HANOVER AT 20: The year 2022 marks twentieth anniversary of the launch of the miniature Kingdom of Hanover

 

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On New Year’s Day, 2022, the first (and latest) Hanoverian monarch ushered in the twentieth anniversary year of the Kingdom of Great Hanover by delivering remarks which centered largely upon growing frustrations with misinformation and conspiracies surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. Taking anti-vaxxers to task, the king observed that we, the vaccinated, may find ourselves “increasingly frustrated with them, perhaps, for extending the life of this global plague unnecessarily through their strident rejection of science, facts, and medicine.”

A week later, the president of the French Republic would astonish the French media, simultaneously infuriating conservatives and delighting centrists by declaring that he intended to “piss-off” the unvaccinated with his government’s vaccination mandates. The prime minister of Canada would go on to publicly express his own frustrations with the unvaccinated, and the president of the United States would position himself inside the US Capitol to publicly throw down the gauntlet, condemning his predecessor and the “Big Lie” manufactured by the American right wing concerning Trump’s defeat in the 2020 general elections.

The larger picture of growing concern among humanity’s responsible majority with the reprehensible attitudes and behaviours of a loud and strident minority of miseducated and/or willfully ignorant malefactors becomes the backdrop for the twentieth anniversary of our little kingdom. In the midst of such a challenging moment for humanity and the world, it is admittedly difficult to meaningfully focus
upon a miniature kingdom’s 20^th anniversary celebrations the way one might like to.

In a world beset with what seems to be endless strife, it is perhaps difficult to muster up much excitement about the fact that twenty years ago, a little kingdom was founded with the purpose of extending the shelf-life of a small polity experience which had foundered under the auspices of an earlier brand name back in the Tony Blair era. 

When we consider, furthermore, that this little kingdom of ours has lain virtually dormant since 2016 and has, since its reboot last year, only managed a series of largely cosmetic improvements, the blasts of the anniversary fireworks seem more muffled, still.

2022’s Kingdom of Great Hanover, if we analyze it with brutal frankness, is little more than a retreat for the benefit of a cadre of adventurous Sconnishmen looking for the occasional refuge, perhaps, from some of the more strident elements of Sconnish society.  That reality was almost laughably highlighted when the same official who dissolved the last session of the Hanoverian Parliament also prorogued the last session of the Sconnish Parliament.

As Sconnishmen attired in Hanoverian garb cast their votes and doff their caps within Great Hanover’s legislative apparatus, there is little denying that there are not to be found in this realm any of the old bona-fide Hanoverians, as such—dyed-in-the-wool devotees who identify first and foremost as Hanoverians--as once upon a time there most certainly were. The “Hanoverian”, as a unique breed, is akin to a wooly mammoth frozen in the Siberian tundra. The old husks are buried out there somewhere, perhaps waiting to be unearthed and even cloned, but they haven’t been seen roaming the plains in these parts in eons.

Even the king, himself—Hanover’s original Hanoverian—seems a bit too preoccupied with being an American in crisis, these days, to allow himself the time and energy to be seen as a full-bodied, red-blooded Hanoverian. But then, who, in these times, can afford to have both feet off the ground the way we could back in the days when the world hadn’t yet been knocked entirely off her axis?

If we are to note anything about this kingdom, however, it will be to note that you, the reader, are reading about it in the present tense. It is, despite itself and in spite of the chaos swirling around it, still standing. After twenty years of turbulence, spanning from the aftermath of 9/11 through the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, Hanover is still a thing. 

Not one of us who started this project back in the year that Pearl Jam's "Riot Act" album was released would ever have imagined that in the year 2022 anybody would still be speaking and writing about this kingdom in the pages of the “Hanover World Report”.  It shouldn’t be happening, yet here we are.

For heaven’s sake, we’ve been around almost as long as Westarctica, and they were around before Antarctica started melting. 

Not only is Hanover still standing, but it is getting ready, for some reason or other, to open yet another Parliament come January 19, 2022, and this after having just concluded one in December of 2021. And who will be on the throne to open it but the same extinct wooly mammoth who opened the very first Hanoverian Parliament back in 2003.

It is all but inconceivable, frankly, and it might be a bit astonishing if not for the backdrop of a planet in chaos. Let’s face it, in a world in which news of the passing of Betty White garnered little more than a cascade of sad-face emojis for a couple of days and in which few people are talking about the fact that a British monarch will, in just a matter of weeks, become the first ever to celebrate her platinum jubilee, “Hanover 20” isn’t exactly apt to cause a fluctuation in the stock market.

So, is there anything beyond sheer force of habit holding this house up? Perhaps not. Perhaps we just keep maintaining it out of a decades-long habit of maintaining it, for little reason other than the fact that it is there and to keep it standing is just…well…something for folks to do when they’re bored with what they’ve been doing.

For how long it will stand is anybody’s guess in an age when humanity, itself, seems hell-bent upon self-annihilation. With institutionalized ignorance in vogue, lethal viruses raging, climate change out of control, the rise of totalitarianism and right-wing extremism going virtually unchecked, the USA headed for a second civil war, and Vladimir Putin’s USSR 2.0 continuing to amass troops along the border of Ukraine, one wonders if Planet Earth as we know it will still be around in, say, the year 2027…Great Hanover’s silver jubilee year.

Against that ominous backdrop, an anniversary reboot by Hanover’s creator in defiance of the voided claims of a deposed pretender reads like handbags at 10 paces (although for the moment, at least, the specter of that particular challenge has yet to materialize).

“Marshals of Great Hanover”, nevertheless, have just been trotted out by St. George’s Palace as the latest means by which to honour the Sconnishmen who people this realm as they demonstrate a willingness, from time to time, to seem a bit more Hanoverian and a bit less Sconnish in aid of the maintenance of this little kingdom which hasn’t the decency, apparently, to expire these many years past its sell-by date.   

It can’t be all gloom and doom, therefore.

If you happen to stumble across any wooly mammoth remains, be sure to let us know.

Happy 20^th birthday, Hanover. And many happy returns.

 

The Hanover World Report is a mostly tongue-in-cheek journal of news-ishness first published in 2002.

 

THE KINGDOM OF GREAT HANOVER  .  2022