Map Monday: Kingdom of Illyria by Keperry

Being partly Serbian, I am always curious about alternate histories involving the former Yugoslavia. The popular scenario is to have the different ethnic groups work out their differences sometime in the 20th century and still be a unified state by the present. A twist on this theme, however, is the "Kingdom of Illyria" by Keperry:

In this timeline, Napoleon dies at the height of his power leaving his empire to continue on for a short while before collapsing as one by one all the Bonapartist states overthrow their monarchs, except for Kingdom of Illyria. They are the Byzantine-esque successor state to Napoleon's empire, pushing a version of Napoleon's ideology to keep the loose federation of Croatians, Germans, Italians and Slovenians together. In the scenario that went with the map its mentioned that the Kingdom already lost the southern half of its territory, so I am assuming places like Bosnia, Serbia and other Yugoslav states were included as well in this kingdom.

As I said before it is an interesting twist on the concept of Yugoslavia, whether Keperry intended it to be or not. Although its doubtful such a kingdom would survive for long in its timeline, at least it gave us a nice Inkscape map to look at. Not bad for Keperry's first MotF entry.

Honorable mentions this week go out to "Let's Split: the End of the Kingdom of Belgium" by Iserlohn and "Ulster Rising: Irish Alt History in a shade of Orange" by KapiTod. If you want more mappy goodness, check out this 1937 map imagining how Japan might attack the west coast of the United States, via Slate.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a blogger for Amazing Stories, a volunteer interviewer for SFFWorld and a Sidewise Awards for Alternate History judge. When not exploring alternate timelines he enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the day when travel between parallel universes becomes a reality. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Learn how you can support his alternate history projects 

Flag Friday: British California by Keperry

Making California British is a popular past-time of alternate historians. The common ways to do it is to either a) have the American Revolution fail and then have British North America expand to the West Coast or b) have Britain seize the territory from Mexico in a timeline where North America has balkanized. Of course there could be a dozen other scenarios where a British California can exist, but those are the two divergences I personally see the most.

I say the above because I have no idea what the scenario is for this flag:

This is the flag of British California and is designed by Keperry. It doesn't come with a story so I can only speculate. That being said, I like the red field. It reminds me of the early versions of the Flag of Canada when it was still a dominion. Perhaps that is the scenario we are going for. One where California is actually a province of Canada, which actually happened in a favorite web original timeline of mine that is sadly no longer available online. Don't even remember the name even, but I know it involved Babbage creating his Analytical Engine so if anyone knows what I am talking about, please share the link...wait I'm supposed to be talking about the flag. Anywho, its good looking, simple and I got to be nostalgic. Good times.

For more flag goodness, see what could be the new flag of Australia, because I just can't stop talking about former and fictional British colonies.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a blogger on Amazing Stories and a Sidewise Awards for Alternate History judge. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the day when travel between parallel universes becomes a reality. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Learn how you can support his alternate history projects on Patreon.