Kaspar Sansinger

Born: April 24, 1773

The history of 19th-century Cabralia was shaped by many great names, but rising above them all are a triumvirate that have gone down in history as the Three Wise Men. First among them, in both chronological and conventional order, is Kaspar Sansinger - military leader in the Cabralian War of Independency, statesman, and ultimately architect of the Grand Principality's descent into monarchism. This is his story.

Plebeian Cabralia

When the Grand Principality of Cabralia established itself in the 1790s, it was a very different place from what it would be fifty years later. It stretched across every climate zone between the equator and Tierra del Fuego. In every possible sense, it was the greatest of the 18th-century republics. Its future was unbounded, its possibilities endless. In its capital [where?], the government could dream with starry eyes of maximismo, when all of Cabralia might be a part of it.

It didn't work out, obviously. But this is the story of what came before - and what might have been.

Republican Cabralia 101

Why? Best practices. If Guisard France deserves to be distinct from other Frances, the early Grand Principality deserves to be distinct from its imperial form.

• Who? Everyone. It had Anglo-Dutch settlers from the north, Moros from the Andes, and everything in between. The early G.P. was more cosmopolitan than the contemporary UCNA, and had every potential to stay so if it could've held together.
• What? Very turbulent early on, but it eventually consolidated into a very aristocratic republic of sorts. The major problem was that it got more aristocratic as time went on...
• Where? In the beginning, about 70% of the entire continent - all of Brazil, Argentina, bits of Chile (with a few isolated Moorish holdouts), Paraguay, Uruguay, etc.
• When? From the 1790s to 1834. After 1834, Kaspar Sansinger's marriage is a done deal, and the slide into modern Cabralia is all but foreordained.

The House of Sansinger

A fair number of alt-histories try to establish an American royal family. I've seen people save the Iturbides, the Habsburgs, the Braganzas... and I've seen a fair number of attempts at dynasties too. (Even though it's much more likely that Washington would've set himself up as President-for-life, the House of Washington seems to be a relatively popular one.)

The hard part is establishing a New World royal dynasty - in the first concept sketch, I was actually playing with a New World House of Bonaparte, which got butterflied away once I realized just how errant a Moorish survival TL would be after that many centuries. The House of Bonaparte (tracing from both Napoleon and Lucien) gave rise to "Bonapartist" (which remains a fair enough description)... until, eventually, my writing on Güntheritism and *Prussia (and the vast Hohenzollern-shaped hole that I still feel in Andalusada's political landscape) congealed, and everything clicked into four words: "The House of Sansinger."

New World beer styles

When I want to waste time writing about Andalusada, I don't write about wars, or countries, or heroes; I write about food, guns, and theology. This particular article, about New World beer, is one that I've been meaning to write for quite some time.

Beer isn't beer isn't beer. Czech beer is different from Austrian beer is different from German beer is different from Dutch beer is different from English beer. And those styles are going to
As a basic rule of thumb, the taxonomy looks something like this:

• Latin American beer styles (and this includes those of Hispano-Baltic Texas) are based primarily on north German/Polish beer styles, with some later adjustments in Mexico and Brazil based on royal marriages and the like.
• North American beer styles are based primarily on Scottish styles, with some crossovers from Scandinavia and other parts of the British Isles (due in no small part to the presence of New Ireland.)
• Atlantic coastal beer styles are primarily Anglo-Dutch, with a bit of crossover from Scottish and Irish styles from North America.
• The UCNA's beer styles are a melting pot of its neighbors, with the exact details varying by region.

Having said that, let's unpack how this stuff plays out.

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.

Introducing the Three Wise Men

The Latin American Wars of Independence tend to get ignored in English-language alternate history, for the simple reason that most of the best literature about them is probably written in Spanish. Which is a shame, because they have an enormous number of Great Men in their ranks. Bolivar. San Martin. And my favorite, Bernardo O'Higgins, founding father of Chile - not so much for anything he did, but because he has such a wonderfully implausible name.

Wars of Independence happen in Andalusada too, during the breakdown of Umayyad Seville - but obviously not the same ones, because by the time the wars Spanish history is 700 years gone. There are still going to be lots of Great Men in the histories of those wars; Yusuf I is one of them.

In Cabralia, by sheer coincidence (and authorial fiat), the greatest of those Great Men shared an unlikely set of names that leads to them being internationally known, in all languages, as "the Three Wise Men." This is their introduction.