The North is Annexed (CYOAH! Redux)

The Southern coalition, led by the Bavarian king, unites Germany as a Federal Empire, under its own conditions. Two main principles, dictated by the South`s interests, shape this new Reich: the dissolution of Prussia into many small, fractured and insignificant member states (officially in the name of "restituting" the legitimate sovereignties which had been "devoured" by Prussia before), and the strengthening of Catholic control over the Empire.

Prussia shattered
While Southern German states joined the new Reich as they were, the North underwent major reshaping, with Prussia completely torn apart and the Hohenzollern line left only with the tiny state of Brandenburg (with the capital city of Potsdam). Out of Prussia`s ashes rose considerably large Catholic member states of the Reich like Westphalia and the Rhineland, but also small Protestant states like Hesse-Kassel, Oldenburg, Mecklenburg, Anhalt etc. Prussian cities often became Free Cities, just to divide the North even more, the most prominent example being Berlin.

A bit of democracy
The new Reich needed a constitution - and although the Bavarian king wasn`t exactly fond of democracy and parliaments, he also couldn`t act entirely agaisnt the spirit of the time. So, a bit of democracy was added to the constitutional design, with a bicameral federal Parliament (the lower chamber being elected by the people, the upper chamber constituted by the monarchs of the member states and delegates from the free cities). The kings of Bavaria would always also be the Emperors of Germany at the same time, retaining a lot of executive and supreme judicial powers as well as a right to veto any Parliamentary law. In contrast to the OTL Reichstag, Parliament did not even have absolute power over the federal Budget, with a portion of the federal budget being constitutionally put under the Emperor`s control.

But although this wasn`t exactly what German liberals and democrats had fought for in 1848, it was more than nothing, and amid continuing hostility between North and South, Catholics and Protestants, Prussian loyalists and regional separatists, a lively electoral campaign took place. On October 3rd, 1886, the new Reichstag was elected.

But who wins and leads a highly divided German Reich into the future?

A centre-left coalition of Social Democrats and National Liberals gains a narrow margin minority in the Reichstag, together with a bunch of small regionalist parties.

A centre-right coalition of the Catholic Centre and National Liberals achieve a landslide victory.

A right-wing coalition of Conservative parties and the Catholic Centre gains a majority of seats in Parliament.

Salvador79 (talk) 14:18, February 5, 2014 (UTC)

Turn the Other Cheek (CYOAH! Redux)