History Literature / TheMerchantPrincesSeries

* EvilChancellor: Matthias, [[spoiler: WARBUCKS.]]
* EvilMatriarch: Miriam's grandmother
* TheEvilPrince: Prince Egon aka "The Pervert".

* GambitPileup: By the third book, there are at least five different factions all either shooting at each other or inches away from doing so. This is [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] when Miriam, in the second book, asks whether there's anyone in her entourage ''not'' working for the secret service. Her maid Kara responds, [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments "Not me!"]]

* ''Invisible Sun'' (slated for publication sometime in late 2019 / early 2020)

* AlternateUniverse: And there isn't just one; by book five, a number of others have been documented.
** It's worth noting that the series is quite a {{Deconstruction}} of the usual "Alternate Universe" setting. The logistical and geopolitical consequences are explored quite thoroughly.

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Not to be mistaken for "Literature/TheMerchantPrinces", part of ''Literature/TheFoundationTrilogy'’, by Creator/IsaacAsimov.

In 2014, these were collected into three omnibus volumes named ''The Bloodline Feud'', ''The Traders War'', and ''The Revolution Trade'', with some minor changes to the text.

* ActionGirl: Downplayed with Miriam, she can't take anyone down during a fight, but she sure shoots people who try to kill her and doesn't wait to be rescued.

* ''Invisible Sun'' (slated for publication in early 2019)

* InvisiblePresident—sort of. Although George Bush and Dick Cheney appear as characters on-page occasionally, their ''names'' are never used (except for on one page near the very end of Book 6 [[spoiler:after both characters are dead]]), even though names of other public figures, such as Ashcroft and Scalia, are used more or less freely. The text, and all the other characters (even those for whom it makes no sense to do so), refer to the president and vice president by their supposed CIA code names, BOY WONDER and WARBUCKS.
** This was ''vastly'' toned down in the 2012 editions. [[spoiler:Cheney gets named a half-dozen times in volume 2, with almost three dozen namings in volume three.]]

%% * PresidentE%% vil

** [[spoiler: Donald Rumsfeld]] turns out to be [[FromBadToWorse even worse]].

* [[spoiler: NukeEm: WARBUCKS uses a nuke against the Clan, but it misses and [[DroppedABridgeOnHim drops a bridge]] [[BigDamnVillains on the Clan's enemies]] instead.]]

* PresidentEvil [[spoiler: Dick Cheney. No, [[BlatantLies no]] [[{{Anvilicious}} anvils being dropped]], [[BlatantLies really]]. [[NukeEm Bombs]], on the other hand...]]

* GambitPileup: By the third book, there are at least five different factions all either shooting at each other or inches away from doing so. This is [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] when Miriam, in the second book, asks whether there's anyone in her entourage ''not'' working for the secret service. Her maid Kara responds, [[CrowningMomentOfFunny "Not me!"]]

* ConspiracyRedemption [[spoiler: By the end of Book 5, the Clan's leadership is mostly in sane hands, and Iris has maneuvered Miriam onto the throne, so now the good guys can defend the Gruinmarkt against invasion.]]

* GenreShift: It starts out exhibiting more fantasy tropes (noble families in MedievalStasis; magical-seeming phenomena mediated through a Celtic-knotwork–style sigil), but by the midpoint the series is clearly economic and military science fiction. This is in part the result of ExecutiveMeddling: one publisher already had an option on Stross's next SF novel, so he started this series as fantasy in order to be able to get it published by another company.

* TheRemnant: The Wolf Orchestra is what's left of a multigenerational scheme by the GDR to infiltrate the United States. There is no GDR anymore, and most of the Orchestra have settled into peaceful retired life in America.

A {{Fantasy}} series by Creator/CharlesStross, about a journalist named Miriam Beckstein who finds an AlternateUniverse stuck in MedievalStasis where her long-lost family are powerful traders who can travel between dimensions. There are six books so far: ''The Family Trade'' (2004), ''The Hidden Family'' (2005), ''The Clan Corporate'' (2006), ''The Merchants' War'' (2007), ''The Revolution Business'' (2009), and ''The Trade of Queens'' (2010). They are now available in a new edition that combines them into three volumes (''The Bloodline Feud'', ''The Traders War'', and ''The Revolution Trade''), with some minor changes to the text.

The series was originally planned as four very long books, but the publisher got cold feet about the length of the books and insisted [[ExecutiveMeddling they be broken up into multiple volumes]]. The six books published so far started out as the first two books of the original plan. Stross is currently working on the "next generation" sequels: ''Empire Games'' was released in January 2017, and the follow-ups ''Dark State'' and ''Invisible Sun'' are scheduled for publication in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

** [[spoiler:Medieval does not mean Moronic. In the first place, the Progressive younger generation of the Clan were opposed to the nuking. In the second place, the older Conservatives did not go "Here is a much stronger nation, let's open relations by nuking their Capitol." First, they engaged in illegal drugrunning in America. Then, a renegade member of the Clan planted a nuclear timebomb in Boston on a deadman switch. So when the government discovered this, they decided to send the nuke back to the Clan on a short fuse (helped along by the fact they did not know how the Clan could retaliate, what with the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing). THEN the Clan retaliated against America.]]

** [[spoiler:Medieval does not mean Moronic. In the first place, the Progressive younger generation of the Clan were opposed to the nuking. In the second place, the older Conservatives did not go "Here is a much stronger nation, let's open relations by nuking their Capitol." First, they engaged in illegal drugrunning in America. Then, a renegade member of the Clan planted a nuclear timebomb in Boston on a deadman switch. So when the government discovered this, they decided to send the nuke back to the Clan on a short fuse (helped along by the fact they did not know how the Clan could retaliate, what with the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing. THEN the Clan retaliated against America.]]

** It's worth noting that the series is quite a brutal {{Deconstruction}} of the usual "Alternate Universe" setting. The logistical and geopolitical consequences are explored quite thoroughly.

* Pirates Of Penzance: The general was the perfect model of a modern military man

* StupidEvil: Agent Gomez in ''Empire Games'' [[CommanderContrarian consistently suggests]] using nasty, brute-force black-bag techniques when dealing with Rita. She gets shut down each time because Colonel Smith knows that that's the ''wrong'' way to train a covert agent.

* ChummyCommies: The New American Commonwealth, established in 2003 in Timeline Three after the fall of New Britain's monarchy. The government is a theoretically-democratic one-party state running an economic program explicitly based on the New Economic Policy, and are introducing massive innovations from computer networks to antibiotic factories both to develop a defense against the United States, and to generally improve the lives of the people. Miriam and her Clan allies are working as hard as they can to step on the [[DirtyCommunists darker sister trope]], as they know exactly how ''that'' kind of Communism turns out.

* ChummyCommies: The New American Commonwealth, established in 2003 in Timeline Three after the fall of New Britain's monarchy. The government is a theoretically-democratic one-party state running an economic program explicitly based on the New Economic Policy, and are introducing massive innovations from computer networks to antibiotic factories both to develop a defense against the United States, and to generally improve the lives of the people. Miriam and her Clan allies are working as hard as they can to step on the [[DirtyCommies darker sister trope]], as they know exactly how ''that'' kind of Communism turns out.

* OutsideContextProblem: Everything is happening against a backdrop where the previous timeline hopping civilization's homeworld was [[ApocalypseHow/ClassX crushed into a black hole.]]