Faction trivia: Gaul

Faction

Overview

Trivia

• Gaul is a combination of both the First French Empire and the Roman Empire in our world.
  • The name derives from an ancient region in Western Europe during the Roman period that is now modern-day France. Gaul was a colony of the Roman Empire. The French often colloquially refer to themselves as Gaulish, particularly when exhibiting patriotic fervor.
    • Gaul, Gaule in French, comes from the Latin word gallus, meaning "rooster." The rooster is the symbol of Gaul, and is still sometimes used as a national symbol of France.
  • Lingones derives from an ancient tribe that once inhabited Gaul.
  • The Battle of the Four Emperors is obviously a reference to the Battle of Austerlitz, better known by its title "the Battle of the Three Emperors." Ironically, the latter was actually a major victory to France that annihilated the Holy Roman Empire.
    • On the other hand, the beginning of the former battle resembles the Franco-Prussian War, in which France declared war on Prussia without proper preparation, which resulted in a crushing defeat to France.
  • The national emblem of Gaul bears resemblance to the fleur-de-lis, which was once used as the monarchial symbol of France.
  • The Champs-Élysées where Mousse, a Victorian, was born into is a real-world avenue in Paris, France.
  • Comte Haussmann, the count who led the reconstruction of Gaul, is obviously based on Georges-Eugène Haussmann who was tasked to renovate Paris during the reign of Emperor Napoleon III.
• Gaulish's status as a lingua franca alludes to the fact that real-world French has historically been used by nobles and royals to converse internationally.
  • For example, the British crown spoke French in the royal court, and the English language itself was considered to belong to the peasants. As a remnant of this, the motto of the British monarch, Dieu et mon droit ("God and my right") is in French, as well as Honi soit qui mal y pense ("Shame be to who thinks ill of it"), motto of a knight order in the United Kingdom.
  • This is also similar in the case of the Latin language, which was widely spoken across the Mediterranean during the Roman Empire. Though Latin is considered to be "dead" in modern days, it is still used in terms of religion, science, and other Western cultures.
    • Interestingly, modern French descended from a colloquial form of Latin used in ancient Gaul.
• The colonization of Gaul by Victoria and its integration of the former's territory are obvious allusions to the long-running historical rivalry between France and the United Kingdom such as the Normandy Conquest.