Desire the Right: the world of Patagonia

[Goweegie2]

It is finally time for me to start my not-so-long-teased new TL (which I teased a lot more in the Our Fair Country Discord server, and is actually just a reboot of an earler TL I did)! Presenting, Patagonia 2.0! This will function similarly to many excellent TLs such as Our Fair Country, A Shining Valley, and Oh I Wish I Was in Dixie, as well as some less excellent TLs such as my previous one.

The POD is that the British establish a trading port known as Port George on the eastern coast of Patagonia in 1770. Following the American Revolution, the port begins to grow until it's a colony, although differences outside of Patagonia are minimal until the 1840s.

Yes, this is the same TL that has nine Opium Wars which I teased earlier today. Enjoy

 

[Goweegie2]

Well I made my very first vector map (with some assistance from @Riley Uhr and @Erinthecute) and since it's of TTL's Patagonia I figured I'd post it here. I'll also update the intro post to include this map instead of the shitty raster one I had before

 

[Riley Uhr]

 

[Goweegie2]

I decided to make some improvements and retcons to the Patagonian PM list

 

[Goweegie2]

Here's the first Prime Minister of Patagonia, Sir Joseph Chamberlain. I will try and do infoboxes for all 5 of his children whose names are in the infobox, but that might be a bit of work

 

[Goweegie2]

Anthony de Tounens (born Antoine Tounens) was a French-Patagonian lawyer, adventurer, and politician. After arriving in Chile in the late 1850s, he convinced the Mapuche (then called "Mapoochees" by the British) to appoint him as "Great Tokee" (modern spelling: "Toki"), the Mapuche title for supreme chieftain, perhaps in hopes with a European as their leader they would have an easier time protecting against European imperialism. However, with the threat of Chilean and Argentine invasion, de Tounens turned to the British for assistance, asking for annexation into the British colony of Avondu. The British accepted, however would shortly thereafter cede the portion of de Tounens' claimed territory that lay west of the Andes to Chile. Afterwards, de Tounens settled in New Swansea and rose up through the ranks of Avondu provincial politics to become its second Premier, the first Liberal to hold the office, a position he would hold for over a decade. In 1886, after the establishment of a Patagonian federal government, the newly appointed federal Prime Minister, Joseph Chamberlain, appointed de Tounens as Minister of the Interior. He would serve in this capacity until the government's defeat in the 1895 election, in which de Tounens lost his own parliamentary seat of Inner Avondu. After this defeat, he would retire to New Swansea where he would pass away in 1899.

 

[Goweegie2]

 

[Goweegie2]

Marc Arthur Lapierre, born Joseph Clément Marc Arthur Lapierre, is a Canadian-born Patagonian politician who has served as the 23rd Prime Minister of Patagonia since 2019 and has been leader of the Conservative Party since 2016. Lapierre is the first openly gay Patagonian prime minister; he is also the first to be born in neither Patagonia nor the British Isles.

Lapierre was born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. His father, Antonio, was a Quebec provincial politician of French-Canadian descent who briefly served as Premier of Quebec from 1996 to 1997. His mother, Madeleine, a granddaughter of former Canadian prime minister Sir Chester A. Arthur, is of French-Canadian, Scottish, Scotch-Irish, English, and Welsh descent. Lapierre attended McGill University in Montreal from 1985 to 1989, and then moved to Patagonia to attend Joseph Chamberlain University in Victoria from 1990 to 1994. During his time at Chamberlain, he made the decision to permanently move to Patagonia. He became a lawyer, and was officially naturalized as a Patagonian citizen in 1997. He was elected to the Patagonian Parliament in 2002 as a Conservative to the riding of New Aberystwyth, replacing the retiring incumbent Bill Howells. After 12 years as a backbencher, he was appointed Shadow Minister of Justice in 2014 by Conservative leader Gavin Short. Short resigned as Conservative leader a little over a year later, and Lapierre won the leadership election to replace him. In the 2019 federal election, Lapierre was elected as prime minister, defeating incumbent Theresa Boshnyak of the Labour Party in a landslide.

 

[Goweegie2]

 

[Goweegie2]

 

[Goweegie2]

This is very long overdue

 

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[Goweegie2]

A leadership election was held for the Patagonian Labour Party from 11 December to 14 December 2019, with a deputy leadership election being held concurrently. Following the landslide defeat of the Labour Party in the 2019 federal election, where the previous leader and incumbent prime minister Theresa Boshnyak lost her own seat to Progressive candidate Max Kirchner, the Labour Party was left leaderless. The deputy leader, Dave Byrd, who had retained his seat, was appointed leader ad interim until a leadership election could be held.

At the beginning of the leadership race, the two frontrunners were considered to be former cabinet ministers Richard Alfonsin and Ciro Sandoval. Alfonsin, who is also the son of former prime minister Ralph Foulkes Alfonsin, represented the centrist wing of the party which Prime Minister Boshnyak had also come from. Sandoval was largely seen as representing "soft left" wing of the party, which was left as the furthest left part of the party after much of the "hard left" had split and formed the Progressive Party. The other leadership candidates recognized by the Labour caucus were Chauncey Johns, who had served in several cabinet positions under prime ministers Price, Gillard, and Boshnyak and had been considered a potential future PM for years, as well as interim leader Dave Byrd, celebrity TV presenter-turned-politician Zane Ryser, and newly elected backbench MP Rachel Ashton, who was primarily known for her previous status as a rising star within the New Monmouthshire House of Delegates. The only candidate to come forward for the deputy leadership was backbench MP Ellen Lonchar, who would go on to be elected to the position unopposed.

In the first round of the leadership race, Alfonsin and Sandoval would tie for first place, each garnering 5 votes out of the 18 Labour MPs. Deputy PM candidate Ellen Lonchar, who had been predicted to vote for Sandoval, surprised most observers by instead voting for Ashton, who would've otherwise only gained the votes of herself and one other MP. Johns only gained his own vote and was thereby eliminated.

In the second round, all the MPs voted the same as the first round with the exception of Johns, who gave his vote to Ryser. Byrd, who only garnered 2 votes, came in last place and was thereby eliminated.

In the third round, Byrd and his sole other supporter within parliament shifted their votes to Alfonsin. Additionally, Ashton convinced Johns to switch his vote from Ryser to her. Ryser was reduced to two votes, came in last place, and was thereby eliminated.

In the fourth round, Ryser, who was expected to endorse Sandoval, instead endorsed Ashton, causing his votes to go to her. Sandoval, once considered one of the two frontrunners in the race, came in last place and was thereby eliminated.

In the fifth and final round, Sandoval endorsed the ideologically similar Ashton, who would go on to defeat Alfonsin for the leadership with eleven votes to Alfonsin's seven. Ashton and Lonchar would be formally inaugurated as Leader and Deputy Leader, respectively, the following day.

Melanie Rachel Ashton, commonly known as Rachel Ashton, is a Patagonian politician who is the current Leader of the Labour Party since 15 December 2019. She was born in 1986 to Sarah (née Levin-Ford) Drystan Ashton. Through her British-born maternal grandmother she is of partial Jewish heritage, and is fifth cousins thrice removed with former Vice President of the United States Sander Levin and former Governor of Michigan Carl Levin, as well as the former Levin's son Andy Levin, who currently serves as United States Senator from Michigan. Ashton entered politics at a relatively early age, being elected to the New Monmouthshire House of Delegates in 2011. She quickly became known as a rising star, and was considered a likely provincial cabinet pick, until the incumbent Premier Cadell Evans lost reelection in 2016 to Shayna Bloch, the daughter of former federal prime minister Mark Bloch, and her New Monmouthshire Reform Party. Ashton would become a major figure in the provincial opposition until her election to the federal House of Commons in 2019, being the only freshman Labour MP elected that year. Shortly afterwards she would be elected Labour leader in an upset, becoming the youngest Labour leader in history.

 

[Goweegie2]

 

[Goweegie2]

Sir Benedict Arnold, one of the founding fathers of the Patagonian province of New Monmouthshire (then separated into the predominantly English Desire Colony and the predominantly Welsh Carnarvon Colony), who also served as governor of the Desire Colony

 

[Goweegie2]

Sir George Meredith Bergoglio is a Patagonian musician who is the lead singer and guitarist of the metal band Papafrancesco (styled PAPAFRANCƎSCO). Born in Victoria to an Argentine mother of Italian descent and an Italian father who emigrated to Patagonia via Argentina, Bergoglio originally intended to become a priest but later shifted his interest to music

 

[Goweegie2]

Sorry for no update in so long! Here's something interesting ig:

Robert LeRoy Parker, better known by the alias Butch Cassidy, was an American train robber, bank robber, and con man, known for being the leader of a gang of criminal outlaws known as the "Wild Bunch" in the American Old West as well as acquiring the office of Mayor of Gallagher, Magellan, in Patagonia under the alias of Lloyd Cassidy through fraud and confidence schemes only to steal the city's entire treasury a week and a half later and vacate the office. He would be caught in Victoria posing as a rich man named Didacus Maxwell in an attempt to escape back to the United States. He would be arrested and spent a handful of months awaiting trial, only to con his way out of imprisonment (accounts of his exact con vary) and escape into the interior of New Monmouthshire. Soon afterwards, law enforcement would catch up with him, and he would die in a shootout with police in the interior town of Good Glasswell.

 

[Goweegie2]

Ernest Gregory "Ernie" Lynch Jr. was a Patagonian politician who served as leader of the Communist Party of Patagonia in the 1960s, leader of the Socialist Labour Party in the 70s and 80s, and briefly Minister of Health under Prime Minister Fiona Price in the late 90s.

Born in 1928 to Celia de la Serna and Ernest Lynch Sr. (born Ernesto Guevara), both Argentine immigrants who fled to Patagonia during the Argentine Civil War, Lynch became a communist while studying at the Joseph Chamberlain University Medical School and was later elected leader of the Communist Party of Patagonia, leading it to gain its first seats in Parliament. During his time as CPP leader he became known for his flamboyant, unvarnished style during parliamentary debates, holding the record for most times named out of all Patagonian MPs in history at 217. However, in the early 1970s both his style and views began to moderate, prompting him to leave the CPP in late 1972 and found the Socialist Labour Party early the next year. The new party had a more democratic socialist position compared to the communist position of the CPP. In the subsequent 1976 election the CPP, now under the leadership of Arthur Haessly, got completely wiped out, with most of its support going to the SLP, who won 6 seats.

However the SLP would not last much longer, losing all its seats in the 1981 election. Lynch would attempt to keep the party alive until 1988, when he would fold it into the Labour Party. He would be elected back to Parliament in October 1996 as a member of the Labour Party, and would briefly serve as Minister of Health under Prime Minister Fiona Price. He would resign from the cabinet in mid-1997 due to his disagreements with Price's third way politics, however he remained part of the Labour Party. He would retire from Parliament in the 2001 election.

However, Lynch remained vocal about politics, consistently advocating for left-wing policies and against Labour's centreward shift. In 2018, when Alexander Stewart founded the Progressive Party, Lynch would join it and leave Labour.

Lynch died in his sleep from old age at his home in Victoria in early 2020.

 

[Goweegie2]

 

[Goweegie2]

Francis Lloyd "Frank" Ulrich (/ˈʊlrɪk/) is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Patagonian adaptation of House of Cards, portrayed by Welsh-Patagonian actor Matt Ryan. He is depicted as a ruthless, cunning, sociopathic, Machiavellian, and extraordinarily corrupt politician who rises from Shadow Attorney General to Prime Minister of Patagonia through treachery, manipulation, and murder. Ulrich is also portrayed as having a secret relationship with Megan MacKinnon (Florence Pugh), the 18-year-old daughter of the Conservative leader and Season 1 Prime Minister Llewellyn MacKinnon (Peter Capaldi).

Throughout the series, he manipulates and destroys several people, including those he calls friends, for his own ends. He personally commits seven murders throughout the first season, as well as another four in the second. Additionally, he is portrayed as being involved in bribery, extortion, racketeering, fraud, and obstruction of justice. Some of Ulrich's dialogue is presented in a way that directly addresses the audience, breaking the fourth wall.