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?