United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a constitutional monarchy located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands. The United Kingdom is a unitary state consisting of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It is governed by a parliamentary system with its seat of government in London, the capital, but with three devolved national administrations in Belfast, Edinburgh, and Cardiff.

The three deseparate countries were brought together over time, largely through the actions of England. England occupied Wales in the thirteenth century, and formally incorporated it in the sixteenth century. Concurrently, England had begun largely successful efforts to occupy and annex Ireland, beginning in the twelfth century. Conquest was complete by the seventeenth century.

England also sought to conquer Scotland for much of the fourteenth century, but the kingdoms of England and Scotland were de facto unified in the person of James VI of Scotland, who asceneded the English throne as James I in 1603. This unification was finally codified in 1707.

The United Kingdom remained more or less intact until after World War I, when Ireland launched a war for independence, which was for the most part successful, although the country was partitioned. An independent Republic of Ireland was created, but the state of Northern Ireland remained part of the UK.

At its apex, the UK controlled the largest global empire the world had ever seen.

Britain in A Different Flesh
Britain adopted the "divine-right" model used by France for its monarchy in the 17th century. The absolutist tyranny the state imposed upon its citizens led to an exodus of people fleeing to the New World. By the mid-18th century, those colonies rebelled, becoming the independent Federated Commonwealths of America in 1761.

Britain in Atlantis
Britain consolidated its control over Atlantis, becoming sole ruler of the continent until the end of the eighteenth century, when Atlantis rebelled and achieved independence.

Britain in Curious Notions
In one alternate visited by Crosstime Traffic, Britain and its allies France and Russia were defeated by Germany in the brief war of 1914. Britain and France went to war with Germany in the late 1930s, but were again defeated, which cleared the way for Germany to take full control of Europe

Britain in Days of Infamy
Britain was engaged in a life and death struggle with Nazi Germany when the Japanese entered World War II. Completely unprepared in the Far East, Britain was soundly defeated on both land and sea, and thrown out of the Pacific, all the way back to India.

Due to more pressing concerns back in Europe, Britain wasn’t able to offer anything much than a stiff resistance against the Japanese, as the Royal Air Force battled the Japanese Air Force for control of the skies.

After the victory at El Alamein, the tide of the war in Europe turned in favor of England and she was able to retake the offensive, bombing Japanese positions and forcing the Japanese to divert limited resources away from Hawaii (Days of Infamy).

Britain in The Guns of the South
Britain had given limited material and diplomatic support to the Confederacy during the Second American Revolution, much to the frustration of the Union. This tension increased after the United States was forced to recognize the Confederacy, and escalated after the election of President Horatio Seymour in 1864.

When the Union sent troops to the New Mexico and Arizona Territories in order to aid the rebel forces against Mexican Emperor Maximilian, the British Empire was alarmed. In response, England sent more troops to garrison Canada prompting protests from the US president. Events eventually degenerated into war between England and the Union; for which England was completely unprepared.

Although the Royal Navy was able to blockade the United State's eastern seaboard and bombard the New York and Boston harbors, the British Army was completely routed in Canada by the far more numerous and experienced US Army (armed with their own versions of the AK-47), thus losing control of the whole territory to the United States.

Britain in The Disunited States of America
In an alternate where the United States failed, Britain is one of the world's great powers.

Britain in "The Horse of Bronze"
The Tin Isle was once inhabited by the Nuggies, who exported tin to the Centaurs. One day tin shipments abruptly stopped coming, prompting the centaur Cheiron to mount an expedition to investigate this disappearance. Cheiron found that the Nuggies had gone all but extinct and been replaced by the mans. Though Cheiron found the mans very intimidating, he negotiated a trade agreement whereby shipments of tin to the centaurs' homeland would resume. However, at a feast commemorating this agreement, some drunken centaurs brawled with mans, and the agreement was abrogated. The centaurs barely escaped with their lives and never returned to the Tin Isle again.

Britain in In the Presence of Mine Enemies
Britain was an occupied territory of the Germanic Empire, ruled by the pro-Nazi British Union of Fascists. During the Second World War, Britain and the Soviet Union fought a losing war against Germany, Italy and Japan. Britain was defeated and conquered.

During the war much of London was destroyed by German dive bombers and panzers, as Winston Churchill led his country through a doomed last-ditch resistance. Key British buildings including the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and St. Paul's Cathedral were completely destroyed with photographs their only legacy.

Following its defeat, Britain was occupied by the Reich which eradicated Jews, Slavs, Arabs, Negroes and other races considered inferior. The Nazis placed British wartime political and military leaders on trial and executed or imprisoned them. The Nazis installed the collaborationist government of Oswald Mosley, leaving the BUF the only legal political party in Britain.

Britain's colonial empire was divided up among the victorious Axis. Its African colonies were taken over by Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain while Japan occupied Britain's former territories in the Far East and the Pacific Ocean along with Australia and New Zealand.

The British economy also experienced hyper-inflation due to the harsh war reparations and the Reich pegging the Reichmark artificially high. Partisan uprisings against the occupation authorities were harshly put down with captured partisans and their families and friends being executed in retaliation. The last partisan uprisings came in the mid-1970s around the Third World War when Germany was fighting a war against the United States, a neutral in the Second World War. Though most of Britain was rebuilt, it never recovered to pre-war levels and some areas in London remained in ruins seventy years after the end of World War Two.

In 2010, upon the death of the third Führer Kurt Haldweim, calls for reform in the Reich and the Germanic Empire began in Britain. The BUF, under the influence of the newly-elected British prime minister Charlie Lynton, started cautious moves towards independence. The revival of democratic ideas was at first cloaked as adherence to Nazi ideals in their purity, specifically Hitler's support for democracy in the First edition of Mein Kampf.

Britain in ''The Man With the Iron Heart
Britain occupied a zone of Germany after World War II, and found themselves dealing with the German Freedom Front. Like the United States, Britain fought the GFF but not with the level of brutality that the Soviet Union and France were.

Although Winston Churchill had guided the country through the War, he was voted out of office in 1945, and replaced by Clement Attlee. Attlee's government was naturally troubled from the beginning, as the GFF destroyed the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg in December, 1945, killing or injuring the judges set to preside over the trials of German war criminals. The British judges were among those injured and killed.

The following year, Britain received a substantial black eye when the GFF kidnapped several German physicists from their custody. In December, 1946, St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey were both destroyed.

With the Americans pulling out of Germany in 1948, it was presumed that the British would follow shortly.

Britain in Ruled Britannia
In ancient times, Britain was part of the Roman Empire. British nationalism inspired Queen Boudicca of the Icini to revolt against their rule. Though she was defeated, the story of her failed revolt inspired William Shakespeare to write the play Boudicca, which in turn touched off the successful revolt which restored Queen Elizabeth to England's throne.

In Shakespeare's and Elizabeth's own time, Britain was divided between two kingdoms: England and Scotland, which remained independent through the decade in which England was ruled as part of the Spanish Empire. However, as of Elizabeth's restoration to the throne, Scotland's King James VI was her closest living relative. Were James to succeed Elizabeth upon her death, Britain would be united under a single king.

For further reading, see England.

Britain in Southern Victory
Britain, along with France, was a primary ally of the Confederate States. The three nations defeated the United States in the War of Secession and the Second Mexican War. After the latter war, Britain claimed half of the state of Maine as a territorial concession. The three joined with Russia to form the Entente at the beginning of the 20th century, a direct response to the US's alliance with Germany.

During the Great War, Britain was forced to divide its army between Canada and northwestern Europe. The Royal Navy battled its American and German foes from the northern Atlantic through South America to the Pacific. Britain was the last of the Entente powers to sue for peace in 1917 (barring an untouched Japan) after her food supplies from Argentina and Australia were cut off.

The peace terms imposed upon Britain were harsh: London was forced to give independance to Ireland and Quebec, and to cede to the US anglophone Canada, Newfoundland, Bermuda, the Bahamas and the Sandwich Islands. However, Britain was only defeated, not crushed like France and the Confederacy, and remained the dominant power from Africa through India to Australia.

In the interwar years it suffered a defeat at the hands of Central Powers forces at Belfast, and in response to this defeat a right-wing coalition of Winston Churchill's Conservative Party and Oswald Mosley's Silver Shirts was elected as the Government. The British along with the French supported the winning Nationalist faction during the Spanish Civil War. Upon the death of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany in the summer of 1941, France began demanding territory it had lost in the Great War. Britian backed France's play, believing that the ascendent Wilhelm III give in. He refused, and the Second Great War began. Britain maintained its alliance with Jake Featherston's CSA, participating in joint attacks in the Carribean with the CS. Franco-British forces achieved substantial gains early in the war, but their offensive successes stalled outside of Hamburg in 1942. They launched a disastrous attempt to outflank the German defenses by violating Norwegian neutrality in 1941 and as a result Norway declared for the Central Powers.

Against the United States, Britain scored an early victory in a daring raid to capture its former colonies, Bermuda and the Bahamas, done in conjunction with the CSA. It felt the need to remind the Confederates that the blacks living in these territories were citizens of the Empire and would have their rights defended. The British (somewhat reluctantly) supported rebellion in Canada but had no realistic chance of returning to the North American mainland. They remained active in the Northern Atlantic, achieving a decisive victory over the German fleet early in 1943. However, unlike the in Great War, they did not participate in the Pacific theater, leaving Entente interests there to their co-belligerent, Japan, which proved to be a mistake; early in 1943, the Japanese abandoned the stalemated war with the U.S. around the Sandwich Islands and launched an offensive against British colonies in Asia.

Britain was one of the belligerent powers that successfully built a superbomb, along with the CS, Germany and the US. In 1944, Britain shared its information with the CS, which allowed the CS to become the first country in North America to detonate a superbomb. However, the US was able to retaliate with two bombs immediately, and the CS could not answer. Britain had to watch in horror as first Petrograd, then Paris were destroyed by German superbomb. While Britain was able to destroy Hamburg, they ultimately were forced to sue for peace when three of its cities, London, Norwich and Brighton were destroyed on the same day by Germany. Britain's response was foiled when a bomber destined for German territory was shot down over Belgium. The Churchill government collapsed, and its successor, led by Sir Horace Wilson, sued for peace.

Britain did not surrender at the end of the war and faced a peace similar to the one imposed in 1917. However both Germany and the USA looked with worry on Japan's new power, and some in both countries began to look at Britain (who lost certain of her Asian possessions to Japan in 1943) as a potential ally against Japan.

Britain in The Two Georges
Britain maintained one of the largest empires the world had ever seen, with kingdoms, empires and/or protectorates in North America, Asia, and Africa.

Britain in Worldwar
Britain was a member of the Allies during the aborted World War II, and then joined Big Five after the Race Invasion. It hosted strategy meetings for the Big Five in London.

Britain was invaded by the Race in 1943-44, but repelled the invasion, becoming the first nation to utilize poison gas in the war against the Conquest Fleet in the process. It remained free after the war; however, it was stripped of its empire (with the exception of Northern Ireland) by the Race at the Peace of Cairo conference. Canada, also free, fell into the United States' orbit. Britain needed a more powerful ally to remain relevant in the postwar world and found this ally in Germany, which helped the British develop their atomic bomb. Politics in Britain became increasingly fascistic, and life became very hard for Britain's Jews, including RAF man and Lizard war veteran David Goldfarb, who ultimately defected to Canada. Despite their close ties, Britain did not join Germany in the Race-German War of 1965, though it did provide some diplomatic support.

After the war, when Germany was reduced to a shell of its former self by the peace imposed on it by the Race, Britain lost its relevance in world and interworld affairs. As of 2031, Britain did not have the technology to build its own starship capable of journeying to Home in the foreseeable future, making it unique among the former Big Five members.