I. PROLOGUE:
ON READING
HALBERSTAM’S COMMENTARIES
IN THE ORIGINAL
The Regnum of Mad Potus George III-(II)¹
[from "The Rise and Fall of the Usanian Empire," VOL. 1, XXII ed.]

by Max Singer

For 100’s of years, the bane of every Third Millenium schoolboy’s existence has been the dreaded requirement of taking at least one year of that “quaint” [read: dead] language Ameringlish.

Years later, in their dotage, awakening to night sweats, they clearly remember the ordeal of reading Halberstam’s Commentaries in the original tongue and having to commit to memory a certain portion of it to declaim aloud ²

To leaven the torture most schoolboys choose to memorize one of the gorier episodes from that chronicle of those murderous times.

Particularly popular to recite is the bloody tale:

The Murder of the
Dashing Young Potus
John the Swordsman
at the Hands of
the Evil Oswald

…which assassin, if the translations of the recently unclassified, often murky and contradictory historical records contain any truth, was in the employ of a nearly universal cabal of all those who bore a grudge against, envied or particularly loathed the young ruler.

And the list of prospective employers was considerable: Robber Barons, Rogue Elements Within The Ruling Class, Traitors Within The Potus’ Inner Circle, Bearded Despots, Disaffected Mercenaries, Ex-Business Partners Of The Potus’ Wealthy Father, Jealous Husbands and Irate Boyfriends.³

Most schoolboys, surviving the agony of that requisite year, eagerly move on to more relevant pursuits [read:manly interests–e.g. war, sports, speculation, crime].

Those, however, who are patently ill-equipped for either the Battleground, Playing Field or Commodity Floor, who seek refuge in Ameringlish 200, or, those, even more unfortunate, who actually find something interesting in those old tales, will read how Potus John’s murder shattered his follower’s dreams of establishing an Arthurocracy, a form of government by a roundtable composed of the Republic’s Best And Brightest, scholar/warriors who called themselves “The League of the Knights of Ivy.”

And only a rare few (misfits, of a truly extreme Scholastic or Monastic bent) will go on to Ameringlish 300 and read of the Bleak Interregnum of Potus John’s successor, Lyndon the Usurper; of the Chaos and Civil Strife that followed; of the Murders of Prince Robert the Ruthless and Martin the Dreamer; of Lyndon’s abdication; of the ignominious defeat of Hubert the Humpfree at the hands of the devious Richard the Lyingheart; and of how that Dark Potus’ excesses finally awakened the Sleeping Senate, which, thus having regained it’s will and purpose, forced his abdication, exile and spearheaded a return to Sanity and The Republic.

And there, since in recorded memory, no schoolboy has ever admitted going on to Ameringlish 400, The Story as well as Their Education ends.

It is a tidy tale, full of the stuff of schoolboy fantasies, whose sole flaw, as only a fool or historian would point out, is that it is not true. . .

…neither was the Republic restored nor the Proud Senate revitalized, but the latter, having spent itself in a Paroxysm of Piety, lapsed into a Senescent Irrelevance, sputtering on through a string of Potuses both greater and lesser (greater in power and lesser in stature)– their names tell the tale: Gerald the Dull, James the Lustful, Reagan the Gypper, George II-(I) the Purger, William the Fat⁴–until at last it was delivered of a painless Coup de Grace and the Empire established by that unlikeliest Potus of them all, Mad Potus George III-(II).⁵

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1. A brief note explaining the system of nomenclature and numbering used in this text is in order: take for example the case of Mad Potus George III-(II), there, the numeral III refers to his technical sequence in the line of Usanian Potuses, while the parenthetical (II) refers to that Potus’ preference, or affectation as it were, of excluding from the official lineage the Founder, George the Truthful, whom George III-(II) asserted was not actually a Potus but a Pater, thus, establishing his pater, Potus Pater George II-(I) as the first Potus George.
2. As well as hearing in their nightmares the ringing of those stilted stentorian declensions:

“Ish ama aber Linner,
Ik binna aber Linner.”

3. That his Regnum was referred to by the Newsmongers of the period as “Came-A-Lot” may give some credence to the theory that affairs of the heart rather than of state may have been a more likely motivation for his murder.
4. Depending on which Political faction’s version of Usanian history you are reading this same line of Potuses are variously named: Gerald the Pardoner (or Dull), James the Farmer (or Lustful), Ronald the Orator (or Reagan the Gypper), George the Spook (or Purger), and William the Empath (or Fat).
5. Presiding as he did over the deed which most consider the formal establishment of the Empire, The Act of Absorption, in which the Mother Country was officially made part of the Ameringlish Polity and the Blair established as the First Satrap, replacing the then existing but moribund Monarchy.