Well, it’s pretty clear the Sun hasn’t been doing much to London recently. But the Victorian era was the height of the British Empire. What happened to it now that its capital is underground and can only be reached through Naples?
London apparently still has some importance internationally, since the Great Game has reached its heyday there (although it seems they’re now just playing for the game itself, rather than Afghanistan). But since once you come to the Neath, you usually don’t leave, wouldn’t it be hard to run a surface empire? Has London lost its colonies? Does it even still rule the British Isles?
The most plausible explanations that I’ve heard is that Prussia has sort of glommed on to what’s left to the Empire, since one of Vicky’s kids is ruling the place.
I like to think that Saki’s novel “When William Came”, which is about the main character being Very Shocked that prim Edwardian society functions just as well under Prussian rule as English, is a reasonably close version of what the Surface Englanders make of the changes (everyone besides the main character has just accepted it and got on with their lives.)
Preußens Gloria!
There’s some indication that England, and perhaps Britain as a whole, still exists. I think it was mentioned Prince Edward remained on the Surface to manage Surface Britain.
I believe it was mentioned that London’s change of venue has made England more distant from European politics, creating a power vacuum with far-reaching implications. I forget where exactly this was stated or implied. If I were to guess, either the Empress’ Shadow, or The Waltz That Moved The World.
I do think Britain has lost a great deal of power and influence, no longer the grand Empire it had been before the Fall. Don’t tell that to Londoners, though.
Only the Empress’ Shadow remained on the surface.
Prussia might have filled the European power vacuum, but that wouldn’t affect the Empire much. All of Prussia’s ports are on the Baltic; it’s easy enough for Russia, France, or whichever power might please to hold the Straits against Prussia and shut her out of the high seas entirely. Historically, no German colonies appeared until Germany was united (which incidentally gave them access to much handier North Sea ports like Hamburg), and even then the German colonies in Africa and the Pacific were mostly in areas nobody else cared to bother with.
Entirely speculative, but to my mind the likeliest consequence of the Fall would be earlier independence for major colonies like Canada and Australia (with or without a Commonwealth system? unknown). Also, it’s probable that the significant expansion of the Empire between 1850 and 1920 would have slowed or halted, meaning colonies like Hong Kong might never have existed.
Again, still speculative, but my guess is that the big winner would be France. After Portugal and Spain were eclipsed, Britain and France were the chief imperial powers, and limiting British presence in Africa and Asia would have been much to their benefit. Russia is also a probable winner, being unopposed in Central Asia and probably the eastern Mediterranean as well. (I am assuming that France would not be as willing to keep the Russians out of Constantinople if she had to do it alone.) The biggest losers would be the peripheral powers whose independence required either British backing (a la the Ottoman Empire) or balancing British and French influence (a la Siam). Where British presence had been most firmly established (India, Canada, etc.), it might very well be that not much has changed.
It is important to note that, by and large, the formidable Royal Navy would have been almost entirely intact after the Fall. Nineteenth-century British military doctrine demanded that the Navy, foundation of British power and safeguard of the Empire, be at least as large as the next two navies put together. While the Navy would have lost many leaders to the Neath, and perhaps a few vessels anchored at Greenwich, its physical strength would have been undiminished; that alone is enough to guarantee Surface Britain a place among the Great Powers. The only real question is whether the Empire still had the wherewithal to transition its naval strength into iron vessels and (ultimately) the dreadnoughts for which our Britain became famous.
The fate of the Imperial Navy is an interesting question all in itself. It would require a lot of retrofitting to accomodate the entirety of it to the conditions of the Zee, but it most certainly wouldn’t just sit at Dover or wherever for all these years. Also, from Sunless Sea we know that the portion of the Navy that did come down is currently in shambles, due to the war with Hell and the New Sequence. Why wasn’t it reinforced through the Cumaean Canal then? I’d guess that the fleet on the surface is no longer controlled by the powers residing in Fallen London, or there is no surface fleet at all - it was either disbanded, they deserted, or were brought into the Neath and suffered the consequences.
The Royal Navy would be stationed all over the world. Malta. Halifax. Cape Town. Aden. Bombay. Singapore. Sidney. No doubt in the early years (before communication was established with the Surface, or the Cumaean Canal constructed) the remains of the Admiralty continued business as usual, as much as it could. Even after the Canal’s opening, there’s not been anything I’ve heard (though others might know something I do not) that suggests any significant portion of the Royal Navy made the trip to the Neath. The Surface Admiralty no doubt has enough to do keeping the French out of India and maintaining British rights in the ports of China to worry about the remote outpost that is Fallen London.
It may even be (given the rigmarole you go through getting your own ship) that London’s naval shipyards are covered in the purchase agreement, and therefore probably as much in Mr. Iron’s hands as is the rest of Wolfstack.
I do wonder which city is now capital of England.
Hang about. There’s no chance it’s Edinburgh, is there?
(that would explain why there’s no Scots in the Neath)
Perhaps the government reformed at Reading or some other town just outside the hole-that-was-London. However, I think Edinburgh’s got as good a shot as any place, with its ancient governmental ties.
That said, I must correct you: Every time I put out to Zee I rescue dozens of taciturn Scotsmen. Pushing your engines past the breaking point seems to be the Scottish national pastime down here.
whistles “Those Magnificent Men in the Flying Machines”
You’re right. I’d forgotten about that.
Paris is mentioned frequently in content relating to the Great Game, and I think I remember hearing somewhere that France is now the "dominant" Surface power… but that could’ve been speculation.
Seems highly unlikely that Edinburgh would ever be the capital of England. It might well be the capital of whatever has replaced the United Kingdom (if indeed there is a successor state rather than the whole simply being governed from the end of a rather long speaking-tube), but Edinburgh being the capital of England is about as likely as Richmond, Virginia becoming the capital of Massachusetts.
Some amount of misinformation must be confusing the general public, at least. Even in Naples they don’t fully believe your tales about London.
To be fair, your tales include devils bargaining for souls, star-letters that burn your hair off, an underground sea that warps time and space, honey that physically transports you into a dream, and cats that talk.
I’m pretty sure the folks in Naples think Neathers have just honed the art of nautical embellishment to a ludicrous extent.
As far as the Empire goes, I agree with Siankan. For a modern American comparison imagine if Washington DC suddenly disappeared. The implications might be colossal locally and would leave a power vaccuum but it wouldn’t suddenly dismantle America’s armies or manpower. In a similar fashion how powerful the British Empire remains depends on how much their enemies were able to exploit the sudden disappearance of England’s most famous city. What little evidence we have of the Surface suggests things are much the same as they were historically.
As for a new capital of England I’d suggest York or Canterbury. The former has longstanding connections to royalty, being the English focus of Ivar the Boneless and his brothers Dublin-York empire and the nominal home of Richard of York, the father of Edward IV and Richard III (who contrary to popular belief was Richard of Gloucester not of York). Beyond this it makes some sense that in the absence of parliament and the royals the average Victorian may turn to the ecclesiarchy until secular parliament could be instated.
I am absolutely not an expert on the Britain of the time period, so please correct me if I’m wrong, but… I believe the Empire was a little more centralized than the modern US. Less because it was especially inflexible and more because the modern US has a fetish for decentralization. There’s an obvious single military command, but there are protocols upon protocols for what to do when separated or out-of-contact with command structures. Blame the Cold War and the preparations for Armageddon.
Not that I think the Navy would’ve been entirely helpless once London was out of the picture. If anything, I can see charismatic officers establishing new commands and power structures to fill the void. The British Empire would certainly be hampered, but I don’t think it’d be absolutely killed off.
York is an excellent thought, not because of the viking (or English) kings of Northumbria, but because York has always been the second city of England. It is a natural place for English government to repair after the loss of London. I am less certain about Canterbury; even Convocation often met elsewhere, and there is no significant governmental tradition attached to the city.
I assume from the rest of your comments that you mean militarily rather than governmentally centralized, in which case, yes. Ever since the Soviet Union developed nuclear weapons, the government has assumed that the United States would lose Washington within the first few minutes of any future world war and planned accordingly.
Governmentally, however, the United States has been undergoing a long process of centralization. The Articles of Confederation were so weak as to nearly be no government at all, yet their replacement with the Constitution was only secured on the assumption that Washington, whom everyone trusted not to abuse executive power, would be the first president. Even then, it was expected (and I apologize, but I can’t remember who exactly said this off-hand) that the federal government would be much smaller than the states’, on account of it having been given so little to do. The American Civil War predicated a major expansion of federal power, and both centralization and federal power have increased fairly steadily since.
That is not to say that Britain has ever been less centralized than her daughter. She’s a monarchy, for one thing, and in the modern era London has always exerted considerable power over her shires and her colonies. Happily for the state of Surface Britain, however, a representative government is reasonably easy to reconstitute even when its head has been cut off, if you can only find someone with the authority to call for new elections. It is reasonable to assume that the ever-practical English (and the even more practical Scots) found a way to govern themselves before Fallen London had oriented itself in the Neath.
edited by Siankan on 7/19/2017
Regardless of England’s long-standing military power, its influence on the Surface will have diminished simply as a result of having to split its attention. In the last 30 years, London has settled several major overzee colonies and participated in (and lost) a significant war. Both of these are efforts that would have drawn from its Surface presence, spreading it more thinly. As significant as its power was before the Fall, it is now operating on a second front, and that weakens what it can do on the original one.
I agree with the conclusion that France is the major Surface player right now. "It’s always Paris" for a reason. That, and the fact that it styles itself an Empire in the present or near-future, tells me that it is in an expansionist mood.
[quote=Siankan]Governmentally, however, the United States has been undergoing a long process of centralization…
[/quote]
While the US has been increasingly centralized, the idea of Federalization is still one that means something to a lot of people. While it may be centralized compared to itself in the past, it’s still quite decentralized compared to other countries.
[quote=Siankan]
Even then, it was expected (and I apologize, but I can’t remember who exactly said this off-hand) that the federal government would be much smaller than the states’, on account of it having been given so little to do. [/quote]
The idea is in the Constitution itself. The Framers added a requirement that Congress meet every year (Article I, Section 4) because they were worried there would be so little to do, that they simply wouldn’t convene.
edited by PSGarak on 7/19/2017