Caphiric Undecimvirate in Vallos
The Caphiric Undecimvirate in Vallos refers to a period in Vallosi history in which nearly the entire subcontinent was under the hegemony of the First and Second Caphiric Imperiums from the early 8th Century until 1172. The collapse of the Second Imperium in 1172 had largely led to the eleven vassal kingdoms to experience immense social and political instability which was only kept in check by the threat of Caphiric intervention; much of what spurred the instability came from the constant warfare between the eleven vassals just so they could pay their full tributes on time. By the end of the 1170s, virtually all of the eleven vassal kingdoms have collapsed and some of their former royal families have been extinguished.
Caphiric Undecimvirate in Vallos | |||||||||
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| 8th Century-1172 | |||||||||
Motto: Via Veritas Vita ("The Way and The Truth and The Life") | |||||||||
| Status | Vassal states of Caphiria | ||||||||
| Official languages | Caphiric Latin | ||||||||
| Religion | Christianity (for most vassal kingdoms) | ||||||||
| Government | Various feudal absolute monarchies under Caphiric hegemony | ||||||||
| Imperator | |||||||||
• 702-XXX | XXX (first) | ||||||||
• 1127-1172 | Disputed (Great Civil War) | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
• Arrival of the First Imperium | 702 | ||||||||
• Establishment of the Undecimvirate | 705 | ||||||||
• Great Civil War begins | 1127 | ||||||||
• Fall of the Second Imperium | 1172 | ||||||||
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As the name of this historical period suggests, there were eleven vassal states within Caphiric hegemony: Septemontes, Oduria, Oeciania, Castraedilus, Lacentralis, Sinuperior, Sinuferior, Sumania, Aecia, Rultania, and Daesespia. These eleven vassal kingdoms were primarily delineated based on geographical features with little to no regard for the demographics of a given area.
Being all vassal states to Caphiria, the Undecimvirate kingdoms have had similar forms of government, legal systems, and the vast majority of them had adopted Christianity as their state religion as the faith was introduced to Vallos for the first time. The primary reason for the Undecimvirate was so the Imperium could receive a steady tribute from Vallos but without the hassle of the multiple, tiny, warring states that had preceded the period of Caphiric hegemony. Conflicts between any of the vassal kingdoms and the Imperium were infrequent for the most part with the Imperium only entering into a conflict with a vassal kingdom if they had failed to make a payment; this often meant that the incumbent royal family would get deposed in favour of a different royal family.
Kingdoms of the Undecimvirate
| Septemontes | Oduria | Oeciania |
| Castraedilus | Lacentralis | Sinuperior |
| Sinuferior | Sumania | Aecia |
| Rultania | Daesespia |
After the First Caphiric Imperium had vanquished most of the small, warring, Vallosi polities by 705, the Imperium began to reorganise the occupied territory into eleven tributary states, having opted not to overextend and take direct control of the territory like it had done to the larger islands to the east of the Vallosi mainland. The territorial divisions of the new tributary states did not take into account the demographics of the areas under occupation, but rather were based on geographical features to ensure maximum efficiency within each tributary state. Each of the eleven tributary states were governed under a feudal monarchy, complete with their own vassal royal families who were often picked from the former ruling families of the previous polities. Because the First Imperium did not favour Latins over other people groups, the royal families chosen could easily have been Latinic, Tainean, or Polynesian depending on the kingdom.
The eleven vassal kingdoms are as follows:
History
First Warring States period
Throughout the early history of Vallos, there were three main non-indigenous groups that were largely in power throughout the subcontinent. The Taineans, who arrived to northern Vallos through the Heaven Ships which were sent from Crona, the Latins, who arrived to eastern Vallos from Adonerii settlements on mainland Sarpedon, and the Polynesians, who arrived to southwestern Vallos from Australis through a gradual process of demographic island-hopping through the use of expert navigational skills. The initial sheer distance of the three groups have ensured that none of the three would be aware of the existences of the other two groups, and it would not be until the formal establishment of a more sedentary form of society that multiple, tiny polities would emerge. Inevitably, the establishment of new states would result in the three groups making contact for the first time.
Hostilities were quick to follow once contact between the Latins, Taineans, and Polynesians were established as neither of them could agree on who should be the ideal rulers of Vallos. Thus, conflicts began to emerge between multiple independent polities with the intent to vanquish their rival polities and achieve regional dominance. Although some states were often successful enough to emerge as the hegemon of their home region, these larger states would not last for more than a century and would soon collapse back into multiple polities to fill in the power vacuums that would frequently emerge. The constant warfare and endless power struggles had given Vallos the reputation of being a backward, violent, and uncivilised place by scholars living in Sarpedon or the islands surrounding the subcontinental mainland, such a reputation which had largely remained in place until the mid-20th Century. Amazingly, despite the constant conflicts, the hostilities between the polities were not based on racial lines, but rather they were based on economic or militaristic issues.
Caphiric intervention
The constant fighting and warfare in Vallos would eventually get to the point that some of the polities would begin to seek outside help from mainland Sarpedon, and particularly from the First Caphiric Imperium which by the start of the 7th Century had started to send out diplomats to the Vallosi polities, regardless of their ruling cultures unlike in later Imperiums which have held a preference for Latinic peoples. Upon their reception, the Caphiric diplomats would promise to these polities alliances under the condition that they submit a tribute to the Imperator once a year. Most of these polities would accept the offer and began sending their tributes which were proving to be quite lucrative for the Imperium to the point that they began to gradually raise their tributes; the idea was to raise the tributes to the point that the polities would be unable to pay the tributes to the full amount so that the Imperium would have a reason to intervene in Vallos to get their tributes. It would, however, take until the early 8th Century for the polities to start to fail at paying the full tributes, thus giving the cause Caphiria needed to actively intervene.
In 702, the Imperator began to personally lead an intervention into Vallos with a force of over 23,000 men, an unprecedented amount in Vallosi history up to that moment. Upon the landing of the Caphiric forces onto the Vallosi mainland, the Caphiric forces, often with the aid of the polities that were consistently able to make the full tribute payments, waged a brutal campaign of subjugation against the polities that were delinquent on their tribute payments. The overwhelming size of the Caphiric forces was easily able to vanquish any and all forms of armed opposition by 705 when the last of the polities submitted to the Imperator. In the aftermath of the Caphiric intervention into Vallos, the Imperium had decided that rather than directly annex the territories into Caphiria proper it would be better in the long-term to establish new tributary states across the subcontinent. Based on the geographical features of Vallos, the Imperium was able to carve out eleven vassal kingdoms, each of them ruled by the royal families of the polities that did not get forcibly subjugated. Asides from a few pockets of land that were not subjugated by the Imperium, the new vassal states spanned almost the entirety of the subcontinental mainland.
Undecimvirate years
Throughout the Undecimvirate period, the eleven vassal kingdoms were obligated to send out an annual tribute to the Imperator. This was initially one quarter of their annual revenue, but it was soon changed to a flat rate just one century later. None of the kingdoms were obligated to be cordial to one another, though they were discouraged from making any territorial conquests. Nonetheless, it was pretty common for the vassal states to wage war against one another just so they could pay their annual tribute on time; the clashes would only get more and more frequent once the tribute was changed to a flat rate. Failure to pay the tribute in full or on time would result in the Imperium staging an intervention against the delinquent vassal state, with its royal family being forcibly removed and replaced with a new one, often a cadet branch of the previous royal family to preserve legitimacy and continuity. Attempting to revolt against the Imperium would also lead to similar consequences; neighbouring vassals were often encouraged to fight against any insubordinate vassal kingdoms so as to keep all vassal kingdoms in line.
Despite the warfare and the occasional insubordination and missed tribute payments, the kingdoms of the Undecimvirate were noted to be relatively stable though whether or not they were only stable because of the Imperium has been a debatable topic for many Vallosi historians, but the fact that the Undecimvirate was able to survive the collapse of the First Imperium has often been cited as evidence that the vassal states were capable of surviving on their own at one point. The overall stability of the kingdoms allowed for Christianity to be introduced to the subcontinent where it was able to become the state and majority religions of most of the eleven vassal states, though the southern vassal kingdoms were a bit more difficult to convert and thus Christianity was only able to achieve plurality status in those areas. Cultural diversity in Vallos was also at its zenith at this time as Latinic, Tainean, and Polynesian groups began to intermarry with one another; such a period of tolerance would never be replicated in later centuries once the Occident began to maintain a permanent hold on most of the subcontinent.
Fall of the Second Imperium
The fall of the Second Imperium is often said to have began with the start of the Great Civil War in 1127. The over forty-year-long conflict over who should be the rightful Imperator had largely caused a mass of confusion for the vassal kingdoms now that there were violent competing claims to the Imperium. To make things worse, the vassal states were unsure of which claimed Imperator should they should pay their tribute to, so the kingdoms began to stockpile on their wealth under the belief that should the Great Civil War end, which they were confident in that the Imperium would endure, they will be able to make large lump tribute to the winning Imperator without risking an intervention for backing the wrong Imperator. The sheer faith in that the Imperium would survive the Great Civil War was the ultimate reason why the vassal kingdoms were able to survive despite there being no serious threat of force from Sarpedon to keep them in line. Unfortunately for the vassal kingdoms, the end of the Great Civil War in 1172 had not only resulted in there being no clear winner, the Second Imperium had collapsed into multiple competing realms and a rump state that briefly served as the second incarnation of the old Caphiric Republic.
After news had spread that the Imperium had collapsed in 1172, the Undecimvirate entered into a period of a quick demise. The confirmation that there was no longer any threats of force to keep the vassal kingdoms in line, combined with the overall lack of stability due to the constant raid and warfare in the name of maintaining their stockpiles of wealth for an outcome that never happened, led to the nobles of each of the kingdoms to rebel against their lieges in hopes of getting parts of the stockpiled wealth. Within a decade, not only did most of the eleven vassal kingdoms had collapsed, the former royal families of these kingdoms had either been deposed or outright extinguished in the ensuing chaos that followed. The former nobility of the vassal kingdoms had split away and by the 1270s the vassal kingdoms have been reduced to either multiple competing polities or a miniscule rump state. The Second Vallosi Warring States period had officially begun, and there would be no sizeable polity in Vallos that were comparable to the size of the eleven vassal kingdoms until the colonial era.
Kingdom governments
The eleven kingdoms were tributaries to the First and Second Caphiric Imperiums. They were organised based on a feudal system in that the king, an ostensibly absolute monarch, held dominion over multiple semi-autonomous vassals who in turn held dominion over their own vassals. Each vassal was obligated to pay a tribute to their respective lieges, and the kings were obligated to pay a tribute to their hegemon the Caphiric Imperator. None of the eleven kingdoms were obligated to protect one another, though they were discouraged from annexing additional territory, and it was a common occurrence for multiple vassal states to conduct raids against one another to secure their own tribute payments. The frequency of these raids often had destabilising effects on the kingdoms, and oftentimes a king may attempt to rebel against the Imperium or a noble may attempt to rebel against the king in protest against the constant tribute payments some would had to have made whenever the tributes were not high enough to satisfy the Imperium. The overall instability of these realms thanks to the constant raids were only kept in check by the threat of Caphiric intervention by the end of the Undecimvirate era, and thus it was not surprising that the vassal states would collapse very quickly once the Second Imperium had fallen.
Other Caphiric vassals
Other Caphiric vassals in what is now Vallos has included the Old Emeritan Republic, now Lucrecia, which was rather unique for a vassal state as it was never made into a vassal kingdom and was even allowed to retain its republican form of government. Indeed, the Republic was nominally independent for the most part with the only caveat being that the Consuls were subject to the approval of the Imperator, who had made himself the republic's permanent designated dictator. What this meant was that the Imperator could, at any moment, unilaterally remove one or both Consuls on a whim; the only time such a prerogative has been used was in the year 846 when the Imperator had removed the Consuls for their failure to put down a plebian revolt. Unlike the vassal kingdoms on mainland Vallos, Emerita was able to survive the collapsed of the Second Imperium unscathed having had spent the years of the Great Civil War gradually asserting its autonomy and eventual independence.