View original postIt's that time of the biannum again! The continuing tradition of Cannoli's Obsolete Olympic Medal Count. Way back when the USSR broke up, I remember reading an article about how it would have been the champs of the Olympics in 1992, except for not being a thing anymore. In the interests of personal amusement (amusing Cannoli being pretty much the most worthwhile aspiration for any given concept), I add up the totals of countries which are current fragments of historical polities. The rules for which countries are counted toward which historical entities are "because I said so". They are basically arbitrary, with some attempts at being fair, for certain values of fair. For instance, I refuse to credit the British Empire with the medals of the USA, because King George can go fuck himself, historically speaking, for stuttering while people were being Hitlered, or for speaking German instead of English, or for sending hither swarms of officers to eat out our substance and so forth. And also, because England only ever controlled a tiny fraction of the country, and probably don't deserve credit for the descendants of slaves they imported to North America over the objections of the inhabitants, or the Irish people whose primary motivation for coming to America was "it's not British." But they do get Canada, because, in the immortal words of Dave Barry "Quel enfer. C'est seulement Canada!". See? Nice and simple.

View original postIn the past I would try to lay out elaborate justifications to preempt argument, because instructing people on what is right, as defined by me, is a duty and a public service, but on the other hand, why should I have all the fun dredging up historical minutiae solely for the sake of being pedantic? I imagine most of us have similar tendencies that make us insufferable to the people about us, hence our fleeing to the interwebs to find like-minded souls, so nit-pick away!

View original postA somewhat older sort-of nation that matched the Soviet Union was the Kalmar Union, which IIRC was more of a royal technicality than a traditional nation, but they won as many medals as the commies, so their medal count of 46 stands. They would, unfortunately, rank 2nd to the USSR, having only 14 golds, plus 15 silver and 17 bronze.

View original postSucceeding the Roman Empire, we have the Kingdom of the Franks, which did them even better, gaining 94 medals, with 30 each of gold and silver and 34 bronze. That's why they got to take over the Imperial title.

View original postUnder protest, but bowing to popular demand, I also include the Mongol Empire. I have been hesitant to include it in past compilations for a few reasons. First of all, the various subdivisions under various Hordes raise some doubt of whether it should all really be considered one empire. I tend to suspect it might be something of an exaggeration that gets so much press because the various the Mongols passed through and terrorized cover such a widespread area, and it looks so impressive on a map. Given that what civilization existed under Mongol rule tended to absorb them, rather than being transformed into a Mongol civilzation, I think that Kublai Khan and the Yuan dynasty were more culturally Chinese with Mongol ancestry, than Mogolians imposing their civilization on the Chinese. Much of their influence on the nations included in their medal count, for example, is external, for lack of a better term. That is, it was not things the Mongols did that affected the countries, but things those people did in reaction to the Mongols. I would call most of these countries closer to client states or protectorates, rather than subject provinces of an Empire. Whatever they might have been called, I think that better describes their relationship with their Mongol overlords, from my admittedly cursory awareness of the subject. Much more importantly, a bunch of these countries were not added until after the death of Genghis Khan, and it was with his death that they began splitting up, so the question of whether Belarus and Ukraine were part of the same Empire as China & Korea is somewhat debatable, IMO.