Is this not horrible enough? It may need to be a little more horrible.
Empire Reborn
Harpreet Kaur (2056-2130) was a Kashmiri grad student at the University of Mumbai when the Pakistan-Iranian war went (briefly) nuclear in 2078. Like most college students of her generation, she was conscripted by the Indian government during the Monsoon Crisis; unlike most most of them, Harpreet proved to have a talent for war, leadership, and demagoguery. She was a pivotal figure in the army revolt in 2079, going all the way from spokeswoman for the rebellion to the public face of the new ruling junta. By 2080 she was the junta. At some point along the way Kaur began claiming descent from Timur and Babur, although she did not actually claim the title of Empress Nurjahan until 2082.
By then most of India’s neighbors had likewise adopted monarchical rule, of varying stripes of authenticity. The new Empress chose a successful diplomatic route with these new kingdoms, creating a mutual defense pact that ended up preventing the Middle East from being snapped up by West Europe, the Pakt, or Greater China. As the years went on, advantageous marriages and adoptions allowed the Empress to directly bind the other kingdoms to India, under her reasonably benevolent and certainly capable rule. She was typically deemed fair, and usually declared just — but rarely considered merciful.
The most significant conflict in that region was what contemporaries called the ‘Wedding War’ (2084-2093), sparked by the political marriage of Empress Nurjahan and King George VIII of the United Kingdom. Relations between India and the theoretically republican nation of Turkey had been difficult from the start, and the effective recreation of the British Raj (albeit a Hindu one) was apparently too much for Turkey’s more paranoid factions. In 2084, rogue elements of Turkish intelligence agencies allegedly detonated multiple EMPs and biobombs throughout the British Isles, in an apparent attempt to make it seem that West Europe was about to invade. Unfortunately for the Turks, the plot was uncovered (although not in time to stop the attacks), leading to a nine year war that ended with Turkey being conquered by what was by then the New Empire. The only thing that remained was Istanbul and a small stretch of territory around it, which was promptly conquered by the Pakt, and with tacit New Imperial permission.
The New Empire would go on to weather the rest of the Consolidation Wars without major issues, as the various nations that made it up worked out their own zones of control and influence. External enemies were kept at bay. Internal enemies (mostly defined as ‘stubborn cultural holdouts’) were heavily suppressed, until the new transportee system allowed for the much more humane method of simply exiling them en masse to the colony worlds.
To me, this was noticeably less horrible than most material in the Unfiltered setting. Also, I liked it.