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."

The House of Umayya

Let's start with the short version of the story:

The Banu Umayya is very, very old. Their family goes back to Umayya ibn Abd-Shams, great-grandfather of Mu'awiya I, the fifth true Caliph of Islam. Under the rule of the Banu Umayya, Islam went from being the dominant religion of Arabia to being the dominant religion of the entire Western world. Constantinople, which had reconquered the entirety of the former Roman Empire, lost all but Anatolia, and their end in 1476 began eight centuries earlier under Yazid I. The march of Islam was only halted by treachery most foul - and before the dust had settled, the last survivors of the Banu Umayya fled to the western most reaches of their former empire, and built it again, better than the first time. Under their rule, al-Andalus displaced even great Damascus as the jewel of civilization: in 1000, Qurtuba was the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, bar none.

It didn't last forever, of course; treachery most foul, once again, and when the Berber fitna was finally over and al-Andalus was reconsolidated, it was under the Abbadids in Seville. The Abbadids gave way to a short period of Berber interlopers, who gave way to the Abbadids, who eventually gave way to the Five Families. But it's a testimony to the Banu Umayya that the civilization they began in that backwater peninsula was never overshadowed by the rest of the Umma.

And when the Five Families had been broken, and the bitch had been beaten, the Umayyads rose from the ashes and restored themselves. And when (not for the first time) they were laid low by treachery most foul, the survivors (again, not for the first time) fled to the westernmost reaches of their former empire, and built it again, better than before.

That's the short version of the story. It's not entirely true, but it's true enough. And even if some of it is lies, and some of it can't be called either way, that doesn't make it any less impressive. Going into that part, though, does make it a bit more complex.

The Sufyanid families

Sufyan b. Yusuf was never going to be the heir of his father. He had some kind of mental illness, and while it was only very mild the medical science of the day left no good way to treat it except alcohol. He was a drunk, and often a brooding one. His politics perpetually clashed with his father's, by turns liberal and Mahdist, and he had neither his father's sharp mind nor his golden tongue. For a nascent state that wanted stability afterwards, Sufyan simply wasn't a good role model.

But the biggest reason Sufyan was never going to be Sufyan I was the succession crisis that would follow him, because Sufyan was a real sex machine. Over the course of his life, Sufyan had eight (or possibly nine) wives, four or five mistresses, a few assorted bastard children, and one pair of identical twins that he adopted simply because he wouldn't be surprised if he did father them before they were abandoned at his doorstep.

There is one thing that could be said in his defense, though: Sufyan ibn Yusuf took his duties seriously. Almost none of his children had much quality time with him, but he did make a point of arranging a proper education for them, and through some string-pulling saw most of them into service posts within midcentury New Andalusia. From this came the several families that bear his name.