North and South: Inside Gunnland and Port Stanley

[Gunnland]

Spoiler: Story Arcs

This story picks up from "In Farthest Himyar." At stake is who wins the Gunnish elections, the conservative long-ruling Integrity party or the Liberals.

In the first story arc we follow Oritsematosan Udomo, a Black Nethian woman from Port Stanley, as she travels to Gunnland to work as Robert Gunn's agent. She is an unlikely person to help the Integrity Party win. It is a gamble. Can Integrity run a few non-white women to siphon off Liberal votes? Robert Gunn thinks so. Udomo will encounter racism in Gunnland and a test of loyalty to the man that she used, then rescued, in Port Stanley. On the other side of this story is the weight of her absence in Port Stanley, which is felt keenly by Prime Minister Butler.

In the second story arc we follow Queen Julian. She would like a more liberal-leaning, progressive, pro-Eiffellandian government in Gunnland. She would also like to return to Eiffelland, perhaps marry a commoner, and live a normal life (for once). But she will soon face a very serious challenge to her rule. It has to do with her brother, "King" Joachas, who is being raised by Robert Gunn and others in Port Stanley, and the fact that her parents (unbeknownst to almost everyone in Europe) are still alive...

Highhome Mansion
Maseru, Loago

“Addie!” said Udomo gently, “Addie!”

But, as Udomo had half expected, Adelaide had fallen asleep. She lay curled up on the sofa in the back drawing-room in the Cameron-Cawdor mansion, looking very lovely in her white muslin and orange ribbons. If Titania had ever been dressed in white muslin and orange ribbons, and had fallen asleep on an ochre damask sofa in a back drawing-room, Adelaide might have been taken for her. Udomo was stuck afresh by the woman’s beauty. They had served Robert Gunn together for many months, and all along Adelaide had been remarked upon by everyone for her prettiness; but Udomo had never thought about it until the last few days, bowing and trailing behind with her luggage, as was still the custom for dark-skinned Stanleans flying with a white woman to Maseru. They had been talking about the Marian University, and Gunnish universities; and Robert, and what he had told Udomo about her future life in Windhaven, and what gowns she would want to wear in Gunnland; but the whispered tone had latterly become more drowsy, and Udomo, after the pause of a few minutes, found just as she had fancied, Addie had rolled herself up into a soft ball of muslin and ribbon, and gone off into a peaceful little after-dinner nap.

Udomo was stung with an absurd concern that all Gunnishwomen would be as beautiful as Adelaide.

 

[Gunnland]

The Bungalow
Chinde, Port Stanley

Robert opened the door himself. There was nobody else to do it. Adelaide had flown with Udomo to Maseru en route to Windhaven; it was still odd for a black woman to fly out of Chinde alone. Robin was painting Deoiridh's toenails by the pool or something; she was serving the horrid burn-victim ex-queen as punishment for fleeing in Robert's hour of need.

“Hello Octavia.”

She was alone. Well, her bodyguard was in the EKW. The last time Robert had seen (now) Prime Minister Butler, he had been imprisoned on a yacht, stripped naked, and forced to serve her a tray of land snails on his knees. Igbin. Meeting her again was a little awkward.

It had been Salammbô’s idea, not Octavia’s. Salammbô was the second member of the triad of Mafewo matriarchs that secretly ruled Port Stanley, warring against Satanic tribes in the jungles of the North, appeasing them with human sacrifices, and God knows what other pulp storybook stuff. Salammbô had been betrayed by her husband and an insane mercenary woman from Bergenheim, and did not play nicely with white men in her country.

“No hard feelings, Mr. Gunn?” Her husky voice was honey.

 

[Gunnland]

By extraordinary twists of fate, the two powerful leaders who most shaped the politics of Gunnland in the 2010s both briefly met other side of power. Queen Julian and Robert Gunn each experienced and narrowly escaped a humiliating captivity. The details of both events are still murky to this day.

Julian Gunn was abducted by conservative elements within the Catholic Church and Integrity Party just before she was elected queen. Today historians agree that the censor, hardline Integrity politician Coemgein Gallagher, was at the center of the plan, which later involved the MacLeish criminal underworld and Yiddish gangsters in Kretyn. The government officially launched an investigation by enquêteur Padraig Smith to deny such a kidnapping ever took place. But according to declassified NSS documents, Smith’s inquiries in Kretyn revealed the MacLeishes panicked after the then-princess was almost hurt or killed when a criminal turf war turned violent. The MacLeishes apparently somehow smuggled her out of the country and onto a container ship, and abandoned her in Helgoland, in the Eiffellandian island-city of Aurich. A government cover-up began immediately after she was found. Historians are divided about whether the powerful Gunnish prelate Henry Cardinal Stewart knew of this plan. Renowned Gunnland expert Ulrike Freudenberger (2017) argues that he was one of the prime movers of an anti-Julian plot, though Thomas MacAllister Fick (2018) has criticized this argument and suggested an alternative thesis where Gallagher contacted the MacLeishes without the cardinal’s knowledge.

Robert Gunn’s disappearance happened in Port Stanley several years later. In the summer of 2018, Queen Julian sent Robert Gunn as an envoy to negotiate the end of white rule in Port Stanley. Journalists at the time and many historians today speclulate that Julian sent the Gunn chief to Himyar because she wanted to get him out of the way (e.g., Fick 2022, 43; cf. Ruddock 2019), but recent archival research suggests that Queen Julian felt strongly about erasing a racist legacy of Marpesian colonialism (Plutarska-Huldrych 2022, 307-310). Meanwhile, hardline Integrity politicians were fighting to maintain the white-rule Commonwealth League. Some historians think it is likely that Coemgein Gallagher resorted a second time to abduction, bringing Robert from the commercial city of Oriel to remote northern jungles to prevent his diplomatic mission from succeeding. Others believe that the radical communists of the RANU-PF were behind the Gunn’s disappearance. Europeans only learned about Robert Gunn’s disappearance many years after the fact, and even then, he never spoke or wrote publicly about what happened in the weeks he went missing in Port Stanley.

Maria Plutarska-Huyldrich and David MacAllister Ruddock, Gunnland At the Dawn of the Julian Era: 2015-2018 (Windhaven: Marian University Press, 2024), 411-412.

 

[Gunnland]

Alexander Rex Avenue
Windhaven, Gunnland

"1:00 is your speech announcing your candidacy at the Marian Student Union. At 2:15 you have a brief meeting with Elizabeth Stoke. You have a tight turnaround with an interview with The Ayr Post at 3:00 sharp. Your supper meeting with Chairman MacGinley is at 5:00 at MacDonald's." It was Udomo's first time in a limousine. Her first time giving a speech, too. She was barely listening to Kate Faolain, her personal assistant. Kate received the messages from Chinde with Udomo's instructions. Technically she worked for Jack Skylaw, but it was an embarrassment for a Liberal MT to have an ambatt at his beck and call these days.

The black Raimer prowled slowly up the cobblestones of the narrow wynds that gave the city its name. Falling snow muted the street noises: boys hawking newspapers, the famous horsedrawn Hansom cabs, the squealing brakes of streetcars. Kate must have noticed her distraction. "The Capitollium is just up there," she said, pointing at a great dome atop the hill, "we're passing Alexander Square now. Down there, on the flood plain, you can just see the Freehold. And there, across the Wash, there's the cathedral and the Black Keep."

Now, Udomo pretended to be unimpressed by the storybook medieval city that was the pride of this frozen country. I am not Octavia. I am not Anwanyu. I am not playing the loving mammy to these germs. Kate seemed a bit hurt and fell back into silence. Udomo felt anxious. When Kate opened the door of the car for the chilly Nethian woman, Udomo realized that she had been holding her breath. It was all a blur till the lights were on her, and she could barely make out the white faces in the auditorium. Now she let out the feeling.

"One week ago I was named the Minister of Foreign Affairs of my country. But several days ago I could not leave that country by myself on an airplane unless I was accompanied by a white woman. These are the contradictions of Port Stanley, where I am from..."

 

[Gunnland]

The Bungalow
Chinde, Port Stanley

Their shoes clapped the floors of white marble as they walked under the horseshoe arches of the magnificent house. Octavia Butler and Robert Gunn were arguing about his decision to send Oritsematosan Udomo to Gunnland. Their argument sounded as sharp as their footfall. To ten-year-old Prince Joachas, trailing behind them to "learn" the ways of his "Salian uncle,"* it was like hissing.

"Hika Qiltu arrives in three days. This is a colossal embarrassment. We had a deal."

"Then you named Salammbô's puppet to the Cabinet."​

"I had no choice."

"I did have a choice."​

"Udomo is not your pet who will eat from your hand. She is a tiger who will turn on you like she turned on us."

"Tigers can hunt in the snow."
​

The argument had reached a dead-end, but it really ended in the sound of screams coming from the courtyard pool. Joachas ran ahead to see his mother kicking Robin's bleeding body. By the time Robert and Octavia rounded the last arch, a thin trickle of blood ran from the woman's mouth, through the grout, and into the pool. The red plume billowed like an otherworldly stormcloud into the ultramarine.

*The equivalent of the phrase "Dutch uncle" in English, born from the period where the cities of Salen and Gunnland were commercial rivals in the St. Elmo's League.

 

[Gunnland]

Nyameba asked the djinn, “What is the rarest of all creatures?” The djinn replied, “A willing slave.” Then Nyameba asked how he could make such a creature. The djinn covered his ears, rolled on the floor, and gnashed his teeth, but finally he told Nyameba: “Pay homage to his special power, and his power becomes yours.” And the boy smiled and said, “Only you have this knowledge.”

A Mafewo proverb.

Gunnland is like many sexually repressive societies. Sex is controlled and contained, but indulged rather than eliminated.

Ulrike Freudenberger, An Introduction to Gunnish Culture (Dun Eidyn: University of Dun Eidyn Press, 2014).

 

[Gunnland]

MacDonald's Restaurant
Windhaven, Gunnland

In Udomo's first visit to the finest restaurant in Windhaven, she is mistaken for a servant, an ambatt. It is a bring-your-own-table-server kind of restaurant. In the swanky district 'above' the Wash: North Wall Street, between the courthouse and the opera house, the famous Salle des Fergusines. The maître d' smiles apologetically at Kate Faolain.

"We only allow the Saturnalian custom till the Feast of the Holy Innocents," he says, presumptuously removing the white pashmina from Kate's head. Gunnishwomen wear hats in public, at least in formal settings, but ambatts cover their heads with white shawls. He is still smiling in his tuxedo: "I'm afraid your girl should be in her whites, Madam."

Chairman MacGinley sees immediately what was happening, and the stocky bearded Integrity Party chairman comes lumbering across the restaurant like a bear. There is commotion. He doesn't like the idea of running a black woman for the Thing, especially not in his party, but Robert Gunn must have his reasons.

Not long afterwards Udomo and the party chairman sit, and it is Kate who slides into a kneeling chair below and between them, pulls a small leaf from under the table, and trains her eyes on the kitchen door. Udomo looks grim; this is much easier, however, than being put down in Chinde. "Her girl" is wearing her white pashmina once again.

She is careful to keep her face impassive as MacGinley explains to her afterwards, "You see, Miss Udomo, once a year at Christmastime, the more... refined establishments keep the ancient Tiburan custom where masters serve servants and servants dress as masters..." She only gives a tight mirthless smile under her canary-yellow hat.

 

[Gunnland]

Alcazar Hospital
Chinde, Port Stanley

Robin's eyes opened. That wasn't supposed to happen. Her coma had lasted for three months. It's not well understood how the brain wakes itself up. Was it Robin? Robin was blonde and brazen, a sexual trophy of the most powerful men in the North, an ornamental human specimen. This woman looked more like the woman who almost killed her: pale, shriveled, scarred. A thick red line ran across her skull where it had collided with the pool deck.

"What happened?"

Brother Paul, loyal servant of the king-without-a-country, dutifully praying by her bedside as ordered, looked up with wide eyes. This wasn't supposed to happen. Uh oh.

 

[Gunnland]

St. Moses Abbey
Bal'harm, Port Stanley

"Mary arrives in Chinde tomorrow, sire. Shall you meet her?"

Joachas lay in bed. His body was still but his thoughts were unquiet.

He had killed his mother on an impulse. It did not matter that there were men around in gray robes. It was not a real trial for murder. Robin had not even died. It had been an accident at the pool. He remembered his mother before the accident, before the plane crash, driving up to Dunrobin in a convertible, her wind blowing in the hair. And all his siblings lined up to meet her, Julian the eldest at the head of the line, he the youngest nearest the stairs... He was not the king of anywhere, not Jyskerige-Østveg, not Gunnland, not Old Tibur.

And now Mary MacLeod was coming to see his mother, and see him, and everyone would know what had happened.

 

[Gunnland]

St. Moses Abbey
Bal'harm, Port Stanley

Robert Gunn wiped the sweat from his forehead and pulled the white cotton shirt that was sticking to his underarms. He hated this country. The chief sighed out a cloud of smoke that he had inhaled from his pipe.

"If you haven't noticed, nobody gives a rat's ass that you're the legitimate king of Gunnland. Least of all me. And even if you were the king, I'm still the chief, boy."

He aimed a sharp kick at the eleven-year-old, curled up in a fetal position on the floor. Robert actually felt sorry for the young man, who in a spell of limerence had killed his mother. Deoiridh the old bitch had it coming, but damn, this is going to do a number on this laddie. But there was no time for gentleness. He sighed.

"Nothing has ever happened in the world that could be otherwise. Gunni calls this urthr -- wyrd. Today we call it cause and effect. Listen, boy. The only freedom is the freedom to do what is necessary."