One century. That's roughly four generations. In 1907, women couldn't vote, space travel was science fiction, and “world war” was still a reference to an H.G. Wells novel.

For the sake of argument, let's group a century into four generations, twenty-five years each.

In the first generation, technology exploded. Nanotechnology reached the level of being able to produce miracle materials, including carbon nano-fibres, and allowed outfits made of smart cloth, “ePaper” and the like. Ultra-efficient solar cells and miniturization meant that power and network connectivity were effectively ubitquitous. Genetic manipulation became significantly easier. Society wobbled as the rate of social change was far exceeded by the rate of tecnological change.

In the second generation, war came to the world. Techology provided new and exciting ways to kill. Inexpensive nanotech in the hands of “antigotterdammerung anarchists” dismantled the majority of the world's nuclear arsenal. Much of Europe was rendered uninhabitable to unmodified humans, and, by the end, came to be known as Hell. The transition was slow enough for the more wealthy inhabitants of Great Britain to emmigrate to North America. The poorer Britons remained to watch the tides of Hell advance in the wake of four horsemen.

The United States fractured under it's own political stress, and went through it's own cultural war. The second generation saw dozens of short-lived governments, often with more than one claiming to run the country at the same time. Canada drifted increasingly towards an insular, technology driven anarcho-syndicalist society with status derived from creative drive towards a shared pool of intellectual property.

In the third generation, a winner in America's culture war finally arose. King William Rockefeller I of the Empire of America, alongside the New Church, began a new social order founded on the religious laws of the New Church and the Conservative social policies of Rockefeller's “One Shining Star” vision of a new American state.

America began to rebuild and adapt to a new culture. The new America was repressive, classist and sexist, but it was a far cry better than the previous years of chaos. For a time, things stabilized. William I's strict ban on reproductive technology misfired, though. Firstly, William had only one child, and that, a daughter. Secondly, it meant that the monarch had no defense againt the engineered virus that rendered him unable to reproduce further. Complications from this infection eventually killed William in his daughter's 20th year.

Upon taking the throne, Chastity Prudence Mayflower Rockefeller took the name Victoria, first of her name, Queen of the Americas. One of her first rulings was to remove many of her father's obstacles to scientific research. Within the next ten years, in a joint venture with the New Church, the Crown grew the Seraphim, an order of genetically modified, nano-enhanced warriors. Social mores began to relax under Victoria's rule. Her attitudes were still much more conservative than that of pre-nanowar society, but more relaxed than her father's.