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.

Yusuf III

Dates: January 20, 1891-present.

The Caliphate in New Andalusia is no stranger to unexpected successors; they're pretty much inevitable when congenital madness runs in the family, the (Jewish) maître d' has rights over each step of the acclamation process, and there are half a dozen collateral lines waiting in the wings. In the 19th century, those unexpected successors went down in history as "the six weak caliphs." In the 20th century, one of them turned out famously well. Only one of them, however, has been judged a bad caliph. His name is Yusuf III, and this is his story.

Yusuf II

Dates: 18??-1908.

Yusuf I leaves impossibly large shoes to fill on his death. For the next fifty years, those shoes aren't filled - at least not by anybody of the Umayyad line; the best claimant to that position would be Yusuf's former right-hand man, Don Musa Cordovero, who (along with his son, Don Ibrahim) oversees a succession of what's commonly called "the six weak caliphs" and steers the UCNA into being a more presidential monarchy.

After Don Musa's death, and the rise of Don Ibrahim, the UCNA encounters something it hasn't known since Yusuf I. For the first time in half a century, the Umayyad and the Cordovero at the top of the pecking order had a rapport - and ambition.

That Umayyad, not coincidentally, was named Yusuf II. This is his blog post.

Guillermo I

Dates: 1091-[when?]

In 1091, the frighteningly young Urraca becomes pregnant by her husband, Raymond of Burgundy. Unlike IRL, the child survives, and her firstborn son is named Alfonso after his late grandfather. He isn't the last son she has with Raymond, though: she has at least one other. In keeping with Iberian naming conventions, that second son is named after his other grandfather, William of Burgundy. On Urraca's death, he ascends to the throne as the first Ivrean king, under the regnal name "Guillermo I."

Thus begins the reign of the first completely fictitious person in Andalusada's history.

Alfonso VI of Castile

Before the beginning, Rodrigo Diaz was in the employ of Alfonso VI, at that point King of Leon and Castile. In the beginning, he's predictably banished.

Once that beginning gets underway, Alfonso VI has only a few years left to live. But he doesn't know that. This is his story.

Alfonso VI up to the point of divergence

Alfonso VI was the second son of Ferdinand the Great, sandwiched between Sancho (king of Leon) and Garcia (king of Galicia.) He was also the first to seriously ignore the division of territories between the sons, extorting money from Badajoz.

And starting from about 1072 (which, admittedly, gets off to a bad start when his brother Sancho kicks his ass at Golpejera and sends him fleeing to Toledo), the ten years prior to the POD had actually been pretty good for him. Sancho gets killed later that same year, allowing Alfonso to claim the coveted title of "King of Leon"; and when García is recalled from exile, he's forced to take monastic vows and gets banished to a monastery, never to fuck or fight again. By 1077, Alfonso VI is in a position to start styling himself Imperator Totus Hispaniae: "Emperor of All the Spains."

In 1079, he marries Constance of Burgundy, who bears him a daughter, Urraca. (She's going to be important one day, as soon as I figure out how.)

The Grand Princess

Dates: late 1700s [when?]-1834.

Mexico's constitution specifically allows for semi-Salic inheritance, because when the first Grand Prince [who?] died, all of his daughters were married morganatically - at least in principle, none of their husbands were eligible to rule in their own right. The daughter who succeeded him was his second, Teresa Maria. In Mexico, and in most of the New World as well, she is simply o Gran Princesa: "the Grand Princess."

This is her story.

Introducing Evgeny I of Russia

The first tsar of Russia I named definitely was also the last: Evgeny IV, popularly called "the Old." All I knew about him was what I'd retained after filing off the serial numbers of the last several Romanovs - and that he was, obviously, the fourth Evgeny of Russia.

It therefore follows that there had to be an Evgeny I as well. And, since I'd already established "the Two Evgenies" as a period in Russian historiography way back in May, it stood to reason that Evgeny I should be a notable tsar as well.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the (very WIP) introduction of the first Evgeny.

Crown princes and their titles

In the present day, the titles of crown princes are pretty much meaningless: Prince of Asturias. Prince of Girona. Prince of Wales. But at some point in history, those titles meant something. And at some point in history, those titles became the titles of crown princes. And because Andalusada parts ways with the world we know in 1081, I'm going to need to rethink all of those stories.

Urraca of León and Castille

Once things start getting different, I run into one of the first big divergence in history: the last Castillian monarch common to both timelines. Her name is Urraca, and she's something I've tried to ignore for awhile because so much is changed that I have no certain idea how her life plays out. This is her blog post.

Urraca's recognizable life

The only reason that I'm sure about Urraca's existence at all is because she's born in 1079. This means that she's two years old as of the POD.

The Miramoline

The has the name Wendy, which went from being an American-only outlier (on par with inflicting your child with a variant spelling of a name) to an internationally recognized one because of some Scotsman writing some book. (The Slavic world has an equivalent in the form of Svetlana.)

Andalusada almost certainly doesn't have Wendy, and it probably doesn't have Svetlana either. But it does have a female name of its own. That name, in the original French spelling, is Miramoline. Within a century the interconsonantal /a/ had been lost, giving rise to Mirmeauline, and (in English) the same thing, with various renderings of the vowels and duplicate letters: Mermelline, Myrmeline, etc. The name caught on.

This entry is about person who made it stick. The first woman to ever sign her name as la Miramoline.

Caliph Yusuf I

Born: August 22, 1772.
Died: 1839.
Position: Caliph of the UCNA.
Preceded by: None (position created.)
Succeeded by: Ilyas [who?]

The fall of Umayyad Seville was a big moment in Andalusada, because it collapsed the Moorish world. The great Mohammedan threat to the West shattered into pieces, never to recover. Out of it rose a number of nations. Above them all, ultimately, rose the Umayyad Caliphate in New Andalusia.

The fact that the UCNA is recognized as the legitimate heir of Seville is due primarily to one man, Yusuf I. This is his story.

Evgeny the Old

Dates: 1820s-1905. 
Succeeded by: Position abolished; see elsewhere [where?] for the pretenders.

I'm not sure how many kings Russia has. Truth be told, I'm not sure about a lot of Russian history. But I do know a bit about Russia's last tsar. His name is Evgeny IV, and at the beginning of his reign he was styled "the New" after the legendary Evgeny I.

By the end of it, having outlived the empire itself, he was Evgeny "the Old."

Introducing Constantine II of Hungary

"King Constantine." You don't need to name him any more than that; everybody will know who he is, just as well as they'd recognize "Count Dracula." And for the same reasons.

The guy is hated across cultures.

Let's introduce him...