March 2018 Challenge: The Bitter Winter (or, Calanthavian Election of 1579 VCE)
After mulling around the idea of the 'map a feud' prompt, and having an odd desire to create a map with circular pie-chart-like indicators surrounding some sort of regional markers (you'll hopefully be seeing what I mean soon, though not quite as of yet), the idea came to me of an election map. So I've begun working on an election map showing a situation of early-modern-era politics in a fantasy world.
The titular feud in question is a bit fuzzy and difficult to concretely narrow down to one thing, but ultimately the closest estimate is essentially an aristocratic vs. republican conflict. The nation of Calanthavia, not too long ago - more than a generation but definitely less (probably a lot less) than a century - had a civil war, in which the monarchy was overthrown. However, this was not the end of the traditional aristocracy, as to accomplish this feat the pro-republic faction had to garner support from some existing nobility, who to varying degrees were either sympathetic or just hoping to gain something out of overthrowing the current rulers. These nobility that were not ousted in the first civil war, while not given explicit hereditary political power, were allowed to retain much of their substantial lands and wealth, and quickly formed a powerful political bloc in the new parliamentary system. However, this was neither enough for the nobles nor the pro-republicans: the nobles were, generally speaking, displeased at the loss of their formal hereditary power and at commoners being brought to a de jure if not de facto level political playing field with them; the revolutionaries were, generally speaking, displeased to varying extents that the nobles still could wield power at all. And this resentment simmered, but didn't boil over for a fair bit of time: the Estates Party, the noble's main group, and the Conservative Party, a more commoner-friendly front group for the traditional aristocracy, were at the least always an important part of the coalition government Calanthavia had in each election term after the revolution, but the revolutionary faction - of which the most individually powerful group was the Trade & Goods Party, also had enough of a political presence to require consideration.
This ended after the election of 1579 VCE, known afterwards as the 'Bitter Winter'. Some up-and-coming, volatile speakers in the Conservative Party spurred a breakaway from the Estates Party, reinventing the party's identity as preserving traditional Calanthavian values without the power of the hereditary aristocracy. The resulting slight thaw between the Conservatives and Trade & Goods led to a new coalition that did not include the Estates, the bastion of the remaining aristocracy. And they did not take it well - shortly after the Bitter Winter, when the anti-aristocratic factions seemed more and more to display real intent to strip remaining political power from the aristocracy, there was an attempted coup, known as the 'Gold Coup' after a common nickname for the Estates Party (Gold Party), that then was dragged out into the Second Calanthavian Civil War, a bloody conflict between two unholy alliances of factions, many of the members of which hated each other almost-but-not-quite-as-much as their opposition (the aristocracy secured the support of seafolk separatists, who they normally looked heavily down upon, with a promise of independence post-conflict; the anti-aristocratic faction included the early industrialist bourgeoisie along with proto-communists united only by their shared dislike of the aristocracy). However much the Bitter Winter was only symptomatic of existing tensions as the political landscape of Calanthavia shifted, by and large it was considered the breaking point of the division between the old, aristocratic faction and the newer, republican faction.
Here's the map thus far - mostly just showing political borders. The presence of the seafolk - merpeople, basically - in this fantasy setting means that the water regions of Calanthavia also have administrative divisions, although the seafolk are at this point in history subject to discrimination and are in some ways de facto disenfranchised. All of the aquatic administrative regions as a whole have more regional seats in the National Assembly than any single land province... by exactly one seat, out of 338 regional seats. I went with a somewhat mixed-member proportional-like parliamentary system, because it seemed like it would make for a more visually-interesting map than a first-past-the-post electoral system, so Calanthavia has 338 regional seats elected by citizens of each administrative region voting for candidates and 169 proportional seats that are allocated so as to bring the total distribution of Assembly seats to parties as close to proportional to the party vote as possible.
### Latest WIP ###
