Constitutional history of Urcea

The Constitution of Urcea developed over the course of more than a millennia. Various influences, including popular forces, the Catholic Church, and ancient Great Levantine institutions all contributed to the establishment of the modern Government of Urcea.

Origins and Estates

Many of the constitutional institutions of Urcea find their origins in the government of Great Levantia, a classical republic based on executive Consuls, an aristocratic Senate, and a democratic tribal assembly. Many scholars have noted that Urcea is characterized by such an embrasure of semi-democratic institutions while eschewing total democracy, either classical or modern, and scholars have posited that this impulse is a cultural tradition handed down from the days of Great Levantia. The tribal assemblies were the only institution to survive the collapse of Great Levantia, and in their Urceopolitan form they elected Gaius Julius Cicurinus and his predecessors as Dux of Urceopolis, and formed the backbone of political life in Urceopolis until the elevation of the Duchy into the hereditary Archduchy of Urceopolis, when the Assemblies began to lose their authority vis-a-vis the Archduke. Meeting regularly until 852, they continued to meet intermittently up through 917 in some form or other as the Archduke began to consolidate authority over the affairs of state. For a century, the Archduke sat alone, though far from ruling with anything resembling the later impulse of absolutism. The tribes continued to exist even as they did not meet, the authority of the Archduke was largely checked by powerful landowners and optimates throughout the Archduchy.

From the assembly's tribes came the Estates of Urcea, groupings of people with not only an important impact on Urcean culture, but also groupings that had a profound impact on the development of the Constitution of Urcea and the general political climate of early Urcea. Due to the continued growth of the realm and the need for administrative assistance, Emperor Adrian II, first Emperor of the Levantines from Urcea, decided to call for a new assembly to replace the lapsed ancient institution, creating the system of Great Landsmeets, which would directly represent the fifty Estates. The Landsmeet would remain in place following the Golden Bull of 1098 and the creation of Urcea as a Kingdom. The Great Landsmeet would subsequently be called often during the two centuries of its existence, solving legal disputes put before them by the King, administering newly acquired territories on behalf of the King, and serving as something like the Kingdom's highest arbitration court (besides that of the Apostolic King himself).

The Landsmeet

Increasing incidents between and within Estates, however, and the growing complexity of governing the united realm necessitated a replacement for the tribal assembly. In 1022, Emperor Adrian II, the first Julian elected Emperor of the Levantines, formally called for the first meeting of a "great" Landsmeet of all of the Estates. It would serve as the replacement for the tribal assembly and would be an authoritative source of conflict resolution and legal consultation for the Archduke-Grand Duke. Rather than represent any specific area. The Great Landsmeet, like the assembly before it, represented the fifty tribal Estates of the Estates of Urcea, which, by the 11th century, were spread out throughout the country and no longer had a meaningful urban-rural divide between them. Upon the elevation of the realm to a Kingdom with the Golden Bull of 1098, the system of Great Landsmeets were elevated to a Royal institution. Great Landsmeets were subsequently called dozens of times between 1022 and 1243, when its use had depreciated to the point of irrelevance and it was fully supplanted by the Concilium Daoni, which it created in 1146.

In 1146, King Niall I and the Estates of Urcea were at odds over the expenses incurred by Niall's involvement in putting down an uprising in the Levantine Empire, for which he was awarded the Electorate of Canaery. At an impasse, the Great Landsmeet and the King agreed to convene a council of commoners comprised of privilegiata and freemen, the latter of which were not allowed to sit or vote in the Great Landsmeet. The council of commoners was designed to propose independent compromises for the King and Great Landsmeet to consider. This common council was comprised of freemen and privilegiata selected to represent each Estate, and the King's Steward was entrusted with the responsibility of organizing the council. With the beginning of the Saint's War in 1214, it became dangerous for important optimates to travel, and travel in general was disrupted. The continuing growth of the nation - the same factor that weakened the tribal assembly - also made it difficult for the Great Landsmeet to fully meet. The common council was more flexible as it required only delegations from Estates and not the optimate heads themselves, and in 1221 the King and Great Landsmeet gave the common council the same force of law that the Landsmeet possessed. By doing so, the Great Landsmeet had relegated itself to secondary status and it was now only useful for resolving disputes within Estates themselves. Existing for another two impotent decades, Estates themselves were proving more than adequate of handling internal disputes. King Aedanicus III called one final Great Landsmeet in 1243, but it was not called again. Its existence remained "on the books" until legal reforms implemented by King Lucás II in 1415 formally dissolved its existence. From the 12th century on, it became clear that the Concilium Daoni would be the primary body of consultation for the Apostolic King of Urcea.

A "government apart from the King"

The 1700s saw several landmark events which transformed the Concilium Daoni into a true national legislature, and consequently the growth of the government of Urcea as a constitutional state. These changes not only came in the form of greater authority and specific legal changes, but in perception in the minds of its participants and the Urcean people. Prior to the 18th century, the Apostolic King of Urcea alone was viewed by nearly every member of Urcean society as the person ultimately responsible for the governance of the state. By the end of the 1700s, however, the Daoni and institutions surrounding it were viewed by the public, by its participants, and by the Apostolic King as more or less an independent junior partner of the King. Accordingly, for the first time, Urcea had what contemporaries called (in a P.G.W. Gelema paraphrase): a "government apart from the King."

Modern developments

The Empire-in-fact

Main article: Empire-in-fact