History of Terre

The Point of Divergence to our OTL takes place in 1831. With the success of the Belgian revolution following the backlash due to the Romanticist theatre play, the European powers decide as to who should be king of the new Roman Catholic nation. The Austrian Habsburg emperor, with considerable power over the German federation and repsect amongst the British, chooses, Napoleon II, Duke of Reichstadt, son of the late Corsican genius.

Napoleon despite his relative adolescence is welcomed by the crowd in Brussels due to his lineage. For the French-speaking Walloons, it is a restoration, and for the Flemish, a Catholic restoration. The Bonapartist ambition however soon outgrew European boundaries again. A growing rebellion in Italy was backed by the Belgian government secretly.

Bonapartist claims became wilder but more realised when in 1840, the Bourbon monarchy was thrown out for the last time. Napoleon's cousin, Napoleon as well, became Presidente of the French Republic. Europe would watch helplessly, as under British protection, Belgian bodyguards accompanied Napoleon II to the Palais bourbon to be recrowned Emperor of the French, and of the Belgians. But the candyboy of Austria and Britain's good friend would do no harm to the European balance, so they thought. Bonapartistic ambition outgrew anything else around him, and soon Napoleon II dreamed of what his father could not, world conquest.

By 1841, Algeria had been conquered. The Bonapartist restoration seemed to bring a good omen to France. Indeed, a war with the Dahomey people would be won the next year, securing Gambia under French command. In 1844, Napoleon II established Leopold de Laeken to explore and set out territory in Central Africa for him. What de Laeken set up was a massive colony of 10 million African people that was a blue French blot on the world map, Congo. Leopold ran slave-camps in Congo for rubber. Nearly 4 million Congolese people were butchered. However de Laeken was punished, he was stripped of his positions in court and sent to exile. The Nobel committee, recently set up, ordered Napoleon to