'. In the world of
The Two Georges, it was retained permanently as the 'Jack and Stripes', the flag of the North American Union inside the British Empire For more than two centuries, what would have become the continental
United States and
Canada has been the North American Union, a self-governing
dominion within the
British Empire;
Alaska remains under the rule of
Russia while
Hawaii is a British
protectorate. The title of the novel refers to a fictional
Gainsborough painting that commemorates the agreement between
George Washington and King
George III, which peacefully ended the
American Revolution, implied to be the result of
George Grenville never becoming
Prime Minister. The painting itself has become a symbol of national unity.
Native Americans fared much better than in real-world history with tribes such as the
Iroquois and the
Cherokee managing to keep much of their land and have autonomy, their status comparable to that of the
princely states in
British India. As the North American Union remained in the British Empire following peaceful negotiation, the
French Revolution was suppressed at the
storming of the Bastille by troops under the command of
Napoleon Bonaparte in the service of
Louis XVI, thus preserving the
Bourbon monarchy. By the twentieth century,
France and
Spain exist in a French-dominated
personal union, the Holy Alliance, which controls most of
Latin America and
Northern Africa and is ruled over by François IV.
The abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833 included slaves in North America. The emancipated
blacks prospered, gained education and experienced a rapid
upward social mobility, becoming a mainly middle class community by the 20th century. Conversely, the
Irish-American community remained a predominantly poor, working class population, subsisting on hard physical labor such as the
coal mining on which the North American Union depended for its energy. This created a feeling of bitter jealousy among the Irish, and many of them came to support the
Sons of Liberty, a terrorist organization that wants to see America become independent from the British Empire and promotes a blatantly racist and xenophobic ideology. In the twentieth century, the empires of Great Britain, the Holy Alliance and
Russia are the world's major powers, with the
Austrian Empire being a European land-based
middle power coveting
Balkan territory and neither Germany nor Italy becoming unified nation-states. As in the
Mexican War of our history, the mid-nineteenth century saw Britain and the North American Union conquer a large portion of
Nueva España (in this case, also including the
Baja California peninsula) from the Holy Alliance. The city of
Los Angeles was renamed New Liverpool and developed into one of the largest cities of the North American Union and the Province of
Upper California. ==Plot==