yellow ribbon wrote:jamitar is right,
historically it gets even worse, since there was a crisis when the french wanted to buy a part of the "dutch" Luxembourg, while the "german" Luxembourg was even a part of the Zollverein.
the "french quarter" (after the third split) shown in game was really a part of the belgian independence movement and thus a part of Belgian national soil...
the GD Lux. was only a fraction of the province.
tricky, at least
Err. Even that is over simplified. The Dutch Luxembourg as you say was actually the one part of the Zollverein (there also is/was a German Luxembourg, namely the region around Bitburg which used to be Luxembourgish until 1815 iirc., certainly even today we speak mutually understandable dialects (yes, I'm from the Grand-Duchy)). All of the post Vienna treaty Luxembourg was pro-Belgian during the Belgian Revolution, the only reason the remainder of the country was split at that time was the presence of a Prussian garrison in the city of Luxembourg (one of Europe's most important fortifications of the time, dismantled in the late 1860's as part of a Prussian-French crisis ;-) ). The Prussians first permitted the dutch governor to stay out of harms way (except for a brief period where he was abducted by Belgian/Luxembourgish revolutionaris and then liberated under Prussian pressure) and then essentially enforced that the so called german speaking (so called because no part of old Luxembourg was ever just german or french speaking, both languages co-existed since at least the middle ages) part of the country remain under their dominance. After the post Belgian-Revolution split, many Luxembourgers remained in Belgium to make careers in politics, law or other areas, the Belgian province of Luxembourg also continued to be developped under Belgian rule. The Dutch/Prussian controlled Grand-Duchy in turn started to gradually become independant (territorial separation from the Netherlands played an important role there), though it still required som time before a national identity would develop (possibly only fully blossoming during the 1939 100 years of independance celebrations and even more due to resistance to Germn occupation during WWII). During the 19th century, under German influence, the Grand-Duchy also started developing industrially (steel mills with close ties to the Prussian Saar, while Belgian-Luxembourg naturally had closer ties to Namur and Liège regions). When the German Federation was first considered, the Grand-Duchy sent a delegation to join, eventually it was decided not to adhere, but to simply stay a member of the Zollverein...
In PoN terms the province of Luxembourg should remain Belgian (even the Grand-Duchy retained strong economic ties with Belgium), simply because Belgium, a 19th century major industrial power is already underrepresented in the game. By removing one more of that country's regions it would lose some important resources (Belgian-Luxembourg had important iron deposits, started some steelmills, exploitations of Wood and industries centred around that resource, later tourism (one industry not represented in PoN). One possible ammendment might be to give the Prussians a trade-agreement with Belgium at the start of PoN, up the resource availability (mostly iron) in the province of Luxembourg and add at least one Prussian iron mine to the province (G.-D. steelmills were only just starting to expand around that time). But that would risk opening all of Belgium to Prussian industry unrealistically. The other, probably more important issue is the question of the fortress of Luxembourg that almost started the Franco-Prussian war a few years early (the solution of the Luxembourg crisis was the dismantlment of the fortress). But if one were to add the fortress to the Belgian province and give Prussia military access to Belgium and a garrison in Luxembourg would again lead to too much Prussian access to Belgium as a whole. Right now I'd say the issue is unsolvable in PoN, therefore another argument to leave things as they are (a Luxembourg crisis could probably be included in other ways anyhow)...
P.S.: Luxembourg partitions were as follows: The region of Longwy to France in the 17th century, Bitburg to Prussia in 1815 and Arlon to Belgium (assuming the G.-D. represents a "true" Luxembourg, which I'd disagree with) in 1839. Other areas had also previously belonged to the old Duchy of Luxembourg and been separated at different points, but these were mostly vassals of the dukes (for instance parts of the county of Vianden, most of which eventually became German, som Belgian and some Luxembourgish) or possesions of the dukes outside de duchy proper (county of Chiny). Oh and to confuse matters some more, before the erection of the duchy of Luxembourg there was a county by the same name, the counts of said county at times also were rulers of a number of other counties (Namur, Durbuy, Laroche, Longwy, Bitburg, Arlon etc.) in the region by the end of the 12th century and the start of the 13th, they also had vassals throughout the region (including several counts like Vianden, Salm etc.). All of that area is sometimes mistakenly (the various counties still had their own laws and traditions) referred to as the county of Luxembourg in history books. Sometimes they are also referred to as a duchy long before such an entity existed. Even when said duchy was finally erected it did not include all the territory formaly (or still) ruled by the former count and new duke. Oh and of course at least three (four if you count Hermann of Salm older brother of one of the counts) king/emperors of Germany were counts/dukes of Luxembourg.
Marc aka Caran...