Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

[Il Palazzo]

Why is she just a Duchess?  I thought she was Queen or something. 
Is this a matriarchal or patriarchal marriage?  Looks patriarchal.

You really need to play CK2 some more.

[Leafsnail]

Respectively:

- Royalists are terrible
- She'd only be Queen once her husband becomes King.  At the moment she just has a title gifted to them by a random city.  I can't remember if marrying a prince makes you a princess.
- Monarchy as an institution is patriarchal.  I dunno about this particular marriage.

[Digital Hellhound]

I'm pretty sure the modern monarchies have pretty much gender-equalized when it comes to that (so, Absolute Cognatic?).

[Willfor]

Simply marrying someone born into the royal family doesn't grant you land titles. The family parcels them out as training tools and for general legitimacy creation as well. Catherine doesn't automatically become Princess Catherine by default, but she does become Duchess of Cambridge because Prince William is Duke of Cambridge, and marriage bestows automatic rank equivalence for marriage with that title.

When William becomes King William (or whatever royal name he'll pick), Catherine's default title will be King Consort, though I am personally hoping that the couple goes "fuck that noise" and goes for the King and Queen stylings.

[Dutchling]

Fun fact: Belgium has three queens and two kings right now :v

[10ebbor10]

The Russian military budget is the same as the US one. Same GDP percentage.

Because of globalization, and the effects on the usefulness of wars. All nations economies are intertwined , in such that a military war will no longer come up positive.* Also, MAD.
*Wars are no longer popular. An unilateral attack scenario is impossible
*Infrastructure is more important than resources and land. Information beats it all. The latter can't be found, the first tends to be destroyed.

Alright, I will admit that a resource war is improbable. But what about diplomatic tension? Russia still doesn't like most of Europe very much and certainly is nowhere near it's policies. Potential trade embargoes to pressure joining EU (I'm sure they'll try and get them to join, potentially soon. ) What then? Diplomacy only goes so far.

That's not how to EU works. It's rather hard to try and get 28 countries to cut their own throats by embargoing their primary provider of energy. Benefits from joining the eu would be minimal for both parties. In fact, the Eu would probably have a loss at the operation, because Russia is eligible quite a lot of subsidation.

Also, Russia would have enormous power in the EU, with it's rather large population of 150 million people. (Compared to 500 mill for the EU). Parliament seats are divided by population.

Fun fact: Belgium has three queens and two kings right now :v

Yup, since the 21 first.

[Dutchling]

Silly Belgians. Kings and queens just become princes and princesses here if they abdicate,

[10ebbor10]

Silly Belgians. Kings and queens just become princes and princesses here if they abdicate,

Nope they don't. Mainly because the Belgian system assumes that people reign until they die.

[Owlbread]

When people started calling Kate Middleton "Katherine" I just wanted to dig my eyes out.

[Dutchling]

When people started calling Kate Middleton "Katherine" I just wanted to dig my eyes out.

Didn't she change her name?

[Owlbread]

When people started calling Kate Middleton "Katherine" I just wanted to dig my eyes out.

Didn't she change her name?

No, I think she was always called Catherine. It's just since she became Royalty Kate isn't good enough for her anymore.

[Sheb]

Actually, there is a couple issues with Europe's armies, but it's not size (As it has been pointed out, we outspend the only potential aggressor, Russia, by a factor of 3).

The first one is inefficiency. We're running 28 air forces, 28 armies and I don't know how many navies. The fact is that Europe's armies are geared for a mix of welfare and parade for most countries, and defense of national interests abroad in the case of France and the UK. Not only do we pay too much, but from a purely defensive POV, our units are all in the wrong place.

Second, the armies are disunited. Let us say that Russia decide to pulls a Georgia on Estonia for example, to give Putin some macho creds and distract dissenters at home. No matter how much cash they pour into defense, Estonia and the Baltic states won't stand for more than a day. Now, in this case, do you think France, the UK and Germany will gear up to counter-attack Russia? Chance is they'll discretely drop it using some loopholes in the treaties. In this situation, the US is probably the only thing protecting countries like Estonia, because they have a reputation to maintain and won't just let Russia in.

Of course, the solution to both problems is not a larger army, we could probably shed half our collective military budget and still be cool. The solution is to integrate our national armies into a real, big EU-wide one.

[Dutchling]

We almost did that actually. I think France is the reason there is no European Army right now, but I honestly am not quite sure.

[Sheb]

I do remember French propaganda against a European Army in the 50's, fearing a new Wehrmacht.

[Helgoland]

We almost did that actually. I think France is the reason there is no European Army right now, but I honestly am not quite sure.

Sounds like France, yeah - still think they're a global power. Cute

a new Wehrmacht.

Die Weltmacht!