Meanwhile, E.U. remained a colossus spanning Europe and Africa on the map.
The Free Iris Zone held the capital, the federal parliament, and most diplomatic offices; east of the Rhine River, the Ironblood Industrial Zone controlled machine tools, armor, railways, and military procurement; the British Isles were still called the Royal Isles on federal maps. Their royal house had long since fled to the New Continent, but the ports and naval bases left behind remained E.U.'s most important foothold in the Atlantic. The Sardinian States maintained Mediterranean shipping, while the Northern Union bore the heaviest burdens of manpower, food supplies, and frontline pressure toward Eastern Europe and Russia.
Together, these regions formed E.U., yet they rarely acted like a single country.
An order issued by E.U. had to pass through the Three Commanders, the Forty-Person Committee, regional treasury offices, federal military departments, and local assemblies.
Everyone had veto power, and everyone could prove they had fulfilled their duties. By the time an order actually reached the front, the battlefield had often shifted dozens of kilometers west.
Nor was the enemy it truly faced an ordinary Britannian expeditionary force.
European Britannia consisted of descendants of the nobles who had fled to the New Continent during the Revolutionary Era. Their ancestors had been driven out of Europe by revolutionaries; generations later, they returned in the uniforms of the Holy Britannia Imperium to reclaim their ancestral estates.
The Four Great Knight Orders operated together under Grand Duke Berance. They nominally obeyed Pendragon, but in practice possessed their own aristocratic parliament, military traditions, and financial networks.
They considered themselves closer to the true Britannia than the Royal Family that had risen on the New Continent. They held little genuine respect for Charles, treating the emperor's banner merely as a legitimate means of reclaiming Europe.