A Brief History of the Fiefdom of Limey George

The isles upon which the fiefdom exists were, legend has it, known by various alternative names in antiquity. Some say "Britain", others "Britian", and others still, "Britun". Limey George cared not. He was born on the largest of these isles, and to him, it was simply "home". Or "Albion" if you believe his alleged diary, though claims of George's literacy are hotly disputed. It is said that the name "Albion" comes from a word meaning "White" in some foreign language... Probably a reference to the large white cliffs along the northern coast, and the quarries of white stone found not far inland. Nobody knows for sure. The other, smaller isles were collectively called the Asbestions, again, from some foreign language. Apparently it's to do with that same white stone in the quarries of Albion, which helps grow crops when you crush it and chuck it on the fields. Crazy stuff.

Anyway, Limey George, or as his mother called him, "George" was not only the father of the nation, but also a prodigiously talented farmer. His plant of choice? Rhubarb, funnily enough. The tale of how he earned the epithet "Limey" is... pretty straightforward, actually. You see, George was around twenty when he took over the running of a farm his father owned -- George Sr. sadly passed away at the young age of thirty-seven after what modern medics believe was a severe allergic reaction to rhubarb leaves -- and he had a couple of trees on his farm, near the farm house. These trees grew limes, though none knew them by this name at the time. Having tasted one of the tree's fruits as a curious child, George knew they were not particularly tasty to eat by themselves, and had in fact coined the name "lime" by his disgusted reaction to the sharp, sour taste. However, his mother -- who was severely visually impaired, and had lost her sense of smell after a head injury sustained when she fell out of a tree as a child -- sliced one and added it to a stew one day, mistaking it for a potato. The stew was delicious, and George recognised the potential of the lime as a culinary ingredient, though it never really caught on beyond his family and close friends.

Around this time, some inhabitants of the isles had begun to travel on large ships, to other isles, for trade reasons. Also probably murder and pillage, because historically, humans often did those kinds of things... but mostly for trade reasons, we're pretty sure. On these long trips, the sailors would often develop a sickness that came to be known as "scurvy" for reasons known only to sailors. George's younger brother, Morris, often went on these trips, ostensibly to sell the produce from George's farm, including the limes. While on those trips, he most often served as the ship's cook, using his mother's recipe for stew as best he could with the ingredients available.

A friend of George's, a doctor known only as "James" -- who often purchased rhubarb (among other plants) from the farm to be used in the production of curative ointments, poultices, and tinctures -- noted that while scurvy was common, neither Morris, nor any of his crewmates ever suffered the affliction. Thus he posited a theory that scurvy could be avoided by using something they had and nobody else did. After much questioning, it was determined that this something was the lime. Shortly after, James and Morris both mysteriously disappeared on ship voyages.

Despite the sadness, George realised the goldmine he was now sitting on, and began cultivating more lime trees using cuttings from the original two, going so far as to clear a small portion of land on his farm for the attempt. In the meantime, he made a sizeable sum by trading the limes he could harvest from the trees (and his mother's stew recipe) to merchant ships to protect them from scurvy, in exchange for a cut of their trade proceeds. Knowing you could return with a full crew meant you could both carry more goods for trade, as well as acquire more in trade, you see. The next part of the story is quite boring and business-y. Long story short, though, George sold limes, got money, bought more land, planted more limes, got more money etc etc until he was the richest man on the isles. He eventually bought pretty much all of the land on the isles, actually, and kind of became "ruler" by default at that point. This day would later be immortalised in history with the introduction of the Georgian system calendar (or "Limey calendar" to most), which retroactively set its start date to the day George bought the last piece of land from a particularly stubborn merchant known as Bartholomew Tuistsson (this land would eventually become Tuistby; George acknowledged Bartholomew's business acumen and rewarded him appropriately), later named Limdagr ("Lime Day"). Three days after this date, George had officially become ruler of the isles, after every House swore fealty to him. That day would be immortalised as Jorgdagr ("George's Day").

There is a crucial bit here, which explains the Rise of George (incidentally, also a very popular Limeywood movie), in that nobody else had managed to successfully cultivate a lime tree not grown from a cutting provided by George. Even if they took the cutting from one of his trees, as if the tree itself knew it had been stolen, and refused to grow. Some believed this was a sign from a higher power of some sort -- like the Citrus Mother -- and began to venerate George as some sort of ubermensch with a divine mandate to preside over them in some way. They marked this with a sign of the cross, the two bars representing this divine power and the people it affected. At the intersection lay George. People also said that the four points of this cross represented the four attributes of the lime: taste, health, colour, and value. George was not a fan. He openly denounced the idea of a higher power, and implored the people to not show reverence to this cross symbol with the infamous sentence that would later become the national motto: "no cross. only lime."

With George's farm(s) -- not all of this being lime orchards, it must be stressed -- now encompassing virtually the entire landmass of the isles, people from outside the isles began referring to them as the Limey Isles, while George simply delegated responsibility over segments of the isles to various talented farmers. In exchange for allowing them to work the land, they had to agree to grow a quota of limes (or some other crop) every year. Those farmers, who became known as "Greenies", would often do very little work on the land themselves, instead hiring regular people to do the grunt work. To protect their land from thievery and other nefarious activity, they would hire guards, known as "Clubbers", who carried a small sack filled with dried limes to bludgeon would-be thieves.

Fast forward hundreds, even thousands of years, and George is long dead, but his legacy lives on. These days, the Limey Isles -- more commonly known as "The Fiefdom of Limey George" in honour of its progenitor -- still leads the multiverse in lime production, but through mass automation and mechanisation for the most part. Most people now actually do other menial jobs. The people who once worked the farms now serve to co-ordinate the complicated global trades made by the fiefdom, under the supervision of what were once Clubbers (now called Supers, they're effectively supervisors of the regular people) and Greenies (who are now effectively supervisors of the supervisors... ubervisors, if you like). So who co-ordinates things beyond the ubervisors? Well...

...Limey George does.

Yes, yes I know we said he died. He did. The original George is dead, but when he died, his eldest son, George III -- remember, George himself was a "junior" -- took over (but as George II, of House Limjorgson) and just didn't tell anyone he wasn't the same George for a few years. Great surprise when it came out, and the people loved it. Mostly. The ones who vocally stated otherwise mysteriously disappeared on ship voyages. When he died, his son George took over, and later, his son George took over. And so on. At some point there was a daughter, Georgina, who also went by George (XIV). Another daughter, Christine, also went by George (XXVI). A child assigned male at birth who later came out as non-binary, with the name Ashley... also went by George (XXXVII). You see, with each passing generation, George's family maintained their ownership and control over the nation, and the name -- as well as supreme control over everything -- was passed from parent to child over generations.