The Many Ways to Divide New Austria: RDNA-verse

It took quite a bit longer than expected, due to real life stuff. Still, here's my first map for 2023, and fittingly enough, it's for the RDNA-verse! This time, however, it's my take on the "ways to divide a country" map meme, which kinda took on a life of its own the more I worked on it.

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There's something to be said about America. The Land of the Free. A Bastion of Democracy in the last part of the Free World without any Red or Reactionary encroachment. Or as a popular saying goes, God, Guns, and Glory. Talk about an inflated view of themselves. It comes as no surprise then that this reflects Americans' relationship with their next-door neighbors. More specifically, New Austria.

It's a tale that could be traced back to the origins of both countries. By the time the English explorers set foot on some rocky shore off Virginia, the Austrian Habsburgs had already been there for around a century. Perhaps, much as with Spain's conquistadors further south, this fueled some sort of inferiority complex. A Black Legend, as it were, of feudal overlords gallivanting over downtrodden peasants and Germanic zealots mingling with the Indians. While there's probably a grain of truth buried in there, even an elementary school dropout could see it as nonsense. Yet this blend of prejudice and envy would have echoes far beyond the life of whoever put those notions to paper.

By the time Ben Franklin and the other Founding Fathers began protesting taxation without representation with force, those sentiments had become fairly entrenched. Following the final triumph of the American War of Independence in 1780, however, they were already evolving. While there was some unrest in New Austria during that period, the lack of any widespread republican revolt bred the idea that its people represented an absolutist Continental tradition, standing in contrast to the ideals of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, this neglected the general autonomy of the New Austrian colonies by then, the labyrinthine checks-and-balances on a local aristocracy that included European and native nobles, or the abolition of slavery, which was finalized in 1793. Maybe it's because they were all Catholic and folk of "lesser stock" in the nascent republic's eyes that it seemed easier to rationalize those away as too un-American. 

As the 19th Century progressed, this animosity intensified. As explorers and pioneers from both sides set forth, it was inevitable that clashing claims arose, which made drawing borders between them increasingly difficult. Especially in Texias and the Californias, disputes between the various settlers became increasingly hostile, whether over land rights, cultural differences or petty arguments. Either of them would have given President Rutherford Lee enough of an excuse to justify his grand "Crusade", though he didn't need to do much to stoke the crowds, even as his popularity began plummeting like a rocks. Seemed like many on both sides were all too eager to throw themselves over six grueling years of bloodshed in what New Austrian textbooks call the War of the Western Frontiers, all too willing to one-up each other from papers to the grave. Neither the Treaty of Ottawa nor Lee's impeachment stopped what had evidently become a rivalry which has kept simmering to this day.

Sure, the Terror certainly fostered more camaraderie in the face of those Reds. Barring that whole pariah stint in the 1940s, relations have mellowed to the point of almost being cordial, as the Pan-American Express wouldn't have been a thing otherwise. Heck, New Austrian products and cuisine have even gain something of a following on this side of the border. It doesn't take a lot of effort, though, to see those prejudices are very much alive, however subdued. A land out of step with the wheels of progress, yet whose women went ahead of the curve in suffrage and rights. Where democratic institutions coexist with nobility and a monarch whose word still holds significant sway. Whose people proudly wear their Old and New World inheritance, while Revivalist movements weird enough clout to hold seats in government. Much of these are still seen as outside the American experience, which the New Austrians would more than happily retort by throwing America's own weirdness back.

All indicative of rivals and equal partners. No doubt respected by both parties, perhaps begrudgingly. But all the same, old habits die hard. It does beg the question: if that's how Americans view New Austrians, given all that frankly strange talk about the National Question lately, what more the very embodi-



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