It has come to our attention that many myths persist about the situation with the former Commonwealth of Austenasia (now styling itself as the “Empire of Austenasia”), and ourselves, the legitimate Austenasian government. Our article sets to address those misconceptions and shed some light on the decisions we have made during the year of this conflict.

This article provides a long overview of the events that have led to this current situation, some recent developments and key facts which are missing from the side of the former Commonwealth. A short overview of key events follows, with a full synopsis later on in this article.

Key events

• Andrew joined Austenasia in 2013, and only became active around 2024, partially as a favour to his then friend HIM Emperor Jonathan I.
• In mid 2024 he became the Acting Prime Minister, where he initially promised to be a caretaker until proper elections took place, but instantly used his position to go on a crusade against the Grand Unified Micronational, which Austenasia had been a member of since 2010. He withdrew Austenasia from the organisation, against the wishes of the former Emperor Jonathan, and in doing so alienated many of Austenasia’s traditional allies. Some have pointed at the fact that those same traditional allies were represented by people he had long-running personal grievances against.
• In a record low turnout, he won his election to become a Prime Minister. Candidates had to be approached to even consider running, and Austenasia was facing a leadership and activity crisis under him.
• After election, he seemed to have many plans laid out, but very few materialised. He offered to host the websites of Austenasia for free after a few problems surfaced, and volunteered to re-vamp the digital presence of Austenasia. He was compensated for hosting and domain purchases.
  • No asset transfer or rights were ever signed to his name.
  • The websites were updated in a very slow fashion, and the new websites lacked content from the old websites, even months afterwards. New legislation was not published, and incorrect information was kept up on the site.
• Andrew was a divisive Prime Minister. Eventually, on 2 June 2025, over a minor adjustment in the line of succession, the new Emperor Aggelos I. tried to call an early election under the advise of a close confidant, as the Austenasian establishment began to grow weary of Andrew. A complex legal issue unfolded, but eventually, a vote of no confidence was issued against Andrew in the House of Representatives under the Executive Authority Act 2023. Order broke down, and Andrew called the Emperor an illegitimate monarch and called for his abdication. Attempting to restore order to the discussion channel, the Emperor did threaten to remove Andrew from it if he could not calm down. In the same day, the situation calmed down with Andrew apologising, but a day later, he resumed his actions and issued the Emperor an ultimatum to abdicate, claiming he will be deposed otherwise by Andrew.
  • This chaos led to several Austenasians reconsidering their involvement and even some territories declaring independence.
  • Amidst this, Andrew refused the calls to resign, which by now were almost universal.
  • Andrew declared he will refuse to abide by the vote of no confidence, claimed to depose the Emperor and that he dissolved parliament. The vote against him passed unanimously, with Andrew himself voting in favour. Andrew was later on removed from the discussion on Discord, because he kept disrupting the other channels.
• During the vote of no confidence, Andrew declared his Commonwealth of Austenasia, initially claiming it was a conspiracy to bring attention to Austenasia, a claim his alleged co-conspirators denied, only saying they did not wish to end their friendship over his stunt.
• Andrew defaced the website of the Empire, using a technical exploit, to display explicit pornographic imagery on all news posts from Austenasia, including articles mourning the loss of friends and a war hero from Ukraine. Wikipedia was another battleground, where he used anonymous sockpuppet accounts to try to change the narrative on a source that many people trust and respect.
• Eventually, the dispute quieted down and we were content with resolving this as a purely micronational dispute.
• In February, Andrew proposed an agreement in which he would return the websites in exchange for £500 and the return of Corinium Terentium to the Empire, which we rejected on safeguarding grounds due to his previous behaviour, as well as the unreasonable financial demand.
• In May, Andrew obtained a UK trademark for Austenasia and used it to have the official Austenasian Discord server deleted. In July, he then issued a DMCA takedown notice against this website by claiming copyright ownership of the former Emperor Jonathan’s and Lord Griffin’s articles for the Austenasian Times between 2012 and 2025. After a review by WordPress, this website was restored.

Synopsis

Where better to start than the beginning. Andrew Musgrave, also known as David Andrew Creed, joined Austenasia all the way back in 2013, when he donated the territory of Corinium Terentium to the Empire, then led by HIM Emperor Jonathan I, when Andrew was disestablishing his micronation of Sabovia. The history of this territory ends here for well over a decade, as no real-world activity or presence was generated by this land acquisition. Andrew held no real influence within Austenasia, focusing mostly on his administrative duties on the Micronations Fandom site hosted on Wikia, and later on his administrative duties on MicroWiki. Andrew mostly cultivated his friendship with the Emperor, who held him as a close confidant and trusted friend.

Rising to Acting PM

Andrew’s first entry into high Austenasian politics was when he was appointed as Home Secretary in 2022. He first stood for prime minister in the 2024 February General election, where he was defeated by Lord John Gordon, who won with 60% of the vote.

During Andrew’s leave of absence, his prime minister John Gordon resigned. After a week of no contact, he finally returned to see that another person was, unconstitutionally, appointed in his stead and reclaimed his role, and started preparing for a general election.

However, he did not take well to the caretaker role. During his status of the acting prime minister, he used his position and Austenasia’s name in the community to launch attacks against one of the oldest organisations of the MicroWiki community, the Grand Unified Micronational. Completely ignoring the proper safeguarding procedures, he decided to publish articles – which some called defamatory – containing details of incidents which allegedly occurred in the organisation (at least one of these was ghostwritten and published under someone else’s name). He was unwilling to provide additional details to the GUM staff, and some of the individuals he named as victims have disputed his interpretation of the events. Eventually, he decided to withdraw the representatives to the organisation and promised to hold a referendum on membership, which guaranteed the organisation to expel Austenasia for a lack of representation. He also on and off demanded special treatment for Austenasia, tarnishing his and the nation’s reputation further amongst its traditional allies which held key positions in the administration of the GUM.

Elected Prime Minister

Another election was held in September 2024, where Andrew was the only actively campaigning candidate. It was an election with an outstandingly low turnout of 23%, and candidates had to be approached by Andrew and Jonathan to even consider running in the election. To say that Austenasia was in a crisis of activity and leadership would be accurate. Andrew won this election and became a full Prime Minister.

He was eventually entrusted to run the websites, as the Emperor Jonathan planned to abdicate and focus on his non-micronational endeavours. This was presented as a friendly gesture to Jonathan, who did not have the technical skills to keep the websites running. Andrew promised to run the websites for free, but Jonathan insisted that he would be compensated for the domain and web hosting costs, for which he was – from the imperial budget of 2025-2026, for his incurred costs of £19.20 for the domain, and £14.52 for the web hosting. He made no further claims for costs, and his labour was volunteered for free. No copyright transfer agreement was signed, and he holds no rights to host content authored by Jonathan Austen and Mick Griffin on his websites. He was compensated for his costs of the domains, and offered a service to Jonathan, at cost.

Commonwealth of Austenasia

Shortly after being removed from his role, he established the Commonweatlh of Austenasia. Initially a rival government of only Andrew (no other Austenasians joined him), he quickly changed the websites to reflect his new version of events. Consequently, access of the government to the websites was lost.

It is worth legally analysing the situation at this point through the lens of the Austenasian Constitution of 2011:

• The motion of no confidence against Andrew in the House of Representatives was lawful, according to the Executive Authority Act 2023.
• There is no provision under the Constitution for the removal of an Emperor except by voluntary abdication. Andrew’s claims to have deposed Emperor Aggelos are therefore false. Indeed, Andrew’s actions certainly would have amounted to treason and laesa maiestas under the Treason Act 2015. There were plans to charge Andrew with treason in absentia, but these were ultimately dropped.
• There is no provision under the Constitution or the Parliament Act 2024 for the Prime Minister to unilaterally suspend the House of Representatives. Andrew’s claims to have done so are therefore similarly false.
• The Constitution may only be amended or suspended by the Monarch with the approval of 80% of the House of Representatives and a majority of the population in a referendum. Andrew’s claims to have suspended the Constitution and instituted a “Commonwealth” are therefore false. At best, the Commonwealth was a separate micronation with no legal continuity with the legitimate Austenasia. More realistically, it was an illegal rebellion in Corinium Terentium as defined by the Third Imperial Decree of Emperor Declan I (2011).
• Andrew was stripped of his Austenasian nationality by the Territorial Changes Act 2025, which was passed the day after he was banned from MicroWiki.

Andrew’s claims were widely dismissed and condemned in the micronational community, only being recognised by a small number of fringe nations ran by his personal friends. Throughout all of this affair, the legitimate Austenasian government has continued to control all of the Towns, including Wrythe, and enjoys the loyalty of the entire pre-June 2025 population, sans Andrew.

In a now-deleted reveal on his news website, Andrew claimed the Commonwealth was entirely orchestrated by him, the former emperor Jonathan and John Gordon, showing screenshots from private conversations after he claimed that the other side went against the limits of the agreement. His own website implicated him in a lie though, as the agreement that was supposedly outlined by Jonathan was broken by him, by admitting territories and using his administrative powers on the Wiki to change articles of Austenasia and lock them from editing. The other two alleged co-conspirators denied the scale of their involvement, claiming they were merely willing to keep their friendship despite the differences.

The website of the legitimate Empire of Austenasia, austenasia.org, was eventually re-established, and the content was imported by the instruction of the former Emperor Jonathan, who also wrote most of the content of the websites. Unfortunately, due to a technical oversight, images still linked to the website owned by Andrew, who eventually discovered this fact and decided to replace the linked images to a pornographic shock image. This was discovered independently by readers and affected all articles, even articles mourning lost friends, and one Ukrainian hero who died defending his homeland against an invasion. This led to Andrew’s immediate dismissal from his roles in the MicroWiki administration and led to him being ostracised by even his last friends in the community.

This was not the only underhanded tactic though, as Andrew tried to use sockpuppets to change the website link of the Austenasian article on Wikipedia; claiming to be an innocent bystander. This repeated several times with fresh accounts, until Wikimedia eventually “anonbanned” him, which means he is banned from using any more sockpuppets.

The dispute quietened after the MicroEuroSummit, with Andrew promising numerous times to Jonathan to take the websites down, and a few times he did. The websites had a habit of re-appearing whenever convenient for Andrew, and he claimed that he planned to use the websites as part of his portfolio. Despite his later claims of cost, he still kept paying for the websites to be up.

Eventually, the side of the Empire was content with letting the issue remain in a status quo and was content with keeping it as a micronational dispute, where legitimacy was to be drawn from the people, and not the British legal system. For several months, nothing was heard from Andrew, and it was presumed that he had quit micronationalism.

Prelude before the storm

In February of 2026, Andrew re-appeared with a contract to be signed by Austenasia, which he documented in public as well. But, he did not document the details of this document. Costs claimed for the websites, which he was already compensated for and was not asked to provide for the remainder of the year, and labour which he volunteered to do were only a small part of the consideration, especially considering the Empire already had a website re-established and functioning.

The document contained a clause and required secrecy on it, which was incompatible with Austenasia and was deemed a “posion pill” by an observer. Andrew requested that his territory of Corinium Terentium be re-admitted, something which cannot be done in secret, and that it remain a territory of Austenasia in perpetuity. This was seen as a way for Andrew to return back to the Austenasia that kicked him out for his own behaviour, and did not want him back, and especially not for a £500 fee. Costs were a concern though, especially since they did not add up from the costs he was compensated for a year before, even when projected on a monthly basis.

Along with vague claims of having a “buyer”, the whole setup seemed dishonest and bad faith had already been established before. Eventually, the Austenasian government decided the proposal was not seen as a good faith one due to the secrecy required and the territorial re-admission clause.

Austenasia was yet again content with not escalating any further, and merely waiting it out, as the Commonwealth had not been a serious threat until now.

Unfortunately, Andrew filed for a trademark to attempt to resolve this dispute using the British legal system. Doing this was completely unprecedented in micronational history and it is ultimately the reason why there is now a state of outright hostility. It was done without our knowledge, otherwise we would have filed an objection. What followed was an attack on Austenasian history, which, if his claims are to be believed, was the history of his own micronation as well.

Legal claims

What followed after the trademark was registered was an instant request to take down the Austenasian Discord server, a platform used to communicate between the core active citizens. No arbitration or agreement was attempted, and unfortunately the server was lost. Cited reasons were trademark claims, and Discord did not respond to any appeals.

Some citizens have reported that a similar request was issued to Google and that historical documents on their Google drives were also deleted for containing the word Austenasia. Similarly, the website was often delisted from Google for a brief period of time, likely from takedown requests we have not been privy to.

A while after, after the dust has settled, Andrew launched a DMCA claim against this website, under the threat of perjury, that his content was used against his permission. Before the material to dispute this conclusively was gathered (which includes written statements by Jonathan Austen and Mick Griffin that he did not receive permission from them to host their authored content), Andrew launched a bogus dispute against a blog owned by the Empire of Adammia, which was denied, and his original DMCA was then reviewed and deemed bogus by WordPress.com, for which we thank them.

Situation now

Now, on the eve of the “coronation” of Andrew’s “emperor”, for an Austenasia built on stolen content and the participation of no other Austenasians beyond Andrew; an Austenasia that uses shady and underhanded tactics to deplatform their rival; an Austenasia with no consent and outright disapproval of the founder – who gave name to the whole project, a question remains: Why?

Why not create something from scratch, why not create something new and exciting? Why all the deception? And what makes Andrew’s Austenasia anything but a hollow shell, devoid of everyone who poured years into Austenasia, and why is the attack against Austenasia’s heritage necessary? Is this all over a Wikipedia article? Is this all a revenge plot for being ousted?

Some final legal analysis, to conclude:

• Johannes Karl has no valid claim to the Austenasian Throne as he has never been included in the Line of Succession by the Senate, in accordance with the Succession to the Throne Act 2020. By contrast, Emperor Alexander VI was designated by the Senate as the successor to Emperor Aggelos, and therefore became the lawful Emperor when Aggelos abdicated in September 2025. Any “coronation” involving Johannes is therefore invalid.
• According to the Constitution, any coronation must take place at the exact spot that the Declaration of Independence was sent from in September 2008, which is in Wrythe, which Andrew does not control or have access to. Any “coronation” held in York is therefore invalid. The Constitution further stipulates that a coronation must use the official Imperial Regalia of Austenasia, which Andrew similarly does not have access to.
• Andrew has furthermore suggested that a new “constitution” will accompany the “coronation”. If it were to be believed that his project is a legal continuation of the Empire that was founded in 2008, he would necessarily have to repeal in whole the 2011 Constitution. As previously stated, this would require a referendum of the Austenasian people, which is not possible for him, as he does not have access to the electoral rolls or the loyalty of the Representatives of any of the Towns. Any such “constitution” is therefore invalid, and anything promulgated under it can be ignored.