Deric States

The Deric States, commonly referred to as Dericania also sometimes called the Deric Confederation and officially the Confederation of the Estates and Principalities of Dericania is a confederation of eight Derian countries in eastern Levantia. It is comprised of the majority of the former territory of the Kingdom of Dericania excepting Burgundie. The Confederation was established in the aftermath of the Great War, and all 8 states are part of the Levantine Union.

The Confederation previously additionally contained the states of Hollona and Diorisia and Lutsana. Both states seceded without conflict in 2023 and 2026, respectively.

The Deric States is considered the legal successor or the Kingdom of Dericania, though its direct predecessor is the Derian National Congress, groups of liberals and moderate nationalists and several states in Dericania who confederated following the end of the Deric Republic. The Deric Confederation has been a member of the Levantine Union since its inception. Many scholars and observers have noted that the function of the Deric Confederation has been increasingly subsumed into that of the Levantine Union, and some have called for the absorption of the Confederation into the Union.

The Presidency of the Deric States - a largely ceremonial position that entitles presiding over the meetings of the Deric States and is nominally head of state - is held ex officio by the Archbishop of Corcra. Previously, the Archbishop served as ex officio arch-chancellor and vicar for the Kingdom of Dericania, and the special relationship between the Archbishop and the Deric community was maintained following the dissolution of the Kingdom with the end of the Holy Levantine Empire.

Nomenclature
The full name of the Deric States is the Confederation of the Estates and Principalities of Dericania, sometimes also shortened to Dericania. Things relating to the Deric States are called Deric while its people are referred to as Derian, but are also sometimes referred to as Conine after Emperor Conchobar I of the Holy Levantine Empire in a similar fashion to Urcea's Julian.

Structure
The Deric States had an organizational structure that, nominally, provided for the administrative and coordination of the public efforts of its member states. In practice, however, the Deric States major apparatuses were largely replaced with those of the Levantine Union, with the Deric States reduced to a coordinating entity for the Union by the late 1970s. The primary 21st century role of the Deric States was to provide a unified judiciary system for its members.

The administrative head of the Deric States was the Elector-President of the Confederation of the Estates and Principalities of Dericania. This office rotated on an annual basis between the permanent ambassadors of its member states. The Elector-President's role was to oversee the bureaucratic administration of the Deric States, and in practice by the 21st century this largely entailed the appointment of judges and serving as a partial intermediary between the Levantine Union and specific bureaucratic agencies of the individual Deric States. The Elector-President served as the chairperson of the Confederate Council of Dericania.

The Confederate Council of Dericania was designed to have wide-reaching legislative authority over the affairs of the members of the Deric States, including foreign and domestic issues. It was to be made up of the permanent ambassadors to the Deric States. In practice, the Council exercised its authority in the 1950s and 60s and played an important role in the rebuilding of Dericania, but after around 1970 it began to vote to delegate its authorities and prerogatives to the Levantine Union Diet or back to the member states. The Confederate Council, intended to be the organization's most important institution, did not meet at all between 1988 and 2029. Part of the Confederate Council was the Committee for Tariff and Trade Protection, which had full statutory authority to set the foreign duties and tariffs for the Deric States. In practice, the Committee was fully supplanted by the trade area regulations established by the Levantine Union Diet, and the Committee held its last meeting in February 1962.

Depreciated agencies
The Deric States, at the time of its dissolution, had many depreciated or vestigial agencies within its administrative apparatus that had not functioned for decades as of the 2020s. The depreciated nature of its institutions were one of the stated causes of the its dissolution.

Besides the Confederate Council of Dericania, the other high ranking depreciated institution was the Confederation Defense Force (CDF), which was intended to be a federalized armed forces for the entire Deric States. It was largely supplanted in its role by the Coordinating Office of Dericanian Forces (CODF) within the Levantine Union Defense Council, which fully supplanted its jurisdiction by the mid-1980s with respect to federalized Dericanian forces. In its final form, the CDF remained primarily responsible for the military defense of Alba Concordia.

Many subsidiary agencies of the Deric States Vicarial Administration remained dormant or lost function over the course of the organization's history. The Department of Economic Development and Intellectual Property was mostly replaced by the Levantine Union Economic Development Agency, with the former being reduced to a largely obscure giver of grant funding. The Department of Mediatization Claims was intended to be a lower court than the Cort de Antics for settling issues between the member states and The Dispossessed, and though it was one of the most high functioning part of the Deric States, it heard its last case in 1992. The Commission for Truth and Reconciliation in Mediatization was established to investigate claims of injustice during the mediatizations from the 19th century to Third Fratricide, and issued its final report in 1988. The Commission continued to exist, but largely as a means to achieve political ends between 1988 and its dissolution in 2029.