@Višeslav i had to load in another tab, but yes these seem to work.
What's the background of this more (successful) Serbian Yugoslav Kingdom?
What's the background of this more (successful) Serbian Yugoslav Kingdom?
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I wouldn’t necessarily call the kingdom more Serbian. The OTL kingdom was if anything more Serbian than this, wanting to Serbianize Macedonia, break Croatia away from the Catholic Church, separate Dalmatia, and impose the Serbian Ekavica accent/dialect on all regions among other things in the aim of Serbianization and Serb domination. This Yugoslavia, in terms of Serbianness, is somewhere between the very unequal OTL Kingdom and the pretty much totally ethnically balanced (at least while Tito was alive) Socialist Yugoslavia. The Croats, Slovenes, and Macedonians get plenty of autonomy, Croatia and Slovenia benefit from post WWII expansion, and the minorities get representation and even reserved spots in government. Serbs do dominate a bit by virtue of being the largest ethnic group but nowhere near as totally as in the OTL kingdom. Really it’s mellowing out on the Serbian stuff outside of (at least fairly) Serbian areas that keeps Yugoslavia together and allows the pro Serbian policies in areas with lots of Serbs to slip through without angering the Croats who are really the lynchpin in the stability of Yugoslavia.
There are a couple of secrets to its success though. It’s part of a broader TL I’m working on revolving around the little entente and cordon sanitaire.
TLDR: The Axis aren’t nice to the Croats, federalization/regional autonomy for the biggest ethnic minorities comes sooner, French aid, a few horrendous acts of of ethnic cleansing, and a slightly different approach to building a common Yugoslav identity
One big factor is the nipping of the Ustaša movement in the bud which meant that the Axis didn’t have a puppet government to install in Croatia and rather Hungarian and Italian anti Croatian sentiment took over. This reinforced the idea that Croatia needs the union to protect it from foreign invaders rather than reinforcing desires for independence and unhealably deepening the resentment between Serbs and Croats as the NDH did.
It also helps that TTL’s equivalent of the Cvetković-Maček agreement came a few years earlier thanks to French pressure to solve the Croatian and Macedonian questions and federalize the country. TTLs agreement is more moderate vis a vis Croatia but also comes with minor autonomy for Slovenia and is quickly followed by autonomy for Macedonia. This acceptance of the reality that Yugoslavia is multiethnic eases tensions a lot.
French aid is a stabilizing factor as well.
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows though. Ethnic cleaning also plays a role. After the equivalent of WWII, Hungarians and Germans are deported en masses, like IOTL but more, and Albanians generally don’t fare well. their collaboration with Italy in WWII is used to justify pogroms by the general population, violence by the army as it reoccupies Kosovo, and finally, a “population exchange” between Yugoslav-influenced post war Albania and Yugoslavia wherein Albania’s Serb (and to lesser degree Orthodox Albanian) population is swapped for Kosovo’s Albanian. It’s a horrible refugee crisis, like a miniature Indo-Pakistani exchange but in the long run it does make the Serbian parts of the kingdom more stable.
The only really big minority left in the federal/Serbian Banovinas after WWII are Bosniaks who the government considers to be Serbs and Croats. This view is present among some Bosniaks ITTL and was IOTL but it is a divisive issue and more and more push for a distinct identity. The development of a Bosniak identity is slowed ITTL because unlike Socialist Yugoslavia, the kingdom doesn’t grant them the status of an ethnic group and actively pushes the opposite narrative.
The biggest factor is just the way TTLs Yugoslavism views the core-periphery divide though. It can be a whole post of its own but essentially it continues to seek to establish a Yugoslav identity but 1) without that identity just being Serbian and 2) without erasing regional identities. They sort of return to Piedmont as Serbia’s example to follow for unifying Yugoslavia. Italy still has regional differences and identities that regions are proud of but Italian identity is built around what they have in common. I hinted at this when I talked about linguistic centralization. The same way standard Italian wasn’t Piedmontese but Tuscan, standard Serbocroatian wasn’t supposed to be Central Serbian but rather a Herzegovinian-Montenegrin dialect and ITTL they return to this which is why Ijekavica is used everywhere rather than the “ekavization” that was pushed towards the end of the. This is as opposed to Synthetic Culture (building a culture out of new features with no regard for the past) and Serbian assimilation which had been popular in the Kingdom IOTL.
Does that roughly sound sensible?
A proposed flag of a modern Kingdom of Cyprus. The blue and white stripes come from the background of the Cypriot banner; the red and yellow canton takes inspiration from the colours of the CoA; the Jerusalem cross shows both the Crusader heritage as well as being symbolically close to the Byzantine flags
I prefer 2 but the borders of the cross are too multicolored. Make them just white and yellow, remove that thin third stripe in there.
I and @Aluma were talking about how looks like the flags of "Joeverse" of @Viking25 and the result is this, a digital version of descriptions were accorded here.
"I imagine a Imperial Japanese flag with red eagle and black stripes for Germania" tells Aluma, and this is the result.
Also, the description of Gallian flag is so vaguely as limited to "the flag will have a lion". Well, after a refit of Safavid Dinasty lion, we had a precious flag for The Gallian Flight's Imperial Kingdom of Gallia. And (maybe) Joeverse.
"I imagine a Imperial Japanese flag with red eagle and black stripes for Germania" tells Aluma, and this is the result.
Also, the description of Gallian flag is so vaguely as limited to "the flag will have a lion". Well, after a refit of Safavid Dinasty lion, we had a precious flag for The Gallian Flight's Imperial Kingdom of Gallia. And (maybe) Joeverse.
DocBen
Banned
The Kingdom of the Flaming Sun, a Russian state in the late 21st century, modeled after Imperial Japan. It is a militarist, nationalist, super traditional, conservative, theocratic, and belligerent absolute monarchy state. Like Imperial Japan, it is lead by a supreme monarch whose will is law, the commander in chief of the armed forces. Just like Imperial Japan, it is a Pagan, rather than an Orthodox state, and the Russian Pagan religion is used as an extension of government propaganda. Also as Imperial Japan channeled the samurai, the Kingdom of the Flaming Sun is channeling the bogatyri, a medieval Russian feudal warrior class. They have a lot of futuristic weapons technologies, but their external appearance is based on ancient Russia. All uniforms, art, and architecture look like ancient Russian architecture on steroids, made of modern building materials, extremely ornate and regal looking, completely rejecting any Soviet traditions.
Basically if Russia was more like the Empire of the Rising Sun from Red Alert 3, instead of the Soviet Union.
Basically if Russia was more like the Empire of the Rising Sun from Red Alert 3, instead of the Soviet Union.
Changing the similarities to Japan for references to Imperial China is practically the same. It is a post-Soviet (and post-Putin) Russia, hypernationalist, corrupt to the core, hyper-religious, authoritarian and totalitarian where the Sovereign is omnipotent and all-powerful and his word is law. Very modern technologies coexist with the aesthetics and society of Tsarist Russia. And Ivan the Terrible's Oprichniks have been resurrected as the political police of the regime. The most significant difference that I appreciate in your idea is that you did not include a Great Russian Wall nor did Oprichnik's Russia renounce orthodox Christianity to become pagan.