The Grand Principality of Cabralia

On Saturday, I'm going to finally post something that's been haunting me for a few weeks, about Iberian-American beer styles. But before I do that, I'm going to have to introduce a country: the Grand Principality of Cabralia.

The G.P. of Cabralia 101

Why? Butterflies were vague concepts when I started writing Andalusada. Once I became aware of them (and washed my hands of the idea of a Bonapartist Brazil descended from Lucien), the notion of a *Bonapartist *Brazil tied to Mexico lingered on; once I read "The Great Powers" and made the fateful decision to wank Bolivar-Peru, the course was set for Brazil to get demoted a bit.

• Who? Overwhelmingly Lusophone and Catholic, but that's as much as you can say about the population; it's really racially mixed.
• What? A war-scarred, militaristic Lusophone regime, locked in an endless on-and-off war with the CRC and a lot of dick-waving and posturing with the Lusophone states up north.
• Where? When it began, the G.P. stretched from French Guyana to Argentina. At this point, though, it probably comprises less than Brazil proper - definitely the eastern half, but Gran Peru claims bits of Acre, the CRC's revanchist claims stretch as far as Santa Catarina, and north of the Amazon the jungle lines are almost meaningless.
• When? Officially, the Grand Principality dates its history from the 1790s. In its modern form, though, the GP dates back to the mid-1830s, when Kaspar Sansinger remarried, setting in motion the Second Baltazarist War.

So why this way? Because, very simply, Mexico's filling the bad cop role.

It'd be enormously tempting to make all empires evil - and I'll be the first to admit I'd rather not have to live in the G.P. of Cabralia myself - but Mexico has understandable reasons for being what it became. Cabralia's story doesn't; it's one of Andalusada's tragedies. In a just world, and in many of Andalusada's uchronias, Cabralia survives as what it was in 1800, second only to Tsarist Russia in sheer size and far outstripping it in potential and power.

(As an aside, it bears mentioning that IRL Brazil was incredibly lucky in the 1800s; I think it was the only country in South America that managed 50 years without a civil war or coup. It's sobering to think that in lots of ways, most alternate timelines should have a Brazil - and a bunch of petty Lusophone states - more like the G.P. depicted here.)

A brief history of the G.P. of Cabralia

Since this is the second phase of Cabralian history, it merits a brief review of what came before...

• In the beginning, of course, there was the Age of Exploration, when everything started diverging about the time that Cabral, rather than Magellan, sailed for Portugal (not Spain.) But that's really outside the scope of this particular article.
• Then there was the Cabralian War of Independence, which merits a page of its own... once I figure out a casus belli.
• The birth of the G.P.: From the start, it's pretty explicitly aristocratic, although a plebeian Kaspar Sansinger winds up as the first Princeps Senatus. Like Mexico (although significantly earlier) it styles itself a "Grand Principality" specifically because there's nobody on the continent who has plausible claims to royalty - and as a way of demanding that the Portuguese Empire treat them as equals in the negotiations.
• Baltasar's Mutiny: When [when?] this leads to a military revolt, and the breakaway of the southern half of the Grand Principality under the leadership of Baltasar. The mutiny is ultimately put down, but not forgotten.
• After the revolt, Kaspar Sansinger steps back into the limelight, becoming Princeps Senatus again; and when a crisis hits in his third term [when?], he simply suspends the election.

This, in itself, wouldn't be enough to merit a new entry in the scrapbook. Just because it's an authoritarian republic doesn't mean it's not a republic, after all. What changes things is Prince Kaspar's marriage and its implications.

The G.P.'s turn to monarchism

Let's start with the basic problem: Kaspar's wife [who?] dies, and after some negotiations he marries again. Not just anybody, though: his new wife is Mexican, the daughter of the Grand Princess. This union consolidated the House of Sansinger, and it has big implications: since Mrs. Kaspar is newly royal, it implies that her children will be too.

Suddenly, Baltazar's dire prophecies about "Imperial Cabralia" start looking all too true, and for many it's a step too far.

• The Baltazarist War: The first big shakeup to the consolidated House of Sansinger was the Baltazarist War, when the south revolts again. This time it does successfully break away.
• Its first act is to have Patagonia secede, setting in motion the rise of the Triple Alliance and, with it, the CRC.

There's more to it than that, but right now I'm afraid that's all we know.

The Grand Principality of Cabralia today

As of the present day, the G.P. of Cabralia is a pretty complex place.

• Languages: Portuguese is official, as expected. Mexican Sevillan and Low German aren't official, but they're common second (or third) languages given the relations between the close ties between the Sansinger states.
• Religion: Cabralia, being originally a Portuguese colony, has always been mostly and officially Roman Catholic. There's more to it than that, though...
• Cabralia has never really asserted itself as a Catholic nationality (unlike Mexico, where Reclamation turned Catholicism into a measure of patriotism.) They aren't impious by any measure, but compared to their brother-state up north they're visibly less fervid about it.
• Kaspar I, who was Güntherite himself and only converted on his deathbed, made a point of giving them more legal protections than they'd had in the Portuguese period. They're much more peacefully integrated into society than they are in Mexico.
• Given the CRC's human rights record, it shouldn't be a surprise that it produces a lot of refugees. The ones who can't get to a harbor first tend to congregate in Cabralia, so there's a fair number of Muslims and Isidoran Catholics in the G.P. (Some of the latter run into ethnic problems with the official hierarchy; they tend to stay doggedly independent, or occasionally convert en masse to Güntheritism, bringing their liturgy with them.)
• Government: A Grand Principality.
• Cabralia has a vaguely Bolivarian tricameral legislature; while it's been thoroughly neutered over the last century, it was forward-thinking and fairly powerful at the outset. (In particular, it's been more willing to clash with the Grand Prince, which has probably hampered its functioning in at least one critical moment.) After the rise of the House of Sansinger, Mexico also conceded to found a tricameral legislature as well.
• Economy: The Grand Principality's economy hasn't done nearly as well as IRL's, because there as here its population is centered in the southwest - which, there, is the most war-torn part of the entire continent. This has kept their population lower than it would have been, and a lot of resources that otherwise would've gone to industry were instead spent on repairing the damages and maintaining the war effort.
• The G.P. does have a decent arms industry. This is less because of its own ingenuity, and much more because they've had plenty of opportunities to seize enormous amounts of ACP hardware. (ACP is quite unhappy about it, but it's not like anybody's going to sympathize with them.)
• Foreign Relations: At its most basic, the G.P.'s eternal ally is Mexico, and its eternal enemy the CRC. Its tangle of foreign relations overwhelmingly revolves around those two key points.
• The G.P. and Gran Peru have been at war in the past. They're still arguing over some lines deep in the Amazon jungle. None of it matters; as long as the CRC poses a common menace to them both, everything else is secondary. (There's also the matter that the last time Cabralia marched against the Peruvians they came home on their shields, but never mind that.)
• Relationships between the G.P. and Portugal have historically been rather poor, involving the occasional Amazonian gunboat war fought over arbitrary lines in the uncharted rainforest. Relations with the Portuguese parts of Cabralia have improved a fair bit since the most recent Grand Prince [who?] married a Portuguese infanta [who?] (Relations with the independent parts of Cabralia remain rather frosty.)

This is a stub. It'll be expanded upon in time.