The Great War had left Tretrid reeling. While the country itself hadn’t seen very much devastation, the events of the war had left many Tretridians extremely dissatisfied with the government.
It didn’t help that the government, fearing this dissatisfaction, tried to make it difficult for common people to vote. Indeed, it only incensed people, culminating with a general strike held at the start of 1918.
Tretrid was forced to dissolve the Witenagemot and hold snap elections, while also having to repeal many of the laws that disenfranchised the working class. This resulted in the Social Democratic Party (SDT) taking power in a majority.
Now, the Social Democratic Party of the 1910s encompassed the entire Tretridian left wing, from revolutionary socialists to reformists, to even those who sought to only mitigate the worst effects of capitalism. They were united in wanting to improve conditions for workers, but the SDT was also infamous for infighting. The right wing and left wing of the party struggled for dominance over the next couple of years.
In the history most people are accustomed to, the right wing of the SDT was victorious. Many far-left elements, deciding that Tretrid’s current system was too broken to reform, simply rose up. The SDT took this opportunity to purge a lot of its more left-wing elements from its ranks, while the military put down the revolution with violent force.
This was when the modern Tretridian Social Democratic Party was brought into being. The SDT has never been more than center-left ever since.
But what if the party’s left wing won the power struggle?
This is the story of what could have happened.
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After the left wing of the SDT managed to secure dominance over the party, and the legislature as a whole, the Witan immediately started passing measures to prepare for a transition to a more socialist government. King Ælfric II, fearing this, used his royal prerogative to block many of the laws. This succeeded in blocking a lot of the reforms, but also made many people hate the monarchy.
Incensed, the SDT proceeded to pass a resolution proclaiming Tretrid a state of its people, not a domain of a king. They co-opted both nationalist and republican rhetoric to further turn public opinion against the monarchy. Not only had the King and his bourgeois government betrayed the working class, the usual propaganda went, but the King had also betrayed the Tretridian people, and the Tretridian nation.
The Witan, meeting against royal decree (which was technically illegal), passed a resolution declaring the Tretridian monarchy abolished and directing the Tretridian military to remove the King from his seat of power. They also declared themselves the “Provisional Government of the Tretridian Republic” and renamed themselves to the “People’s Council.”
The military was split on what was to be done. On one hand, Tretrid was and had for centuries been ruled by a king, but on the other hand, the Witan’s arguments that Tretrid was a nation of its people was extremely compelling. Most of the soldiers ultimately sided with the Witan. Fighting broke out around Tretrid.
So it was in 1919 that troops acting under orders from the Witan faced off against troops acting under orders of the King. A shot was fired. Many more were soon after, and blood was spilled on the streets of Cynebury. The royalist troops were forced to retreat.
The King, seeing the writing on the wall, fled to the countryside beyond the Nalpian mountains under escort by his Cyneweard bodyguards. He ordered the military to make its way to Transnalpia to consolidate his forces.
By the end of 1919, Tretrid was split in two. The lands of Transnalpia and Beorhmere still remained under control of the King, while the Witan’s forces controlled the land southeast of Tretrid, the land that was so deeply associated with the nation.
And then… nothing. The only passage that could viably be crossed by soldiers through the Nalpians was the Transnalpian tunnel. But both sides had dynamited the tracks that went through the tunnel to prevent anybody from using the railway to quickly move troops in. Instead, fighting saw soldiers using vehicles to try to drive through the tunnel.
Fighting quickly turned into a stalemate, however, with both sides digging in with their positions. Both ends of the tunnel were essentially covered by bunkers, and the chokepoint provided by the tunnel proved to provide too much of an advantage to defenders. Attempts to take the other side proved to be futile, so both sides simply held their positions and continued digging in.
In January 1920, the members of the SDT met to create a constitution for a new socialist Tretridian state. The core concept was simple: it would safeguard the workers’ control over Tretrid, as well as set out fundamental rights for the laborer.
However, how that would be done was subject to debate. And it was here that the SDT started to splinter.
Some argued for the Durakan model of governance. Claiming that democracy was too susceptible to bourgeois interference, they wanted a strong, centralized system with which to establish socialism. Some argued for the complete dissolution of a central Tretridian government and devolve into many self-governing communes.
In the end, however, the democratic socialists successfully enshrined elections into the new constitution, though it drew the ire of both the anarcho-communists and the Martovists.
Many accusations of being traitors to the revolution were slung at each other.
However, they still managed to put on a show of unity when the Witan ratified the constitution by a thin majority at the end of April, effectively abolishing the old legislature and replacing it with a new Tretridian People’s Assembly.
So it was on May 1, 1920, that the newly appointed Acting President Leofdæg Eadmundson proclaimed the creation of the new Tretridian People’s State.
Even with the revolution secure on the fatherland, however, Tretrid’s future was unclear. The new state was surrounded by enemies, from the old monarchy-in-exile in the northeast, to capitalist Lapinumbia to the south, to even the Arkian Confederation. Furthermore, former allies within the SDT had turned against each other as the party fractured, leading to extremely vicious infighting that threatened to consume the government entirely. Said infighting would get worse as the first proper elections for the new People’s Assembly would be held.
Would Tretrid pull itself together and prove its strength against its foes? Or would it collapse in on itself and fall?