Don't we pity the poor civilians
Sitting beside the fire ?
Oh! Oh! Oh! It's a lovely war,
Who wouldn't be a soldier, eh?
Oh, it's a shame to take the pay.
The Confederation War
By the Grace of God, the Timeline diverged in 1756.
With the help of the Angels, the forces of the British-Prussian Coalition won a total and complete victory over the Hapsburg-French alliance. The French, ejected from the American and Indian continents, retreated to Europe to lick their wounds as the Protestant nations stand in triumph over the World. Discontent over taxes levied against the colonists boiled over in British North America, leading to a thirteen year insurgency dubbed the 'American Insurrection.' The British won this without little contest, and with the final defeat of the rebel General Washington at Yorktown, the Insurrection ended.
In 1789, with the British Parliament eager to rebuild relations with the American colonies, a compromise was reached between the British and North Americans. The terms agreed would be formalized with the Dominion Act of 1789, pardoning the surviving Insurrections and organizing the disparate American colonies - from Canada to the Caribbean - into the unified Dominion of North America.
Across the waves in Europe, the 'Great Confrontation' between the Kingdom of France and the United Kingdom would continue. Removed from North America and India, France focused its efforts on the Continent to thwart British influence. The first to fall would be the United Provinces of the Netherlands, brought into an alliance with the French through force of arms. The coalition between the Catholic Empires of France and Austria would remain fast.
In 1848, the Springtime of Nations wracked Middle-Europe. The eternal Hapsburg Empire, which had survived the Crusades, the Thirty Years' War, and the horrific Seven Years' War, was dissolved by revolutionaries marching through Vienna. The Hapsburgs not only lost the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, but also the Crown of St. Stephen and their Hungarian possessions. The rump Empire, weakened by still a force to be reckoned with, entered into a Confederation with the Prussian King and the countless dukes and princes of the former Empire.
The Confederation went to war for Schleswig-Holstein in 1851, liberating it from Danish rule, but grew increasingly weak in the face of tension between the Protestant north and Catholic south, which organized into blocs led by the two superior powers of the Austrians and the Prussians.
In 1853, the Russians attempted to force their influence over the Ottoman Empire for the rights of the Christians within the Holy Land. A gunboat flotilla was sent to the Dardanelles to force a settlement with the Sublime Porte, igniting the Crimean War - otherwise known as the Eastern Crisis. The French and the British, typically aligned against each other, allied temporarily to thwart the growing Russian menace. Even the Papal States, typically silent in Rome, called all Christians to arms in a Crusade against the Third Rome.
The chaos of the Eastern Crisis brought about the independence of the Balkans, the re-institution of the Roman Empire, led by the Greeks, and the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire. In the Treaty of Vienna, signed in 1856, Russia's position in the Levant was repuidated, their American colony in Alyaska was lost to the British, and Franco-British protectorates were established in the Holy Land and Egypt, respectively.
1861 saw the beginning of the American Brothers' War, caused by the underlying tension of the Southern Provinces following the Slavery Abolition Act of 1828 and the transportation of the former slaves to British West Africa. The American Republic rose up in defiance of British rule, leading to four years of bitter warfare between the Northern Provinces and the rest of the Empire. The fledgling Republic was aided by the Commonwealth of Texas - an independent Anglo-Saxon Republic formed in the wake of the revolution against Mexico in 1836 - and the Kingdom of France. However, the strength of the Royal Navy and the North American Army forced the Republic to capitulate, and ended the dream of the Americans for self-rule for the foreseeable future.
The year is now 1905, and Europe is holding its breath and all eyes look towards the German Confederation with apprehension and dread. It has been more than a century since a major war has ravaged Europe, and as the North Germans and South Germans align themselves and ready themselves for the final showdown over who will unify Germany, it is looking as though another will erupt in the same place where it started in 1756.
Bloody, drunk with madness,
You may cry, you may moan!
Oh! My native land!
What have you done to her?
Explanation
This roleplay takes place in an alternate world, where the British won a total victory over the French and forced them out of North America entirely and won against the American Patriots in the Revolution. The French Revolution never toppled the Bourbons, and Germany was never formed in 1871. Tension exists throughout the world as the great powers of Europe ready themselves for the final confrontation over who will rule. The Protestant powers of Britain, North Germany, and united Scandinavia are aligned against the Catholic alliance of South Germany, France, and Spain. The various bit players, including a disunited Italy (divided between the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Two Sicilies, and the Papal States), the Roman Empire, a resurgent Russian Empire, are ready to pounce and align themselves with whoever will grant them a place in the Sun.
Our story will start in one of the constituent nations, either Britain, Prussia, Austria, or France, as a group of friends before the War breaks out. When the War breaks out, we can choose to sign on to our country's military or to avoid the War. The larger the group, the better, and I think we can play this in many ways that make it world-building and to play a fun military game. There's really a lot of options we can do, and if this takes off we can figure out where we want to start and all that.
I'll do various votes in the OOC to see where we want to take the Confederation War, which will rapidly become our world's Great War, and see where it takes us. I expect Advanced-style posts; I'm not concerned too much about length but more about quality. If you can only write a paragraph, it doesn't bother me so long as it's well-written and provides for others to build off of.
If anyone is interested, please post up. I can build the world more or elaborate on my vision of it.
