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#Post#: 58278--------------------------------------------------
Steampunk and the British Throne
By: honeybee42 Date: September 30, 2020, 10:07 pm
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Why gaming? Because this is RPG related.
So I picked up this book (Brass & Steel) which is a ruleset for
an alt-Earth Steampunk game (and I'm still thinking about
running a game with the rule set). Some interesting elements as
far as how the alternate history unfolded, but one thing that
does have me thinking is that the game sets the date as 1905 but
kept a "surprisingly spry" Queen Victoria on the throne instead
of letting that particular thread play as it did in the real
world.
Now, most of the steampunk I've read is set very solidly in the
Victorian period (1860s to 1880s for the fiction), but what
would be so earth-shatteringly different that it would be a
problem with the date as 1905 but Edward VII on the throne
instead of extending Victoria's reign even longer than it was?
#Post#: 58282--------------------------------------------------
Re: Steampunk and the British Throne
By: Aleko Date: October 1, 2020, 1:57 am
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International relations would have been totally different.
Britain and France had been traditional enemies for hundreds of
years; in the 1860s they found themselves on the same side in
the Crimean War but there was no undertow of sympathy. Victoria
had no interest in improving relations with France, which she
thought frivolous, immoral and (eeew!) Catholic, and no talent
for it even if she had. But Edward not only saw the need for
diplomacy but excelled at it; he set out to charm the French by
regularly visiting Paris, and simply dispensing bonhomie while
being seen to appreciate French cuisine, champagne, racehorses,
and not least, beautiful ladies. It looked like pure hedonism
(and don’t get me wrong, Edward was good at pure hedonism), but
there was method in it; by 1904 he was so popular in Paris that
he was known as “notre roi“ and had got the Entente Cordiale
between France and Britain signed, without which the fallout of
the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, and the course of world
politics, would have been very different.
#Post#: 58287--------------------------------------------------
Re: Steampunk and the British Throne
By: honeybee42 Date: October 1, 2020, 6:34 am
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Hmm--with that, it seems like it would be much better to put
Edward on the throne in the game, because the world background
info includes the Entente Cordiale as being in place (I'm
guessing that there are things that the writers, which are only
three individuals and not a big company, didn't fully think
through with their tinkering in the timeline). There's still
the Three Emperors League (Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary) in
the game, and of course the addition of magic and so forth, so
who knows how things might turn out as to whether there's the
assassination, some other trigger, or whether the world somehow
manages to avoid the world war altogether.
Of course, for the characters, it doesn't seem that it would be
much difference between saying "for king and country" vs "for
queen and country", so all in all it sounds like it would make a
whole lot more sense to make the minor change to let Edward
reign (and maybe the magic and such would even let him live a
little longer, though I'm not sure what the further
ramifications of that would be, but in this game world, German
doctors came up with a cure for hemophilia, which strengthened
their ties with Russia (and perhaps would have had an impact on
how that history plays out), if the game should go on as long as
that.
#Post#: 58290--------------------------------------------------
Re: Steampunk and the British Throne
By: Aleko Date: October 1, 2020, 7:45 am
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I have a soft spot for Edward VII, because around in 1901 in
Marienbad he doffed his hat gravely to my 11-year-old
grandfather. That's what I mean about charm. My grandfather was
a very small nobody, but Edward knew what mattered.
#Post#: 58297--------------------------------------------------
Re: Steampunk and the British Throne
By: honeybee42 Date: October 1, 2020, 8:42 am
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That is way cool.
The game is tilted toward an assumption that the PCs are British
subjects, and also has some setting changes with respect to the
Ottoman Empire (which ends up with Constantinople becoming
British, along with much of the Ottoman Empire as the British
Near East), with Constantinople as the setting for one module
and Egypt for another.
#Post#: 58337--------------------------------------------------
Re: Steampunk and the British Throne
By: Aleko Date: October 2, 2020, 2:15 am
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I wonder if they consider monarchs just as figureheads and don’t
really think that the personality of whoever who was on the
throne would make any significant difference to the course of
events? If so, their rationale might have been that people
generally equate steampunk with ‘Victorian’ and it might confuse
people who buy a steampunk game to find that the monarch of the
British Empire isn’t Victoria. (Incidentally, it did surprise me
to learn a few years back that the term ‘Victorian’ is often
used by Americans to refer to 19th-century American fashions,
attitudes, etc. Very odd. But I’d be even more surprised to
learn that they use the term ‘Edwardian’ in the same way.)
I’ve always wondered what would have happened differently if
Edward VII had been still alive and active enough to travel in
August 1914 (which he easily might have been, especially if he
could have cut down smoking). Could the “uncle of Europe“ have
schmoozed all his nephews successfully enough for them not to
have gone to war? I think it’s possible. Rebecca West reckoned
that the responsibility for starting World War I actually lay at
the door of Count Montenuovo, head of protocol at the Austrian
court, who insisted that it was out of the question for Franz
Ferdinand and his non-royal wife to have a state funeral, with
the result that none of the crowned heads of Europe came
together with the opportunity to talk; as they certainly would
have done if Franz Ferdinand had been buried with all the normal
ceremony due to the heir apparent of an Empire. And she
certainly had a point. Doubly so if one of the most powerful
monarchs there had been Edward, with all his diplomatic skills
and family seniority.
#Post#: 58342--------------------------------------------------
Re: Steampunk and the British Throne
By: honeybee42 Date: October 2, 2020, 6:57 am
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It could well be that they didn't see the monarch's personality
as being a significant factor, though I wonder why they didn't
just drop the date of game events back by ten or more years when
Victoria would've been on the throne anyhow (except then they'd
have had to fiddle with the date of the signing of the Entente
Cordiale or just not have it in place at all). Sometimes,
there's just so many down-stream effects to consider with
alternate histories. At first, I thought I must be missing
something about why Victoria should be kept on the throne for an
even longer reign, but it seems like the game writers missed
something about why Edward was important.
In any case, I don't see why Edward couldn't have been on the
throne at least 5-10 years longer than in the real timeline,
either from smoking less or through use of the magical medicines
of the game world. Even though PCs wouldn't actually meet him
(probably), the more I'm learning about Edward VII, the more I
like him.
#Post#: 58636--------------------------------------------------
Re: Steampunk and the British Throne
By: honeybee42 Date: October 8, 2020, 6:24 am
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And just in case someone reading the thread is interested:
Quintessence: The Hotaether Element
HTML https://r.rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=75724&date=1602130778
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