Iturbide
Seven generations on a throne nobody in them chose, each one inheriting a promise they did not make and a decision about whether to keep it.
Founder, conqueror, pacifier, reformer, heir
Historical fiction
Draft complete, in revision
The House That Won
The empire of Agustin de Iturbide never falls. For 141 years the promise it was founded on stays framed on the wall of the palace, and three families live out what the country becomes underneath it.
Cover art, working edition
The premise
One country, one promise, and seven generations of people who inherit it.
In 1821 the founding document of an independent Mexico promised the new nation to everyone in it, without any distinction of Europeans, Africans, or Indians. In this novel the emperor who signed it is never deposed. The document stays on the wall. The country built underneath it becomes something else entirely.
Structure
Five acts, 141 years
A prologue, five acts, and an epilogue, moving from the coronation of 1822 to an archive opened in 1962. Each act is a generation and a different kind of ruler.
Prologue
The Three Guarantees1821
A general rides into the capital at the head of his army and signs the promise the rest of the book will be measured against. He believes it, for one afternoon.
Act I
The Founder1822 to 1840
The empire is invented. The promise starts breaking quietly, not in speeches but in ordinances, garrison ledgers, and the gap between what a document says and what an officer at the border is told to do.
Act II
The Conqueror1846 to 1867
The empire goes to war and wins. The map of the continent is redrawn at a hotel table, and for the first time families begin migrating south into it looking for work.
Act III
The Pacifier1880 to 1910
The empire is rationalized, industrialized, and made efficient. Hierarchy stops being an unwritten practice and becomes civic law, written in the language of progress rather than betrayal.
Act IV
The Reformer1930 to 1945
An empress tries to repair what her family built, against a nativist movement rising inside her own court, and learns what a half reform costs the people it was meant to protect.
Act V
The Heir1962
An archive is opened. An intelligence captain, a courier, and a crown princess put the founding document back on the table and read it out loud, 141 years after it was signed.
Epilogue
A country, continuing1962
The narrator returns to close the book on the act of speaking rather than on the consequence. What happens next belongs to the country, not to this novel.
Point of view
Three families, one document
The saga follows the people who wrote the promise, the people ordered to enforce it, and the people it was never quite extended to.
Maldonado
Career officers who carry out what the palace decides. Four generations, four broken right hands, and one running family question about what obedience is worth.
1851, 1899, 1937, 1962
Carter
Americans who crossed south after the war and built a life inside the empire, and who stay legally foreign no matter how completely they integrate.
Reverse migration, five generations
Where it stands
The manuscript
A complete first draft exists. It is being revised act by act, with a structure reference, character bibles, a glossary, and a timeline kept alongside it.
Length
~150k
Words across the full draft
Chapters
25
Plus prologue and epilogue
Viewpoints
14
Close third, four of them outsiders
Span
1821
To 1962, across seven generations
Follow along
Research notes and chapter updates.
Sample chapters, the structure reference, and revision updates go out to a short list. If you are an agent, an editor, or just curious how an alternate history gets built, say hello.
[email protected]
Reads like The Underground Railroad crossed with The Plot Against America.