GENERAL INFO

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

CONSTANTINOPLE. ISTANBUL. KONSTANTINOUPOLIS. قسطنطینیه.
KOSTANTINIYYE
Glory of Byzantium;
Heart of the Ottoman Empire;
Sacked by the British;
Now the greatest free city in either East or West, governed by Council with representatives of the Great Powers: the British, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires.
A city of religious tolerance, where Jews, Muslims, Eastern and Western Christians have equal rights.
(A man with no god is a man with no soul, and a man with no soul is no man at all; and you may do what you will with him - Edicts of the City of Kostantiniyye)
A city of political stability, hardwon and proudly protected.
(Any man, woman or eunuch who plots against the City is guilty of treachery, and their life is forfeit.)
In a world where:
There was no Protestant Reformation, but there was an
Industrial Revolution - in the seventeenth century, giving rise to the
Age of Steam;
Monogamy is unusual, triadic marriage is common and pederasty and corerasty are enshrined in law;
Byzantium lost Constantinople to the Ottomans, but its Empire never fell;
The British Empire controls much of the continent called New England, and protects the throne of the
Pope in the West, who sits in New York, while the
Pope in the East now sits at Alexandria after the Byzantines lost Konstantinopoulis;
The British in their turn took Istanbul from the Ottomans, but lost Constantinople; and a
Great Peace was made that enshrined Kostantiniyye forever more as a free city.
(Until someone takes it back.)

I don't want to get toooo bogged down in history, and I think in a way game play can help develop that organically, so I will just provide a rough sort of sketch. Then there are information posts on specific areas that you might want to think about.

As I explain in more depth in another post, there was (as in our world) a major Schism within the Church that resulted in the Eastern and Western Churches. The Eastern Church (which is a more cohesive unit than Eastern Orthodox churches in our world) has become and remained very powerful because it is the official religion of the Byzantine Empire. For general purposes I think we'll mostly say the history of the Empire bears a strong resemblance to what happened in our world (Wikipedia gives quite a good basic intro here). But unlike in our world, the Byzantine Empire does not start to decline in the late 12th century -Andronikos I Komemnos continues his reign in the balanced way it started and he's not overthrown. Furthermore, the crusaders of the Fourth Crusade do not attack Constantinople in 1204 and so it does not fall. So the city is not a weakened shadow of its former self when the Ottomans are rising in power as it was in our world.

The Ottoman Empire also has a similar background history. In our world, the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 is what really cements their position. It's a bit more complex in this world. Konstantinopoulis does eventually fall to the Ottomans, who rename it Istanbul, but the Byzantine position is not so weakened that they accept Ottoman incursions into their territory. There are quite a lot of bloody conflicts. Eventually the Ottomans, having made some gains from the Byzantines, instead turn their interests to Western and Southern Europe. In particular, their wholesale conquest of Portugal means that the Portugese Empire of the New World falls under Ottoman control in the late sixteenth century. The Battle of Lepanto is a decisive victory for the Ottomans, and for a long time after this it is the Ottomans who are the great naval power in the world. 

This changes with the rise of the British Empire. In the seventeenth century, seeing the domination of the waters by the Ottomans, and with technological developments (see section on science and technology), the British (which officially is the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Ireland and Normandy) - with the Dutch as their allies - make a concerted effort to develop their naval power. By the early 18th century, the British have developed ocean-going steamliners and have comprehensively settled North America, which in this world is called New England. The Dutch have a number of colonies in this new continent, but the British are dominant. Mexico lies as an uneasy zone between the Ottoman Empire in South America and the British in the North. For some years the British were content to focus their domination on their new colonies, but with their new economic might they turned their attention back to the Old World. The mid-eighteenth century saw a period of stagnation in the Ottoman Empire, as well as revolts within a number of its member states against the Empire. The British took tactical advantage of this and, using their new naval advantages, conquered Istanbul from the sea and named it Constantinople. Thirty years later, though, the Ottomans tried to take it back. A bloody siege lasted a year until the Byzantines helped the two powers to broker a deal, by which it was decided that the newly named Kostantiniyye should be a Free City governed by all three powers, and so it has been for the past 75 years. Peaceful on the surface, there are of course lots of factional interests and everyone wants control of the city.

The overall aim of the game is to take Kostantiniyye. This could mean taking it back for one of the imperial powers, or overthrowing imperial control, perhaps by taking advantage of help from states not within the three major empires... Lots of options, lots of scheming. Lots of fun, hopefully.

FURTHER INFO:

Sex, marriage, gender 
Politics, law, admin
Technology, science, magic
Religion and culture
Geography and economy

Comments

[ladybird97.livejournal.com]

Yay, a new world! This game sounds really exciting, and I'm already looking forward to playing!

I have one main question, which has lots of little questions attached to it that might affect people's choices of PCs and people's in-game options. How egalitarian are gender relations?

In politics, for the President, you say 'he or she', so presumably both men and women can be on the various councils too, and therefore both men and women can be citizens, but eunuchs can't hold any of those positions?

For religion: is the clergy of the Eastern Church open only to eunuchs, not women? Are there nuns, and if so, do they have to be physically sterilized too? In Judaism, are there also Bat Mitzvahs; can there be women rabbis; is there separate seating for men and women in synagogues, etc? How are the Muslim modesty principles interpreted for each gender?

(Side note about Judaism: historically, the Reform movement has been more progressive about gender than the Orthodox, but still didn't allow women rabbis until the 1970s. My grandfather is a Reform rabbi, so I know lots about the history of the Reform movement. I can answer questions about history and practice if you want (and I think I may even have access to a 19th-century Reform prayer book if anyone wants to be really hard-core). Or I can keep quiet if you don't want additional info muddying the waters of what you're establishing as game canon :)

(also, on a totally different note, having a pope in New York still cracks me up :)

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

I was hoping you would jump in on the question of Judaism and I'm very happy to have you provide lots of relevant info! I figured that given the different cultural climate, Reform Judaism in this world might be more progressive earlier on about gender and sexuality but that certainly doesn't mean it should resemble modern day experience. (On which note, I didn't mention bat mitzvah as I got the impression that was a reasonably recent development, but I don't know a lot about the history of Judaism!) Maybe you could think about how other religions are being represented in game and what you think, being Jewish yourself and also knowing a lot about religious history, would make for a good mix in terms of how the game is structured. I would definitely welcome your feedback, particularly since reimagining faiths that we actually practice is a fairly sensitive thing.

Thanks for bringing up gender relations and power! I meant to mention that in my section on gender, so I shall edit something in now.

In terms of religion, I did think about having the possibility of female "castration" to allow female entrance to the ranks of the eunuch, but I wasn't sure if it would seem as plausible in medical science terms - but it's definitely something I'm open to if people think it's an interesting idea (which I certainly think it could be, since it would work quite well with some of the historic "third gender" perceptions of eunuchs).

I like the q about nuns and I wonder if perhaps in the Eastern Church the emphasis on castration has meant that female religious are given a kind of second tier status.

All really good questions and I shall probably come back to them! I liked putting the Pope in New York; it's such an unlikely idea in lots of ways. :D And it helps demonstrate that in this world, the Western Church is the religious face of an emerging power. Whilst the Western Church certainly has an ancient pedigree and never became powerless, I think Rome was much less important and wealthy in the early modern period, though it's been rising again in the last century in this world.

[tezcatl-ipoca.livejournal.com]

Given that effective surgery was, as I understand it, developed earlier/faster in the Arabic world, and the first hysterectomy was performed somewhere around the 2nd century, I would think there could be something along those lines - OR (more controversially?) female genital cutting/infibulation etc as it is still practised in some parts of the world...

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

Yes, when I was thinking about this in early stages of the game I had the idea of genital mutilation as a female equivalent, as it seems to have closer parallels to castration than hysterectomy - for one thing, if hysterectomy were the route to becoming a eunuch because it ties status to uterine capability, that would suggest post-menopausal women are eunuchs, which is problematic!! I could definitely see that infibulation could be a route to achieving eunuch status but that it might be a less popular route since it is necessarily more painful, even with advanced medical techniques, than male castration - and that it would have a more problematic historic precedent, perhaps making eunuchs who were born female a relatively new (and maybe controversial?) status...

[tezcatl-ipoca.livejournal.com]

Just eating but a quick question before I ponder more - by castration are you meaning orchidectomy, penectomy or both?

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

Good question while eating :P I haven't decided. I was wondering if it would make sense for there to be regional variation on this score.

[tezcatl-ipoca.livejournal.com]

Smoked salmon and penectomy! XD

So, do people choose to become eunuchs, or...?

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

I think I like it as a choice, though in cases where quite young boys are castrated one may ask to what extent they had a "choice"... I think like in our world, castration has a varied range of possibilities :)

[ravelled-ribbon.livejournal.com]

Actually the hysterectomy - menapausal equivalency isn't necessarily true. There's a difference between having it removed and it ceasing to function and I imagine that would make a significant spiritual difference. Similarly, if men or women had to have their sex organs removed for medical reasons that needn't necessarily make them eunuch's as part of becoming a eunuch could involve the intention of becoming one (though maybe persons who had them removed for medical reasons could change to eunuch status after a time if the wanted to).

Though actually historically female religious being second tier because they can't be castrated like men makes an interesting real world paralell.

[snakey.livejournal.com]

I suppose it depends in part on how eunuchness (?) is constructed - if it's seen as removing (genitally-based) sexual capacity, removing reproductive capacity, removing physical signifiers of gender (whether visible or otherwise) to a goal of either making a male-assigned person 'more like' a woman (and vice versa) or to a goal of moving someone *outside* of that kind of dyadic gender....and a lot of that's going to tie into how gender's constructed in these different societies in general, and will probably vary, like Rachel said upthread?

[tezcatl-ipoca.livejournal.com]

Re other states: do you have any thoughts on contact with other non-western powers? (China, Dahomey, the Mughal empire...?)

Aaaah too many thoughts!

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

Is creating three major world powers not enough for you people? ;) I don't really but I am open to hearing how people think these other societies connect to Kostantiniyye.

[tezcatl-ipoca.livejournal.com]

NEVER ENOUGH XD

(I'm also thinking in terms of empire-building and maintenance, resources going into conquest/putting down local resistance, that kind of thing. *insert Michael Caine as pb joke*)

My brain is just jumping all over the place with this atm, hopefully it will focus down...

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Actually, I was wondering about two things relating specifically to Africa: relations with Ethiopia (Christian and Orthodox, but not as we know it, Jim), and - since in our 'verse Napoleon's French did it - who of the great powers, or not-so-great ones, discovered remains of Ancient Egypt and worked to interpret their secrets? (That last could tie into the alchemy bit of things...)

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

There's no reason that, for instance, intellectuals of the Byzantine or Ottoman empires might not have worked on Ancient Egyptian translation and archaeology, though their priorities might have been different from those of western academics and explorers in our world. :) I think in this world Egypt is mostly controlled by the Byzantines - certainly their pope is in Alexandria. This isn't something I've really thought about, though, and as world building in this game will involve lots of collaboration, if there's anything you'd want to work up into a character application I'm totally willing to consider it. :)

Answers about Judaism, Part 1

[ladybird97.livejournal.com]

I'm happy to answer questions about Judaism!

And now that I know that you're OK with my chattering on about it, I will do more. I really don't want to stand in the way of your modly authority, and I really really don't want to be That Player who's always saying 'But this is how it REALLY IS!' :)

So! Here is a whole lot of background about 19th-century Judaism, with specific regard to gender and society.

First: there are two major geographic branches of Judaism that would come into play in our gameworld, even before the Reform movement starts in the 19th century: Sephardic and Ashkenazic. Sephardic Jews come from Spain, Portugal, North Africa, and the Middle East; Ashkenazic Jews come from northern and eastern Europe. These two branches don't have many theological differences, but they have huge cultural differences. This could be a point of conflict in the game, since the Jews local to the city of Konstantinyye would be Sephardic, and those coming in from Europe would be Ashkenazic. (Jews coming from Britain or the Netherlands could be either, though; there was an older Sephardic community dating from the 17th century, and then Ashkenazi immigration in the 18th and 19th century.)

With regard to gender, historically, Judaism is extremely patriarchal. Only men could be rabbis and cantors; only men could read from the Torah; only men counted towards the official quorum of ten that is required to say certain prayers. Women had to abide by stricter modesty practices than men - married women had to cover their hair completely, for instance - and in synagogues, there were separate seating areas for women, marked off by curtains so that men and women couldn't see each other during services. (All of this is still the practice in most Orthodox congregations today.)

Many of these practices were changed by the Reform movement, which started in the 19th century. It was founded by some fairly assimilated German Jews who wanted to find ways to practice their religion in greater harmony with the majority culture. One of the big changes was that they conducted services almost entirely in the vernacular rather than in Hebrew, so that the prayers would be more accessible to people. They also made it more egalitarian - no separate seating, etc. (I don't know if they allowed women to read from the Torah, but my instinct is that hardly anyone at all in that community knew enough Hebrew to read from the Torah, so it wasn't an issue :)

Reform Judaism was most popular in Germany and the US. (Which means that in our AU, Jews local to Konstantinyye would not be very likely to be Reform, but Jews coming in from Britain or elsewhere in Western Europe might be.) Therefore, assimilating into the majority culture also meant adopting a lot of Christian practices. That 19th-century prayer book that I think is still somewhere in my grandparents' house refers to the "minister" instead of the rabbi, and calls the songs "hymns." Reform Judaism also eliminated the Bar Mitzvah and replaced it with Confirmation, a ceremony for both boys and girls that took place around age 15.

Since the later 20th century, Reform Judaism has started to swing back towards a more traditional stance - they've added more Hebrew back into the service, for instance, and they've put Bar Mitzvahs back in, and added a Bat Mitzvah for girls, but many have also kept Confirmation. The Bat Mitzvah is a 20th-century creation. (And it actually originated in a _third_ movement, neither Orthodox or Reform, but that's another story :)

However, in many other ways, Reform Judaism still matched the general patriarchal attitudes of society. There were no female rabbis or cantors until the 1970s, and even then it was fairly controversial. (Today, however, the Reform seminary in NY has more than 50% women in each graduating class, and only the very oldest and most traditional members of the Reform movement object to women rabbis. Orthodox rabbis are still only men.)

Answers about Judaism, Part 2 - because my first try was so wordy that it broke the buffer

[ladybird97.livejournal.com]

So the question is, how much do you want to depart from the historical patriarchy? Do you want to have the Orthodox Jewish community stay patriarchal, and the Reform movement be egalitarian? I could see the Reform movement in our AU instituting Bat Mitzvahs much earlier, since our AU is much less patriarchal overall. Also, since we've got western European Jews coming into the eastern Mediterranean, there would very likely be some culture clashes - Sephardic vs Ashkenazi, traditional vs. assimilated, etc.

If you really want to play with internal culture clashes, you could make the Reform movement catch on faster in the eastern Mediterranean. Then, because one of the biggest issues in Reform Judaism was about how much to follow the customs of the majority group in their society, we might have Jews in Konstantinyye debating whether they should adopt triadic marriages too.

Let's see - have I exceeded the length for comments yet? :)

Re: Answers about Judaism, Part 2 - because my first try was so wordy that it broke the buffer

[snakey.livejournal.com]

Thank you, this is helping make things clearer for me at least!!

Slight tangent, re thinking about Sephardic Judaism and the historical differences that have been established - were the Moors expelled from Spain, or is it still Islamic? *supercurious, wonders what ppl think*

Re: Answers about Judaism, Part 2 - because my first try was so wordy that it broke the buffer

[ladybird97.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I'd love for Granada to still exist, at least. And, relatedly, were the Jews expelled from Spain too?

And, you're welcome! I'm happy to answer any more questions that you might have about culture, belief, practice, etc.

Re: Answers about Judaism, Part 2 - because my first try was so wordy that it broke the buffer

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

This is all super super useful, thanks hon! I will prob come back to some of this. I was a little hesitant to make Judaism a super-patriarchal religion in a world that is somewhat less patriarchal overall, just because it seemed like there'd be some cultural interplay here. What would you think would be a useful way to approach the gendered authority question particularly?

Re: Answers about Judaism, Part 2 - because my first try was so wordy that it broke the buffer

[ladybird97.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Glad you like it!

The whole issue of gendered authority and religion is just really complicated when you're talking about religions that people practice today, because nobody wants to set up anyone's religion as Big Bad Evil Patriarchy! But at the same time, you can't erase historical patriarchy in general.

(We would probably be having this debate about Islam too if there were any Muslim players!)

So...some brainstormy thoughts!

Judaism is matrilineal (i.e. if your mother is Jewish and your father isn't, then you're considered Jewish), so maybe that could be played up a bit more. Maybe there's matrilineal inheritance of property and status as well as religious identity, since we're going to be playing around with inheritance and different ways of organizing families. That would give a reason to have the earlier emergence of the Bat Mitzvah as a parallel ritual to the Bar Mitzvah, to mark girls' coming of age for inheritance and marriage purposes. That would also mean that women would count for a minyan (the quorum of 10 needed for services).

However, there could still have some patriarchality (is that a word?) to match the rest of 19th-century society - no women as rabbis, etc.

Re: Answers about Judaism, Part 2 - because my first try was so wordy that it broke the buffer

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

This makes sense :) And yes, I agree that we can't eliminate patriarchy altogether, but I didn't want to make Judaism THE MOST patriarchal religion as compared to what's going on in these versions of Christianity and Islam that we have here! I admit some of my reduction in the significance of gendered power is probably a bit anachronistic, but I just think it'd be interesting to have a game that's set in (an AU) the past without the main focus of social disparity being gender. But the main reason I was asking you is that I am totally happy to acknowledge a lack of knowledge about the history of Judaism, rather than cos I'm trying to make you be our token Jewish authority. I don't want to try to "speak for" Christianity and Islam per se, but I am more confident in my ability to create plausible histories for them in this context. (With the Ottomans' tolerance for religious diversity, the very early rise of secularism in Turkish culture, the historical presence of female imams, and so on, I feel reasonably confident in having Islam in this world be relatively female friendly, even if I couldn't find any justification for allowing polyandry.)

/rambling comment