Return of the King, A Kaiserreich Canada Play through Part 1

When Britain went to war against the Germans in 1914, hardly anyone could have predicted that the war would end in 1920 with Russia defeated, France and Italy in revolution, and Britain herself humiliated. And it only got worse from there. The British economy took a sharp nosedive, and in 1925 Britain went through it's own syndicalist revolution, forcing the Royal Family and their supporters to flee to Canada. Like vultures, aggressive neighbors swooped in to seize many of Britain's old colonies. The Irish invaded Ulster, most of British Africa fell to the Germans, the Spaniards took Gibraltar, The Ottomans captured Cyprus, and half on India rose up in rebellion against the Raj. By 1936, all that was left of the old British Empire and Commonwealth was Canada, Australia and New Zealand (now united as the Australasian Confederation) The Dominion of India (Which was in fact nothing but northwest India) and the various Caribbean Islands. Their only remaining ally was the authoritarian democratic French government in exile, based out of old French Algeria.

Considering this bleak situation, it is perhaps no surprise that King George V died in Ottawa on January 20, 1936, a broken man. His eldest son, now crowned Edward VIII, was determined to avenge his father by taking back the British Isles from the wretched Reds.

But in order to do so, the political situation in Canada itself would need to be sorted out. The Liberal Party, under Prime Minister Mackenzie King, had been in power for nearly 10 years by 1936. It was no secret that King Edward and the Prime Minister did not exactly get along, to the point that many Canadians joked about "The War Between Two Kings." Edward VIII felt that Prime Minister King was two soft on the Syndicalist menace, while the Prime Minister saw the King as a dangerously ambitious warmonger.

Events abroad soon swayed Canadian public opinion in Edward's favor. The rise of the Totalist demagogue Oswald Mosley in Britain, and Afghanistan's attack on the Dominion of India, convinced many Canadians that a stronger leader than Mackenzie King was needed to lead Canada through the crisis. That leader, Edward believed, was Richard Bennett.

A devout Methodist, army veteran, and Empire loyalist, Bennett was the charismatic leader of the Canadian Conservative Party, nicknamed the Tories after their old British predecessors. Bennett made no secret of his stance on the Syndicalist menace, calling for it to be crushed "with an iron heel." As a result, the 1936 Canadian General Election was a landslide victory for the Tories, and Bennett was swept into 24 Sussex*, determined to crush the Mosleyites in the Union of Britain...

*24 Sussex is the official residence for the Canadian Prime Minister, and more or less the Canadian White House.