January 14th, 2011

lander

Dystopic question

Poll #1667813 Just out of interest
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All. Participants: 31

I may describe the empire of The Struggle For Empire as a Dystopia

View Answers
I have no idea what a dystopia is
0(0.0%)
I neither know nor care what a dystopia is
0(0.0%)
I'm not sure but it sounds a bit pretentious
0(0.0%)
I know what a dystopia - it wouldn't make me more or less interested
7(22.6%)
I know what a dystopia is and it would put me off
5(16.1%)
I know what a dystopia is and it would interest me
14(45.2%)
Dystopias are passe.
0(0.0%)
You spelled Utopia wrong
0(0.0%)
Oooh! Shiny!
1(3.2%)
Clicky box!
1(3.2%)
Cats!!!!!!!
3(9.7%)
lander

All Anglo, no Saxon

The Struggle for Empire has the world ruled by the Anglo-Saxon Empire. Basically Britain and Germany took out France, Russia and the other European great powers in the early years of the 20th century, as the empire expanded the USA joined and ultimately gave up being an independent nation to become part of the Empire. The Empire is so dominant that some nations (such as France and Turkey) no longer exist, and English appears to be the global language.

Ignoring all of the implausibility of this, the problem I have is that there is no hint of any German influence on this culture. Nobody has a German name, none of the spaceships have German names, etc. Yet it's consistently called the "Anglo-Saxon" empire and there is no hint that Britain has somehow swallowed up Germany in the 150 200+ years or so between the formation of the empire and the "now" of the story.

Basically I feel I have three options:
  1. Explain it as the story being a translation of the Empire's Anglo-Saxon language, a mixture of English and German. It's just a coincidence that most of the story revolves around English characters.
  2. Explain it as the Empire having decided (by vote or whatever) to use English as its only language.
  3. Say that Germany has its own fleets etc., German is the second language of the Empire, they're also involved in the war but we don't see them because the viewpoint characters serve with the British fleet.
The third seems the most plausible explanation of this point, on the whole, anyone got any better suggestions?