Fridge / Suzerain

Fridge Brilliance

• Why is Orso Hawker able to present such convincing evidence of Richter's supposed conspiracy with Arcasia? He's a judge; he'd know how to present and argue for evidence, and possibly fabricate it as well.
• Understanding that Sordland is similar to Turkish history explains much of the story elements:
  • The Renan Empire and Kingdom of Sordland are both meant to represent the Ottoman Empire.
  • Artor S. Wisci is meant to represent the idealistic side of Kemal Mustafa Ataturk, a republican whose attempts at genuine democratization were foiled by the attempts of the deposed monarchists to return to politics. Like Ataturk, Wisci tried to create a multi-party democracy, but faced counterprotests and political challenges from the absolute monarchists he defeated.
  • The Sordish Civil War and the political violence between the left and right following Bernard Circas's murder both represent the political violence that raged in Turkey from 1976 to 1980, regularly bordering on civil war. Soll's intervention in the civil war directly parallels General Kenan Evren's coup d'etat that ended the political violence in 1980 - and Soll himself is based on Evren, as well as Ataturk's authoritarian side. Evren also wrote a new constitution that gave the president dictatorial authority, and was made to be an untouchable document unchallenged by anyone.
    • Evren was a staunch Kemalist and wrapped himself in Kemal's personality cult to obtain legitimacy, as well as claiming his despotic policies were justified in the name of Kemalism. He was also notoriously racist to the Kurdish minority.
    • The Red Youth and the Young Sords are the Revolutionary Youth and Grey Wolves respectively, two prominent groups during the political violence of the 1970s.
  • The Bluds represent the Kurds, and the BFF is the Sordish equivalent to the PKK.
  • Wiktor Smolak is based on Saddam Hussein, and like Saddam to the Kurds, he carries out genocidal operations destroying Bludish villages in the name of wiping out militant groups, close to your border. You can also have the Sordish military take part in the killings if you want. Historically, Turkey and Iraq were very close and even signed multiple defense pacts in the 1930s, and the Iraqi-Turkish border was a hot spot for Kurds fleeing Iraqi repression, especially under Saddam.
  • Arcasia and United Contana attempting to draw Sordland into their respective sphere of influence represents Turkey's importance in the Cold War; whoever had Turkey in their sphere won control of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Although Turkey ultimately stood with NATO, the neutral foreign policy you can choose to keep is based off Turkey's own foreign policy in the 1930s, where it was courted by the Allies and Axis but ultimately refused to enter World War II.
  • The constant threat of military intervention in politics in the name of Sollism represents Turkey's real-life military, who is legally allowed in the Constitution to depose the government in the name of Kemalism and stability.
  • The Soll Dam is the in-universe equivalent of the Ataturk Dam.
  • The USP and the multiple ideologies it can conform to represent the CHP, the big tent party founded by Ataturk. Similarly, the PFJP could be interpreted as an equivalent to the Democrat Party and its successor parties while the NFP is equivalent to the MHP in its hardline nationalism. The CPS is the TKP, and the WPB is the HEP, the first legal Kurdish party in Turkish history.
  • Rumburg could be interpreted as an equivalent to both Greece under its autocratic king Georgios II in the 1930s and under the Dictatorship of the Colonels in the 1970s, and their revanchism over former Rummish territories is possibly equivalent to the Megali Idea which drove Greek expansionism up until the Cyprus War of 1974. This parallelism is further strengthened by how "Rum" is a traditional term for ethnic Greeks in Turkey due to the legacy of the Byzantine Empire.
  • However, Rumburg could also parallel the Third Bulgarian Empire under Tsar Ferdinand, with how Ferdinand I aspired to restored the Byzantine Empire under Bulgarian leadership. A militarized, totalitarian absolute monarchy with a formidable military, a grandiose nationalist mythology aiming to annex large parts of Turkish/Sordish territory, and an expansionist monarch with downright Imperial pretensions but a glass jaw when it comes to diplomacy.
  • The centrally planned economy favored by Soll reflects the policy of Etatism - economic statism - advocated by Ataturk and most of his successors.