Toggle Background Color
The Unified Kingdom of Tierra is, in many ways, little more than a polite fiction. Constructed out of a patchwork of petty kingdoms by the Principality of Aetoria little more than a century ago through a combination of diplomacy, trade, threats, and open violence, the Unified Kingdom remains in many ways divided along cultural, politickal, and historical lines. Only the institutions of royal government serve to bind the six million people and disparate regions of Tierra together, however tenuously.
Thus, to understand Tierra is to understand that it is still many nations pretending to be a single entity—a collection of hundreds of little local governments, administered by members of a common aristocracy, and linked together through a quasi-feudal network of obligations and privileges, all in the guise of a unitary state.
In many ways, that divided character still shows itself. Nowhere is this clearer than in the strong regional identities of the major constituent regions of the country. Having once been sovereign and independent kingdoms prior to the establishment of the Unified Kingdom, these regions still maintain strong ties to their past, and often owe their loyalties foremost not to the Kings of Tierra but to the Great Houses, who claim descent from the kings and queens which once ruled those regions.
The sole exception is Aetoria itself. The Kings of Tierra descend directly from the Princes of Aetoria, and the lands which the Principality of Aetoria once covered have been accustomed to the rule of the royal House of Rendower, not for decades but for centuries. As a result, the institutions of royal government, the Army, the Navy, the Intendancy, all are seen as fundamentally Aetorian in character, and the great city of Aetoria itself is seen not as an appendage of the Unified Kingdom, but as its heart.
Which is not to say that the Duchy of Aetoria can do without the other regions of the country. Aetoria's soil is mostly ill-suited for farming. Much of it is only useful for the raising of sheep or the growing of particularly hardy crops. The City of Aetoria must rely upon trade with other regions and even other countries to feed itself—and its status as a commercial centre has more to do with its excellent harbour, excellent location, and royal favour than any particular productivity.
The same could not be said of Cunaris, traditionally the wealthiest and most populous of Tierra's regions. During the period of the Petty Kingdoms prior to Tierra's unification, the Findlay kings of Cunaris were considered the most powerful in the land. Ruling from the fortified city of Fernandescourt, they governed a realm possessed of productive lands, fine rivers, and a strong military tradition. Indeed, to hear some Cunarians speak of it, a Findlay of Cunaris ought to have been the first to unify Tierra under his reign, not a Rendower of Aetoria.
Despite such sentiments, Cunaris has never really chafed under Aetoria's rule. Its admission into the Unified Kingdom had been early and entirely peaceful, a legacy which few in Cunaris regret.
The same could not be said of the hardscrabble folk of the wind-blown Salt Coast, who had never unified into a single entity. Split into three dozen small realms dominated by the Cazarosta pirate-kings of Leoniscourt, the Englesseys of Crittenden, and their collateral branch, the Englesseas of Castermaine, the hard-bitten, fractious states of the Salt Coast had prided themselves on self-reliance, independence, and defiance in the face of any threat. They were the first to take up arms against the threat of an expanding Aetoria. Only after three decades of military defeat did Leoniscourt, the last of the Salt Coast kingdoms, at last accept Tierran rule.
At least part of Leoniscourt's persistence was the result of outside support. Through imports of iron and coal, as well as the occasional military alliance, the Candlesses of Wulfram were the animating force behind multiple attempts to contain Aetoria's expansion. Dominating much of the north, the Kings and Queens of Wulfram saw a unified Tierra as a threat to their power and security. Only after nearly six decades of resistance did the Wulframites at last submit, though the Dukes of Wulfram have striven to use their land's prodigious natural resources to keep their seat at Tannersburg an economic powerhouse independent from Aetoria's direct authority.
Like Wulfram, Warburton joined the Unified Kingdom late. Blessed with great reserves of silver and fertile land, and separated from the Tierran mainland by the Straits of Kentaur, Warburton developed its own culture and systems of governance separate from those of the mainland. While the Harris Kings of Warburton would eventually join the Unified Kingdom in the wake of military defeat and a campaign of diplomatic pressure, its languid—some would say indolent—way of doing things mark it as a very different place from the rest of Tierra.
Last of all, there is Kentaur, the last bastion of the first people to inhabit the Tierran mainland. Pushed into the poorest and most inhospitable part of the country by centuries of encroachment from the so-called Settler-Lords who now rule the rest of the Tierran mainland, the Kentauri have developed an understandable mistrust of most outsiders. Fractious, proud, and prone to violence, most of the Kentauri clans live within the borders of the Unified Kingdom but refuse to partake in its institutions.
Only Clan Havenport serves as an exception. Possessed of Kentaur's only sizeable natural harbour, the Havenports grew wealthy and powerful off of trade with the Settler-Lords, a relationship which eventually developed into an alliance with Cunaris and Aetoria. The chief of Clan Havenport was among the very first to accept annexation into the Unified Kingdom. As the Dukes of Havenport, his descendants have served the Crown's interests in Kentaur faithfully ever since. In return, the Rendowers provide the Havenports with the support needed to reward their allies, destroy their enemies, and dominate most of Kentaur.
While these Great Houses control much of Tierra's wealth and population, the majority of the country is not administered directly by such families, but by a vast array of lesser nobility. Where the Duke of Wulfram might control the industrial city of Tannersburg and wide swathes of Wulfram's richest and most profitable land, the rest of the region is split up into the estates of dozens of lesser aristocrats, each in possession of a few villages, a handful of farming estates, or a town. However, many of these lords are equal to the heads of the Great Houses in one respect: they too each possess a seat in the Cortes, the Tierran parliament.
The Cortes is emblematic of the compromise between the Crown and the aristocracy that sits at the heart of Tierran governance. While the King reigns, it is the Cortes which represents the interests of the nobility. It is the Lords of the Cortes who perform most of the functions of government and provide the bulk of the King's Army in times of war. Thus, if he is to govern effectively, the King must negotiate effectively with these aristocrats, regardless of their wealth or seniority within the peerage. As a result, the Crown must consider the concerns and counsel of even relatively poor and undistinguished members of the nobility.
Of course, such a compromise remains an arrangement between the components of the aristocracy, not a measure of genuine popular rule. The vast majority of Tierra's people are not of the Baneblooded classes, but the Baneless commons, who build its houses, run its shops, work its fields and die in its wars. They possess little voice or influence in the processes which determine the laws they must live under, the taxes they must pay, and the leaders they must submit to.