Since 2017, Netflix has constructed a Christmas rom-com cinematic universe, which now includes more than a dozen films, but its twin anchors are a pair of royal-themed trilogies set in the present day.
Conjuring up the raw materials the plots demand — monarchies and picturesque snowy villages — has forced Netflix to invent two European countries: Aldovia (where a New York journalist meets her “Christmas Prince”) and Belgravia (where Vanessa Hudgens’ baker character agrees to a “Princess Switch” with her royal doppelganger).
Neither of these is meant to be more than a stage set for the female fantasy of putting on a pretty dress and dancing with a prince in a cozy Christmas castle. But as a male history nerd whose wife forced him to watch these terrible movies, my mind immediately went to a very different place.
Behind all that cocoa-sipping frippery must lie the hard Thucydidean realities of diplomacy and war.
The Map
The biggest hint we get about the geopolitics of the Netflix Christmas universe comes in “The Christmas Prince 3: The Royal Baby,” when courtiers brief Queen Amber on a ceremonial treaty renewal with the (equally fictional) kingdom of Penglia. […]
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