Dystopian Catholic France

Andalusada's France has had a different sets of ups and downs. It missed out on the revolutions, for one thing; as of the present day, under the House of Burgundy, it's a semi-constitutional monarchy struggling to recover from the Great War. The Hundred Years' War is called something different, and I know that it played out differently because I have some ideas for how the Black Death affects the British Isles. But you wouldn't know about that, because I haven't written about that stuff at all.

I write what I know, and at the moment this is primarily the early modern era. And since I like pithy names (mind you Hispano-Baltic Texas), and try to write about Andalusada the same way I talk about it, I'm gonna introduce early modern France by its working name. In French historiography, everything related to the period is tagged with the adjective très-chrétien; in the rest of Andalusada, early modern France is "the Most Christian Kingdom." But within this blog, it's what I've called it for at least a year: Dystopian Catholic France.

Messieurs, mesdames, it's time to stare into the abyss. Don't let it stare back into you.

Dystopian Catholic France 101

Alt-history writers have a bad rap for making history more awful. At its most ambitious we have Bruce Sterling's Draka series, and Harry Turtledove's TL-191 involving a surviving CSA, and any number of Nazi-victory timelines. One of my goals with Andalusada was to, as a general rule, make the world less awful - it's why the first thing I wrote about Great Russia's economy was two words long: "Not Stalinism."

Dystopian Catholic France makes the first question of the national 101 take on a new meaning: why? Why did I give one of the world powers over to a family that rips people's tongues out of their heads?

• Who? The House of Guise.
• What? IRL French royal absolutism, coupled with a Catholic hierarchy as independent as powerful as IRL Spain's. Coupled with a devoutly Catholic royal family that fears and hates the Farrellites for the harm they caused.
• Where? Most of what we'd call "France," but with some exceptions. Dystopian Catholic France, much like its successor, controls at the very least most of what we'd consider Belgium; the French empire-building that took place during the Hanseatic Wars lasted pretty well until the succession collapsed, so at various points it's controlled smatterings of the moribund Holy Roman Empire and enough coastline to threaten Denmark-Sweden.
• When? France makes the turn toward dystopia while the Wars of Religion are underway. It mellows out a bit, but never backs away from the institutional dystopianism until after the House of Guise is well and thoroughly displaced. So maybe ~1625 to ~1825, give or take a few years either way.

I didn't answer why? at the top, because it would've taken too long. And the truth is: I still don't have a satisfying explanation. All I have is a true one.

Andalusada started off, not as a writing exercise, but as a roleplaying game setting. To a large extent, it still is. And alt-history RPG settings have a very different target audience, with very different needs, wants, and tastes. In a RPG setting, you don't show most of your work, because it doesn't matter; you need to be able to convey just enough information.

Also because when I was reading Niall Ferguson's The Reformation, the casual detail about the Catholic League tearing out Protestant tongues caught my eye, and since I knew I'd be rewriting a lot of French history (no Joan III of Navarre, ergo no Henri IV) I ran with a Guise victory on a whimsy. And it stuck, and it stuck, and it gelled.

As I said, I still don't have a satisfying answer. All I have is a true one.

A brief history of Dystopian Catholic France

It runs something like this:

• The French Wars of Religion: In which the Unitas Fidelium rose to power, the Sodality of the Most Holy Savior was made official, and suchlike.
• Alongside the Franco-Portuguese Alliance, France moved to become a serious world power.
• French colonization of the New World started relatively late; they never had a very good pick of the Caribbean islands (and while they may have owned part of Cubana at one point, it was lost when Seville imported a fleet of Barbary corsairs to take it over.) They did, however, manage to establish a permanent toehold along the Gulf of Mexico, relentlessly pushing up the Mississippi River and fighting wars with Seville over where Lousiana meets Texas IRL.
• At some point [when?], France inherited a fair number of holdings in India too.
• Dystopian Catholic France's policy is, very much like Portugal's IRL, a heavy-handed attempt to convert India to Christianity. It gets mercilessly lampooned in The Nestorian Epistles.

The educational system was inextricably entwined with the Sodality of the Most Holy Saviour.

• The War of the French Succession: The end begins when the Queen's confessor [who?], disgusted and pressured by disgruntled Sodalites, breaks his priestly vows and talks about the affair she confessed to having. The backbiters turn this into an attack on the paternity of the unpopular prince du sang [who?], which coincides with convenient bread riots; by the time the dust settles, the last Guise pretender [who?] is reduced to ruling in Rome.

Traditionally, the Most Christian Kingdom is considered to be ended when the papal legate to France addresses the Duc de Bourgogne as rex Christianissimus, implicitly legitimating the new ruling house and reducing the pretender to being a king without a country. After the ignominous death of the Bastard, the direct male line of the House is extinguished. His eldest daughter [who?] marries Carlos I of Mexico.

Life and society in Dystopian Catholic France

Language: Wasn't particularly standardized, actually. The French of Paris was still the nominal standard, but I'm not even sure what that is right now - and in the historic regions, it didn't matter for most of the population.

• French scholarship made heavy use of Latin, because there was a lot of demand to understand it: vernacular worship was illegal.

Religion: Dystopian Catholicism, of course. It's right there in the name.

• From the mid-18th century onwards, though, Dystopian Catholic France actually diversified a bit. The Nestorian Epistles caused a wave of Syrophilia, which somebody [who?] capitalized on; there was a Syro-Indian convert community in Paris by the time the Guises were driven into Roman exile.
• In the early 19th century, that Syrophilia led to an awareness of the Syrian Church of Antioch's claim to Petrine foundation. It got a few French converts, who became early Heretical Heroes.

The legacy of Dystopian Catholic France

The Most Christian Kingdom is a complex period, to say the least.