HRH George Washington Carver......SERIOUSLY?! integrating and reconciling true history into my fictional history

Yep you read the title right HRH George Washington Carver.....how alternate can you get eh?

Interesting fact on George Washington Carver: He had no direct line descendants.
George Washington Carver never married and did not have any children.
Yet creating a family let alone a entire dynasty for him was somewhat easy but requiring several liberties taken.

Then not to mention creating the Royal family themselves without stepping on the toes of any of the Royal families of Africa currently still in existence and like Europe they have their families still ruling and those that are in pretender status due to the toppling or overthrow of the monarchy in their respective countries.

Then I heard someone say "Wait...what? There arent any monarchies left in Africa. Colonialism wiped all of them out!"

AU CONTRAIRE MON FRERE

The Solomonic Dynasty of Ethopia survived well into WWII and even though their land was forcibly annexed by Italy managed to survive into the 1960s. Haile Selassie the last emperor is highly revered by the Rastafarian religion as the incarnation of Jesus Christ

Swaziland still has their Nnegyama and their Idouvakazi (the Great Lion and She-Elephant) King and Queen Mother respectively .

The House of Alaouite is in Morocco with Muhammad VI at the head,

And these are the ones more widely known. There are others more lesser know but still out there and I sampled from all of them to create the wide web of the  Royalty in this fictional territory of mine.

LoNyawetim and LaNyaweta translated as the Great Father and Great Mother. Not a far stretch since one of the Czar of Russia's epithets was Godunsa or Father of the country. In France the children and grandchildren of the King were known and fille and petit-filles de France signifying that they belonged to France more than their parents.

Then in order for my royal family to function I had to create royalty and nobles around them.  With my first draft of the story. LoNyawetim and LaNyaweta were going to be translated as Grand Duke like in Baden, Luxembourg, or Mecklenborg-Schwerin.....yeah didnt think I knew those huh?
But as the story progressed, it made more sense for the translation to be kingdom or better yet empire

Why?

Well I inserted a little time honored tradition once spoke on by Swedens King Gustav V that "Royalty can only marry other royalty" Hey they werent the only ones to follow this philosophy. The Royal House of Tonga rules that the royal princes can only marry the daughters of island chieftains sometimes their own cousins i.e. the current crown prince for thier children to be eligible for succession. The Nnengyama of Swaziland by custom of having more than one wife is supposed to marry one from all the clans of his domain in fact his first Great Wife must be from the Matsebula clan....Nope not up for negotiation folks. So to avoid a possible pedigree collapse of my fictional Royal house even before I set it up I had to expand their borders somewhat.

What's a pedigree collapse?
Simply put is so much inbreeding that that a certain bloodline for lack of a better term breeds itself out. The Spanish Hapsburg are the best definition of this.
The Spanish Hapsburgs?   Where are they now?
Well the main line ended with Charles II  or El Herizcho (The Bewitched)
He was the product of several cousin marriages and two uncle-niece marriages.

Hey cut the Hapsburgs some slack now .....marriages were more than standing before the priest and saying I do. Marriages were for lack of a better word business transactions and treaty sealers.
A lady that was an heiress in her own right was nice catch: just ask Mary of Burgundy or Eleanor of Aquitatine.  And in those days when you married the lady unless her father made you sign a agreement that allowed her to keep her control over her land you became the new lord.

Okay enough of the history lesson!
What does this have to do with Carver Chronicles?
Alot when you think about it.....

To create a fictional world that made sense even though it was fictional I had to study all of this in addition to the history of Africa.  I had to realize the enormity of what I was creating:  a fictional Westernized African empire.  An African Prussia with British tendencies, a British like government with all divisions experienced in the Western world at that time. Because to make a proper alternate history, although its alternate it still has to make sense as a possibility that could have happened if the circumstances were available.  So while you read, you learn at lesson at the same time
How bout that?

Creating the world of Carver Chronicles and all the flack that came with it

Allow me to introduce our heroine
HRH Sehani Ifyiena Alexandra Carver

Interesting name isnt it?
No more interesting than her family: The Royal Family of Carver-Ajiyneate

Wait did I hear right?
Carver?

Like George Washington Carver?

Well yes you did.  How is that possible?

"Carver is American the last time I checked."  Someone said to me at a writing panel at DragonCon when I was pitching the story while waiting for all the authors to arrive.
"Not as far fetched as you may think....
The colonies of Liberia and Sierra Leone were populated by freed American slaves.
In fact until the 1980's and that coup of Samuel K Doe,  Liberia was dominated by Americo-Liberian elite descendants of the freed slaves."

From the American Civil War to World War I
The Hapsburgs to the Hohenzollerns (And the Saxe Coburgs, Zahigrens, the Bernadottes too)
The Sarejevo incident and the few countries that managed to avoid colonization by the Europeans
Whew!
helps that I love to read.
And Thank heaven for Wikipedia!

Building the country of Akewiji was a very labor intensive yet fun task as it required a lot of research.  Because I had to make it plausible and believable
Yes its fiction  but fiction in a sense that one could see it happening

The country is actually a fusion of several countries including some that still retain their monarchies.  I needed a country that interacted with everybody but as a whole did not show loyalties to one or any of the superpowers but individually expressed sympathies. A Switzerland with a monarchy if you may. Or a Luxembourg or Sweden if you will.
Hey c'mon its not such a far stretch when you think about it.
There were Swiss who were Nazi loyalists
Queen Victoria of Sweden was pro-German being a princess from Baden and made no secret of it
Princess Victoria Adelaide of Denmark was banished for her Nazi loyalties after World War II
The people in my Grand Duchy are no different
The Royal Family for the most part are pro British
With exceptions of course (namely Sehani and Zwendili)
The loyalties and sympathies reflect the times and the growing movements with some variations of course.
With no World War I, communism would remain a political ideology instead of a movement that toppled several governments.
The National Workers Party would still be meeting in beer halls instead of goose stepping in the streets and everybody's favorite person to hate (except for the Neo-Nazis of course) Hitler led a more mainstream life of obscurity as painter and occasional rabble rouser.
The Lusitania is not sunk and Germany is still a loose confederated patchwork of duchies and grand duchies, principalities, kingdoms and well....Prussia

wait.......WHAAT??!!



Yes people the Germany that most of us know today is no more homogenous than the good ol
US or any country for that matter.  And my Grand Duchy is product of its times so why not?


"Ugh" said one of my friends "Youve  Eurorized an  African country."

"Eurorized?

 Is that even a word?"

       "Well you know what I mean. Its a country of Uncle Toms, Anglophiles.....really? If given a chance would a African country really do that?"
Well why wouldnt they? Why couldnt a country adapt itself to protect itself from the encroaching powers.
Best way.......become just like them while retaining their distinct identity.

Thailand did it

Japan to a certain degree did it.

I dont see the Akewejian people as Uncle Toms in the slightest.  I could be viewing with rose colored glasses, but i see this kingdom as survivors adapters and chameleons of their time.
What do you think?

Tickling my "what if" bone...

I consider myself a unique kind of gal.....I actually liked history.  I liked reading at a young age so reading about history was not hard.  As young as second grade, my guilty pleasure was Ancient Egypt when I got older I moved to Native American history then from sophomore year in high school I became what was called a "royal watcher" a term coined by a high school English teacher who was an Anglophile.

I can tell you pedigree of Prince William through his father to the whole history of Saxe Coburg to Windsor.

I can talk about the Hashemite line and their decent from the prophet Muhammad as well as the

Kings of Buganda

and that Hirohito was the 126th of the unbroken like of emperors occupying the Chrysateneum Throne.

I dont know why as a girl of American  black working class parents why the history of the Royal families of the world was such a fascination no more than I know why British comedy tickles me so much or why Downton Abbey has become my newest British addiction along with clotted cream, cucumber sandwiches and Classic and New Doctor Who

(the fourth, ninth and tenth incarnations were the best by far, im just sayin)


I'm sure a psychologist would have some complicated explanation with a bunch of jargon and phrases that I could never hope to understand but I'm not interested in treating it anyway...
So its no surprise that I fell into the world of alternate history and steampunk

Old period mixed with science
A car during the Renaissance period
Laser gun in the Old West
Dark City
 Magic and alchemy
The plethora of what ifs and maybes

I was hooked and the seeds were planted.
Franz Ferdinands assasination
WWI
The fall of most of the Royal Houses
Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns, Romanovs
Hitlers rise then WWII

And my aha moment mixed with one of my scientific idols : George Washington Carver

Imagine if you will the incident at Sarejevo taking a different turn: the Archduke and his wife surviving thanks to fantastic invention using a material synthesized from the soybean A kind of bullet proof vest.
Envision a kingdom in Africa that managed to ride out the wave of colonialism keeping it culture traditions no I'm not talking about Marvels Wakanda home of the Black Panther though I love the Black Panther series no doubt. Im talking about an African kingdom or Grand Duchy in this case. Thailand is such an interesting kingdom because as the British French were carving out territory in Asia and Africa it managed to avoid colonization. So one asks themselves: What did Thailand do differently?
They adapted to the leading powers.
And thus another "what if"  What If an African kingdom managed to do the same?
And George Washington Carver now esteemed and ennobled by a grateful Archduke who accended to the throne married into a royal tribe bringing all of his scientific knowledge.
The wheels started speeding:
The Carver Chronicles
So dive in with me to the Grand Duchy of Alakewji with Princess Sehani heir to the throne trying to hold her own and preserve the peaceful knowledge seeking land that she knows from her militaristic cousin who get this : she is required to marry.
Updates coming!