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Opening Atlantis Spoilers; Ask your questions here!
Topic Started: Dec 19 2007, 05:39 PM (685 Views)
Makkabee
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The Stuarts were still in power after 1688 OTL. The Glorious Revolution tossed out James II but didn't topple the dynasty -- his daughters Mary succeeded him, and after her death her sister Anne ruled until 1714. They brought in the Hannover cousins after they ran out of Protestant Stuarts.
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Custer
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Oops you're right - I always think of William and Mary as just William. :ph43r:
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SladeJack
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My knock on the series is that, though the specifics of European history seem to change, the broad strokes stay the same, and influence the history of other regions (including the mini-continent) in roughly the same ways. From promotional materials I had expected an uninhabited mini-continent where people from anywhere in the world could move and start over afresh without owing anything to anyone from back home--sort of like the New Hastings novella started to be.

Agree with Mak that the lack of development of such a small area makes no sense. If it were North America-sized I could accept it, but Atlantis is small. What makes even less sense is that halfway through New Hastings the behavior he describes--striking out and starting new towns when the old ones get tiresome--had already begun. You had Bredestown in the first generation, and still in said first generation Richard was already thinking of quitting Bredestown and starting yet another new one, and William made reference to multiple satellite settlements.

It might be possible that settlement slowed in subsequent generations as Terranova opened up and presented greater economic incentives. Initially Atlantis had the super-rich cod fishing grounds, but use that as a cash crop and it won't be long before overfishing kills the goose that laid the golden egg. Carcasses of big birds aren't very worthwhile, and by Noveau Redon the Atlantean economy seems wholly dependent on imports from Terranova like tobacco. Perhaps once Terranova became no less accessible than Atlantis the mini-continent was overlooked by colony-founders and settlement slowed to a crawl. However, this falls flat on its face when we realize that Atlantis contains at least one major metropolis and has a number of other centers that are moving in that direction in all three territories.

My take on the war is that it wasn't introduced to Atlantis till it was already well under way, but it seems hard to imagine the colonial powers would wait more than a few months. The campaign seemed to last about a year. After that, I suppose we can hope some time elapsed before the negotiations began worldwide. It seems incredible that all five great European and colonial powers, aligned in such a way that initially allowed for a rough parity of forces, would be able to resolve anything in two years at most. Given what we know of the terms of the peace treaty it doesn't sound like anything the losers would accept without being well and truly defeated.
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Custer
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Finished it this morning. It was decent. Not his best, but decent. It was nice to see Cornwallis being on the victorious side of the climactic siege of the war in TTL.

A difference I picked up in the third novella was a short line about how infrequent wars in Atlantis were while great power conflicts regularly occur in Europe.
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SladeJack
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They may be infrequent, but it seems they're frequent enough to drive the course of Atlantis's colonial history, and on roughly the same time frame.

I guess it's possible that the fewer wars on Atlantis are because there are only three governments, while in Europe many nations large and small all engaged in shifting alliance systems makes things more complicated. One would at least expect the British and French to be on opposite sides, as usual. I just now thought to wonder on how odd it seems that having established English and Spanish colonies in close proximity to one another didn't seem to be problematic during the Anglo-Spanish War. I also find it a little taxing on the imagination to think of Bretons handing something they'd built from the ground up over to the French just because a government in an ancestral homeland from which they were a number of generations removed decided to. Ditto for the Basques and Spaniards--that's an even more antagonistic relationship that Breton and French.

At any rate, if I didn't mention earlier, I enjoyed the book as a fun read and expect to enjoy the next one as well.
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TR1
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Custer
Apr 14 2008, 12:05 PM
A difference I picked up in the third novella was a short line about how infrequent wars in Atlantis were while great power conflicts regularly occur in Europe.

Supporting this is the exchange between Kersauzon and the French harbormaster, where the harbormaster's attitude was generally indifference and reluctance to fight the war until Kersauzon acted tough with him.

Also, the general attitude of the Europeans is that Atlantis is more of a pain in the ass than it's worth. It has no immediately useful natural resources, aside from redwoods, and it an obsticle to getting to Terranova. It does have a history of telling Europe to go fuck itself right from the beginning. So it might have been that it wasn't until this war that Europe decided that Atlantis need to be involved.

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My take on the war is that it wasn't introduced to Atlantis till it was already well under way, but it seems hard to imagine the colonial powers would wait more than a few months. The campaign seemed to last about a year. After that, I suppose we can hope some time elapsed before the negotiations began worldwide. It seems incredible that all five great European and colonial powers, aligned in such a way that initially allowed for a rough parity of forces, would be able to resolve anything in two years at most. Given what we know of the terms of the peace treaty it doesn't sound like anything the losers would accept without being well and truly defeated.


HT's love of parallels might apply here: New France basically fell in 1759-1760, but the war in Europe continued until 1763. The same may be the true of Atlantis. Yes, having a colony in Atlantis is nice, but there are more valuable places to defend. So it may be the case that while Victor Radcliffe and Blaise Black are touring French Atlantis, Europe is still tearing itself apart.

Beyond that, I'd have to re-read that section.

Another possibility is that the changes in North America changed the schedule of Europe, and the war broke out a little later. That would explain some of the inconsistencies. HT likes shortening those world wars.
"Nobody's gay for Moleman." - Hans Moleman
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Custer
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Near the end of the book the RN officer was telling Radcliff about the treaty where France signs over French Atlantis, as well as most of its possessions in Terranova and India, keeping some of the Caribbean islands as a sop to its honor. Sounds an awful lot like the Treaty of Paris ending the war between Great Britain and France in 1763.

As for the beginning of the war I had the impression that it hadn't been going on long before Roland and Radcliff found out about it - basically the ship carrying the news left as soon as the governments declared war.
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TR1
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That's right, I'd forgotten that we learned the terms of the treaty.

"Nobody's gay for Moleman." - Hans Moleman
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SladeJack
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I hadn't, hence my consternation.
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