Stop taking inspiration from current events, dammit.
First the British economy, now “oops we didn’t think about how this law would affect incredibly popular services (religious attendance, IVF, etc.)
Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
First the British economy, now “oops we didn’t think about how this law would affect incredibly popular services (religious attendance, IVF, etc.)
The Bourbon Restoration: The Confederate States 1915-33
"...amendments to the Confederate Constitution could not be proposed by Congress to the states, but rather the same amendment had to be proposed by three separate state legislatures via constitutional conventions in those states, and then passed by two-thirds of state legislatures. This had been in part to avoid fears by the founding generation of Confederate politicians of a Congress hostile to the interests of the states pressuring them to swallow amendments they may not have wanted other than via broad consensus, and also in part to make it difficult to amend the Constitution to change components of it favored by the Confederate elite, namely slavery.
The challenge of passing the so-called Gunbarrel Amendments thus fell to Patton, and he could only commit in late 1917 to passing one of them - the abolition of slavery, rather than other acts extending broad equal rights to freedmen, which he knew was an absolute nonstarter and would need to be severely delayed, if it ever passed at all. Simply getting "the Third Amendment" over the line was going to be supremely difficult as it was. Thankfully, the total collapse of the slave economy and the deterioration of the Confederate society in 1916 served as a boost to this agenda - by September and October of 1917, when Virginia became the first state to propose the abolition amendment, it had become clear to most everyone in Charlotte that the freedmen were never going to voluntarily go back to being property, and that the United States would never allow that to happen, anyhow. The cat could not be put in the bag, and Patton's argument was that it was best to simply bite that bullet and then work as fast and hard as possible to restore "social order," which everyone understood meant whites at the top and Negroes below them.
In this endeavor, he was hugely assisted by his fellow Virginian Martin, who while a strong supporter of the planter class was a pragmatist first and ideologue second, and understood the dynamics as well as Patton did. Martin arranged to have the Virginia Legislature convened in Danville, near the North Carolina State Line, on September 30, 1917 rather than in Greensboro in exile as they had previously to avoid the question of whether the constitutional convention was convened "in" Virginia, and subsequently the state of Virginia on October 5, after much heated debate, passed an amendment declaring, "The act of bondage of a person as property to another person or to the State, with the exception of penal labor, is hereby abolished and forbidden." The Third Amendment of the Confederate Constitution had just been proposed.
Where it could be passed next was a more difficult calculation, especially as the question of how to even conduct the 1917 elections loomed. Patton and Martin, while allies, saw things differently, with Martin wanting to push ahead with more state conventions after the elections and polarize the question, where it was possible, around "ending the Yankee occupation," still convinced that Philadelphia would be satisfied merely with the Third Amendment and would leave by the end of 1918 if it were to pass. Patton was skeptical, to say the least. The explosion of activity by Forrest's NRO in the Midlands since the Anniston Declaration and hillboy activity across Dixie led him to believe that speed was of the essence, and he deliberately went behind Martin's back days after Virginia's passage to arrange for North Carolina to organize a convention in Raleigh on October 20th. Here, he ran into considerable resistance from the "Tar Heel Triumvir" of Julian Carr, Josephus Daniels and Furnifold Simmons, all down-the-line conservatives who were stubbornly hanging on to the idea of some kind of retained slavery once American occupation ceased, and with Patton and Martin both Virginians, they had already expended their single-state influence. Ben Tillman, still bitter over the legislative putsch that Martin had orchestrated in 1915, pointedly refused to rally ravaged South Carolina to the cause of the Third Amendment until it was the third state to do so, and demurred even then.
The issue thus did indeed slide into the elections in the first week of November, and "elections" is probably a strong word for them. Most Confederate Congressmen stood unopposed simply because there was no secure infrastructure for conducting elections in most states; where elections were held, competing hillboy militias faced off to get preferred candidates elected, and rumors quickly spread of not only insurgents stealing ballot boxes but also the US Army fudging results and freedmen attacking polling places in their fiefdoms. Scholars have, as an experiment, tried for decades to piece together what a free and fair Confederate election could have produced, to little avail; it was absolute chaos on the ground.
That said, the dynamics of the Congress were little changed, in part due to the lack of opposition to many candidates, and this indeed helped serve to bolster Patton's position. Many of Martin's henchmen were now being whipped to support the Amendment in the heavily-Martinite exile legislatures of Kentucky and Tennessee, which under the watchful eye of Yankee soldiers were temporarily returned to theaters and hotels on the nearest borders of their state lines to quickly hold "shotgun conventions," named so both for their resemblance to a shotgun wedding in speed and coercion and to the very real guns casually held by American troops on their periphery, to pass identical Amendments on November 20 and December 1, respectively.
The issue thus was to pass on to the states, where it was just as complicated to have legislatures in the Deep South having to try to maneuver full abolition as it had been to arrange the conventions in the first place. Oscar Underwood had just been ejected from the Senate by the Alabama legislature as it gathered in early December to cast votes, likely for his opposition to Patton but probably, one suspects, for his support of the Third Amendment, though his replacement in former Speaker Tom Heflin would in time advocate its passage. Officialdom from the Carolinas was determined not to budge unless they could go last, and states such as Florida and Louisiana where the preponderance of remaining slaves were concentrated were reluctant to move for fear of NRO violence.
Patton mulled a speaking tour through the country, but acknowledged it was entirely unsafe; the math was that he needed eight states to pass the Amendment, and he could only count on three so far. Accordingly, he made a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life. On December 21, 1917, as part of his "Christmas Address," he announced that he would resign the Presidency upon the passage of the Third Amendment. He took responsibility for accepting the provisions of Mount Vernon and acknowledged that "this humiliation at Yankee hands" was behind much of the violence in the Confederacy, and he stated that it was his view that "a new paradigm must be found in Charlotte for us to rebuild and heal together, but this cannot happen until the Yankee has evacuated."
Historians have debated what, exactly, Patton was thinking in sticking his own neck in the guillotine. At face value, he removed much of his leverage over other politicians, weakened as the Confederate Presidency was at that point; it also meant that he was essentially immediately making Tom Martin his successor-in-waiting, as there was little path to the Senate ousting Martin to replace him with a new President pro tem. On the other hand, Patton may have been savvier in that move than he has gotten credit for. The sentiments towards Patton by the most hardened supporters of the NRO can best be described by Forrest's own "Pronouncement from the Appalachian Foothills," a famous polemic of his that is still widely read in Confederate schools today, in which he succinctly stated, "There are "Four Horsemen" of ultimate betrayal - Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, and George Patton." While others may not have put it in quite such apocalyptic terms, the political class of the Confederacy did in many ways hold Patton responsible, helped in part by James McReynolds' numerous writings and speeches which laid "our civilizational humiliation" exclusively at Patton's feet and blamed his walk with then-President Hughes for his caving. So in that sense, Patton - who was no fool, contrary to what his enemies may have thought - likely understood that his Presidency was the price of abolition, and abolition was the price of peace. Patton's extensive post-Presidency biography never sought to portray himself as a martyr or noble hero, but he did state definitively that it was necessary for him to fall on his sword and step aside to allow things to move forward.
Nonetheless, Patton would not lose all his leverage, and it was clear to most legislatures as 1918 came about that Martin had little daylight from Patton in terms of advocating for a quick passage of the Third Amendment so that the Confederacy could start pressing the Yankees out cohesively. There was an incentive for voting him out of office via passing the Amendment, and lo and behold, whipped by Martin's chief lieutenant Duncan Upshaw Fletcher, the Florida legislature next passed the Amendment in early February. Movement was coming - it was just a question of how quickly..."
- The Bourbon Restoration: The Confederate States 1915-33
(I'll cop immediately to the fact that I'm not entirely pleased with this thumb on the scale for ending slavery and getting those Amendments passed, and this is more me just needing a solution that can explain away the issue that would dominate Confederate legislatures in 1917)
The challenge of passing the so-called Gunbarrel Amendments thus fell to Patton, and he could only commit in late 1917 to passing one of them - the abolition of slavery, rather than other acts extending broad equal rights to freedmen, which he knew was an absolute nonstarter and would need to be severely delayed, if it ever passed at all. Simply getting "the Third Amendment" over the line was going to be supremely difficult as it was. Thankfully, the total collapse of the slave economy and the deterioration of the Confederate society in 1916 served as a boost to this agenda - by September and October of 1917, when Virginia became the first state to propose the abolition amendment, it had become clear to most everyone in Charlotte that the freedmen were never going to voluntarily go back to being property, and that the United States would never allow that to happen, anyhow. The cat could not be put in the bag, and Patton's argument was that it was best to simply bite that bullet and then work as fast and hard as possible to restore "social order," which everyone understood meant whites at the top and Negroes below them.
In this endeavor, he was hugely assisted by his fellow Virginian Martin, who while a strong supporter of the planter class was a pragmatist first and ideologue second, and understood the dynamics as well as Patton did. Martin arranged to have the Virginia Legislature convened in Danville, near the North Carolina State Line, on September 30, 1917 rather than in Greensboro in exile as they had previously to avoid the question of whether the constitutional convention was convened "in" Virginia, and subsequently the state of Virginia on October 5, after much heated debate, passed an amendment declaring, "The act of bondage of a person as property to another person or to the State, with the exception of penal labor, is hereby abolished and forbidden." The Third Amendment of the Confederate Constitution had just been proposed.
Where it could be passed next was a more difficult calculation, especially as the question of how to even conduct the 1917 elections loomed. Patton and Martin, while allies, saw things differently, with Martin wanting to push ahead with more state conventions after the elections and polarize the question, where it was possible, around "ending the Yankee occupation," still convinced that Philadelphia would be satisfied merely with the Third Amendment and would leave by the end of 1918 if it were to pass. Patton was skeptical, to say the least. The explosion of activity by Forrest's NRO in the Midlands since the Anniston Declaration and hillboy activity across Dixie led him to believe that speed was of the essence, and he deliberately went behind Martin's back days after Virginia's passage to arrange for North Carolina to organize a convention in Raleigh on October 20th. Here, he ran into considerable resistance from the "Tar Heel Triumvir" of Julian Carr, Josephus Daniels and Furnifold Simmons, all down-the-line conservatives who were stubbornly hanging on to the idea of some kind of retained slavery once American occupation ceased, and with Patton and Martin both Virginians, they had already expended their single-state influence. Ben Tillman, still bitter over the legislative putsch that Martin had orchestrated in 1915, pointedly refused to rally ravaged South Carolina to the cause of the Third Amendment until it was the third state to do so, and demurred even then.
The issue thus did indeed slide into the elections in the first week of November, and "elections" is probably a strong word for them. Most Confederate Congressmen stood unopposed simply because there was no secure infrastructure for conducting elections in most states; where elections were held, competing hillboy militias faced off to get preferred candidates elected, and rumors quickly spread of not only insurgents stealing ballot boxes but also the US Army fudging results and freedmen attacking polling places in their fiefdoms. Scholars have, as an experiment, tried for decades to piece together what a free and fair Confederate election could have produced, to little avail; it was absolute chaos on the ground.
That said, the dynamics of the Congress were little changed, in part due to the lack of opposition to many candidates, and this indeed helped serve to bolster Patton's position. Many of Martin's henchmen were now being whipped to support the Amendment in the heavily-Martinite exile legislatures of Kentucky and Tennessee, which under the watchful eye of Yankee soldiers were temporarily returned to theaters and hotels on the nearest borders of their state lines to quickly hold "shotgun conventions," named so both for their resemblance to a shotgun wedding in speed and coercion and to the very real guns casually held by American troops on their periphery, to pass identical Amendments on November 20 and December 1, respectively.
The issue thus was to pass on to the states, where it was just as complicated to have legislatures in the Deep South having to try to maneuver full abolition as it had been to arrange the conventions in the first place. Oscar Underwood had just been ejected from the Senate by the Alabama legislature as it gathered in early December to cast votes, likely for his opposition to Patton but probably, one suspects, for his support of the Third Amendment, though his replacement in former Speaker Tom Heflin would in time advocate its passage. Officialdom from the Carolinas was determined not to budge unless they could go last, and states such as Florida and Louisiana where the preponderance of remaining slaves were concentrated were reluctant to move for fear of NRO violence.
Patton mulled a speaking tour through the country, but acknowledged it was entirely unsafe; the math was that he needed eight states to pass the Amendment, and he could only count on three so far. Accordingly, he made a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life. On December 21, 1917, as part of his "Christmas Address," he announced that he would resign the Presidency upon the passage of the Third Amendment. He took responsibility for accepting the provisions of Mount Vernon and acknowledged that "this humiliation at Yankee hands" was behind much of the violence in the Confederacy, and he stated that it was his view that "a new paradigm must be found in Charlotte for us to rebuild and heal together, but this cannot happen until the Yankee has evacuated."
Historians have debated what, exactly, Patton was thinking in sticking his own neck in the guillotine. At face value, he removed much of his leverage over other politicians, weakened as the Confederate Presidency was at that point; it also meant that he was essentially immediately making Tom Martin his successor-in-waiting, as there was little path to the Senate ousting Martin to replace him with a new President pro tem. On the other hand, Patton may have been savvier in that move than he has gotten credit for. The sentiments towards Patton by the most hardened supporters of the NRO can best be described by Forrest's own "Pronouncement from the Appalachian Foothills," a famous polemic of his that is still widely read in Confederate schools today, in which he succinctly stated, "There are "Four Horsemen" of ultimate betrayal - Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, and George Patton." While others may not have put it in quite such apocalyptic terms, the political class of the Confederacy did in many ways hold Patton responsible, helped in part by James McReynolds' numerous writings and speeches which laid "our civilizational humiliation" exclusively at Patton's feet and blamed his walk with then-President Hughes for his caving. So in that sense, Patton - who was no fool, contrary to what his enemies may have thought - likely understood that his Presidency was the price of abolition, and abolition was the price of peace. Patton's extensive post-Presidency biography never sought to portray himself as a martyr or noble hero, but he did state definitively that it was necessary for him to fall on his sword and step aside to allow things to move forward.
Nonetheless, Patton would not lose all his leverage, and it was clear to most legislatures as 1918 came about that Martin had little daylight from Patton in terms of advocating for a quick passage of the Third Amendment so that the Confederacy could start pressing the Yankees out cohesively. There was an incentive for voting him out of office via passing the Amendment, and lo and behold, whipped by Martin's chief lieutenant Duncan Upshaw Fletcher, the Florida legislature next passed the Amendment in early February. Movement was coming - it was just a question of how quickly..."
- The Bourbon Restoration: The Confederate States 1915-33
(I'll cop immediately to the fact that I'm not entirely pleased with this thumb on the scale for ending slavery and getting those Amendments passed, and this is more me just needing a solution that can explain away the issue that would dominate Confederate legislatures in 1917)
the most progressive Confederate opinion at the moment is probably no lynch mobs segregation...
but progress needs to start somewhere
and I theorize one or two CSA states will probably be better off in order to form a base for the eventual civil rights reckoning plus Kentucky
Oscar Underwood is the one halfway decent Confederate national politician - so of course he gets kicked out of the Senate lol.
There is not going to be a Fourth Amendment isn't it? If Patton is going to resign over this, then Martin will not take the risk either by passing a ala OTL 14th Amendment in the Confederate Constitution. The problem it is literally required in the treaty as condition for withdrawal of occupation: "amendments to the Constitution protecting the rights and privileges of all persons born free shall be expected in return for a suspension of occupation."
Considering it's election year in America. Root, perhaps sensing how unpopular his admistration is. Starts gradually pulling troops out of the Confederacy as soon the third passes. Although there a chance considering how easily swayed he is, that Lodge will force him into maintaining occupation to follow through.
There also a posibility that either a future bourbon admistration or Long himself will follow through on that term.
He going flee the country as soon he resigns right? Imagine him being esorted by the US Army via train out of the Confederacy. OTL he died in San Marino, California in 1927.
Is this the beginning of a 15 year long era or warlord-ism?
Just realized that, if Martin suceeded Patton, that he's going to have a very short Presidency indeed. He died in 1919 in OTL - and so the CSA, in addition to everything else, is going to go through at least four different Presidents in about 3 years, two of whom were never voted on by the public. Which .... goes a long way to helping to explain the state of the Confederacy during the 1920s!
The Matriarch: Empress Margarita Clementina and the Emergence of a Modern Mexico
"...strongest reluctance came, perhaps unsurprisingly, from Louis Maximilian. The Crown Prince, as this book has studiously tried to document, was not an outwardly warm man, especially outside of the confines of the Imperial family. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a man who was shot in the face and lost his left eye at his first communion as a child, he was suspicious of people he did not know, was instinctively untrusting, and kept a very intimate circle of confidants, a circle that after nearly thirty years of marriage, despite his legendary infidelity, including Margarita Clementina and their three eldest sons. "To have earned Louis Maximilian's loyalty is not difficult, for he is not a duplicitous man by nature," Bernardo Reyes once commented. "But to earn his trust? Earn his trust, and you have made the fiercest friend for life."
As such, the Crown Prince was the biggest roadblock to the plans swirling the Chapultepec to impose a Regency Council on Mexico. He would hear nothing of the arguably less extreme alternative - the Emperor's abdication and peaceful convalescence in whatever years the eighty-five year-old Maximilian had left - not only because he explicitly viewed it as standing "athwart God's will" but because he took it as a personal insult to his father, after fifty-five years on the Mexican throne, "to have to decamp the city into exile now in his twilight of life." Suffice to say, others in the Imperial family did not feel that. Agustin de Iturbide y Green, his adoptive cousin, was at the head of the abdication faction along with his sons, angrily arguing that the Emperor's frail physical and deteriorating mental state made it an impossibility for him to execute his constitutional duties, which under the Mexican system at that time were still substantial; behind closed doors, Agustin openly questioned whether Maximilian knew the name of Bernardo Reyes and derided him as an embarrassment. Louis Maximilian, upon hearing of this, accused Agustin of simply wanting to further his reactionary political goals and suggested brusquely to a friend that his cousin "swim out to his brother," a crude joke about the death of Prince Salvador in the Battle of Cozumel.
It was Francisco Jose and Carlos who hoped to identify some sort of middle path. The elder of the two, having never quite recovered from his wounds sustained at Los Pasos, pointed out that he himself had debated foregoing his birthright in favor of his brother due to his injuries, and while he was in better shape by late 1917 than he had been on death's door just three years earlier, he nonetheless understood the impulses of those who were concerned the Emperor was in rapid decline, or soon would be. Carlos was more circumspect, but pointed out the numerous crises of the last five years, even before the war; the monarchy had never been more fragile, and as he eloquently put it, "To force Grandfather to stay on the throne to deteriorate alongside its legitimacy may force the Crown to die with him." His chief concern was the perseverance of the Empire, well aware that a Mexican republic would likely represent the same anarchy that had plagued the country before Maximilian, and the open secret that the Emperor's age and health were severely limiting his public interactions was lethal for an Emperor who had always built his legitimacy with his public on his relationship with the public.
Carlota's intervention was the final one - she took the Crown Prince aside on the afternoon of December 10, 1917, and walked through the Chapultepec gardens, speaking idly about what the palace had looked like when she had arrived in Mexico, and when he'd been born, finally meandering to the point she was trying to make - his father was perhaps not as mentally incompetent as the claims were, but he had definitely lost a step or two just in the last two years, and the struggles were worsening. She predicted, incorrectly, that Maximilian was about to see his last Christmas, and suggested that the Regency was in part his idea, a way for him to preserve some dignity his last year in life while not having to abdicate the throne. Louis Maximilian was still highly reluctant, but he had always been easily swayable by his mother, and he finally conceded.
As such, on December 17, a document was drafted and put before Emperor Maximilian - which he by all accounts signed fully lucid - in which he declared his son Louis Maximilian the Imperial Regent of Mexico, handling day-to-day tasks of government on his behalf while leaving all ceremonial functions to the Emperor. It was a unique, modern document, delineating specific areas of regency rather than a broad claim of power, designed to take Mexican constitutionalism into account. The Regency was affirmed by the Imperial Assembly on January 8, and with that it took the force of law. A new day was on the Mexican horizon - the hour of Louis Maximilian was at hand, even if it was not his head the crown rested on.
Yet."
- The Matriarch: Empress Margarita Clementina and the Emergence of a Modern Mexico
As such, the Crown Prince was the biggest roadblock to the plans swirling the Chapultepec to impose a Regency Council on Mexico. He would hear nothing of the arguably less extreme alternative - the Emperor's abdication and peaceful convalescence in whatever years the eighty-five year-old Maximilian had left - not only because he explicitly viewed it as standing "athwart God's will" but because he took it as a personal insult to his father, after fifty-five years on the Mexican throne, "to have to decamp the city into exile now in his twilight of life." Suffice to say, others in the Imperial family did not feel that. Agustin de Iturbide y Green, his adoptive cousin, was at the head of the abdication faction along with his sons, angrily arguing that the Emperor's frail physical and deteriorating mental state made it an impossibility for him to execute his constitutional duties, which under the Mexican system at that time were still substantial; behind closed doors, Agustin openly questioned whether Maximilian knew the name of Bernardo Reyes and derided him as an embarrassment. Louis Maximilian, upon hearing of this, accused Agustin of simply wanting to further his reactionary political goals and suggested brusquely to a friend that his cousin "swim out to his brother," a crude joke about the death of Prince Salvador in the Battle of Cozumel.
It was Francisco Jose and Carlos who hoped to identify some sort of middle path. The elder of the two, having never quite recovered from his wounds sustained at Los Pasos, pointed out that he himself had debated foregoing his birthright in favor of his brother due to his injuries, and while he was in better shape by late 1917 than he had been on death's door just three years earlier, he nonetheless understood the impulses of those who were concerned the Emperor was in rapid decline, or soon would be. Carlos was more circumspect, but pointed out the numerous crises of the last five years, even before the war; the monarchy had never been more fragile, and as he eloquently put it, "To force Grandfather to stay on the throne to deteriorate alongside its legitimacy may force the Crown to die with him." His chief concern was the perseverance of the Empire, well aware that a Mexican republic would likely represent the same anarchy that had plagued the country before Maximilian, and the open secret that the Emperor's age and health were severely limiting his public interactions was lethal for an Emperor who had always built his legitimacy with his public on his relationship with the public.
Carlota's intervention was the final one - she took the Crown Prince aside on the afternoon of December 10, 1917, and walked through the Chapultepec gardens, speaking idly about what the palace had looked like when she had arrived in Mexico, and when he'd been born, finally meandering to the point she was trying to make - his father was perhaps not as mentally incompetent as the claims were, but he had definitely lost a step or two just in the last two years, and the struggles were worsening. She predicted, incorrectly, that Maximilian was about to see his last Christmas, and suggested that the Regency was in part his idea, a way for him to preserve some dignity his last year in life while not having to abdicate the throne. Louis Maximilian was still highly reluctant, but he had always been easily swayable by his mother, and he finally conceded.
As such, on December 17, a document was drafted and put before Emperor Maximilian - which he by all accounts signed fully lucid - in which he declared his son Louis Maximilian the Imperial Regent of Mexico, handling day-to-day tasks of government on his behalf while leaving all ceremonial functions to the Emperor. It was a unique, modern document, delineating specific areas of regency rather than a broad claim of power, designed to take Mexican constitutionalism into account. The Regency was affirmed by the Imperial Assembly on January 8, and with that it took the force of law. A new day was on the Mexican horizon - the hour of Louis Maximilian was at hand, even if it was not his head the crown rested on.
Yet."
- The Matriarch: Empress Margarita Clementina and the Emergence of a Modern Mexico
With this discussion of Mexican Monarchy, it reminds me that we haven't heard from our favorite Belgian royal, Stephane Clement, in a while. However, I'm *quite* sure we'll hear from him later iTTL. There is still a part of me that wants to see him *personally* be the cause of the war. (Assaulting a German Princess and the Queen runs in and witnesses it, etc.)
You know, Louis Maxamillian comes off as ... kinda sweet, actually. Obviously had a traumatic experience in his childhood which he still struggles with: but he's loyal to his father, family and friends, and really does seem to want to put their interests, and the interests of Mexico, above his own personal goals. And that's kind of heartwarming. It also says a lot that despite his lack of faithfulness, his wife is in his inner circle.
I'm going to be interested in seeing his influence on Mexico during the Regency and, hopefully, his own reign.
I'm going to be interested in seeing his influence on Mexico during the Regency and, hopefully, his own reign.
It won’t
Underwood is actually a pretty honorable guy by the standards of his time - he was vehemently against the Klan, for instance.
Treaties can say all kinds of things, but if neither party in the US wants to maintain the occupation, then it’s text is just words
Maybe, that’s not a terrible idea
More or less
How so?
Mmmhmmm
We’ve got some Belgium content queued up for early 1918
LM was originally conceived to me as a villain but over time as I wrote him he just became a decent but flawed man living forever in his father’s very long shadow (there’s some Charles III vibes to him in this sense).
Figured. And Really hoping to see more of max with what little time he has left, he's the MC after all!
Can we get a list of Warlords?
Yay!!! More Cartoonishly evil royals!(not that I mind it...)
Simply ordered US army detachments to demobilize outside of southern plantations. I’m sure if the black population of the CSA was all armed and de facto emancipated than simply recognizing that fact would be a bit easier