Forward and Explanation

This is a serial novel, in the style of the great 19th century serials that are classics today. It is also set in a semi-fantastical world:

This story takes place not in any history that was, but a history that might have been, had certain events transpired differently.

The French and Indian War (also known as the Seven Years’ War, and the War of the Conquest), lasting from 1754 to 1763, and concluding in victory for the opposing British forces, has in this story been won by the French, who then established a series of campaigns to de-anglicize the Canadian territories.
These later political moves included furiously building roads and routes of trade, opening up the West a trifle sooner than our history shows.
Counter-moves from the British, before the Revolution in America, included sponsoring an immigration program smuggling willing Greeks from the Ottoman Empire to the New World, as is obliquely mentioned in the first chapter.
The chess-game of Canada was forgotten, however, in the struggles with suppressing rebellion in the south, and New France was left to its own devices. Shortly after this time, as you may recall, the French Revolution took place; old-world France supported the USA’s severance from Britain, and continued to its own Terror. Subsequently, the Republic was proclaimed, the royal family imprisoned, Louis XVI and his queen beheaded.
In this novel, Louis XVII escaped, with help from a sympathetic Republic prison guard, and established royal rule in New France. One can well imagine the implications of two French nations, each vowing it is the true state; one can well imagine that they might have come to blows. Throughout the story, there is an additional threat from the north—namely, that the Russians, allied with the Spanish, might attack (heretofore overlooked) New French possessions.
There were Russian colonists in Alaska from the 1740s; by the 1790s, they had become permanent settlements. Alaska was purchased from Russia by the United States in 1864.

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All characters, events, and representations appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2009, I.M.S.