sniping,” Tania said, “And served on a naval vessel. Loved it. My commander thought I had very good aim and recommended I transfer. So I did. Best decision of my life.”
“Is that why you’re an admiral at such a young age?” Julian said.
“To be honest with you, I didn’t expect to make admiral so quickly,” Tania said, “I just wanted to practice my aim. Everything just escalated from there.”
“Maybe your mom or aunt pulled strings?” Ruby said.
“I’m pretty sure they didn’t,” Tania said, “Neither of them approved of my career choices, especially my aunt. She definitely didn’t want me to become a soldier like her.”
“Do you like being an admiral?” Julian said.
“It’s fine,” Tania said, “I’m still getting used to all of the paperwork and command stuff, but it’s really nice. Pays well too. But I guess I was lucky it was not too far off from where I started.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Angelica said, “For the record, I have been thinking about this for a while. With all this going on, I don’t think I want to go back to the Athanatoi, if things get better, if there even is an Athanatoi left. Do I even want to serve in the public sector, after the hell my own country put me through?”
What good was it to serve your country if it inevitably shot you in the back?
“Think about it,” Julian said, “You won’t have all of the answers you want immediately, but you will eventually.”
“Right,” Angelica said.
“Des mots de tous les jours
Et ça me fait quelque chose.
Il est entré dans mon coeur
Une part de bonheur
Dont je connais la cause.
C'est toi pour moi. Moi pour toi dans la vie
Il me l'a dit, l'a juré pour la vieuuuh.
Et dès que je t'aperçois
Alors je sens en moi
Mon coeur qui bat!”
The music stopped.
“What, that’s it?” August said.
“Were you expecting the whole album?” Billy said. “I could put on another—”
“No, I’m good,” August said.
Angelica also had had enough French classics for the day.
“So…what’s our next move, then?” Julian said.
“I don’t know, Billy said, “As I said, we’ve got nowhere to go.”
Another idea popped into her head. As a matter of fact, there was something else they could do. Somewhere else they could go. In the name of Alençon and the people who died here. In her mother's name.
“No,” Angelica said, “I think we do.”
“What do you mean?” Billy said.
“Ruby, you said children are being abducted from all over France, right?” Angelica said.
“Yeah,” Ruby said.
“How about we go rescue them?” Angelica said.
- 2
Of all the things it did not think Angelica was going to do I did not think it would be this but as the saying goes "idle hands are the devil's workshop".
Dude your family ruled Gaul/France for thousands of years how do not know French? Then again one similar scenario to this that I remember is Ptolemaic Egypt in were you had a Greek ruling class that lived separately from their Egyptian subjects.
Really interesting that part of ancient and modern French History. Angelica is right "The road to hell is really paved with good intentions".
Also the part in were she said that "allowing CB to come to power and eventually aid the Kaiser in his coup in 2030." makes me think that the Hohenzollern's will not survive the committee.
Hopefully when all of this is said and done Angelica does become a pastry chef. Who knows with her fierceness she could become female Gordon Ramsay?
Oh I know were this is going.
I do like how you are able to mix in the plots of different episodes from different seasons as opposed to just following the episodes in order. It will be interesting to see how you bridge the gap between the show and The Testaments when you finish the season 4 parallels.
Im pretty sure the Schweinfurt originated from Poland and then ruled Italy, most of North Africa and parts of Poland not under Habsburg control, never in France. That said, Saint Gunhilda is fondly remembered by the French as well as her native poles and likely Norse Andalusians, and many French soilders did serve under her during her campaigns throughout Europe, it’s one of the reasons she protected communities targeted by Fredrich the Glorious and Saint Wilhelmina despite them being family to her. Also I feel like French should be spoken in some parts of Italy considering that the Normans used to rule Sicily and southern France (and I hope they are still there as Norman Sicily from what I know about them was really cool and gave me similar vibes to Al Andalus, what with being a multicultural society for Byzantine Greeks, Italians/Lombards, French Normans and Muslim Arabs. Sadly it’s likely the Normans there have long since moved to Portugal/Lusitania after the conquest of the Mediterranean, either willingly or unwillingly).
Great update all around Zen. It’s good that Angelica was able to connect to her culture and her people despite her family being gone. Another thing I like about that these last few updates is that Billy and Ruby get to have their redemption arcs. After all this is over, it would be fitting for Angelica to retire from the Athantoi to take up something she loves like baking, feels like an appropriate place for her to end up. Angelica’s rescue attempt of abducted children go well and the children she frees aren’t too far gone in the Committee’s indoctrination program.
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Your right I had them confused with the Sigmaringen's since they had a similar sounding name at least to me.
Amidst the dystopian situation everyone is facing, it's always good to see things like this, just a group of survivors savoring some bread, listening to cultural music that still touches the hearts of its listeners. I say this again Zen, you certainly have come a long way from writing this megacampaign, the dialogues as well as Angelica's inner thoughts certainly made me smile. Billy is certainly right that at least a memory of the town is kept alive through this.
The committee: "Idle hands are the devil's workshop" puts the French in labor camps
The Sigmaringens ruled France, not the Schweinfurts. Though admittedly the way I installed them in France was gamey and I'll be reworking that to be more realistic in the future. Still working on the details.
Yes, Saint Gunhilda is a revered figure among the French, but she never directly ruled France. I do think some French moved to Italy or North Africa to serve her and her successors though. I like your idea of having French be spoken in parts of Italy, both from those who moved to Italy under Saint Gunhilda's reign and those who came with the Norman conquests. I'm currently floating around ideas for delving into the fate of the 11th century Norman conquests in the Mediterranean, as Robert Guiscard is an interesting person who was Friedrich the Great's contemporary and interacted with the Byzantines. I'm also thinking of talking about the greater Italian situation like the papacy (Kaiser Heinrich IV in real life caused the Investiture Controversy in the 11th century, which I've completely ignored so far but here could've influenced the later Mending of the Schism) and the Lombard/northern Italian nobility (like Matilda of Tuscany). And the more research I do into the Italian situation, the more I realize it connects with events in both the HRE and Byzantium through stuff like the Investiture Controversy and Robert Guiscard's exploits in Sicily. I feel there's a lot to flesh out about the second half of the 11th century as the era of Friedrich the Great deserves much more content than I currently have. This will result in some gameplay elements being retconned, but I've done a lot of that lately.
Officially, there are only three main line Hohenzollerns left: Wilhelmina, Joseph, and Friedrich. One nuke dropped on Tsarberg would easily take care of all three of them.
Angelica to the French: "Oh dear, oh dear, oh precious"
Angelica to the committee: "You frakking donkey"
At this point I've pretty much stopped directly adapting episodes, just lifting some ideas like the train escape scene, as the scenario is now going its own way instead of hewing to the Handmaid's Tale/Testaments story. I don't think I will directly adapt Testaments at all because as I said it relies on a timeskip and has a scenario that doesn't fit my plans
Angelica's character arc is really learning how to live for herself and do what she wants instead of hewing to expectations, living for someone else, and doing what she thinks others want. It's time she stopped trying to emulate Angela and Diana and started trying to be herself. Which is important when resisting a regime that forces people to hew to its expectations and do what it wants. Same goes for Billy and Ruby, who finally have the chance to choose their own destinies and redeem themselves for the crimes they committed under Sentinel.
Thanks. I put a lot of effort into this scene as I wanted to bring some hope and light into a dark situation, especially one where we see a place we're familiar with completely destroyed. It was interesting writing Angelica's turnaround, after several months of her closing herself off and stubbornly pushing towards Normandy. Sometimes, the simplest things have the greatest effect. Although the town may be destroyed, a part of it lives on in Angelica's pastries. She now carries the legacy of Alençon with her.
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Agreed, the era of Fredrich the Great could do with a lot of fleshing out. Some character development for Fredrich the Glorious would be appreciated as well, maybe in the form of the trauma of losing his parents to the Worm’s cult at a young age and having the responsibility of a Kaiser being thrust upon him, as he doesn’t have much content himself. I myself have some ideas for fleshing out Henrich IV to be a more nuanced character, including have his wife and spy master reluctantly join the Worm’s cult out of disgust for his violent deportation and assimilation policies in Italy and North Africa he pioneered and Fredrich the Glorious and Saint Wilhelmina expanded on, with their killing of Henrich being something they didn’t want but were forced to do.
I take it the Norman conquests means there would have been some FLM activity outside of France in places like Brittania, Hispania, Italy and North Africa, likely in collaboration with other cultural awareness movements for Arabs, Africans, Celts and Poles (because of their mutual respect for Saint Gunhilda) among other disenfranchised minorities before the Commitee’s rise to power.
Hopefully she can bond better with people around her, as opposed to shutting out people like Tania, who herself also tried to emulate Diana and Olga. She definitely does need to open up to those around her.
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I have a lot of ideas for historical figures who could have met Friedrich the Great. I want to specifically focus on the era on which he gained power, so the 1060s-70s, as there was a lot of political intrigue going on between Heinrich, the German nobility, the papacy, and the Italian nobility in real life at the time. Matilda of Tuscany was a significant backer of the Pope against Heinrich during the Investiture Controversy. With a point of divergence in 1066, the controversy likely still happened here, and there's no way Friedrich the Great wasn't involved in it. It might even set up the circumstances for the Worm cult to carry out Heinrich's assassination.
Friedrich the Glorious could also use some development too. I haven't focused too much on him at the moment, as I have been doing research for Friedrich the Great first, but I want to explain how he met Saint Gunhilda (I admit I used the console to kill off his wife just so he could marry Gunhilda, which I will retcon) and how he raised Wilhelmina. His trauma of losing his parents would be a good bridge between his and his grandfather's stories too. And that whole business with the Necronomicon just screams Worm.
Good ideas. I want to go over why exactly the assassination happened, but I haven’t had any details yet. I was thinking of tying it to the Investiture Controversy since that split the German and Italian nobility between Heinrich and the Pope, with the cult taking advantage of things to consolidate power within the Catholic Church and the nobility. I'm still trying to find out who the spymaster is from my save file as I don't have/can't find any screenshots involving him. I don't want to make him up from scratch.
Most likely, but they wouldn't be as influential or active as the groups in France proper.
Her days of rebuffing and shutting out those around her are over. She can learn a lot from Tania, and vice versa.
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Some reflection and nostalgia over pastries. A pretty wholesome chapter overall.
I’m also certain that Ida’s affairs began in this time, given it was Italian noblemen she was having affairs with, even if one of them was originally from Croatia before settling in Spoleto. I imagine there would‘ve been disagrements amoung Fredrich‘s supporters, notably the Sigmaringens and Habsburgs, when it comes to the Investuire controversy. And of course, many outside of the HRE would have their own opinions on the Investiture controversy as the Reich expanded, which I’m sure would lead to whatever fates they end up with when the two Fredrichs conqured them, notably in the case of groups like the French, Poles and Hungarians.
Those sound like interesting routes to flesh out his character, especially his relationship with Gunhilda. Oddly, I started getting some Azure Moon Dimitri vibes when we started talking about the loss of Friedrich the Glorious’s parents, which I guess kinda makes Gunhilda like Byleth. There’s also the circumstances that to Kirill being born from an affair between Friedrich the Glorious and Tsarista Sbyslava I where I’m sure you could flesh out Russia’s formation and relationship with the early Reich as well. On this note, I wonder ever happened to Novgorod during this time? I remember that being one of the most prominent cities and princely state of the Kievan Rus and pre Tsardom Russia before being destroyed by Ivan the Terrible, but it hasn’t been mentioned much here.
Considering that El Cid would still be around in Hispania in the latter half of the 11th century after the POD, I wonder how his life and career would be affected by the arrival of the Norse in Andalusia and if he or his descendants would meet and interact with Saint Gunhilda when she launched her campaign into Hispania decades?
Seeing how Christians will face a backlash from non Christian if and when Jerusalem falls, I wonder how common it would be for Christians to straight up reject the Kaiser and the Orthodox church once the Committee falls and embrace either new or old heretic movements, maybe in places that use to be strongholds of heretic activity like Illyria? That likely won’t happen after the Commitee’s supresion of heresy, at least openly anyway, but I could see this leading to the anti-heresy decrees being formally abolished four centuries later from when they should’ve been repealed. Either way, people looking at the Fifty Years War and the 17th century in general in a different way due to all the parallels that will be made to the Committee’s rise, which would be funny since the General Crisis also had a form of climate change in the little ice age. Speaking of which, is the Roman state system and the way you talked about the post Fifty Years War geopolitical changes in the 17th century’s Origins in Modernity post from EU4 a nod to OTL’s Treaty of Westphalia?
As a heads up, you may want to add @GhostRider124‘s Scandinavia update for Tianxia to the table of contents, I noticed it wasn‘t listed there with the other Tianxia updates.
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Now that you mentioned El Cid, yeah I'm curious to see if his descendants ended up fighting for the Reich when the crusade for Spain began, so among other things, I'm hyped for whatever plans Zen has for the two Fredreichs since no doubt a lot of retcons are going to be involved, plus we only saw them a couple of chapters mostly as background characters, even when Fredreich the Great kinda returned during those last few chapters in the CK2 portion as a ghost. More lore expansion is always welcome, helps fleshed out this universe more. I for one would like to see how in God's name did the Kaiser and the Tsaritsa of Russia have an affair and with no one noticing considering Kiril grew up as a Rurikid.
I was going to mention it when I posted the addendum to that update in were I cover the Hanseatic League and the Jomsviking that way Zen could post the links to both of them at the same time. But thank you CaptainAlvious for mentioning it.
Now that you mention it does sound strange that two head's of state can go and have an affair with anyone none the wiser. Also I thought Kiril was a Romanov?
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We need some real wholesomeness every now and then to counter Jerusalem's fake wholesomeness.
What I'm thinking is Ida is the one more involved in Italian/German politics while Friedrich is off crusading. The Investiture Controversy would split a lot of the nobility, yes. I'm thinking of having Matilda of Tuscany be a backer of Friedrich and possibly a friend of Ida who backed the Pope in the controversy against Heinrich as in real life, so Ida had to choose between one friend or the other. Maybe Friedrich and Ida back different opposing friends which leads to a falling out and possibly the affairs (although those happened after Friedrich had become Holy Roman Emperor and the controversy would be long over). The controversy happened in the 1070s so the Reich hadn't been restored at that point yet, but Friedrich could reach out to leaders outside the HRE for backing, particularly France and Byzantium which would tie into how France comes under Sigmaringen rule and how Friedrich negotiates the political marriage tying the Hohenzollerns to the Doukai. I have a note to involve Hungary in this as well but nothing yet.
All good ideas. It would make his story very interesting to work all this together.
Not sure about Novgorod. I'm sure the city still exists since I mention it later on, but I don't know what exactly happened to it.
I am thinking of ideas for El Cid and the Jimenas right now, particularly the princesses Urraca and Elvira who are mostly forgotten in the larger power struggle between their brothers who received whole kingdoms as opposed to Urraca and Elvira getting only cities. El Cid was known to have participated in the siege of Urraca's city of Zamora, so that could have gone differently here. Alternatively, he could have joined Friedrich's crusader army. Urraca and Elvira could have backed Friedrich as he was an outside party with no stake in Spain (at the moment) who still had political and military clout which could protect them.
I think most disillusioned Christians would just turn to atheism or agnosticism and not another heresy that while heretical is still Christian. Any post-committee government would certainly fully abolish the anti-heresy laws among other long outdated laws.
Yes, the Fifty Years' War geopolitical changes and the rise of nation-states is based on the Treaty of Westphalia.
It's been updated now.
The conquest of Spain is weird since I remember Friedrich the Glorious backing the duke of Barcelona against the Jimenas, but I could make it so that he also had backing from an older Urraca, Elvira, and El Cid. The Norse coming in through Leon and conquering almost all of the Islamic emirates in Andalusia would have also put significant pressure on the Christians to unite.
As for the affair with Sbyslava? I really don't know what happened. I barely remember how Sbyslava even united all of Russia to declare the Tsardom. I don't have many screenshots from that time.
The Romanovs are a cadet branch of both the Rurikids and Hohenzollerns.
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Since you said you have notes for how the Sigmaringens became rulers of France, I wonder if you have any notes for how the Habsburgs got the non Austrian domains they got, like Poland, Frisia and Lothringia, and how it would play into future events like Gunhilda's appearance in the historical record? I imagine their involvement in the Investiture controversy between the pope and Henrich IV would have something to do with it. IIRC, earlier parts of this AAR said that the Habsburgs also briefly held some land in the Balkans and Hungary too, but the Aprads and Magyar nobles got back the latter (through I'm pretty sure that's been retconned since then) while there's not much information about who owns Illyria, through I like to think the situation in the Balkans throughout this megacampaign is mostly Greek and German nobles ruling over a rebellious south Slavic majorities turned minorities with a slight streak towards embracing heretic movements after the Fifty Years War. Come to think of it, House Salian becoming the rulers of Venice and Bulgaria is pretty weird too.
There's also the matter of the arrival of other groups to Hispania like the Normans and Malians in Portugal after the conquest of Hispania that's bound to have an affect on the situation there and the unification of the Hispanic Christians, as well as the growth of the Sephardic Jewish community into a plurality in eastern regions like Catalonia right next to the Basques and France.
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