The 2018 presidential election sends ripples across the Nineteen Countries. Newly-elected conservative politician Marion Maréchal-Le Men presents herself as the agent of change to become the eighteenth Yohannesian Emperor. Many believe her to simply be a pawn of the GOP establishment, and there are pejorative rumours that Marion is just a puppet of the Freedom Caucus inside the beltway.
The formidable bible belt Emperor is regarded by her evangelical base as the saviour that would make Yohannes great again, yet many rainbow politicians and prince-electors knew of her inexperience and seek to weaken the powers and privileges of the imperial government during her reign.
Desperately uninitiated in the game of thrones, Marion paints herself as a champion of the Fifth Amendment and LGBT rights. Outside the continent, employing high-powered diplomacy and neutrality by trade, she oversees her nation’s strongest economic expansion since the Gholgoth days of 2012 by keeping rival nations friendly.
Marion is a complex figure. She is of the Freedom Caucus yet is open to the cause of the rainbow movement. A poster-girl of the Yohannesian far-right, she is devoted to her African Yohannesian husband and is a loving mother to her two biracial daughters. Formidably astute, she plays one of the most dangerous political games the nation has ever seen — the multicultural rainbow inner cities love her family and leafy suburban middle Yohannesians like her Yohannes First political platform. She promises so much to so many.
Marion’s game of thrones in her realm is played out amidst an increasingly fractious and turbulent International Incidents background.
The web of alliances and informal networks of yore are increasingly being replaced by the empires of the future. Beyond the borders, World Assembly activists have started to criticise her move to align the Nineteen Countries closer with the increasingly dangerous and powerful military hegemons of the Santiago Anti-Communist Treaty Organisation — culminating in her government’s decision to form ever closer economic relationship with Greater Nifon and to ignore Inyursta’s human rights issues in favour of trade.