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tunapirate posted:I might be overly optimistic, but I'm confident that the AI will largely fail to capitalize on this break in the line. The HOI4 AI, especially on the version the mod runs on, is basically incapable of doing anything but deliberately bleeding all its manpower down to 0. I'm confident enough that this war literally will be done by Christmas I would almost toxx for it.  I am concerned about all those undefended provinces left exposed by the Istria breakthrough. Divisions can only move so fast, and that's a lot of potential ground the AI will be happy to jump on. I kind of wonder if it'll be so eager to exploit the break in the Byzantine line it'll abandon some of its own fortified positions. Before people fret too much, though, it feels worth pointing out that, much like the OTL nazis, the WRE literally cannot possibly win this war; they have something like half the world against them, and because their navy effectively no longer exists they have no means of even reaching some of their enemies, such as Ayiti and Britain, to do any damage to them. Flesnolk fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Sep 30, 2022 |
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Sep 30, 2022 02:56
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If the AI’s so dumb, why am I still struggling with it? 
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Sep 30, 2022 17:07
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Sheer weight of numbers and the front being gigantic
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Sep 30, 2022 17:14
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Empress Theonora posted:If the AI’s so dumb, why am I still struggling with it? Because you didn't cheese the metagame stategy and sink most of your buildup into making a Maginot Hypercube of fortresses, with the intention of establishing stationary meatgrinder fronts for the AI to exhaust themselves against even if you're only defending with untrained militia meatshields and artillery divisions?
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Sep 30, 2022 18:14
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Knowing the meta is for cowards! Um, yeah, that's my excuse.
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Sep 30, 2022 18:33
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silentsnack posted:Because you didn't cheese the metagame stategy and sink most of your buildup into making a Maginot Hypercube of fortresses, with the intention of establishing stationary meatgrinder fronts for the AI to exhaust themselves against even if you're only defending with untrained militia meatshields and artillery divisions? I think that was basically attempted in Italy, and then the French didn't attack there
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Sep 30, 2022 18:53
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Flesnolk posted:I think that was basically attempted in Italy, and then the French didn't attack there They would get around to it eventually, once they steamroll all of the softer targets and run out of alternative routes to attack. As TheMcD said the defenders are spread too thin to defend effectively, so either they fallback to a more defensible line or they get pushed back and both sides take heavy losses along the way. Except Theonora has other/RP reasons not to intentionally abandon allies to fnazi occupation in order to camp a single strategic chokepoint and wait for the AI to decide that the only valid option is to march everything down the impassable hallway of death like it's a Rimworld raid.
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Sep 30, 2022 20:03
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I really hope that we can counter punch swiftly. Less people at risk of fascism that way. I'm also hopeful that, without a navy, it'll be fairly easy to crush our way directly into France.
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Sep 30, 2022 21:26
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Honestly surprised the Brits haven't already done a naval invasion of northern France, from what I remember of playtests
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Sep 30, 2022 23:14
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Empress Theonora posted:The future only exists because of all the past piled up behind it. I think about all of the historical circumstances that had to line up exactly for people like women like me to exist. The mass migration that was the real legacy of the Ming Frontier Army, the Hui nobles of southern Germany throwing their lot in with the Hungarian League and the foundation of the sultanate Ao Di Li, Ao Di Li's expansion into Istria, the Roman Empire's later conquest of that same region, the fall of the empire, the rise of the republic, the fall of the republic, the rise of the Commune, and its evolution into the sort of society where I was not only free to be myself, but had the vocabulary and concepts to articulate it and the tools to achieve it. Sometimes, looking back at the grand sweep of history, I feel a sort of vertigo, like I'm perched atop some sort of narrow spire, and beneath me is the vast majority of other times and places that eventually led to the particular one I was lucky enough to be born in. In most of the rest, I suppose I would have wound up living as a man out of sheer inertia. Or, more likely, not living at all. 
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Oct 1, 2022 01:40
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Does HOI IV model partisan unrest at all? Because I can't imagine the fascists having an easy time occupying areas with people used to living under fairly radical communism for a couple generations, especially while the mother country is still kicking.
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Oct 1, 2022 05:24
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Yes
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Oct 1, 2022 07:15
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Smh, I can't believe ByzLP is political now. Consider me unsubbed.
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Oct 1, 2022 09:40
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stumblebum posted:Does HOI IV model partisan unrest at all? Because I can't imagine the fascists having an easy time occupying areas with people used to living under fairly radical communism for a couple generations, especially while the mother country is still kicking. Yes, although the mod is based on an older version of the game, it still includes an occupation mechanic which affects production and any potential manpower usage. For details, see here.
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Oct 1, 2022 10:34
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What does the WRE sub fleet in the med look like? I imagine that they have a big one based out of their southern coast?
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Oct 2, 2022 18:16
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Kangxi posted:Yes, although the mod is based on an older version of the game, it still includes an occupation mechanic which affects production and any potential manpower usage. For details, see here. Aw, no stacks of partisan units spontaneously popping up in HOI IV barring the possibility of specific events forcing such a thing to exist?
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Oct 2, 2022 18:29
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stumblebum posted:Aw, no stacks of partisan units spontaneously popping up in HOI IV barring the possibility of specific events forcing such a thing to exist? It's possible, but comes with the problem that the supply system then considers them to be encircled and out of supply, leading to them being very easily wiped out and not being as much of a problem as one would want them to be.
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Oct 2, 2022 18:33
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Whats the stockpile situation for the Byzantines? Do we have surpluses of anything in large quantity that we're not using? Those maps of the air zones are very worrying if we're only able to put up a few hundred planes over the balkans where we're losing ground, getting that green air is a huge deal for pushing so giving it to the french is a big no-no
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Oct 2, 2022 19:40
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Empress Theonora posted:
 (I only just noticed while talking to a friend about this, hey that's my confirmation saint - the patron of plagiarists and internet piracy)
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Oct 2, 2022 20:05
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drat it, I'm trying to make a 'just one more thing' joke re. the coup de grace being delivered by the Columba, but I just can't get it done!
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Oct 3, 2022 06:39
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Oh, this is a great ship you got here. Converted battleship hull? My wife was always telling me this is a great idea if you need to repurpose your heavier ships and - oh, excuse me. I don't mean to intrude. This is the LÉ Columba, Irish naval ship, happy to meet you. Just one more thing and I'll get out of your hair. Is this your ammunition storage?
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Oct 3, 2022 14:15
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Kangxi posted:Oh, this is a great ship you got here. Converted battleship hull? My wife was always telling me this is a great idea if you need to repurpose your heavier ships and - oh, excuse me. I don't mean to intrude. This is the LÉ Columba, Irish naval ship, happy to meet you. 
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Oct 3, 2022 17:36
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the LE Columba doesn't have flank speed, it has shamble speed instead.
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Oct 3, 2022 19:39
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TheMcD posted:It's possible, but comes with the problem that the supply system then considers them to be encircled and out of supply, leading to them being very easily wiped out and not being as much of a problem as one would want them to be. Can they be used as a backboard for scoring encirclement? I tried looking up the mechanics of encirclement but couldn't find any definitions on how it actually works.
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Oct 4, 2022 16:45
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stumblebum posted:Can they be used as a backboard for scoring encirclement? I tried looking up the mechanics of encirclement but couldn't find any definitions on how it actually works. encirclements happen when a unit has no friendly province to retreat to after losing a combat, so yes, partisan units can be used to cut off the retreat of enemy units, but it is exceedingly unlikely that it ever actually works out, since they are AI controlled and spawn randomly, so it's very unlikely they ever find themselves in a position to do so.
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Oct 4, 2022 17:11
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Kangxi posted:Oh, this is a great ship you got here. Converted battleship hull? My wife was always telling me this is a great idea if you need to repurpose your heavier ships and - oh, excuse me. I don't mean to intrude. This is the LÉ Columba, Irish naval ship, happy to meet you. This is amazing.
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Oct 4, 2022 23:10
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Empress Theonora posted:As the RRP forces picked through the rubble of Sibiu's abandoned pickets and pored over the documents left behind by the WRE armies, it became clear that the Gauls' lack of regard for the Agaidika Convention moved past mere rudeness. Surviving political prisoners and Hungarian POWs liberated by the Red Army reported that some among their number were taken out and executed by C.S.P.[15] officers once it became clear Corvus's forces were encircled with no hope of relief. There was also evidence that the occupation authorities seemed to be cataloguing and categorizing both those in imperial custody and the larger civilian population of Sibiu County, although according to what schema-- and for what purpose-- remained unclear; this was an occupation that scarcely lasted a month, so this effort had barely got started by the time Ha's landships rolled into town. The full scope of the WRE's occupation policy, therefore, remained unknown to the RRP.  well this is going to be grim when we get to areas occupied/ruled by the fash for longer
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Oct 4, 2022 23:14
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Kangxi posted:Oh, this is a great ship you got here. Converted battleship hull? My wife was always telling me this is a great idea if you need to repurpose your heavier ships and - oh, excuse me. I don't mean to intrude. This is the LÉ Columba, Irish naval ship, happy to meet you. Parfait.
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Oct 5, 2022 05:34
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Yuiiut posted:
This is interesting because racism, as a historically contiguous and largely-consistently-defined socioeconomic hierarchy, isn't really a thing in this world. What would the criteria for "desirable" vs "undesirable" be here then? Linguistics is the only criteria I can think of that would make the most sense as the locus of fascist resentment. If language is the basis of their ordering, then I'd imagine something along the lines of "Romantic" speaker being the best and most Roman/Western, with "Grecian" speakers being the degenerate/intermediate station, to "Sinic" (and possibly Arabic) speakers being associated with the despicable East. Language also makes sense as we've already seen material about the IG trying to hamfistedly push Latin-based honorifics and stuff about them changing signage and education in former Leon.
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Oct 5, 2022 21:05
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There's also much more gender equality and a long acceptance that women and men can do the same jobs, whereas OTL fascism is huge on "traditional" womanhood and the primacy of the patriarchy.
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Oct 5, 2022 21:16
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"Degeneracy" is subjective, so all it takes is spinning up contrived moral outrage over imaginary crimes and suddenly the designated scapegoat is somehow at fault for all the evils in the world. As evidence, just imagine I'm gesturing vaguely in the direction of a cable TV
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Oct 5, 2022 21:46
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It doesn't take more than a stiff breeze for a fash in a lab coat to start pontificating over the inherent genetic villainy of {insert enemy here.}
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Oct 5, 2022 21:53
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Could be a de-sinicisation of the occident, which has some unfortunate implications for iberia for starters
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Oct 5, 2022 22:02
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So this is me just wondering if I missed something but is The Great General our first explicitly trans character in the narrative?stumblebum posted:This is interesting because racism, as a historically contiguous and largely-consistently-defined socioeconomic hierarchy, isn't really a thing in this world. What would the criteria for "desirable" vs "undesirable" be here then? Linguistics is the only criteria I can think of that would make the most sense as the locus of fascist resentment. If language is the basis of their ordering, then I'd imagine something along the lines of "Romantic" speaker being the best and most Roman/Western, with "Grecian" speakers being the degenerate/intermediate station, to "Sinic" (and possibly Arabic) speakers being associated with the despicable East. Language also makes sense as we've already seen material about the IG trying to hamfistedly push Latin-based honorifics and stuff about them changing signage and education in former Leon. So I've got two thoughts on this that don't quite dovetail into a single conclusion but both kind of start from where you're talking. 1. The absence of racism. I'm not sure that we actually know that. Mainly because our sources are predominantly in-universe first person narratives written by Theonora, and I mean I don't blame Theonora for not wanting to write a first person narrative from a really racist person, or about experiencing racism for that matter. Her narrators have largely been sympathetic to a greater or lesser extent, and I get it if she doesn't really feel like putting on a "I'm a racist hat" for a few thousand words. While I'm trusting that Theonora has given us a mostly complete picture of the general social struggles of this world, that isn't the same as it being 100% complete. The peculiarities of racism in this world would be different; without the transatlantic slave trade or wildly successful anglo colonialism, two of our major pillars for how racism works in the english speaking world just didn't really happen. Western and Eastern Africa remained powerful, the Americas are largely ruled by indigenous states rather than settle colonial ones, which means ex post facto justifications for the mass enslavement of entire phenotypes and the seizure/murder of others did not have an adaptive reason to arise all that strongly. That said I can't really recall anything in the narrative that suggests a radical change in this world's approach to antisemitism. 2. OTL Nazis. And I guess CW for Nazis. OTL Nazis were really loving focused on killing Jews, that is true. But that isn't really where they started the exterminationism, that came after several ratchets up of getting people used to the idea that there are undesirable groups that must be exterminated for the greater good. Notably, queer people and disabled people. That famous book burning photo? That wasn't burning Jewish religious texts, it was burning scientific texts on gender transition. As Theonora says, its not quite obvious what the WRE was assembling those lists for. The least dramatic answer is that it was a list of suspected spies/partisans/hardcore RRP supporters and the WRE was simply so bad at identifying such people that the list is not anything like what the RRP would have written. But we don't know a lot about what the social norms are inside the WRE, so they could have been evaluating people on ability, on inscrutable phrenology bullshit, on acceptable vs unacceptable types of queerness that the RRP doesn't really parse as meaningful, or even quite possibly religious or ethnic affiliations that were less obvious than just like "has Chinese ancestors." In any event its not good I'm in the middle of watching Come and See so I am feeling pretty pessimistic!!!
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Oct 5, 2022 22:29
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stumblebum posted:This is interesting because racism, as a historically contiguous and largely-consistently-defined socioeconomic hierarchy, isn't really a thing in this world. What would the criteria for "desirable" vs "undesirable" be here then? Linguistics is the only criteria I can think of that would make the most sense as the locus of fascist resentment. If language is the basis of their ordering, then I'd imagine something along the lines of "Romantic" speaker being the best and most Roman/Western, with "Grecian" speakers being the degenerate/intermediate station, to "Sinic" (and possibly Arabic) speakers being associated with the despicable East. Language also makes sense as we've already seen material about the IG trying to hamfistedly push Latin-based honorifics and stuff about them changing signage and education in former Leon. "Postuma seemed to attribute the fall of the Roman Empire to Germans, "sinicization", heresy, heathenry, effete philhellenes, Greek debauchery, the miscellaneously "asiatic", street radicals, minority ethnicities, Germans again, wicked commissars, sexual deviants, and, finally, the Germans." CW: Nazi discussion Even putting aside the ethnic categories noted [Germans, Greeks, 'asiatics'] there's plenty there that would mirror the other notable targets of OTL Nazi Germany - trade unionists, disabled people, any political opponents, "sexual deviants" etc. Have we had any insight into religion under "West Rome"? The reference to 'heresy' and 'heathenry' is interesting - OTL saw a persecution of clergy in occupied Poland, but in this timeline the RRP and it's lands has been pluralistic for quite some time, so local clergy are less likely to be focal points of resistance and opposition & religion is likely much less tied to national identity. The WRE could try to co-opt some clergy into co-operation and compliance - I expect they'd have a theological movement mirroring the "positive Christianity" one in Nazi Germany, though I doubt it would be hugely successful [in occupied lands]. Internally, I expect that “political priests” are slated for suppression and extermination for much the same reason they were under Nazi Germany - fascists have little tolerance for power structures & centers outside the party-state. The upper ranks of the WRE are 100% going to be swarming with Hellenic reconstructionists talking about how the 'Semitic religion' sapped the 'martial vigor' of old Rome though.
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Oct 5, 2022 23:14
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ThatBasqueGuy posted:Could be a de-sinicisation of the occident, which has some unfortunate implications for iberia for starters Pretty sure it's this. We don't have a whole lot of evidence yet but, y'know, none of the fascists know how to use a writing brush. They make a point to take all the eastern inspired elements out of their uniforms compared to pretty much everybody else's general portraits. The loud and implacable hatred of eastern degeneracy while still clearly being existentially terrified by China. Little things like that.
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Oct 6, 2022 00:08
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The big speech where their leader clarified that the "western" in their name isn't a geographic thing so much as a civilizational one.
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Oct 6, 2022 00:26
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I appreciate the serious and respectful tone of discussion so far. There is a specific quote that stands out to me from Valeria P's speech, emphasis mine: Valeria Postuma posted:But now, the empire has the privilege to begin again. The new empire we are building will be an empire reborn in fire, steel, and blood; the imperfections and contradictions of the old empire will be burned away. Just as the Living Saint united all the West under one Church and one God, we shall unite it as one imperial Roman nation, eternal and indivisible, moving as one to advance the cause of Western civilization. We can do all of this-- together; even our wayward brothers and sisters squatting in the ruins of the old empire have their part to play once the wicked commissars who have led them astray and other undesirable elements beyond remediation or rehabilitation have been culled. There is a long and contentious academic debate over what exactly fascism is, at least in distinction to what is 'only' authoritarianism. Regimes can crack down on civil liberties, be violently anti-communist, suppress ethnic and religious minorities or other groups without being explicitly fascist, and they according to some definitions, can be 'only' right-wing authoritarians. To list one attempt of a more exact definition of fascism: Robert O. Paxton in his book, The Anatomy of Fascism, defines it as an ideology based on historical grievances, a cult of leadership, reliant on paramilitaries, repressed civil liberties, and used violence as a political tool. And in that book, he compares various regimes, saying which ones were explicitly fascist (Hitler's regime in Italy, Mussolini's in Italy) and which ones were only right-wing authoritarians. Looking back at the history of France in the 19th century in this LP, and its near-continual military defeat at the hands of the Byzantine Republic, there is enough room to describe a politics of grievance here. The two Valerias can encompass a cult of leadership. The posts about armed militias in Victoria 2 and the existence of an armed paramilitary (the CSP), it would make a lot of sense to describe the regime as fascist according to this definition. But the reference to 'beginning again' makes me think of a different author specifically. Roger Griffin, across much of his work, describes what characteristics fascist regimes share. He describes the concept of palingenetic ultranationalism. Palingenetic here refers to a the myth of a national rebirth. This is accomplished through destroying the old political or social order, railing against its "corruption" and "decadence", and in the process creating a new one. It is, in a perverse way, 'revolutionary', but not liberal, not socialist (for any of the varieties of socialism that exist in Byzworld), and not whatever the Ming are doing. The fascists in this timeline, we should note, overthrew a constitutional monarchy, in their backlash against the previous social order. The recurring imagery in this speech is of the rebirth of a community through an imaginary vision of the Roman Empire. Of course, that is what the ideology promises. The promise is of the intoxication of mass rallies and waving giant flags. We all know what the reality of what these regimes are. (edited for typos and clarity) Tomoe Goonzen fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Oct 7, 2022 |
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Oct 6, 2022 02:45
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Yuiiut posted:"Postuma seemed to attribute the fall of the Roman Empire to Germans, "sinicization", heresy, heathenry, effete philhellenes, Greek debauchery, the miscellaneously "asiatic", street radicals, minority ethnicities, Germans again, wicked commissars, sexual deviants, and, finally, the Germans." This reminds me of an interesting word choice the WRE/Theonora made on the map. It's 2AM and I can't sleep so I'm going to type up a little history of rome through the lens of ethnic integration. Note that I am not and was never a Rome specialist, and I am not trying to make the claim that this is the True way of looking at Rome, I'm just trying to get to a particular word and why I find it interesting. So going all the way back as far as we can in Roman history and mythology, we find that Rome was from the get-go a fusional community. Even if you decide to discard the claims of Trojan refugees as Roman founders, Rome from the earliest possible claims of its existence is a fusion community of Latins, Faliscians, Etruscans, Umbrians, and Sabines (and yes the Sabines are also a kind of Umbrian but they get a lot of special distinction in the narrative). That's according to mythology; archaeologically there were also Phoenician and Greek communities inside Rome. The non-Roman Sabines are granted citizenship without the vote and then the vote itself quite early in the records (290 BCE and 268 BCE respectively, which the eagle-eyed may note is before the 1st Punic War, or on either side of the Pyrrhic War, well before most of the really defining events of Rome happened or most of its possessions). So that gives us our kind of "core" of Rome. As Rome expanded across the Italian peninsula, they tended to do somewhat arms length integrations of other peoples in Italy such as the Oscans, Campanians, and further groups of Etruscans. They'd conquer a place and then those people would become socii, a bit of a second class citizenship that could be summarized as reduced military burden, lack of say over foreign policy, and equal booty rights on campaign. Not necessarily the best deal but a shockingly good deal compared to what e.g. Macedonians would give conquered people. The real test of if it was a good deal or not was the eventual Social War in 91BCE, where the several socii revolted against Roman rule. While the formal record is that they lost (after all, all their leaders died), the war ultimately ended with Rome making radical changes to its citizenship law, largely integrating the socii and in effect ending the system by which the Italian peninsula had meaningful ethno-legal distinctions in favor of a general Romanization. Of course the Roman model of expansion kind of needed to have some troops who were cheaper and easier and less tied to the Roman legal system. Enter the peregrinii, which refers to free non-citizens. These were recruited into the imperial army as auxilia starting in 30BCE, which is more likely the term you've heard. Auxilia provided the bulk of Roman (non-engineering) specialists, and importantly gained full citizenship after 25 years of service, which was of course fully hereditary. Another way of looking at this is that any ethnic group that was under Roman law for a long period of time would slowly but surely become more and eventually fully Roman. Which is also to say that the auxilia system was deliberately if slowly self-destructive. In principle it was sustainable as long as you kept up a certain rate of conquest, a rate of conquest that slowed considerably during the Imperial period. So the socii system ends rather dramatically and the auxilia dwindled until citizenship was granted to all Imperial subjects in 212 CE and the auxilia just became a category of military units by function rather than a category of military units by citizenship. The need however for bulking up Rome's armies on a budget was if anything more intense than ever, as the remaining Roman enemies had narrowed down largely to groups that were especially hardy opponents, and it brings us to the term that struck me: foederati. Foederati is technically a term that can refer to socii as well, but almost always to modern readers it refers to practices from the late Empire rather than Republic. While socii were granted a sort of second class citizenship, and auxilia were put on an escalator to increasing citizenship, foederati were simply not citizens. They had a specific treaty with Rome that outlined a set of military obligations in exchange for ownership of land. We often think of them as not even really part of Rome at all - the Franks, the Alans, the Goths, the Vandals. Which is fair. The move to the foederati system marks an inflection point in the process of Romanization, where the process begins to slow and then eventually reverse. So back to our most recent SOTW:  Why are the Germans foederati rather than a kingdom or empire or even just "Germania" or something? I posit, combined with the quote waaay up there that Yuiiiut points to, that the WRE has a particular axe to grind with Germans. Much like how at certain points in Roman history the Samnites and Gauls were viewed as beyond the ability to civilize, the WRE views working with Germans as an unfortunate necessity that they want to dispense with at some point in the future. While it could just be a bit of historical nerdery (the Germans were never conquered by Rome, but several Germanic groups, notably and especially ironically the Franks1), an empty echo, the combination with them having a different level of alliance than either Leon or Polonia as well as Postuma's seeming particular antipathy toward the German people (plus the Germans being the original victims of the WRE's beloved "lightning war") points to there being some real teeth to this bigotry. I suspect at this point that life in the German Foederati may be substantially worse than we suspect so far. I'm going to reveal myself as a horrible dork and admit that part of what I'm thinking of is the light novel/manga 86eighty-six, where a country does ethnic extermination via grinding conscription. It's dark! 1 Kind of tempted to do a little fanfic from somebody analyzing this part of the WRE psychology and how this is a sort of psychological denialism that is an intrinsic contradiction in the WRE politic that any attempt to resolve will cause the ultimate psychic collapse of the entire project. Kangxi posted:I appreciate the serious and respectful tone of discussion so far. Fascism does stand out as taxonomically interesting since while very few people can agree what fascism is, they can largely agree on who the fascists are. A mildly hot take of mine is that I hate when people say that fascism is a death cult, because I think its almost exactly the reverse, a fertility cult. Fascists do not crave death as an end in and of itself, they crave it as step on a greater process of rebirth and renewal. I feel that the politics of grievance here run even deeper than just a series of defeats (though that is plenty!). The major fascist powers are united in their claims to being the rightful heirs of Rome, but they are confronted daily with the embarrassing reality that actual Rome and actual 2nd Rome are both under the control of a group that is not wallowing in creepy nostalgia, and that rejects not just looking-backwards but also authoritarian rulership. Every second the Byzantine Commune draws breath is an insult to their pretensions of Roman-ness, and since that Roman-ness suffuses their entire governing ideology, this transcends embarrassment and becomes revanchism (and they didn't even need to control the territory before!). A note about IRL fascists that is a definite divergence and I'm interested in others' thoughts here. Theonora made the decision very early that this world just does not have misogyny in the way we're used to it OTL. To me at least, one of the driving features of fascist thought is misogyny. IRL fascism rests its governing logic on a series of synecdoche, where the individual man is supposed to be empowered to pursue his (genetic) self interest in a primal struggle, and his submission to a near omnipotent state is synecdoche for his near omnipotence over his household, a state of affairs which rests on the profound disenfranchisement of women. The Romans even provide a useful concept here, the pater familias, which included not only the father of the household having religious duties within the household as minor priest (synecdoche of course for the critical role that priesthood maintained in statehood), but more importantly for our purposes actual life-and-death power over members of the household (most extreme: a legal obligation to put "deformed" children to death). Obviously a political philosophy that enshrines and assumes that men are always and forever the legal superiors to women is not going to fly here and is not what has been adopted by even the WRE. IDK to me that seems like a really major divergence in this timeline's fascism from IRL fascism.
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Oct 6, 2022 08:21
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Tulip posted:[Extensive discussions about the use of 'foederati' to refer to the Germans] In terms of the discussion about fascism being a 'death cult' compared to a 'fertility cult' & misogyny - obviously the 'rebirth and renewal' (of the Roman Empire) is a massive ideological 'goal' of the WRE, but where the 'death cult' comments come from is something like Umberto Eco's essay 'Ur-Fascism': Umberto Eco posted:In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte (in English it should be translated as “Long Live Death!”). In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death. That is, 'everyone' is educated to become a 'hero' and expect or desire a corresponding death for the party/state/'people'. In OTL fascist societies, 'everyone' was a man who was the pater familias of his family, the women subjugated underneath (and subject to) him, he would (nominally) be socially accountably for her actions. Here where we have had genuine gender equality since misogyny doesn't exist in the same way it does OTL, and women appear in the armed forces at what seems the same rate as men, I would expect that this 'everyone' includes both genders, and the 'cult of heroism' and valorization of the heroic death - the expectation that 'citizens' of Rome should gladly die for it - plays some role in WRE ideology. I don't think there's a strain of individual 'genetic' success, but instead collective success as the 'Roman' people, which demands individual's sacrifice. Empress Theonora posted:Despite having two légions of armour in the area, Invicta's attempt to block this new offensive failed; the Legate was attempting to leverage her force's mobility for a defence-in-depth-- but, in the bottleneck IX Hispana was caught in, she rapidly ran out of depth, and was forced to order these divisions to withdraw southwards, towards Sibiu-- and the nigh-impassible Southern Carpathians-- after taking nearly 3,000 casualties in the space of five hours. For instance, I wouldn't be surprised if part of the collapsing of the Sibiu pocket saw the more ideological divisions/C.S.P elements fighting to the death, valorized in WRE propaganda (potentially credited with tying up RRP forces while Illyria was taken), whereas Corvus' surrender is ignored and suppressed. Given that the WRE regime, as Kangxi noted, toppled a constitutional monarchy, I expect the hierarchy presents itself as meritocratic - people are given status and recognized in accordance with their 'contributions'. In reality, like all fascist states it will be a incestous viper's pit of nepotism and playing favourites, but the the hierocracy fascism relies on will be structured around (alleged) 'merit' and 'ability' as opposed to decadent greek populism or antiquated aristocracy. Potentially that what this means for family structure is unlike the patriarchal structures favored by fascists IRL (which typically reflect social norms) the WRE (or at least parts of it's intelligentsia, it's likely not in a state where it can roll it out by force) is potentially more interested in 'abolishing' the family, looking back at the extensive adoptions which characterized ancient Rome (because all our sources of Rome are aristocrats) as model and claiming that all relationships can and should be re-ordered to be more 'useful' or 'productive' to the party/state/people. After all, if Valeria is the parent of the nation, then her chosen heir is also family, right? And if your parents are complaining about the war, then every good Roman child knows that the C.S.P officer you inform of such sedition is much more your family than those traitors.
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Oct 6, 2022 10:21
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