England became more important to my family during the Hundred Years War. As feudal holders to the French throne, the Normans owed fealty to the French king. But we held the kingship of England in our own right, and we held closer claim to the throne than the new French king. We claimed it, the king disputed the claim, and a war broke out that would last a hundred years. That war changed us all forever.
A lot of people didn’t trust the Peloran when they showed up. Still don’t actually. Many groups tried to reverse engineer their treatments in fact. The results weren’t amazing. The Russian and Chinese Treatments for example have some kinda crazy side effects. Very rare of course or they wouldn’t still use them. But dwarfism, giantism, and a lot of other ’isms like that show up with them. One side effect they don’t get is the Ageless. We’ve got no clue why.
The Great Wall of Xin Shi isn’t actually a wall of course. It does ring the planet, where day and night meet, but it isn’t a single building by any means. It’s broken up by lakes and small oceans, and even on land it is more a collection of buildings crammed together. Those buildings on the line itself are the largest and richest of course, towering over their lesser cousins. The buildings on the edge of the habitable zone are the slums of Xin Shi.
Most of the Normans ruled England from Normandy. My little branch of the family actually did move to England, but many of us stayed. We continued to speak our own little version of French, and to rule the island as we thought best. The irony is that the greatest of Norman kings, forever known as Richard the Lionheart, never did learn to speak English. You see, England was a secondary holding at the time, truly only important in that it gave us a claim to kingship.
There’s an old saying, from back before Contact. You can be full of wisdom or full of youth. You can’t have both. That’s still true of the lower classes in places like China and India, where population and cultural pressures keep the treatments more rare. But in most of the Western Alliance, and even in Russian and non-aligned territories, most people can learn wisdom through experience, and still be healthy enough to take advantage of it. That’s changed everything.
The Martian Affair on Amazon
Forge of War on Amazon
The Audacious Affair on Amazon
Angel Flight on Amazon
Angel Strike on Amazon
Angel War on Amazon
The Family Affair on Amazon
The Thunderbird Affair on Amazon
Wolfenheim Rising on Amazon
Wolfenheim Emergent on Amazon
The Gemini Affair on Amazon