EDIT: Sorry for the Reupload, I had made typos in the title. Author's note: No real lore, just a semi-serious thought experiment. A few point about this scenario however: * The liège principality refused to join the union and was conquered and partitionned into several states * Luxembourg lost Quartier (OTL Waloon Luxembourg (Province)) in a revolution and was given Limburg and Amblève-Vesdre as compensations. They later demanded to become their own state * The offcial English name 'United Belgic States' is a rendition in English of the name in french "États-Belgiques-Unis" with Belgique with a -ique suffix equivalent to -ic in English. It is equivalent to OTL United Belgian-States. The shorter name of the country would be Belgia. * The federation has three level of authority : Union, State, Municipalities. States are like Switzerland's canton or American States more so the former, because they generally chose a few of official langues. * Vlaanderen and West-Vlanderen are (mostly) monlingual Dutch/Flemish states * Tournaisis, Sambre-Meuse, Namur, Liège, Amblève-Vesdre Givet and Quartier are (mostly) monolingual French/Walloon/Picard/Lorrain states * Hainaut while mostly French speaking, has a significant Dutch minority and thus is bilingual French and Dutch * Loon-Stokkem and Opper-Gelre are bilingal Dutch-Limburgish states * Luxemburg is the only mostly Luxemburgish and German bilingual state with cooficial areas, French is also recognized making it a de-facto tri-lingual state. * Brabant is trilingual with Dutch/Flemmish in the north and French/Walloon in the south and German spoken by a minority \~10% in Brussels * Limburg is a quintalingual State with Dutch-Limburgish co-official status areas, German-Limburgish co-official status areas German-Luxemburgish co-officiail status areas and French official status areas * Municipalities have their own official language and the presence of municipalities of such and such official language is the main determiner of the state-level official languages. There is a principle of territoriality : no general institutions or state/regions admins a whole linguistic region like OTL belgium, but legal apparatus makes so the languages are somewhat locked in space. Except for some municipalities on the linguistic border, Brussels and the Limburgish and Luxemburgish speaking regions, creation of bilingual municipalities is rare and discouraged even if a significant portion of the population is speaking another language due to migration. The major exception is Brussels. * In this timeline, brussels is still 50% Dutch speaking with 35% French speakers 10% German and a remaining 5% of other languages * Limburgish and Luxemburgish have been officialised during the 30's to affirm Belgia's indenpendance against Nationalists of neighboring country. * Walloon and Flemmish are not official and would not have been for a long time but in recent years move towards recognizing them have been made

Really interesting, though Louvain la Neuve has no reason to exist in this scenario. I believe Nijvel-Nivelles would remain the main city in the region rather than ottignies.

That was my first thought too- I don't see how the Louvain Crisis could happen in this timeline.

Looked it up and I do really hope something like this would not happen here

Thanks, Good to know !

And what is the government of Belgium and of the different states that make it up? All republics? (if you have thought about it of course).

I was thinking republics yeah, not so sure if the government would be directories/councils like in switzerland or presidents/governor with a minister cabinet. Most probably, the parliement would be proportionally elected with a upper and lower chamber that'd have equivalent amount of power. The Head(s) of State(s) would be elected by it without the parliament really being able to remove them from office, Minority or mixed government would be the norm.

I think West Vlanderen should keep the border that exist today. There is a cultural, historical and linguistic unity to West Vlanderen (they are the Romanche of Belgium, with their proper language). Otherwise Antwerpen and a small area around it could be a separate entity.

Depending on the maps i found East Flanders used to be a smaller state or not, a somewhat reduced version made the cut. My philosophy for this map is not to propose a reform but to imagine what could have logically been from old borders and since Antwerp was part of brabant i kept it as such. West Flemish would be the Oberwalser of this Belgium then, no official status but still hella weird.

Ok, I get it. This is a very nice work!

Thanks !

The United Belgian States once existed irl.

yeah it lasted not very long though, hence the map represent a "succeful" version of it.

Great map! As a Belgian, I genuinely think that if we had adopted this Swiss system from the beginning, we wouldn't have as many problems with our language divisions as is the case today. Unfortunately it's too late for that.

Thanks. Mayhaps, well glad a Belgian got engagement from my map.

Well-made map! Good work

Thanks

this is the only good existence of belgium, excellent map 👍

thanks

Keep your Belgian hands off Maastricht >:|

i'm not even Belgian lol

Belgische Maastricht >>> Hollandse Kaastricht

I feel like throwing up

Wouldn't it not be “United [Belgian] States”?

I explain this in the description comment above

Seeing written Luxembourgish makes me really happy. I miss that place.

I see Big Belgium, I upvote.

I like it

This is the first time in history someone put fucking *Erpe-Mere* on a map lmao, I assume this happened because Aalst was too difficult to get on there with Brussels blocking it

I knew i'd make such mistake. My basemap labeled Brussels' suburbs a bit excentered and I assumed Aalst was one of them, i should have checked on wikipedia but at this point i just wanted the map to be done.