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?
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