Language and ethnicity:
As of the end of CY3, the population of mainland Britain was a little more than half British and the remainder Icelander and Faeroese. Of the British majority, around two-thirds were English, and the rest Welsh (from Anglesey), Manx, and Scots—the latter divided between those from the Western Isles and the northerners from Orkney and Shetland.
The Council followed a policy (briefly interrupted when Queen Hallgerda gained an ascendancy over King Charles) of mixing all elements fairly evenly in each Commandery.
Almost all the Scandinavian immigrants were already fluent in English, thanks to their excellent pre-Change educational systems, as were the Welsh and Scots, though a fair proportion of these were Welsh and Gaelic speakers as well.
Education in the new Britain, however, was uniformly in English. While other languages were not forbidden, they were not given any assistance either—and under the hard conditions of the early Change Years, that meant that they were not used above the conversational level.
English-speakers were in a majority, and occupied most of the status positions in the new society; the rest of the population already knew the language. This, combined with extensive intermarriage almost from the beginning, ensured that wholesale ‘language shift’ took place over the next generation. English became the language of communication, and then overwhelmingly the home language of the entire population.
(However, Welsh and Scots Gaelic did survive among the small populations remaining on Anglesey and the Western Isles; and in fact, became more dominant there as those remants reoccupied the nearly deserted landscape, since they were left mostly to their own devices by the government in Winchester and no longer had close contact with overwhelmingly more numerous Anglophone populations for some time.)
The new English dialect of southern Britain—known locally as the ‘burr’ — did, however, have substantial differences from the pre-Change standard. Some features drew on the rural dialect of the Isle of Wight; there were also loan-words from Welsh, Gaelic, and above all from Icelandic, amounting to several hundred in all.
Gibraltar, Spain and Morocco:
Most of Spain became a death-zone as empty as mainland Britain or France. The crowded tourist-isles of Majorca and the Balerics fared no better, and neither did most of the adjacent Mahgreb, heavily dependent on modern inputs as it was, and dotted with multi-million population cities such as Algiers, Oran, Rabat and Casablanca.
The sole substantial exception was the British colony of Gibraltar. Connected to the mainland only by a narrow isthmus, it proved possible (under strong military leadership) to defend the “Rock” once more, this time from a massive attack by the starving.
The supplies stored supplies in the tunnels, together with several providential grain ships which passed close enough by to be unloaded or towed into port, proved enough to bring the population of approximately 30,000 through the first Change Year intact. Water was also short, but adequate—if only just.
Contact with the Isle of Wight was established via sailing craft during the summer of 1998. The garrison commander placed himself under the orders of the Emergency Executive Council. This was fairly theoretical until CY2, when British input in the resettlement process became significant—mainly by furnishing ships and overall leadership.
As the first Change decade wore on, a steady flow of British (and Icelander/Faeroese and Irish) settlers came to join the effort to establish farming communities in southern Spain and northern Morocco, lured by the favorable climate and fertile soils. Reconditioned orchards and vineyards, cotton and sugar-cane fields provided cargoes much in demand in the motherland; some subsidies were given to encourage settlement around the naval bases established on the Moroccan coast to guard against Moorish (Mauritanian and Senegalese) raiders, and to preempt any attempt on their part to settle.
By CY 25 the Guadalquivir valley had been (albeit very thinly) resettled and outposts established as far south as Marrakesh, as far north as Valencia and the Tagus valley, and as far east as the area around Algiers.
The only resistance to this expansion came from the small relict populations of the Riff and the High Atlas; moving down into the lowlands, they found them preempted by the British/Gibralterian settlers.
Note on dialect: the actual speech of Gibraltar at the time of the Change was a form of Spanish, albeit a rather eccentric one. This remained a living tongue for some time in the city itself, but in the resettled rural areas (where northern immigrants ranged from a majority to a large minority) gave way to English over the next several generations. Loan-words and a distinct accent remained, however, to mark the “Southern” dialect of the New English.
France and the Netherlands:
Survivors in France, apart from equivalents of the Brushwood Men, numbered no more than 75,000 in all, mostly in the most remote areas of the Pyrenees, the Massif Central, and the Alps. The Netherlands were still more devastated; only a few of the Frisian islands maintained any population at all, and the North Sea soon came in over the untended defenses, restoring the vast marshes and the salt lakes. Belgium was intermediate between the two.
For the first three Change Years the British government paid little attention to these areas. However, with the founding of Norrland the more far-sighted members of the Council decided that a long-term division of the empty territories would be necessary. The Treaty of Gotland established the western boundaries of Norrland as running along those of the pre-Change German frontier.
This remained very theoretical indeed for quite some time, as neither Great Britain nor Norrland had the population to colonize the vacant spaces. The only British presence for the first few years was that of modest salvage expeditions scouring for tools and artwork.
However, towards the end of the first decade of the Change, the British government began resettlement on a limited scale, mostly at the mouths of the great rivers (Seine, Loire, Gironde) and at a few spots along the coast of Picardy and Flanders.
These continental outposts remained modest until the bulk of the potential arable land in southern and eastern England was at least claimed, if not actually resettled. However, attractive terms were offered to help settlers, and they were joined by a steady trickle from the remaining civilized villages of French survivors, most of which were too small and scattered to sustain basic services.
Demand for land on the continent tended to increase steadily well before all the potential acreage in England was under the plow once more; after all, the area just across the channel offered abundant fields as good as the best available in England, and with a slightly more genial climate.
Prince Edward Island:
The Atlantic coast of North America fared as badly as most of Europe; it was the home of megalopolis, and even the Maritime Provinces of Canada had little arable land and were food-deficit zones. Newfoundland, for example, effectively produced no food at all, and even the inshore fishery was moribund.
The major exception—and therefore the major area of survival—was Prince Edward Island. Canada’s smallest province was easily isolated from the mainland, lightly populated—total numbers had not increased in a century—and had a very large percentage of its modest area in arable land. Combined with quick action by the provincial government, this preserved it, almost uniquely in its continent, from famine and mass die-off.
120,000 islanders were left alive when the spring of 1999 came. A few thousand more were found in the adjacent areas of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Together they made up by far the majority of survivors along the whole Atlantic coast from Labrador to Florida.
Expansion on the mainland began by CY3. Initially it was directed towards the limited areas of good farmland in the Maritime provinces, and then towards the entirely empty St. Lawrence valley between the ruins of Montreal and Quebec City. Not for generations would the mega-necropolis of the former American coastline be much visited, although voyages to the Caribbean began much earlier.
Politically Prince Edwa
rd Island remained a parliamentary democracy throughout the Change, another almost unique accomplishment, shared only by far-off Tasmania and the South Island of New Zealand.
One feature of post-Change life in PEI was an intense sense of isolation and abandonment; the vast emptiness of eastern North America was an oppressive presence until the last of those who had been adult at the time of the Change died.
This may have contributed to the eagerness with which relations with the Mother Country (Britain) were reestablished, although practical considerations were also important.
Regular interchanges were resumed via schooner by CY3. They grew closer throughout the following decade, and events on the eastern shore were followed closely. When the Succession Crisis of CY10 was over, the islanders accepted William the Great’s invitation to send MP’s to the restored Parliament, and titles were granted to give the island and its mainland colonies representation in the Lords as well; in CY22 a tradition that a child of the monarch would preside locally as Governor-General was established when Princess Dagmar assumed that office.
One of the first fruits of this reunion was the joint resettlement of Barbados, which had been entirely depopulated by the Change and its aftermath.
Political Developments:
Monarchs:
Charles III CY 1 (1998) – CY 10 (2008) William V “the Great” CY 10 (2008) – CY 41 (2039) Charles IV CY 41 (2039) – CY 68 (2066) Elizabeth III CY 68 (2066) – CY 100 (2098)
Britain was, in effect, under martial law for most of the first decade after the Change.
The Emergency Executive Council governed by fiat and decree. Initially this was simply accepted as inevitable, in the harrowing year of the Change and its immediate aftermath. And initially there was surprisingly little disagreement within the ranks of the Council. The necessities were clear, and the Council met them, which increased its popular support.
Prince Charles (after December of 1998, Charles III) presided over the Council, and for the first few years grew increasingly to be more than primus inter pares, until the Crown had more real political power than at any time since William of Orange or even before.
His knowledge and outlook made him a natural leader in the reconstruction effort, and his intelligence and application impressed most. The dominant military faction of the Council were strong monarchists to a man in any case, and the Crown provided an element of continuity to which the shocked population gravitated.
A sense of gratitude also linked the King to the immigrants from Iceland and the Faeroes who flocked in from early 1999 on. Charles had played an important part in organizing the exodus, and the immigrants were among his strongest supporters. This was the more so when in CY 2 (late 1999) he married Hallgerda Haldorsdottir, an Icelander who he had met while she was working with the Resettlement Board.
Disagreements between King and Council grew slowly. At first, the King’s more arbitrary actions were either regarded as tolerable eccentricities or positively approved by that body, many of which were like the King strong traditionalists given to rural nostalgia (what some called the “Merrie England” or “Deep England” complex) and who had been alienated from modern Britain before the Change. The reversion to the traditional monetary system (12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound) saw widespread applause when a money system was reintroduced in CY4. Nostalgia was a widespread sentiment in any case—not so much nostalgia for the period just before the Change, which was too painful to remember, but nostalgia for an imagined England of long before, the rural England of folk-memory. This had little relation to the actual conditions of preindustrial times, but it proved immensely influential in establishing the new system.
The reversion to the Imperial measurement system in CY5 was more controversial, but was generally accepted—by then the Crown had deep wells of affection and gratitude to draw upon, among a populace now assured of enough to eat, a growing range of basic consumer goods, and a degree of stability.
More serious was the King’s reluctance to call elections to a new Parliament when the overall situation had stabilized enough to make that feasible. There was widespread unease over the obvious and growing influence of the Queen’s family and favorites at Court, especially when the Special Icelandic Detachment, a heavy-infantry battalion recruited exclusively from Scandinavian immigrants, was founded in CY6.
In the same year seaborne raiders from what had been Senegal and Mauritania began to probe into European waters, first around Gibraltar, and then into the seas around Britain and Ireland. Lack of effective response by the Council followed; rumor (correctly) had it that Queen Hallgerda thought that mobilization would require elections, which she was intensely anxious to avoid.
Instead she encouraged the increasingly eccentric King Charles to concentrate on his hobbyhorses—decreeing the use of thatch on roofs, the wearing of smock-frocks in the countryside, and the teaching of Morris dancing. None of these was actually very unpopular in itself, but they did seem to indicate a certain detachment from reality, as did the growing reliance on the Royal astrologer—later revealed to be in the pay of the Queen.
The opposition on the Council—what came to be known as the Whig party in later times—was headed by Sir Nigel Loring, one of the organizers of the refuge system. He was at first reluctant to do more than privately complain and consult, but became increasingly alarmed as the Moors were allowed to develop bases on the Canary islands, and Queen Hallgerda’s influence over the King became more complete. As yet none of her (three) children by Charles had been a son, but her fertility was unquestioned, and if she produced a male heir there might well be widespread support among the Icelanders for an alternative heir who was half of their blood.
The story of Sir Nigel’s arrest in CY8, his escape from detention at Woburn Abbey, and his flight abroad have been told elsewhere (see THE PROTECTOR’S WAR).
There was widespread outrage when it became known that Lady Loring had been killed by the SID as they attempted to prevent the escape. When Prince William was ordered south in pursuit of Sir Nigel’s escape on the Tasmanian ship Pride of St. Helens, outrage became anger. When the Prince’s barely-seaworthy vessel (the rebuilt Cutty Sark) was dismasted in a storm and then nearly overwhelmed by Moorish corsairs off the Canaries, only to be rescued by the fugitive Sir Nigel, anger became fury among many. The Queen’s party began to lose support even among moderate Icelanders.
This decline was exacerbated when in CY9 (2007) the Prince married Ingeborg Andersdottir, a young physician he met while in hospital on his return from the Canaries.
The King’s increasingly obvious mental problems and the birth of a male heir to Prince William the next year brought matters to a head; the fact that Queen Hallgerda was brought to bed of a son not long after also probably helped precipitate the crisis.
The Queen had managed to bring the entire Special Icelandic Detachment to Winchester on a series of pretexts; she had also (she thought) had most of the regular forces of the Crown dispersed on various tasks, including coast-watching against Moorish raids.
When the King died (officially of a stroke, though rumors that Queen Hallgerda smothered him with a pillow persisted for generations), Hallgerda declared herself Regent for her son Eric, who she claimed would “unite the peoples” of the new British kingdom.
This might have had some degree of plausibility if William’s son Charles had not been born several days earlier.
However, William had been making secret preparations for something of this sort since his return from the Canaries. With the aid of Colonels Knollys and Buttesthorn, he immediately denounced the Queen’s move as an illegal coup.
Part of the SID detachment sent to arrest him defected or refused to use its weapons. The loyalist colonels had secretly managed to keep several companies of Regulars in the vincinity of Winchester, and with their aid and that of some of the Territorial militia, the remaining Hallgerdists among the SID were killed or captured in a series of running fights over the next week. Que
en Hallgerda herself and her children were captured attempting to flee to Bristol.
William was immediately crowned as William V. His first proclamation was an amnesty for all surviving supporters of the Queen, and for the Queen herself, who was thereafter kept in comfortable house arrest—ironically enough, at Woburn Abbey. Her children were however taken from her, and distributed for adoption to loyalists.
The SID was disbanded and its men either incorporated into the Regular army or settled as farmers and craftsmen in widely separated Commanderies with reliable commandants.
William’s second official act was to announce that Parliamentary elections would be held within six months, and that a Parliament (and House of Lords) would be summoned.
The new regime’s first order of business was the Moorish threat, against which both the Archbishop of Winchester and the Pope now preached a Crusade. Two years were spent in preparation and diplomatic arrangements, before an allied fleet and army set sail for the Canaries—British, Norrlander, Ulsterman, Shannon-Irish, and Italian. King William was in command, and the corsairs were first crushed in a naval battle off the Canaries, then pursued to their bases on the African mainland and heavily defeated once more. Pirate nests were burned out, and the fleet returned to universal acclaim.
(Except for the “Republic of Ireland”, a rump state in the western part of the island universally known outside its own borders as “Provoland”, just as the Principality of Ulster is termed “Ian’s Rump” by most non-residents. Later investigation showed a degree of collusion and collaboration between Provoland’s leadership and the corsairs.)
On his return in the spring of CY10, the King was met by the Archbishop of Winchester and Pope Benedict XVI, then in England for talks concerning the reunion of the Anglican and Roman churches, and as the envoy of the Umbrian League.
Emberverse Short Stories Page 13