Hello, this is Solar Kitty and I want to thank you for reading my story.
I'm currently in the proces of rewriting the first three chapters, most will remain unchanged but I will be adding a lot.
For now I'd like to give you the reason why I decided to create province characters, as it is more than: I want an OC, state characters yay!
Before the nineteenth century there was no union state and until that time the gewesten (now provincies, provinces) each had their own rules & government.
The only thing centralised were foreign relations, and the gewest Holland had the most to say about those, because they payed the most money.
The rebellion against the Spanish had nothing to do with nationalism, in fact. The Spanish wanted to centeralize everything and the Dutch didn't want this!
They wanted the power to stay with the gewesten (other reasons were poverty and religion (the North wanting to be Protestant)). Also, the common people didn't know much other than their own environment and the gewesten themselves were sometimes enemies, other times allies.
Under these circumstances I cannot understand how there could be one character for the Netherlands, surely there would be one for each gewest?
Nowadays a national character would definitely work, however, there is no reason for the, now provinces, to stop existing.
You only need to look at the responce to the idea of merging provinces, a football game or even some music/dialect to see this. The characters simply would have grown, changed, and be renamed to become the provinces of today.
This is the reason I decided to write a story about the Dutch provinces.
I hope you enjoy it.