Line #52 UsefulNotes/NorthernIreland


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/350px-NImap-CIA_4957.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:If you tilt your head at just the right angle, it looks like a skull.]]
3
4	->''"Ulster in the north is the seat of battle valour, of haughtiness, strife, boasting; the men of Ulster are the fiercest warriors of all Ireland, and the queens and goddesses of Ulster are associated with battle and death."''
5	-->-- The '''''Ard Ruide''''', an Old Gaelic poem dating from the Middle Ages. Still true.
6
7	Roughly, Northern Ireland/Ulster/The Province/Norn Iron/[[UsefulNotes/TheMagicalCountiesOfEire The Occupied Six Counties]]/the North of Ireland/British Ireland/British-''occupied'' Ireland/The Fourth Green Field/Tuaisceart Éireann/Norlin Airlann.
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9	People can't even agree on the name of this place: [[TheScottishTrope choosing whether to say "Londonderry" or "Derry"]] is equivalent to coming down on one side or the other of [[UsefulNotes/TheIrishQuestion The Question]]. No wonder UsefulNotes/TheTroubles were so bad. Northern Irish is, sadly, perceived as one of the worst UK accents - whether this is because of the association with UsefulNotes/TheTroubles is a question for scholars. Of course, there is an alternate argument which contends that the Northern Irish accent is merely incomprehensible and vaguely threatening which makes it sound worse than it really is. This doesn't stop either the English or Americans incessantly crying, "Oh, I just LOVE your accent. So quaint!" ("And that's when I hit him, yer honour.")
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11	The region is also known as "Stroke Country", a reference to a local joke name for the city of Londonderry/Derry.[[note]]That thing between the words "Londonderry" and "Derry" is called a "stroke" in some versions of English. An American would call it a "slash", which could have some [[SlashFic pretty strange]] unintended implications. Then again, "stroke" isn't much better, since it brings to mind masturbation. Or a medical stroke - although, given [[UsefulNotes/TheTroubles the region's, er, "troubled" history]], it no doubt proved stressful enough to result in a fair number of ''those''.[[/note]] The city is officially called Londonderry, but has a City Council that calls it "Derry". An attempt to compromise is "The Maiden City", since it wasn't breached in a 1689 siege. (As an aside, the State of New Hampshire in the U.S. TookAThirdOption and split its [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Londonderry,_New_Hampshire Londonderry]], which was first settled by Ulster Scots, into two towns called Londonderry and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derry,_New_Hampshire Derry]].)
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13	In UsefulNotes/{{Dublin}}, Stroke Country is generally referred to simply as "the North", except in official documents and the news (though sometimes they will use 'the North' too). This is probably not politically motivated as most people in Northern Ireland refer to the Republic as "Down South" or simply "the South". Old-fashioned Irish nationalists might refer to "the Occupied Six" etc. People who want to make a point of how ''un''nationalist they are will use "Northern Ireland", even in casual conversation. Meanwhile "the South" is ''never'' called "Southern Ireland" except by clueless people from England and people particularly ill-disposed towards Ireland.[[note]]Or on the rare occasion when one wants to refer to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Ireland_(1921%E2%80%931922) the historical entity by that name]] established by the Government of Ireland Act 1920 - the same Act that formally established ''Northern'' Ireland - and existing, in largely-nonfunctional form, in 1921-22.[[/note]] Its official description (though ''NOT'' its official name), "Republic of Ireland", is often abbreviated as "[=RoI=]" or "The Republic" and the shorthand "The South" is acceptable, if hardly ever used in the [=RoI=] itself. "Ireland" is the official name for the [=RoI=], but confusingly it is also the correct term to refer to the entire ''island'' which includes both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
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15	"Ulster" is never used in the south, because only two-thirds of the old province of Ulster is in the North (er... you know what we mean). The remainder, Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan, are not. (Incidentally, the northernmost point of the island is in Donegal. So it's possible to be "Down South" and have the North be south of you).
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17	Conversely, 'Ulster' is widely used by unionists of various hues, as is "the Province". Technically both are inaccurate, but the second one is considerably less politicised and is often used elsewhere in the UK - the BBC often refers to the area as "the Province".
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19	Its people are generally laid-back, but a little more grim and stoic than the Republic. They can, since the Good Friday Agreement, claim dual citizenship; forms for both Irish and British passports sit side by side in post offices. As with many other things in Northern Ireland, [[UsefulNotes/WithEuropeButNotOfIt Brexit]] threw a spanner in this, when the de Souza case led to British courts declaring Northern Irish people were British by default for immigration law purposes, casting doubt over the future rights of Northern Irish with Irish citizenship post-Brexit.
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21	The local flavour of Creator/{{ITV}}, UTV (or until 1993, Ulster Television - it changed its name mainly to get advertisers to sell to its thousands of viewers in the Republic), used to embody 'regional programming' (teatime "good news" programme before the proper news, replacing ''Tonight with Trevor [=McDonald=]'' with an actual current affairs programme, a Friday night live chat show that ran for 16 years), but, apart from continuity announcements to soap operas by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kqkavY6nFU this guy]] (who really is a trope unto himself), it's now a reskin of Creator/{{ITV}}1 with regional news. This is an [[http://www.elementalsoup.com/spidemanissue2.html improvement]].
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23	Creator/TheBBC's NI branch is mostly the same as in Britain, though it did give us ''[[http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/gmhp/ Give My Head Peace]]'', which helped launch the television careers of '[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hole_in_the_Wall_Gang_(comedy) The Hole in the Wall Gang]]'.
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25	Stroke Country has produced several notable figures in entertainment and the arts, though internationally they are usually identified as either or Irish or British rather than Northern Irish as such - thus Creator/LiamNeeson and Seamus Heaney - from Nationalist backgrounds - are universally considered 'Irish' while Creator/KennethBranagh and Creator/CSLewis - from Unionist backgrounds - are almost universally considered 'British' (despite both identifying culturally as "Irish"). An exception to this rule is curmudgeonly singer / songwriter Music/VanMorrison. Although born a Belfast Prod, from the ultra-Loyalist Sandy Row area of the city, he is universally thought of as Irish and has never contradicted this. The only thing that will unite Northern Irish people who think of themselves as "Irish" and "British" is their outrage if you call them "English".
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27	----
28	!!Fiction set in Northern Ireland that doesn't involve UsefulNotes/TheTroubles:
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30	* ''Anime/{{Hellsing}}'' (end of OVA episode 1)
31	* ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'' (the episode 'Char Returns' is set in Belfast, as are several levels in the videogames based on the original series)
32	* ''Film/DanceLexieDance'', a short film about a single father who takes his daughter to a dance contest.
33	* ''Film/TheShore'', a short film about two old friends reunited after decades apart.
34	* ''Series/DerryGirls'', a TV show set in Derry/Londonderry.
35	* ''VideoGame/CounterStrike: Condition Zero'' has its final mission set in Belfast.
36	* ''Series/TheFall2013'', a PoliceProcedural starring Creator/GillianAnderson and N.I. native Creator/JamieDornan set in Belfast.
37	* ''Film/AnIrishGoodbye'', a short film about estranged brothers brought together at their mother's funeral.
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39	----
40	!!People from Northern Ireland:
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42	* Creator/GarthEnnis
43	* John Hume
44	* Creator/ColinMorgan
45	* WebVideo/DiamandaHagan
46	* Creator/CSLewis
47	* Creator/StephenBoyd
48	* Creator/LiamNeeson
49	* Music/VanMorrison
50	* [[Music/ThinLizzy Gary Moore]]
51	* [[Series/{{Glee}} Damian McGinty]]
52	* [[Music/DefLeppard Vivian Campbell]]
53	* Creator/KennethBranagh
54	* Seamus Heaney, Nobel Prize winning poet.
55	* James Burke (of ''Series/{{Connections}}'' fame. Traces of Derry slip into his otherwise RP speech, particularly in words ending with "r".)
56	* [[Creator/JamieDornan Jamie Dornan]] of ''Series/TheFall2013'' and ''Film/FiftyShadesOfGrey'' fame.
57	* Rory [=McIlroy=]
58	* [[Music/SnowPatrol Gary Lightbody]]
59	* [[Creator/CiaranHinds Ciarán Hinds]]
60	* Lord William Thomson Kelvin, famous physicist.
61	* All three members of [[Music/TwoDoorCinemaClub Two Door Cinema Club]]
62	* Creator/PaulaMalcomson
63	* From ''Series/GameOfThrones'': Creator/MichelleFairley (Catelyn Stark), Ian [=McElhinney=] (Ser Barristan Selmy), Creator/ConlethHill (Varys), Richard Dormer (Beric Dondarrion), Kristian Nairn (Hodor) and the aforementioned [[Creator/CiaranHinds Ciarán Hinds]] (Mance Rayder)... Not really surprising given the fact that Northern Ireland is the show's primary filming location.
64	* James Nesbitt
65	* [[{{Series/Dexter}} Ray Stevenson]]
66	* Music/RobinMark (''Revival In Belfast'', from which comes "Days Of Elijah")
67	* Mary Mallon, a.k.a. Typhoid Mary, was born and spent the first fifteen years of her life in Cookstown, Co. Tyrone.
68	* Lindy Tsang, a.k.a. Bubzbeauty, Website/YouTube beauty guru and vlogger.
69	* Stella Maxwell, current Victoria's Secret Angel.
70	* Jocelyn Bell Burnell, astrophysicist most well known for discovering pulsars. Controversially her then thesis supervisor won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974 whilst she was excluded.
71	* Chaim Herzog, 6th President of Israel, was born in Belfast (though he grew up in UsefulNotes/{{Dublin}}.)
72	* Music/CatherineMcGrath
73	* Nadine Coyle of the UK girl group Music/GirlsAloud
74	* Blu Hydrangea, contestant from series one of ''Series/RuPaulsDragRaceUK'' and ''[=RuPaul=]'s Drag Race UK Versus the World''
75	* Music/KneecapBand

Context UsefulNotes / NorthernIreland