Crown Imperial: An Alt British Monarchy
- Thread starter Opo
- Start date
Correct me if I'm wrong, but we know the child that the Queen is pregnant with is a girl called Victoria, don't we?
That's right, in 1840 both Queen Louise and Princess Victoria of the Netherlands give birth to princesses named Victoria.
After that, I don't think I've given any spoilers to the children that follow in either line (except the birth years of George V's other children). But I may have done inadvertently somewhere!
That's right, in 1840 both Queen Louise and Princess Victoria of the Netherlands give birth to princesses named Victoria.
After that, I don't think I've given any spoilers to the children that follow in either line (except the birth years of George V's other children). But I may have done inadvertently somewhere!
I think you gave some more of their names at one point.
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It's entirely possible. I like to drop in little hints now and then because I enjoy the speculations you guys post when I do.
I've just checked there's a reference to a William IV being crowned in 1886 at one point, but admittedly that could be either a son or a grandson.
the real Luise of Mecklenburg-strelitz died in 1842. So, can there be some butterflies that push that back about 50 years?
We've been told that George's children were born in: 1838 (Missy), 1840 (Vicky), 1842, 1846, 1848, 1850, 1855 and 1858, so unless George remarries, it would appear she does.
Just a heads up guys, I had planned to post an instalment for you all today but I'm really not happy with how it turned out and I think it needs a little more research and work.
Unfortunately with other things on the menu, it means the next chapter might not be with you until Tuesday. That said, I don't want to half arse a post for a post's sake as that would be silly. And it's not fair to shortchange all of you who have followed this TL for so long. So please bear with!
Unfortunately with other things on the menu, it means the next chapter might not be with you until Tuesday. That said, I don't want to half arse a post for a post's sake as that would be silly. And it's not fair to shortchange all of you who have followed this TL for so long. So please bear with!
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You’re fine. I’d rather have a great chapter later than a good chapter now.
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Perhaps we could try and guess the names of the other six children in the meantime.
Girls:
- Charlotte : both a nod to his sister and grandmother, George and Luise have already named one child after a cousin so it would feel remiss if Lottie failed to receive a similar namesake.
- Frederica : after the Queen's paternal grandmother, Frederike of Hesse Darmstadt, although it could be confused as being named after the Duchess of Cumberland
Boys:
- William : After the late Duke of Clarence or Honest Billy or the King of the Netherlands, who could stand as a godparent
- Edward : this would be both a nod to his father and to his beloved younger brother by the King
- Frederick : if Frederica isn't used for a daughter, then Frederick for a son after the King and Queen's maternal grandmother
- Alexander, after the Tsarevich
Girls:
- Charlotte : both a nod to his sister and grandmother, George and Luise have already named one child after a cousin so it would feel remiss if Lottie failed to receive a similar namesake.
- Frederica : after the Queen's paternal grandmother, Frederike of Hesse Darmstadt, although it could be confused as being named after the Duchess of Cumberland
Boys:
- William : After the late Duke of Clarence or Honest Billy or the King of the Netherlands, who could stand as a godparent
- Edward : this would be both a nod to his father and to his beloved younger brother by the King
- Frederick : if Frederica isn't used for a daughter, then Frederick for a son after the King and Queen's maternal grandmother
- Alexander, after the Tsarevich
I would add Augusta to the list of possible names for a princess. Caroline might also be used in addition to/instead of Charlotte. I like George for the oldest son, but your suggestions are solid for the younger ones.
To make it a little easier, I'll tell you that George will have 3 sons and 5 daughters.
The girl guesses? I'm afraid neither Charlotte nor Frederica will feature as Christian names for George's daughters.
But on the boys? 2/3!
And for Hortense, you've guessed two correctly!
Hoyahoo9
Donor
Opo - - I first ran across this marvelous story last week and have spent hours and hours since catching up to the present posts. Thank you for this thorough, educational and impressive work. The intricacies of early 19th century United Kingdom politics is not something I have a lot of in-depth prior knowledge about, so I've been soaking it all in with great interest. I'll look forward to more.
This is so very kind of you! What lovely feedback, I'm so glad you've enjoyed the timeline this far!
GV: Part Two, Chapter 9: Bala Hissar
King George V
Part Two, Chapter Nine: Bala Hissar
The imposing fortress of Bala Hissar was constructed in the 5th century AD, nestled in the Kuh-e-Sherdarwaza Mountain from which the 20ft high Walls of Kabul wind along the mountain ridge into a majestic curve down to the river. In 1839, these fortifications bore all the hallmarks of the Great Game, pockmarked and scorched by various warring tribes and armies. Whilst the lower fortress which contained the stables and barracks where General Lord Keane stationed his forces had largely been spared destruction, the three royal palaces which adjoined the barracks had been subjected to looting and arson leaving just one habitable. Even then, there was not a stick of furniture left in the rooms and when General Lord Keane marked out a suite for himself, it was hardly the luxurious accommodation one might expect from the royal residence of the Kings and Emirs of Afghanistan. Above the palace complex was the upper fortress from which the entire compound took its name; Bala Hissar, meaning High Fort. It was here that one could find the empty armory and conversely, the crowded Siyah Chal (or Black Pit), the much-feared dungeon of Kabul in which many had languished on the whim of the ruling elite.
Bala Hissar, Kabul.
Upon their arrival at Bala Hissar, Keane had much to attend to. Prince Mirza, the brother of Shah Shuja Durrani, was immediately liberated from the Siyah Chal and brought to him in his unfurnished rooms. Mirza spoke no English and so an interpreter was called from the city below to help Keane explain the situation. His brother (and jailor) was dead. Now, the British had elected to install Prince Mirza in his stead. Mirza was agitated by the suggestion, but Keane paid him no mind. He would only reign until the British had done just enough to make Mirza’s son Muhammed Umar realise that the British were here to stay and that his future was tied to that of Afghanistan’s relationship with the United Kingdom. If he received a single Russian diplomat without the British ‘Official Resident’ (currently General Lord Keane) granting permission for him to do so, he too would find himself ousted just as his late uncle had been. The message was clear; Muhammed Umar was to be a puppet of the British, at least until the Great Game had been concluded.
It is worth noting at this point that almost every action General Lord Keane took in relation to the vacant Afghan throne at this time was done according to the last set of orders he had received from Lord Palmerston. As Keane conducted his preliminary discussions with Muhammad Umar, he had no idea that the Melbourne government at home had fallen and that very shortly a new set of directives would arrive from Lords Melbury and Granville. This is often the defence used to absolve Keane of any wrong doing at Bala Hissar but whilst he was indeed following orders from the British government where the succession of the monarchy of Afghanistan was concerned, it was the decisions Keane took himself that in the September of 1839 led to the shocking events at Bala Hissar; events which would cost him his life.
Almost immediately, Keane managed to gain a terrible reputation with the citizens of Kabul. The royal palace at Bala Hissar had been so thoroughly looted that he couldn’t even offer the future King a bed to sleep on. That was easily rectified, however. Whilst the campaign had hardly run smoothly thus far, the British were the victors. After all, it wasn’t Dost Mohammed Khan now bedding down at the fortress was it? The people of Kabul seemed indifferent at first, they were used to dramatic regime changes and all the chaos that came with it. But when it appeared the British were making Bala Hissar their permanent foothold in the city and were not likely to depart any time soon, that indifference turned to wariness. This sentiment could not have been helped when Keane ordered 60 of his men to go down into Kabul and to requisition anything they could find which might be of use at the fortress. Officially, these were “reclaimed objects of a purely essential or functional use to provide for the comfort of the Princes Mirza and Muhammed Umar, and which were identified as having been looted from the palace complex in previous weeks and months”. Some might question just how essential or functional some of the “reclaimed objects” were.
In other words, Keane had arranged a victor’s raid on the homes of the people of Kabul. They watched in amazement as British troops simply entered private dwellings and the bazaar alike and took what they wanted, loading carts high with all kinds of spoils. As this caravan of plunder made its way back up the hill to Bala Hissar, people watched on with an uneasy knot in their stomach. The British had a reputation in such places; they arrived, they pillaged and then…they massacred. Stories had reached Kabul from the Punjab about the darker side of British foreign policy and suddenly, far from being disinterested in the change of leadership at Bala Hissar where the person of the Emir was concerned, the people of the city began to hold clandestine meetings in the early hours of the morning to work out how best they could save themselves from the inevitable bloodbath the British were bound to unleash in the streets.
There were some who doubted that the rumours could be true. After all, Kabul had shown no resistance to the British when they arrived. Yes, there had been a tense moment when a parade of Khan loyalists displayed the severed head of Shah Shuja Durrani in the city square, but the British were hardly likely to carry out reprisals when they themselves were responsible for Durrani’s assassination. Others argued that this made a massacre even more likely. The British soldiers would not want to admit that it was their oversight which saw Durrani carved into pieces by his own bodyguards; the people of Kabul would be made the scapegoat and a massacre would be justified because the British would consider it retribution. It was said that at this time, a pound of gossip was worth more than a pound of salt in Kabul and indeed, children found a lucrative side-line as runners dashing from one side of the city to the other with the latest rumour to sell to interested parties.
General Lord Keane.
It had also not gone unnoticed that the British seemed to be doing an awful lot of moving about. With no word from England yet, Keane intended to keep to the letter of his last set of orders from Palmerston; to enthrone a Durrani Emir as quickly as possible and to quell any further resistance to his rule that may exist in the territories outside of Kabul. Keane therefore ordered his troops to rehearse for a grand procession which would carry Prince Mirza in a sedan chair through the streets of the city to leave nobody in any doubt as to who was in charge. [1] The General’s ADC, Captain Charles King, was given the tricky task of making this procession “memorable” and so a huge dais was constructed in the parade ground below Bala Hissar with yet more looted furniture from the bazaar providing a canopy and a make-shift throne. It was to be an impressive sight. Prince Mirza would be carried in triumph, proclaimed Emir and then presented with the Order of the Bath on behalf of King George V by General Lord Keane. [2] The British troops would then parade before the Emir (who would take the salute) and he would give a brief address to the crowds assuring them that peace and prosperity had returned to Afghanistan – with the British as guarantors that it should always be so.
The British had around 18,000 troops in Afghanistan at this time, the 21,000 strong Great Army of the Indus a little depleted around the edges but far from decimated as their enemies would have the people of Kabul believe. But of those troops, only 6,000 were stationed in Kabul. [3] Others had been sent to secure other locales on the journey from the Bolan Pass and beyond. On a daily basis after their arrival, more and more British troops were seen to leave the barracks at Bala Hissar marching off to the surrounding territories to flush out Khan loyalists or to head back to the Punjab. This made perfect sense of course, Keane was simply following orders from the Foreign Office not to hold any enthronement ceremony until he was certain that the towns and cities beyond Kabul were not likely to see a rush of insurgents make a dash to take back the city in the early days of Mirza’s reign. Troops were also needed on the border where the Russians (Palmerston believed) had whipped up anti-British sentiment to strike in an uprising whilst the British were distracted in Kabul.
The atmosphere therefore was one of confusion but also of suspicion. General Lord Keane had no such anxieties, however. He believed that Kabul would be relatively easy to secure in the long term. As yet, only a handful of protestors had been encountered and they’d been put down swiftly enough. The general mood of the Afghans seemed to be one of apathy. In the respect that most of them didn’t care whether it was Dost Mohammed Khan or Shah Shuja Durrani who ruled them, he was correct. Those who did remember Durrani rule were nervous because of the late Shah Shuja’s reputation as a cruel and brutal tyrant but even they didn’t display any real opposition to his brother being installed in Khan’s place. In his final letter home to Britain, the General wrote to his brother Colonel Edward Keane; “The locals are unconcerned with our movements here and I have some concerns that this grand spectacle we have been asked to stage for Mirzo [sic] is a terrible waste of time and resources for I cannot see such an event drawing much of a crowd at all”.
In the days leading up to the enthronement, it seemed Keane was correct. All seemed peculiarly quiet. The curfew imposed when the British arrived didn’t seem to be needed at all. The streets were empty well before darkness fell and even during the day, Kabul did not seem to have any of the hustle and bustle one might expect. The city even looked different. There were no young men to be seen anywhere. And then, almost at once, no children either - not even the gossip runners. It was eery. Unsettling. But Keane took this as an indication that the people of Kabul simply didn’t wish to provoke the British and that they were, in his words, “behaving as admirably as well disciplined children in a nursery”. But behind closed doors, the rumour mongers had stoked such a fear of the British that men of fighting age had gone into hiding and mothers refused to allow their children to play outdoors in the streets.
The common belief at this time was that the massacre was to start any day now. The British had sent troops to dig mass graves just beyond the walls of Bala Hissar and others had been dispatched to the surrounding towns and villages to carry out similar atrocities. They had even built a stage with a canopy for General Lord Keane, who would sit and watch the women of Kabul slaughtered en masse in the square below the fortress. One eyewitness would later say that as darkness fell on the evening of the 24th of September 1839, you could feel an unusual tension in the streets. This was a city which could erupt into violence at any moment; all it needed was one spark to light the powder keg.
As the sun slowly sank on the horizon and a cool blue haze descended on Kabul, General Lord Keane was facing some last-minute difficulties. He had carefully explained to Prince Mirza that the following morning, he would be taken to the dais and that he would be proclaimed Emir there before the crowds. It was not a complicated ceremony, but Prince Mirza seemed incredibly agitated. Through his interpreter, Keane asked what it was that Mirza was so irate about. “He cannot rule”, the translator explained, “It is not right for him to rule”. Keane took this to be indicative of stage fright and this perhaps cuts to the very heart of what led to the debacle that was Bala Hissar. Since the very beginning, those with knowledge and/or experience of life in Afghanistan and the surrounding territories had tried to warn the British Foreign Office that this was not a war that could be fought on European terms. A vital piece of the puzzle was an understanding of Pashtun customs and traditions, something Palmerston had always regarded as academic hogwash. Force was all that was needed, he said. But Palmerston was wrong.
Shah Shuja Durrani pictured in the Bala Hissar.
Mirza explained that even if he did allow himself to be installed as Emir, the people would never accept him as their ruler. When he had posed a threat to his brother Shah Shuja, Durrani had ordered he be thrown into the Siyah Chal and blinded. But this wasn’t just another of the late Shah Shuja’s cruel punishments. According to Afghan custom, no blind man could rule. [4] In taking his brother’s sight, he had removed him as a threat forever – even after Shuja's death. Keane was heard to ask if this was a common belief among the Afghans. It was. Thinking on his feet, Keane ordered a decree to be written which would see Prince Mirza simply abdicate his rights to the Afghan throne in favour of his son. Muhammed Umar could be enthroned instead. It wasn’t exactly how it was meant to be, but the young man was hardly likely to bite the hand that fed him. After all, the British were taking this 32-year-old exile and transforming him into an Emir with great riches and authority. If that didn’t guarantee his loyalty, what would?
Keane was about to find out. When Mirza refused to sign the decree claiming that he had no rights to abdicate since he was blind and therefore ineligible to succeed in the first place, Keane’s patience ran out. He wrote a memorandum which stated that Mirza’s long-term imprisonment had clearly sent the man mad and therefore, he had no choice but to follow the line of succession (as a European saw it anyway) and install Muhammed Umar instead. Prince Mirza’s son was only too happy with this sudden change in his circumstances and yet…it wasn’t quite enough. As Keane explained the way forward to Muhammed Umar, he noticed that even the interpreter raised his eyebrows during Muhammed Umar’s long speeches. This vain and pompous prince had fought with the British for one reason and one reason only; to display loyalty to his uncle Shah Shuja and to have his father’s lands restored to him (that is, restored to Muhammed Umar). As far as he was concerned, Mirza was no patriarch and could rot in the Siyah Chal.
Suddenly, Muhammed Umar could not only gain back the riches of his family they had held for generations; he could claim the entire country of Afghanistan for himself. For a man as vain as Muhammed Umar, this thought was so tantalizing that he could hardly believe his luck. He pressed his advantage. Firstly, his title concerned him. The British spoke of him becoming the new Emir but Muhammed Umar did not recognise that title existed. His uncle, Shah Shuja, had declared himself King of Afghanistan in 1801 after his brother Zaman Shah was deposed. The pretender Dost Mohammed Khan had used the title of Emir, for a Durrani to share such a rank with a usurper was a grave insult to the dynasty’s honour. Besides, wasn’t the Durrani dynasty far superior to the Manguds in the north who ruled as Emirs of Bukhara? Muhammed Umar demanded that he be enthroned as King of Afghanistan, anything less was unsatisfactory and offensive. [5]
His second condition concerned his residence. The three palaces at Bala Hissar had been the residence of his dynasty for decades but when Dost Mohammed Khan fled, they were ransacked. He wanted the British to pay for their restoration. On a similar theme, he also wanted pensions to be provided by the East India Company for the first 3 male heirs of his line for their lifetime and a guarantee of safe passage to British India in the event of an uprising or coup against his rule. “The British could abandon me”, he said, not unreasonably, “I shall see it as a sign of their sincerity if they offer protection to my family and if they do not, I shall forever regard them as snakes in the grass waiting to strike at us”.
His third condition was that he be allowed to appoint his own Wazir, free from British influence. Keane absolutely could not accept this, though he had no idea at this time that the Peshawar Agreement which Dost Mohammed Khan had proposed to end the Anglo-Afghan War, had just been adopted as official British foreign policy. King Muhammed Umar would never agree to seeing a man who had kept him in exile as his Wazir. However, he agreed that he would instead select a Wazir from a list of candidates provided by the British Official Resident. Keane had no authority to propose or accept such an agreement, but it was either this or abandon the entire enthronement and disobey the orders of the Foreign Office. As he made his way to his bed, Keane must have felt relieved. At the 11th hour, he had saved the day and within 24 hours, he would have done his duty and installed a Durrani on the throne of Afghanistan.
As Keane slept, some of his troops had found other ways to whilst away the hours before the enthronement. Just behind the bazaar in a back street was an unassuming three storey house with a red lantern outside on the wall. For young men far away from home, the aptly named “House of Delights” was just the sort of place they enjoyed spending their money. Here, the strict moral code of Islam which dominated Afghan culture simply didn’t exist. Owned by an imposing woman nicknamed Madam Sin by the British, privates could avail themselves of all kinds of things which were strictly off limits to them both at home and according to the regulations of the British Army, abroad. Hashish, wine and of course, women, were all offered at extortionate prices by Madam Sin who had made a very handsome living in recent days. Officially, any British soldier found in the House of Delights was to be immediately court martialled. But the officers, much like the conservative Muslim religious authorities, tended to turn a blind eye to such things unless they caused public scandal and the goings on inside left traces outside. After all, even in Christian societies where prostitution was abhorred, the oldest profession in the world was still thriving. Men would be men.
The British soldiers patronising Madam Sin’s establishment that night were in rather a celebratory mood. They believed that with the enthronement ceremony over, they would soon be returning to their far more comfortable billets in the Punjab. Like many of the British in India at this time, regardless of their backgrounds which made them working class drones in England, in the colonies they could afford to live a much better standard of living; indeed, they might well pass for gentlemen. But they certainly didn’t behave as gentlemen on this particular evening. A fight broke out between two soldiers in a back room where a game of cards was being played for high stakes. There were accusations of cheating and as they could hardly report it to a senior officer to adjudicate, good old fashioned brute strength was to provide justice. In the chaos, several of the ladies of the night in Madam Sin’s employ panicked and ran screaming into the backstreets behind the bazaar. In the dead silence of the late hours of the night, their screams carried. The spark was lit.
According to the Pashtunwali by which the vast majority of Afghans lived, men were tied to the principle of ناموس, or nāmús, which meant a Pashtun must defend the honour of women at all costs and protect them from harm. Even those men who were in the dark as to the supposed massacre that was due to occur any day rushed to the bazaar to identify the screams and to help. In the early hours of the morning of the 25th of September 1839, hundreds of other men who had been in hiding preparing themselves for the inevitable slaughter came pouring out into the city from every possible corner. The British soldiers in the House of Delights were the first to be culled by them. But now, the battle was on and within an hour, they were heading towards the fortress to kick the British out by force. The Uprising of Bala Hissar, one of the biggest humiliations in British military history, had begun.
It was a blood bath. The British were caught napping – quite literally in some cases – and for the next four days, the fortress of Bala Hissar was relentlessly attacked by the Afghans of Kabul. Captain King later noted how; “Nobody seemed taken by surprise among them, I do believe they had planned to rise against us and kill us, for it seemed that they rushed the city like a great flood. They were all against us, not one man stood idle. At first, we held them back and it appeared we should stamp out the insurrection in a matter of hours, but they very quickly rushed the armoury above the barracks and in doing so, they took our own supplies and weaponry and used it against us, firing upon us on the lower tier of the fort where we in the barracks were like fish in a barrel. Captain Reid said we must abandon the barracks or else we should all be killed but somebody else, I do not know who, said that it was our duty to protect the palace, which was not yet breached, and that if we did retreat in any way, we should be leaving the General and other superior officers billeted in the palace to their certain deaths. I agreed we must therefore head into the palace where General Lord Keane and the King slept”.
By the third day of the siege, the palace complex itself was breached. Embarrassingly, the British had not posted a guard at the Western Gate because they were so focused on the multitudes attacking them from the Eastern Gate. Had they done so, they may have prevented a legion of Pashtuns blowing up the tower there (with British explosives) and gaining access to the vast network of tunnels which connected the three royal palaces, and which were primarily used to keep food and water cold in the 50-degree Celsius heat of the Kabul summers. Once the forces of the uprising had found their way into these tunnels, nothing could stop them. Crushing the British troops as they went, they set fire to the Palace forcing all remaining British troops to scatter from the fortress like ants from a nest. It was pandemonium. General Lord Keane was nowhere to be found. The British were divided, there was no clear chain of command, and every officer had a different order to give. Eventually, they gave in and sounded the retreat. Around 3,600 British troops fell at Bala Hissar. Those who did not were strewn across the neighbouring towns and villages as they desperately tried to flee from Kabul.
A 1900 depiction of the retreat from the Bala Hissar, 1839.
When news finally reached England of the events at Bala Hissar, General Lord Keane had been reported dead. According to legend, he was killed protecting Muhammed Umar who was also murdered that night. The British establishment was stunned. How on earth could a rabble army of peasants defeat 6,000 British troops in just a few days? It was a humiliating defeat and even the Unionist-leaning newspapers could not bring themselves to gloat. Accounts were heavily embroidered to hide the worst of it. The London Times claimed that Muhammed Umar had ordered his people to rise against the British because General Lord Keane refused him the title of King. This was untrue of course.
Bell’s Weekly Messenger printed a four-page account of the siege provided by a Captain Arthur White who claimed that the people of Kabul were so bloodthirsty that they had spent days before the uprising throwing small children into pits which he claimed as a local custom to “win the favour of their God in battle”. White also alleged that two Pashtuns had torn down the Union flag in the Garrison when it was breached and set fire to it shouting “Death to King George the Tyrant” which forced White to defend the honour of His Majesty and run them through with a scimitar torn from the cold hand of a slain Afghan. Stories like this horrified the people of Britain just as they were supposed to. But there was one just one problem; Captain Arthur White didn’t actually exist. Nobody knows who dreamt up the account but nowhere in the otherwise meticulous files of the Ministry of Defence can this heroic champion of the King be found.
Lance Corporal Cyril Mount, he of the incident at Lal Pur fame [6], survived the siege. It was only when he returned to England in April 1840 that some light was shed on the truth of what had happened and how he had been with General Lord Keane when he was shot in the back as they fled the palace complex together. But how Keane had died was immaterial to the British government when news reached them of what had occurred at Bala Hissar in 1839. Word was immediately dispatched to the King who received the news from Charlie Phipps and William Mansfield. He took the note with the vague details from Lord Melbury hastily jotted down and crushed it in his hand.
“Of all the news you might bring me Charlie”, he said walking towards the fireplace, “This is surely the very worst”.
His Majesty tossed the note into the fire. He stood and watched it burn to ashes.
Notes
[1] This is based on the return of Shah Shuja Durrani in the OTL.
[2] It would usually be the Order of St Michael and St George but that doesn't actually exist in this TL. It was created by the Prince Regent in 1818 but here, George was dead by then and his younger brother didn't establish it.
[3] I've tried very hard to find accurate troop numbers here but I've had to patch together some pieces written at the time (which I don't believe could always be taken as entirely accurate) and marry them with the numbers from the famous retreat from Kabul in 1842 led by William Elphinstone.
[4] Husain, Farrukh (2018). Afghanistan in the Age of Empires.
[5] When the Durranis were deposed, the Kingdom proclaimed by Shah Shuja Durrani was replaced by the Emirate of Afghanistan. In the OTL, Shah Shuja returned as King and not as Emir because he felt that title was beneath him – Emir being the equivalent of a Prince and not a King.
[6] This incident will feature in the next instalment.
Once again, apologies for the delay with this chapter and thank you for being so patient!
I had originally tried to split the focus between London and Kabul as I know many of you enjoy the tantrums and tiaras of TTL! Sometimes the politics heavy instalments can feel like a disruption to that. But in this case, trying to balance the two was actually far too disruptive to the narrative. As what happened at Bala Hissar is so important to what comes next, I eventually decided to concentrate on that because otherwise, the fall out just wouldn't make any sense at all.
But I also had to do some pretty heavy research for this. My two sources for most of what's here were Afghanistan in the Age of Empires by Farrukh Husain and The Ottomans by Marc David Baer and as I can't claim to be any great military historian or Middle Eastern political expert (!), I had a lot of learning to do along the way.
That said, this is half of the fun of writing timelines and I hope the end result is something you can all enjoy!
It's not exactly a inaccurate argument, you follow the last orders you're given, and well, if they change, they change.
Same shit, different day is nigh universal.
Oh boy. It's not just gonna be furniture and such. Food, possible souvenirs, anything small and valuable....
Which just adds to the tension.
And this is the downside of a bad reputation, people tend to assume the worse of you.
So parade the obvious puppet around in a elevated slow moving chair that clearly shows him.
Yeah, might wanna avoid the Kabul Book Depository in that case.
I think Russia's just looking over the border and laughing at how Britain's gotten themselves into a quagmire for no benefit to them.
Famous last words, along with 'This ship is unsinkable" and "They couldn't hit a elephant at this distance".