Surt: Because it was in the GLP mainifesto and the UH was liberal enough (you can blame a persistent 1848 event chain for that.) It's foolish to assume that if say, a radical socialist party came to power (and this being Victoria, all socialist parties are radical) it wouldn't try to socialise as much of society as possible, assuming it had the legal and constitutional power to do so. If my POPs elect such a party and if my UH is staunchly socialist, I will persist in passing social reforms even if it makes absolutely no sense gameplay-wise to enact them, because that is what that party would do if power were invested in them in the real world. The same goes for liberals, radicals and everyone else.
As an author though, I do have a vested interest in making sure that the reigning party has as less support as possible. My election updates would be dull as ditchwater if the GLP won every damn election - that's one of the reasons I didn't add a conservative party at the start, for fear that it would all but monopolise elections as it did in my first Dutch AAR.
Densley: That's actually E. Blackadder's finest conjuring trick right there: managing to come up with a brilliant excuse while in a state of gross inebriation. Gerrit would do well to learn from such masters of the art... or not.
Placing Prussian Constitutionalism in hard and fast terms is always a bit difficult. My "in-depth" knowledge of the latter Prussian monarchs (for which my sole source is one BBC television drama made almost two decades before I was born) seems to suggest that Wilhelm's grandfather at least did buy into the concept of the Divine Right of Kings and enlightened despotism even though he presided over a parliament elected through an unequal (weighted) franchise. I therefore would define it as an Absolute Monarchy with a parliament: the monarch's powers are absolute in theory, but not in practice, as the threat of ending up as Charles I of England serves as a powerful deterrent. If Frederik or a successor chose to rule as a despot, he theoretically would have the constitutional and legal power to do so.
As for Egypt, definitely. Frederik would have surely annexed all of Egypt if he had he opportunity, it was only the urgent state of affairs at home who prevented him from doing so, hence the haphazard state of our Egyptian borders. When it comes to breaking the infamy limit or not, I tend to take the monarch's or Head of State's personality into account: Frederik's a Prussian, and therefore likes war and soldiering an awful lot, but he's also smart enough to know that going to war with half of Europe is not a very smart move. A timid monarch would have a slightly lesser infamy threshold than 25 (15 or 20 perhaps) while a fascist or communist dictator wouldn't care about the limit at all. from that we can infer that while Frederik would like to annex most of Egypt proper, he'd steer clear of the Ottoman claims (unless in a Bismarckian flourish he decided he deliberately wanted to provoke the Sultan in Constantinople) and would do so in such a way as to steer clear of almighty retribution from the concert of Europe. His generation fought Napoleon, after all.
And you're right on the map (it's by FWR at least, don't know his work well enough to guess which series it's from.) There was a threat in the OT devoted to those active some months back, so I guess the idea to post it at some point stayed burned into my memory because of that.
Tommy: I'm glad you enjoyed it, since I was worried while I was writing it that it might be too wordy for people. I can't reveal too much at this stage, but let's just say that Frederik's decision won't entirely be his own; events abroad will force or stay his hand to a degree. There will definitely be a change of government of some sorts.
Stuyvesant: As long as I know you're still out there and reading, feel free to take all the time you wish. You'll find out what happens to Schimmelpenninck soon enough.
As an author though, I do have a vested interest in making sure that the reigning party has as less support as possible. My election updates would be dull as ditchwater if the GLP won every damn election - that's one of the reasons I didn't add a conservative party at the start, for fear that it would all but monopolise elections as it did in my first Dutch AAR.
Densley: That's actually E. Blackadder's finest conjuring trick right there: managing to come up with a brilliant excuse while in a state of gross inebriation. Gerrit would do well to learn from such masters of the art... or not.
Placing Prussian Constitutionalism in hard and fast terms is always a bit difficult. My "in-depth" knowledge of the latter Prussian monarchs (for which my sole source is one BBC television drama made almost two decades before I was born) seems to suggest that Wilhelm's grandfather at least did buy into the concept of the Divine Right of Kings and enlightened despotism even though he presided over a parliament elected through an unequal (weighted) franchise. I therefore would define it as an Absolute Monarchy with a parliament: the monarch's powers are absolute in theory, but not in practice, as the threat of ending up as Charles I of England serves as a powerful deterrent. If Frederik or a successor chose to rule as a despot, he theoretically would have the constitutional and legal power to do so.
As for Egypt, definitely. Frederik would have surely annexed all of Egypt if he had he opportunity, it was only the urgent state of affairs at home who prevented him from doing so, hence the haphazard state of our Egyptian borders. When it comes to breaking the infamy limit or not, I tend to take the monarch's or Head of State's personality into account: Frederik's a Prussian, and therefore likes war and soldiering an awful lot, but he's also smart enough to know that going to war with half of Europe is not a very smart move. A timid monarch would have a slightly lesser infamy threshold than 25 (15 or 20 perhaps) while a fascist or communist dictator wouldn't care about the limit at all. from that we can infer that while Frederik would like to annex most of Egypt proper, he'd steer clear of the Ottoman claims (unless in a Bismarckian flourish he decided he deliberately wanted to provoke the Sultan in Constantinople) and would do so in such a way as to steer clear of almighty retribution from the concert of Europe. His generation fought Napoleon, after all.
And you're right on the map (it's by FWR at least, don't know his work well enough to guess which series it's from.) There was a threat in the OT devoted to those active some months back, so I guess the idea to post it at some point stayed burned into my memory because of that.
Tommy: I'm glad you enjoyed it, since I was worried while I was writing it that it might be too wordy for people. I can't reveal too much at this stage, but let's just say that Frederik's decision won't entirely be his own; events abroad will force or stay his hand to a degree. There will definitely be a change of government of some sorts.
Stuyvesant: As long as I know you're still out there and reading, feel free to take all the time you wish. You'll find out what happens to Schimmelpenninck soon enough.
