Few people realize how far the Normans traveled. Normandy and the British Isles are easy to remember. And from England, we conquered much of the world. But few people realize that we conquered southern Italy, Cyprus, and even regions of Africa, long before England was a center of power in the world. And while kings changed, our descendents remained. The survivors of the French Revolution could find refuge in nearly any corner of the Earth.
Constantinople’s first foray into the space race was a bit of a market changer. Literally. She was the largest rotating space station of the time, with different decks matching the surface gravities of Earth, Venus, and Mars. Named Nilufer Station in honor of the first President, and great granddaughter of the last Sultan, of Constantinople, her open bazaars made her the most visited station in the Solar System. They still do. I’ve stopped there a few times.
Millions of people travel to Persistence every year, and not because they want to see Half-Blood Falls. Don’t get me wrong. Two rivers, one dyed red by mineral deposits, meeting at a kilometer-high waterfall is a sight very few people will ever forget as long as they live. But it’s the minerals in question that bring prospectors to Persistence, all of them hoping to stake out a claim filled with gold, silver, or other heavy metals.
After the French Revolution, they went crazy. They took our lands, our money, and our lives. The French side of my family, those who had lived in Normandy for nearly a millennium, were part of the landscape itself, faced mobs that spit on their faces before the guillotines took their heads off. They were the lucky ones. A very few escaped. We helped them rebuild elsewhere, far away from France. We never forgot Normandy.
Constantinople has colonized a lot of worlds. Of course it’s Constantinople, capital of empires, center of trade for millennia, ancient and powerful and all that jazz. Sure she was getting a bit long in the tooth by the time we started our space race, and I’m betting she was working more on reputation than actual capability by then. But reputation can count for a lot. And when Constantinople shrugged the Jihad off her walls, she had a lot of reputation to spend.
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