Spoilers Off applies to this page given what the series' overall lore is like. You Have Been Warned!
The Kingdom of Shepherd came as a result of the Hundred Lilies War.
- In-game lore for Solatorobo: Red the Hunter states that for several centuries Shepherd was a kingdom with a royal family and aristocracy that was oppressive enough for the people to successfully stage a revolt against it, leading to the Shepherd Republic's founding— an event that happened over a hundred years prior to Solatorobo proper. However, Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 reveals that Shepherd's predecessor, the Free Lands of Gasco, was already a presidential republic a full thousand years before Solatorobo, meaning that the royal family could only have risen to power afterwards. As to how this may have happened, it's possible that during the century-long era of constant conflict between Shepherd and Abyssinia (which, for reference, began over six hundred years before Solatorobo), one particular head of state for the former may have taken advantage of the chaos to reorganize Shepherd into an autocracy— via abusing their Emergency Authority, rallying the people against their current government and collapsing state, or a mix of both a la Palpatine. While Solatorobo doesn't allude to something like this happening (Fuga wasn't even an idea back when the game was released, of course), it can be handwaved in-universe as being lost to time thanks to the royal family wiping it from the history books.
The Little Tail Bronx equivalent to the United States of America (or at least its major cities like New York or Los Angelesnote ) will be given an antagonistic role.
- Developer trivia for Solatorobo: Red the Hunter has stated that the Star Dogs Café is a foreign company, so we already have a strong implication that LTB!America does exist. That said, the "Starlet" art book for the game described America's actions in the pre-Reset world as such (please remember that this is all fictional, alternate-history lore):
- Refusing to comply by Geneva Convention protocols that each nation should have no more than two Juno, instead owning a total of five. Granted, Russia also pulled a similar stunt by giving two of its four Juno to the Urals and Siberian Federal Districts as an attempt at a Loophole Abuse, but this only means both nations would've contributed to the inequality caused by Juno.
- Almost immediately provoking the Middle Eastern nations into war right after New York was hit by a terrorist attack, in a manner clearly meant to be reminiscent of how The War on Terror started. Of course, the United States' demands themselves were perfectly reasonable since the one responsible for the attack was under protection from Middle Eastern nations, but the Middle Eastern nations were at the very least portrayed as trying to prevent war at first. If the point wasn't obvious enough, the then-current president of the United States is said to have been named George Baker.
- Beginning a one-sided war on the Middle East through the use of the Titano-Machina, which killed insurmountable numbers of soldiers and completely innocent civilians. Hell, it arguably wasn't even a pragmatic way to fight the war, since most of the soldiers who were smart enough to desert survived to live another day and try again from the shadows, along with them being able to hide their Juno away from being taken. And, of course, the very fact that the United States revealed that it could create effective killer Titano-Machina, allowing everyone else to try their hand at it themselves.
- Ignoring condemnation from the international community regarding the destructive use of their Titano-Machina.
- Failing to help with effective post-war reconstruction in the Middle East due to the low amount of ground troops, resulting in the populace hating the United States and calling for the return of previous regimes— which gave former Middle Eastern soldiers the leverage and support needed to begin resistance attacks (and for added salt in the wound, the art book explicitly mentions how the United States thought the populace would be brimming with joy).
- Ordering allies and neutral nations to completely relinquish control of their Juno and Titano-Machina when the Middle Eastern nations figured out how to make and use their own, and given how most nations refused to comply, implicitly taking some of their war machines by force. As a result, some US-allied nations outright defected to the Middle Eastern nations' side, and a Titano-Machina arms race began where the world was brought to the brink of destruction.
- Leaving Japan to the combined Russian, Chinese and Korean forces when they said their constitution prevented them from giving their Juno away.
- Failing to return borrowed Titano-Machina to its allies when it became clear the Middle East couldn't be retaken (since east Asia and South America were attacking the United States), resulting in it becoming isolated while the rest of the world rapidly collapsed.
- So, yeah. Despite how they aren't the only nation whose negative traits are highlighted (e.g. Germany confiscating the Tanzanian Juno, the aforementioned Loophole Abuse by Russia, the very terrorism condoned by the Middle Eastern nations, the lesson to take from the series' backstory is that Humans Are Flawed in general), it seems the writers at CyberConnect2 aren't shy about expressing their more negative viewpoints towards things like the United States' foreign policy and the mindset of American exceptionalism as a whole. Granted, that's hardly anything new among Japanese creators (there's an entire trope with examples of it, dammit), but it's still likely that they'll still use America's post-Reset equivalent as a means of referencing some elements of real-world America's culture or history, since Solatorobo's Shepherd Republic already did that with France. Per what the art books say as described above, and considering how Germany's post-Reset equivalent went right back to fascism and imperialism, LTB!America might be portrayed as a "tycoon" nation of sorts, where it does business fine with other countries but still exploits them or parades itself as being the best. Or perhaps this is being given more thought than it should be.
Some humans escaped the Reset and made a civilization in space.
- Per one of Jeanne's archives from the first Fuga: Melodies of Steel where she briefly theorized that happened. It's likely that humans would've at least considered using Juno technology to improve space travel, if not design a Titano-Machina itself to pull double duty as a giant space vessel. The team that built the Taranis had enough time to do so during a rapidly destructive world war, after all, so it's likely that attempts were made. And returning to the main point, one of these creations may have also been an "ark" or "lifeboat" meant for people to escape the war-torn planet and start elsewhere. Maybe one day they'll return to the Earth out of curiosity, just to see that now things are different… very different…
Jesus Christ was a hybrid.
- Long story short, the "Starlet" art book for Solatorobo proposes that the five original "Ace" Juno were used by Jesus Christ as the five holy relics, and that great sages and rulers before him used the powers of Juno as well. Yes, really. Considering how Juno are already comparable to gods if you interpret them as the "divine will of the Earth made flesh", and considering how hybrids are made from Juno technology… yeah, obvious interpretation is obvious. Besides, Jesus Was Way Cool, too.
The main point of divergence for the Little Tail Bronx universe is post-World War II, not the discovery of Juno.
- This is probably just an oversight on CyberConnect2's behalf, but by the time Juno was discovered in the 70's, Germany already seemed to be unified and Russia already seemed to be broken off from the Soviet Union. It's possible that the Soviet Union collapsed much faster in this timeline compared to our own, hence why both of these events seem to have happened early.
