Cromania

Cromania is a fictional country implied to be in Eastern Europe. It was the primary setting for *Men Rock!*.

## Background

In the early ’20s, Cromania was a pseudodemocratic neopatriarchy headed by Agustan. Elections were implied to exist, but women’s suffrage was prohibited. Agustan said that Cromania based all of its society on Emily and Bridgette’s *Men Rock!*, a sarcastic song that hundreds of thousands of admiring Cromanians misinterpreted as sincere.

Agustan coerced Bridgette and Emily into performing *Men Rock!* at a concert. At first they performed the song as planned, but quickly improvised and changed the lyrics to be unambiguously feminist. This strongly appealed to all of the women in the audience, but disturbed almost all of the men, and Agustan abruptly cancelled the performance by calling for Bridgette and Emily’s seizure. Then a group of women, imprisoned for not laughing at their husbands’ jokes, escaped through a loose tile in the concert stage, assaulted the guards who almost seized Bridgette and Emily, and joined the revolution that they instigated.

Today Cromania is a democratic matriarchy with far fewer—if any—men, whom the Cromanian women massacred in the revolution. Further details are unknown, but Bridgette and Emily summarized the new form of government as being ‘not that great either’.

## Culture

Cromanians are a Slavic people who write their language with the Cyrillic alphabet and speak with Slavic (or specifically Russian) accents. However, it is implied by the Cyrillic spelling of Cromania (Сяомаиіа) that Cromanians pronounce с, я, and и similarly or identically to English k, r, and n, respectively, in striking contrast to how these letters are pronounced in all other languages using the Cyrillic alphabet.

They enjoy music, have a unique sense of humor, and like other Europeans, they sometimes greet by kissing on the cheeks, but a less usual custom is that some of them also keep dead fish as trophies, as one Cromanian man presented a fish for Bridgette to sign. Hundreds of thousands of Cromanians have Internet access, but only two television channels. Prior to the revolution, women dressed conservatively, required men’s permission to agree, did all of the housework, never drove cars, and most of them wore wigs in the shape of Emily’s hair. While many Cromanians found Emily beautiful, they were less impressed with Bridgette, whom Mirek described as ‘a three’ in Cromania.

### National symbols

Cromania’s coat‐of‐arms was a crowned, duocephalous eagle bearing a shield. He carried two round objects, possibly peppers, in his claws, but in one flag he carried only one of these, while the other held a scepter.

Cromania had various flags, the purposes of which were unclear. The first flags shown were ambiguous because they were wrapped around flagpoles, but were later revealed to be red flags with a white scrotum that had a left arm clenching its fist. This could have been a military banner. The next one briefly visible was a red, white, and blue tricolor with a golden shield bearing the Cromanian eagle on it. This one might have been the flag of the air force. The next one was a red, black, and yellow tricolor with a golden shield bearing the Cromanian eagle on it. It’s possible that this was the presidential flag. The final one was briefly visible at the concert and was a Cromanian eagle on a golden background. Any of these could have been the national flag.

## Gallery

A Cromanian flag on a Cromanian private jet.Cromanian flags.Closer look at the Cromanian eagle.Concert with many neopatriarchal flags.