The Universal Register

A series of novels set in the world of the Universal Register, where the American colonies never left the Crown.

The Grand Union flag of thirteen stripes, the Union of 1707 in its corner, flying against an evening sky, with the old Union flag faint behind it. Crown on the Potomac The Olive Branch Book One 1775 to 1780

Book One · 1775 to 1780

The Olive Branch

April 1775. The war begins at Lexington, exactly as it did in our history. Then a petition that George III refused even to receive is received instead, and nothing about the war changes except what it is for.

The Olive Branch follows thirteen people through the four years after that: a King who never changes his mind; the minister who talked him into a courtesy and then had to run the war it did not stop; the moderate who wins the vote history remembers him losing; the general fighting the King's army in the King's name; a Mohawk leader whose people the peace forgets; and a farm boy from Lexington.

Start reading Latest: the Epilogue

Forty-two chapters, an interlude and an Epilogue, from Lexington in April 1775 to New York in October 1780. Complete in five parts. Contents · Characters

A wreath of white orange blossom, browning at the edges, and a plain gold wedding ring on black crepe, beside a black-bordered letter whose red seal, stamped with a crown, is broken in two. Crown on the Potomac Constitution Hill Book Two 1840 to 1841

Book Two · 1840 to 1841

Constitution Hill

June 1840. Queen Victoria, twenty-one, four months married and four months with child, is driving up Constitution Hill when a young man steps out of the crowd and fires two pistols at her carriage. In our history he missed. In this one he does not, and every Crown she held passes to her uncle, the King of Hanover, sixty-nine and the most hated man in England.

Constitution Hill follows five men through the eleven months after: the husband who has no place without her; the Prime Minister who must govern for a King he distrusts; the King who observes every form and tests every one; and, an ocean and thirty-eight days behind the news, the Governor-General and the Prime Minister of America, who have to find out whether they have a King at all.

Start reading Latest: Chapter Thirty: God Save the King

Thirty chapters, from London in February 1840 to London in January 1841. Complete in four parts. Contents · Characters

A boy soldier in the red coat of the Regiment of Virginia stands with his musket on a dark battlefield at night, among men round a small fire, stretcher-bearers with a lantern, a field gun with the colours furled beside it and the fallen in the grass, while fires burn across the field under a clear sky full of stars. Crown on the Potomac The Honest Silence Book Three 1859 to 1866

Book Three · 1859 to 1866

The Honest Silence

October 1859. John Brown seizes the armoury at Harpers Ferry, and Colonel Robert E. Lee takes him alive. Eighteen months later five polities rise against the King's ministers in the King's name, and petition him to recognise them as his true subjects in America. The petition comes back unopened. The King says nothing, for the whole of the war.

The Honest Silence is the account of Henry Ashton, a Virginian engineer who stayed with Lee and the Crown when his Province and his brother went the other way, written in 1866 to a blind King who will have it read to him: the engine house and the levee at St James's, the works that broke Jackson, Atlanta and the march, the counting of the people his family owned, and the price the Lords asked for the Rights Act.

Start reading Latest: Chapter Thirty: The Same Hands

Thirty chapters, from Harpers Ferry in October 1859 to London in October 1866. Complete in six parts. Contents · Characters

A young soldier in a wet olive drab uniform and steel helmet stands on a landing beach at grey dawn holding a brass artillery shell against his chest, while behind him a gun crew works a field howitzer that has just fired, trucks drive out of the surf from landing craft, ships lie offshore in the mist, and a column of smoke rises beyond the dunes. Crown on the Potomac The Gunner's Line Book Four 1941 to 1946

Book Four · 1941 to 1946

The Gunner's Line

December 1941. Japan strikes Honolulu, and James Wheeler, eighteen, who has never been further from Lexington than Boston, volunteers within the month. The Army puts him to loading shells for a towed howitzer, the heaviest work in the battery and the least admired, and he is quietly glad of it.

The Gunner's Line follows him from the artillery school to the counter-invasion, ashore in the Cotentin with Operation Rollo, through the hedgerows and the winter to the fall of Paris. It is written a year later, at a kitchen table on the family farm, by a man who wants to get it right, including the parts he cannot know.

Start reading Latest: the Epilogue

Thirty-two chapters, a Prologue and an Epilogue, from Lexington in December 1941 to Lexington in November 1946. Complete in six parts. Contents · Characters

A painting of a black-fronted map shop at dusk in an old street of the capital: in its lit window an atlas stands open on an easel at a map of a long narrow peninsula, with a small card propped against it, a globe and rolled charts behind; on the pavement outside a tall fair young man in a grey jacket walks away up the street towards the white dome of Parliament House, lit against a gold and violet evening sky. Crown on the Potomac Confidence Book Five 2028

Book Five · 2028

Confidence

July 2028. Caleb Whitlock is twenty-six and the seventh Baron Whitlock of Wickford. He sits on the crossbenches two days a week and sells atlases three days a week in a map shop near Charter Hill, and every speech he has ever made has been about the Territory of Loreto. On the afternoon the book opens, the Valdez ministry is about to fall by a single vote, on the Territory, and for four hours that night somebody puts his name forward without telling him.

Confidence follows him through seven weeks of the Register's own present: the division, the dissolution, an election spent behind a shop counter while customers argue about him without knowing who he is, a telephone call on a Saturday, and a walk to Government House alone.

Start reading Latest: Chapter Twenty: The Step

Twenty chapters, from New Westminster in July 2028 to New Westminster in September 2028. Complete in three parts. Contents · Characters

A photograph of a geometry classroom on an October afternoon, seen from the back: a fair-haired boy in a grey jumper sits alone at a wooden desk, head bent over an open exercise book with a protractor and a pencil beside it, the other desks empty, geometry drawn on the green chalkboard, the strip lights on under a storm-dark sky over the rooftops, and the door to the hall standing ajar. Crown on the Potomac An Ordinary Day Book Six 2028

Book Six · 2028

An Ordinary Day

October 2028. Prince Frederick is fifteen, the heir to fourteen Crowns, and his father lies in New Westminster General unable to find most of his words. On a Tuesday afternoon his father finds six of them, and that evening, at a kitchen table on the fourth floor of a block of flats, Frederick tells his friend, and is told to eat his dinner.

An Ordinary Day follows him through nineteen days: a statement written in an exercise book, answers arriving from fourteen realms, a Saturday of letters, a Monday lunch in the principal's office, and a geometry class on a Tuesday afternoon, when a teacher with an email asks to speak to him in the hall.

Start reading Latest: Chapter Thirty: An Ordinary Day

Thirty chapters, an interlude and a Prologue, from New Westminster in October 2028 to New Westminster in November 2028. Complete in four parts. Contents · Characters

A photograph inside a small wooden observatory dome on a winter night: the slit is open to a deep blue sky with the belt of Orion and a red star in it, frost along its edges, an old brass telescope on its pier pointing up, a cast-iron stove glowing in the corner, and a slim boy in a dark coat seen from behind with his hands clasped behind his back, a sealed letter in one of them, looking up at the stars. Crown on the Potomac Feierabend Book Seven 2028 to 2029

Book Seven · 2028 to 2029

Feierabend

December 2028. Alexander I has been German Emperor, King of Prussia and Kaiser von Kamerun since the morning his father died in a corridor, and he is not allowed to do anything with any of it until he is sixteen. On the night of the Prussian election the woman his Council dismissed in his name wins outright, and by the spring she has done the thing he refused to ask for.

Feierabend follows him from a kitchen table in New Westminster to a dome at Potsdam: a cousin across the Atlantic who writes every week and in March tries to help, a vote in the Bundesrat that nobody will ever be able to explain, two mothers who find the letters in the same week and say nothing, and nine days at Easter when the four of them are in one house.

Start reading Latest: Chapter Thirty-six: Feierabend

Thirty-six chapters and a Prologue, from Potsdam in December 2028 to Potsdam in May 2029. Complete in four parts. Contents · Characters

A photograph of a beach on a bright cloudless morning: a long wooden pier on its piles with a stopped Ferris wheel, and the sea drawn far back, leaving wet sand, rocks, kelp and small boats lying on their sides, a thin white line along the horizon, and empty wooden stairs going down from the bluff in the foreground. Crown on the Potomac Santa Monica Book Eight 2029

Book Eight · 2029

Santa Monica

May 2029. Frederick has reigned in his own right for four weeks, and he goes on the sophomore class trip to Los Angeles because he said in October that he would finish at Ellicott with his year, and meant all of it. The city is seven months into mending itself from the earthquake he watched on other people's phones in a history class.

Santa Monica follows him from the rows bought round him on an ordinary flight to a pier swaying on its piles, a run up the stairs of a bluff while every phone screams the same words, a helicopter that cannot take his class, and a gym full of cots where a homeroom teacher calls the roll.

Start reading Latest: Chapter Thirty: The Ninth Day

Thirty chapters, from New Westminster and the air over the Realm. Tuesday in May 2029 to New Westminster. Monday in June 2029. Complete in four parts. Contents · Characters

A photograph of an old classroom on a November morning, seen from the back: rows of students in jumpers and coats from behind, cast-iron radiators under tall windows, shafts of low sun slanting across the desks, and at the front an old roll book lying open on the teacher's desk; in the middle row one fair-haired student sits a little straighter than the rest. Crown on the Potomac Junior Year Book Nine 2029 to 2030

Book Nine · 2029 to 2030

Junior Year

September 2029. Frederick goes back to Mr Abernathy's homeroom for junior year, three months after Santa Monica, with the same roll book and the same radiators and one new name in it. His father, on the sixth floor of New Westminster General, has begun to talk again, and to walk, ten steps at a time.

Junior Year follows him through the State Opening and the Eleventh to Westminster Abbey on a Saturday in November, where he is crowned King of Great Britain at sixteen, with his friend carrying the train, and home again across the Atlantic under the one word nobody has said aloud since September 2028.

Start reading Latest: Chapter Thirty-six: The Roll

Thirty-six chapters, from New Westminster. Tuesday in September 2029 to New Westminster. Friday in June 2030. Complete in four parts. Contents · Characters

A photograph of a village cricket match on a summer evening, seen from far across the field: players in white, a small white pavilion and a scoreboard, an old stone church with a square tower beside the ground, wooded hills beyond under a pink and gold sky, and a small rough-coated terrier running across the outfield. Crown on the Potomac Senior Year Book Ten 2030 to 2031

Book Ten · 2030 to 2031

Senior Year

August 2030. Mr Abernathy's homeroom, all thirty-one of them, flies to England for a year at Coln Abbey School, in a valley in the Cotswolds, where the English call the King Fred, the bus into Cirencester is never on time, and a woman of ninety-nine on the churchyard wall has opinions about every King since the one who asked her the way to Bibury.

Senior Year follows him through a State Opening with a heavier crown, a Christmas in the snow, a donkey's head in a tithe barn, a cheese down a hill and a cricket match on the green, to a leaving day, a flight home, a graduation, and a Monday on which nothing happens.

Start reading Latest: Chapter Thirty-six: Monday

Thirty-six chapters, from New Westminster and New York. Thursday in August 2030 to Santa Monica and New Westminster. Saturday in June 2031. Complete in four parts. Contents · Characters

A photograph of five young men in silhouette on a rocky desert summit at sunrise, four standing and one sitting on the rock holding on, the sun coming up over far mountains above a wide city still lit in grids, and far down the trail a small figure running up towards them. Crown on the Potomac Last Call Book Eleven 2031

Book Eleven · 2031

Last Call

August 2031. It is Theo Hartigan's eighteenth birthday, and the Household has booked the King to open a water treatment works in Phoenix on it, in 108 degrees, with a plaque. Frederick promised Theo the best eighteenth in history. So at half past seven he walks out of a reception at the Arizona Biltmore and onto a city bus, which Theo, a bus driver's son, knows how to ride and nobody else does.

Last Call follows one night in the Valley of the Sun: a King with no ID, an Emperor on lemonade, a boyfriend from Gloucestershire, the wrong bus to Ahwatukee, trivia, the Wheel of Booze, a protection officer a bar behind all night and another one up from Tucson, and five young men on the top of Camelback Mountain at sunrise, phoning in.

Start reading Latest: Chapter Eighteen: Last Call

Eighteen chapters and a Prologue, from Phoenix to Camelback Mountain, August 2031. Complete in three parts. Contents · Characters

A photograph of two young men laughing behind the wooden bar of an old dive at night, one fair-haired in white tie, a crimson sash and a beer-soaked apron with his hand on the cord of a brass bell, the other in shirtsleeves and an apron with a cloth on his shoulder, a brass trombone on hooks and a row of framed photographs on the red brick wall behind them, two glasses of whisky and a water jug on the bar, and through the open door a blue night street of empty tables under strings of lights, leading to a church. Crown on the Potomac Time, Gentlemen Book Twelve 2031 to 2032

Book Twelve · 2031 to 2032

Time, Gentlemen

September 2031. The King has not decided what comes next, so he takes a job behind the bar of Eight Bars, a dive near his old school, and moves into the flat upstairs with Theo Hartigan, who is exactly as bad at it as he is. Everybody knows who he is. Nobody is fooled. Everybody pretends, badly. Every bar asks him for ID, and he has none.

Time, Gentlemen follows a year of pints pulled wrong in fourteen countries: a committee of the Household that writes a manual one disaster at a time, a protection officer at the end of the bar drinking his mistakes, a retired chemistry teacher marking his pints in red pen, a Duke who is lethal at darts, a boy from Gloucestershire judging every pour by video, and a state banquet, at the Emperor's request, in a dive.

Start reading Latest: Chapter Thirty-six: Time, Gentlemen

Thirty-six chapters, from New Westminster. Friday in September 2031 to New Westminster. Thursday in August 2032. Complete in seventeen parts. Contents · Characters

A photograph of a still life at night: a worn black leather bag lies open on a wooden desk with a bundle of letters tied with string inside it, a single envelope with an unbroken red wax seal lying apart, a brass lamp casting warm light, and a window behind on a park in snow under a deep blue sky. Crown on the Potomac Letters from Potsdam A Companion Novel 2028

A Companion Novel · 2028

Letters from Potsdam

October 2028. Alexander I has been German Emperor and King of Prussia since his father died in February, when he was fourteen. His cousin Frederick, eight months older and at school in New Westminster, has just learned that he will be King of fourteen realms before he is sixteen. On the night the realms agree, Alexander writes to him for the first time in their lives.

Letters from Potsdam is their correspondence, carried by hand in the diplomatic bag and read by nobody else: what it is like, and what to do about it, from the one person in the world who knows.

Start reading Latest: Chapter Thirteen: Feierabend

Thirteen chapters so far, from Berlin in October 2028 to Potsdam in May 2029. Now in Part Two: The Bag. Contents · Characters

About the series

The Universal Register is written as the encyclopedia of a world in which the American colonies asked the King for redress in 1775, were heard, and never left. The novels of Crown on the Potomac tell that world's history from the inside, for readers in ours.

Each chapter opens with a short extract from the Register, quoted as it stands. The chapters show what happened in the rooms it was not in.