Cold War and ... Ved'mak (Ведьмак)?

Cold War and ... Ved'mak (Ведьмак)?

* Perspective of Tsar Nicholas II.

Reading was something very usual for Tsar Nicholas II, but we talked about reading mainly about matters related to Russia and the international situation.

While the Tsar found a taste in reading, he had very little time to enjoy it due to his addiction to bureaucratic work and state planning.

Either way, Tsar Nicholas II managed to finish reading The Hobbit.

"... There don't seem to be any extreme changes in the work. Outside of a few subtleties." Nicholas Alexandrovich exclaims with some annotations, perhaps it was actually his own memory playing tricks on him.

"Why was it published 20 years earlier?". The tsar wonders in that private room, of course there was no answer.

Now Tsar Nicholas II was alone, completely isolated, after Alexander III's death there was no one who could understand Nicholas in a similar way.

It is true that Nicholas Alexandrovich had a wife and a family who appreciated him, but Alexander III and he were both individuals, which gave a unique and unrepeatable connection.

Soon the tsar abandoned his momentary sorrows.

"I should start working on other projects." Tsar Nicholas II quickly jotted down some sketches and began sending some messages.

The tsar functioned more as a director than a creative himself, he gave general directions, ideas and enormous depth.

But many times secondary parts of the work were done by private artists hired or working with the Tsar, while he created an identity and a false name for the publication of said work.

This is how, unknown to many people, he started the creation of Ved'mak (Ведьмак), better known as The Witcher, outside of Russia and the Russosphere.

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Just the beginning.​

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First Cold War? Proto-Cold War? Call it wathever you want!​

Competition between great powers was always one thing, we can see a very clear example in the Great Game between the British Empire and the Russian Empire in Central Asia.

To give a recent example for the year 1916-1917.

The signing of the Treaty of Visegrad marked the beginning of a cold peace, the great powers would avoid war, for the moment. But it did not mean that there were no competitions on other fronts or in secret.

Some call the period between the Second Great War and the Third Great War a first cold war, or a proto-cold war.

Historigraphy strongly debates this in the interwar period and if that category would be right, since the first effective hyper-powers were not yet developed.

There were no modern weapons of mass destruction (atomic weapons) either, but there was a strong international, economic and ideological component. Direct conflict was also mostly avoided, either replaced by more subtle performances like spy-networks or similar, other international competitions like sports, cience and culture, or national politics (like the new isolationism of Henry Ford, or the policies of Nicholas II and Edward VIII).

There was also a growing ideological component due to the survival of the socialist revolutions in Europe (and the socialist countries did not hesitate much in wanting to expand Marxist thought, if possible), the British Social Aristocracy and the complicated situations in USA-Russia.

Russia and USA were just really strange, and didn't fit in some system like the rest, but they still were major powers (and Russia was in obvious future conflict with the British) so their 'gravity' affected the situation in this proto-Cold War.

After Visegrad the first timid steps were taken, which were simply escalating after the economic miracles of Moscow, London, New York and Germany-France.

For example, the increase in soccer and other international sports competitions, or the beginnings of the fantasy genre in literature.

* On the one hand, the Imperial Federation launched proto-fantasy and High Fantasy with the beginnings of The Hobbit and the career of J.R.R. Tolkien (monarchist, christian and with some, not so nice comments about Eastern Europeans and Asiatic people).

* On the other hand the following year (1918) Russia began its own proto-fantasy and a more 'dark' Fantasy with the beginning of The Witcher saga (Ved'mak / Ведьмак), which had its own problems by the time.

Red Europe and America would soon follow with their own interpretations and sub-cultures of the genre, which effectively provided the perfect breeding ground for the definition of fantasy and international cultural competence.

Literature was not the only field, a famous example would be the effects of the interwar period in comics.

While the war propaganda was over (at least it was less obvious and direct), there were still influences and stereotypes that marked the time.

Characters of a certain nationality described by foreigners, either as villains, neutrals, or allies.