The New Western Roman Empire

The New Western Roman Empire:

Happy New Year everybody. Here is the map to commemorate the new year.

In this world Lothair I succeeds in his attempt to overthrow his father and manages to gain control of the entirety of the Carolingian Empire. Establishing a system of male primogeniture, a new stable empire is formed with a hereditary monarchy and a connection with the Roman Catholic Church.

The Holy Roman Empire sees relatively continuous expansion throughout the next few centuries, going on to conquer much of Central and Eastern Europe, assisting in the Reconquista and even contesting the Balkans with the Byzantine Empire. Eventually an enterprising emperor, worried of the rise of Turkic influence in the Middle East begins campaigns in the Middle East and North Africa. The idea of attaching religious motifs and connotations to these wars is also conceived which provides more popular support.

Of course the rot eventually set in. Muslims bounced back in the Middle East and North Africa and the united Holy Roman Empire shrank in size. Then a new claimant to the throne emerged and allowed a Renaissance which lead to reaction and dissent, pretenders appeared and tore chunks off and declared themselves the true Holy Roman Empire and religious divisions emerged that opposed the more politically affiliated Papacy.

The current Holy Roman Empire is a wholly Germanic state and formed from the Kingdom of Allemagnia.

The Holy Roman Empire is an aggressively expansionist state focused around 'progressive' politics. It is a constitutional monarchy with the progressive party holding the true authority in government. Other political parties do exist but their candidates for the position of arch-chancellor often end up being arrested on trumped up charges before every election.

The Holy Roman Empire follows a local Dissension denomination of Christianity. The government supports this faith as the nationalised nature of the church makes it much easier to dominate and co-op for their own purposes. Society at large is very religious with a focus on social traditionalism. The class system is very much in place though it is built more like a military hierarchy, showing the old martial traditions of Allemagnia. The aristocracy are, by tradition, very militant and often serve in the armed forces in some capacity. However by this point their relevance is diminishing thanks to the rise of the industrial urban elite, many of whom espouse actual titles and often adopt characteristics and manners of other nation's elite.

The Holy Roman Empire's primary competitor is the Empire of Iberia. Technically they also call themselves the Holy Roman Empire, a title they adopted after they conquered most of Italy and roped a good chunk of France into their orbit. The Iberian nations were never properly integrated into the Holy Roman Empire, instead remaining vassals and particularly troublesome ones at that.

Despite the importance of their European lands, the centre of the Iberian Empire shifted west to the Ascensions (ATL Americas) decades ago. Like OTL the Iberian nations were the first states to make it across the Atlantic and, thanks to weak Imperial control at the time, the Castilians were able to grab the best parts and even managed to hold on to them after that.

Iberian culture is far more artistic (some would say flamboyant) than their rivals in the Holy Roman Empire. A lot of Amerindian features and festivities have also been incorporated and have risen to social prominence now that the centre of power has shifted west to the Ascensions. The Iberians are very Catholic and take their control over Rome as a justification for uniting and ruling the other Catholic nations (a mission of dubious progress). Whilst their monarchy odes have more influence than their counterpart in the HRE, there is a senate that now holds most of the power. Of course the senate is largely populated by the rich but it is increasingly being filled with candidates from the urban elite who are transplanting the traditional rural aristocracy.

Thanks to handling the conquest of the local cultures a little differently, the population of Amerindians is greater than OTL. However they have, for the most part, been assimilated by the Iberians colonists and creoles. A minority of the aristocracy are actually descended from cooperative local elites.

The Anglican Union, a semi-federated descendent of the English Empire, is not exactly a great power but they are making their mark on the world. Their own internal fragility and their continued issues concerning race and regional self-governance versus centralised intra-national government tend to hamstring them. The Union has a decidedly post-racial attitude (with a hint of technocratic elitism) though there are still many issues with the potential inter-mixing of cultures and people that their new system would allow and the unfortunate reactions that have built up because of it. Westminster still runs the Union but by this point the other members are starting to flex their muscles, especially after the government forcibly began industrialising the old empire.

Sweden managed to luck out when they began their own colonial project in the Ascensions, even beating the Iberians to a lot of good land. Unfortunately their colony ended up overtaking them and now the Empire of Sweden is more known for New Sweden than the homeland.

Sweden managed to remain a much more powerful and expansionist state in this world and that has carried over to New Sweden as well. Having a better history of assimilating the indigenous populations of lands they colonise, the Swedish have done a better job of culturally converting the Amerindian peoples that still live within their lands. Even today a large portion of New Sweden's population is ethnically (if not culturally) Native American. Socially the Swedish are rather conservative, even if they can accept assimilating other people. They are not Catholic, instead following their own local Dissension denomination which they have also aggressively spread throughout their empire as much as possible.

New Sweden's government is a constitutional monarchy. The Swedish royal family moved to New Sweden in the 1930s along with the central parliament. This has created a disconnect with Sweden itself which is threatening to secede from their own empire. Sweden's other colonies are still run in the traditional manner though work is in progress to assimilate the people there as well.

India ended up mostly being partitioned between the various colonial powers that had a presence in the Indian Ocean. However the Marathastan Federation managed to remain independent, albeit frequently battered about. The Maratha have since recovered and have been slowly gobbling up the subcontinent for the past century. Through open war, active subversion of colonial control and quite a lot of luck, the Maratha have managed to free a lot of India. Their big break was the last war between the HRE and the Iberians where they were able to successfully steal Aquitaine's colonies in India. However they still have a very long way to go before they will liberate all of India and the question still stands on whether the regions they assimilate want to be a part of their federation or not.

East of Europe is the Confederation of the Rus. For centuries the Kievan Rus have stood as a bulwark of Greek Orthodox Christianity, fighting off attempts by Catholics, Dissensionists and Muslims to convert the region. Though they had trouble expanding east, they have been able to coax the more organised states of Sibir, Tartary and the Kazakh Khanate into several dynastic unions with their royalty over the centuries. Now the bonds between Kiev and their various allies and vassals are more formalised and the Slavic people have migrated into Northern Asia enough to even set a growing racial precedent for unity in the western portions of the Confederation.

The current Tsar of Kiev is an ambitious young visionary who plans to centralise the Confederation even further and finally bring the various nations together into a proper union. The Orthodox Church has already spread throughout Northern and Central Asia (butterflies led to Islam not catching on as well in the Kazakhstan region) which he believes calls for more unity and standardisation of laws and dogma. The government of Kiev is now in a game to win the support of the population and is using whatever methods they approve of to convince the people that a truly united nation is what they really want and need.

Technology is at about the same level as OTL 1940. Mechanised warfare was introduced to the world in the 1950s when the two main contenders for the title of Holy Roman Empire clashed over the remains of France. Tanks and aeroplanes have largely phased out modernised trench warfare by this point and submarines and aircraft carriers are about to dramatically change naval warfare forever. Poison gas has been used in warfare since the 19^th Century and was only recently outlawed by universal international convention.

Civilian technology is much the same as OTL 1940 as well. Cars are becoming increasingly available to the masses though prices do still mostly confine them to the upper and middle classes. Radios and newspapers are the primary means of dispensing news and information but cinemas are incredibly popular and televisions are also becoming more common. Zeppelins have largely been discredited due to their poor performance in war and the development of more sophisticated heavier than air technology.

In laboratories around the world, most of the major powers are trying to unlock the secrets of atomic energy. The splitting of the atom is no longer theoretical, in due time it could be a reality. Soon enough, the true power of nuclear fission will be made available and the world will change dramatically.