The Crown of All Spains (and France)

Writing about Mahdism this last week or so leaves me kinda bothered that I haven't written about Spain yet. I have my reasons; given that it's ground zero for the point of divergence, all I can honestly say is that I know the Crown of All Spains exists (for plot reasons), and that it's ruled by the pre-Wars of Religion French ruling house (whence the inevitable "and France" in the name.)

But I've posted articles about things I knew less than that about, so here goes nothing.

The Crown of All Spains 101

Why? Because it's been here from the beginning. Admittedly in the beginning it was Napoleon driving the Moors out of Spain, but a united Spain is still there.

• Who? Not the Galicians (Galicia having been part of Galicia or Portugal or Portugal-Galicia for most of its history since 1090, when Garcia II sets up shop in A Corunha), but other than that you'd recognize most of the territories. There's Asturias and Cantabria, and the Catalans and the Aragonese, the Léonese and the Castillans, the Toletans... and, south of the Tagus, the Andalusis, many of whom still speak Arabic at home.
• What? The Crown of All Spains is one of the complex dynastic unions that Andalusada seems to love - a confederal monarchy that on its good days is exactly the sum of its parts, and on its bad days much less as those parts cancel each other out.
• Where? Most of Iberia, predictably. The Crown of All Spains also controls a number of North African city-states, which it occupied during the destruction of Barbary Coast piracy, and a fair bit of Morocco through very unreliable Andalusi landlords.
• When? The Crown of All Spains dates from the late 1780s, although I'm not sure exactly what year it was.

And now for the expanded answer to "why?" The answer: drama and melodrama.
Originally, I had Spain united and Christian because it Americanized the UCNA. (I even said it over there; "I wanted something that'd reflect how very different an extra 500 years of survival makes Islamic Spain, and the easiest way to do that was to give it a decisive break with its past.") As the world grew on me, though, the Crown of All Spains... also let me check off a few clichés... but more than that, it gave the Moorish world I'm constructing darkness, depth and nuance.

When al-Andalus survives, the usual description of it runs something like "a more liberal Islam WITH SCIENCE!!" When I took al-Andalus from New Andalusia, it revealed a uniquely Moorish underside: it gave me (literally) space to explore what Western-Islamic civ looks like when there is no happy ending, no closure, no staunched blood or dried eye.

Andalusada was meant to be pulpy. The Crown of All Spains lets me be noir.

A brief history of the Crown of All Spains

Of necessity, this will be brief, because I have no idea what the hell came before.

• The unification of the Crown of All Spains: This was pulled off when the several kingdoms on the Bay of Biscayne, somehow mostly united on their own, did what they did IRL: arrange a marriage to an Aragon that was just removed enough to be kissing cousins and get Papal approval. [details?]
• The conquest of Seville (1787-1793): In 1786, Hisham V enjoys his final year of peace; at some point in that year, violence breaks out, which rapidly spirals out of control. Backing multiple sides, Spain manages to play all of them, such that by 1792 it's able to march its armies into Sevilla itself.
• The War of the French Succession: At this point, feeling lucky, the Crown of All Spains proceeds to piss its luck and power away spectacularly, launching an invasion of Provence during a French succession war. Because I don't know enough about the three sides in this conflict, I'm gonna give this a pass and just note the one thing that I do know happens at the same time:
• The Second Mahdist War. al-Mahdi ibn Hisham, heir of the sunset world, crosses the Strait of Gibraltar and retakes Seville, rallying the Muslims behind him and marching them to an equally spectacular defeat.
• The Third Mahdist War. When, about 40 years later, Spain tries applied anthropology. It backfires, big time.
• The Chergui. In 1893, the UCNA (after dealing with a SNAFU) dumps a lot of smokeless guns on the market. They're entirely overlooked, and hit the market big - a bunch of rebels on the far side of the Straits buy them like hotcakes and kick a lot of Spanish ass before the ammo runs out.

I'm afraid that, at present, that's all we know.

The Crown of All Spains today

As of 1930, the Crown of All Spains looks something like this:

• Language: Several by region. Aragonese in the east, Leonese in the north, and south of the Tagus... Moorish Sevillan.
• One of the only successes from Spain's halfhearted attempt at Reclamation was the outlawing of Andalusi Arabic in public schools. The long-term consequences of this policy remain to be seen.
• Religion: The Crown of All Spains is officially Roman Catholic.
• In fairness, Romanization has been halfhearted too. Attempts to force the Roman Rite on Toleto have met with riots; the only reason that the 1859 attempt wasn't classed as a guerilla was because it was completely overshadowed by the pan-Moorish violence that erupted at the same time.
• A happy side effect of Moorish survival: the Inquisition was neither as united nor as racialized as IRL, so there are still Sephardi Jews in Spain. (That said, Moors do face an unfair amount of systemic discrimination, especially considering that by weight they form a plurality of the population.)
• Government: A fairly confederal monarchy, although I'm not sure how confederal yet.
• Economy: Kinda scarred by the wars, but I'm honestly not sure.
• As a result of occupying Andalusia, the Crown of All Spains has become an emigration society, in much the way Ireland was IRL. Working to export its Moorish population, while simultaneously encouraging to send money home, is a factor in almost all parts of its society.
• Foreign relations: Spain's best ally and worst enemy is itself.

 This is a stub. I will expand it as I discover the details.