Post by hubertbartels on Oct 23, 2020 15:27:11 GMT -5
Tales of the Unicorn Club stories take place during the period of the Regency, in the years after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 . King George III drifts in and out of madness while his son, the Prince of Wales, acts as regent. Robert Jenkinson, the 2nd Earl of Liverpool is the Prime Minister. Lord Liverpool, a Tory, is an intelligent and capable statesman who becomes one of England’s longest serving Prime Minsters. He succeeded Spencer Perceval who was shot down in the House of Commons.
In opposition to the Tories was a loose coalition of people, headed up by Henry Brougham, Lord Grey, Lord Grenville and Lord Althrop. They were slowly building strength by reaching out to the growing middle class in England. The Whigs were not a party yet but moving in that direction.
The Tories appealed to the larger landowners in England; most of the elven and dragonborn houses preferred their policies. The dwarves of the rapidly industrializing Midlands supported the Whig ideas of a stronger Parliment.
England’s opponent in the last war was Napoleon Bonaparte and France. After escaping the isle of Elba in 1815, Napoleon returned to Paris and sent the king, Louis XVIII, running to Germany. The alliance of powers, England, Austria, Prussia and Germany mobilized their forces and marched out to defeat him again.
They met at Waterloo. Napoleon had handily defeated the Prussian army at the Battle of Ligny before meeting Wellington and his coalition of Anglo, Hanoverian and Belgian forces at Waterloo. The battle was hard fought and ended with Wellington's forces still standing across the Mont-Saint-Jean escarpment across the Brussels road. Unlike our time line, the Prussian forces never made it to the French lines, being held up in a thunderstorm created by magical means.
On the evening of the 18th of June, Napoleon sent out a flag of truce. He would agree to abdicate in favor of his son, the King of Rome, currently in Austria. France would be in a regency until the young prince came of age.
Wellington, his forces battered and down to their last reserves, agreed to the truce. Napoleon retreated back to France.
In the succeeding months, Wellington was feted and scorned for his decision. But Austria’s Emperor Francis I, seeing one of his grandsons ascend to the throne of France, agreed to the decision. His daughter, the Duchess Marie-Louise, returned to Paris with Napoleon’s son, Francis, the King of Rome. The Tsar Alexander I, now under the influence of the Baroness Julie von Krüdener, a mystic from Latvia and a rumored daughter of Baba Yaga, turned his attention inwards.
In the Tales of the Unicorn Club, France is a regency. Napoleon and Maria Louise act as regents until Francis, Napoleon’s son comes of age. England allows travel to France but her warships keep an eye on her harbors, suspicious of any attempt by the French Navy to challenge Britain's control of the seas.
Of the rest of the Allies that fought France, Russia has turned inward and backward as Tsar Alexander has turned to mysticism. Austria is almost broke from the many years of fighting Napoleon. Prussia has focused on assimilating its new provinces along the Rhine while Bavaria and the Kingdom of Saxony watch nervously.
The United States, is also assimilating the Louisiana Purchase while Native American tribes, warned by their seers and shaman, try to influence the politics of the new Republic. They had an ally in James Madison who supported their ideas. Native Americans did not take part in the War of 1812, and acted to strengthen the republic in all ways. Their biggest opponents were the wealthy landowners of the Carolinas and Virginia who saw the Native Americans as rivals for their lands. The Native Americans worried about the ever increasing numbers of slaves and undead used to work the plantations.