Author Topic: Steampunk and the British Throne  (Read 243 times)

Aleko

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Re: Steampunk and the British Throne
« on: October 02, 2020, 02:15:53 am »
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.