A/N: Okay, I'm well aware that I have been absent for about a year, and that my other story hasn't progressed beyond the introduction, but fear not! That will come in due time. Right now, I'm on a massive multi-fic, multi-crossover epic, so this is sort of going to be the focus of my return for now.
. . .
In 1774, thirteen colonies on the North American continent signed a piece of paper that declared themselves independent of a country on the opposite side of the Atlantic Ocean. Thirty-eight years later, the United Kingdom attempted to regain her colonies in the War of 1812. In the 1860's, during America's Civil War, the UK entertained the idea of siding with the Confederacy, hoping that a divided America would make her easier to reconquer. Only a few decades after that, American and British soldiers sat side by side in amphibious assault vehicles as they landed on the beaches of Normandy. Adversaries they had been, but allies they had become, to fight the same war, to kill the same enemy, to die on the same beach.
In 2157, turians attacked the human colony of Shangxi in what came to be known as the "First Contact War" on Earth, and the "Relay 314 Incident" on Palaven. Regardless of its name, it was a poor first impression of each species on the other and that first impression would pervade diplomatic relations between the two races for the next twenty-five years. Only recently, thanks to the efforts of some forward-thinkers from both races, did turians and humans cooperate. The result was the brainchild of both human and turian engineers and, gifted to the Systems Alliance, was a symbol of both species' tolerance and respect. The fact that the ship was named after the city upon whose beaches Americans and Brits fought and died side-by-side after so many years of animosity was no accident, but a beacon of hope for the future and a candle lit in honor for remembrance of the past.