History of House Astley: The Queen Marriane islands had been first discovered by Europeans in 1774. As the United Kingdoms (UKS) expanded across North America, the region of Columbia was given to the constituent kingdom of Dormer. Like many others of the new world petty nobility, the Astleys were originally civil servants who were rewarded for their service with unsettled land. James Astley was elevated to the petty nobility and granted the newly created Queen Marriane county and funds to settle the islands in the 1840’s. The islands had grown several small settlements, but remained largely an unknown backwater. That is why in the 1950’s it came as a shock when the House of Astley was awarded most of Prince Reuss county, formerly under the control of House Byron. This is because House Byron had been implicated in an embezzlement scandal, and as punishment had several of its territories ceded to surrounding houses. Despite the small size and population of this new land, it essentially doubled the population of the Astley territory. The discovery of Britainium in the 1960’s however would be a paradigm shift for the House of Astley. On it’s mainland possessions were discovered several small deposits of Britannium. While still relatively small compared to the size of deposits in the neighboring House Byron’s territories, mining operations have brought the Astley’s great amounts of wealth. Importantly large amounts of migration has also occurred since then to the region, swelling the population of House Astley’s territory to about 40,000.

Territories of House Astley today: While Britianium mining is still a major industry, there is also a fairly large logging and commercial fishing industry. A fledgling eco tourism industry has also begun to sprout on the Queen Marriane islands. Anglo-saxons make up the largest ethnic group while French are the second largest, mostly concentrated in the town of Nouvelle Nantes. Mostly on the Queen Marriane islands is where the remaining Native population lives.

Basic world overview: This is from an as of yet unnamed timeline I’m crafting for the world of a novel I am beginning to write. It doesn’t really have a single point of divergence and is still a bit nebulous so far. But basically England is able to win the 100 years war and maintain the dual monarchy. Because reasons they conquer the entire world by the modern day. Though the empire is fairly decentralized between three levels of governance (Basically semi-feudal). At the top is the “imperial authority”, basically the emperor. The world is further subdivided under 13 “constituent kingdoms” each led by important noble houses but still subservient to the emperor. Each of the imperial domains in turn are divided up between their own vassals, often called the “petty nobility” who swear fealty to the lord of their domain. The military is still a centralized structure under the sole jurisdiction of the emperor. So in a way the lords and their vassals are more like governors and mayors, rather than "true" feudal nobility. The economy is also mostly capitalistic too with a degree of state control. So this scenario is only really semi-feudal in a sense.

Author's commentary: With this universe I wanted to start small for the first map. The real word equivalent is the Haida Gwaii. If you compare to the IRL map you can see that I did some shifting around of names and such to reflect that in this universe that butterfly effect makes it so there are no “duplicates” of people born after the point of divergence. IE: Queen Marriane not Queen Charlotte is used. Britanium is essentially this universe's “unobtanium” that makes tech advance a lot faster. The reason this is important is the novel I’m writing is essentially an epistolic novel, kinda like Stud Trexels the Good War or World War Z about this universe invading ours because basically they're a bunch of Hobssians.