Romany Kingdoms
The Romany Kingdoms is a term referring to a loose confederacy of three Latinic kingdoms located in what is now the southeasternmost region in Castadilla. It is traditionally considered to be the legal predecessor to Navidadia, and was the last independent Latinic polity in mainland Vallos. The confederacy was established in 1503 after the signing of the Union of the Prefects which united three Latinic petty kingdoms under a mutual alliance against the Loa Kingdom and Empire until they were conquered by the latter in 1751. The three kingdoms of which the confederacy comprised of were Iria, Nova Venceia, and Constantia, each of them occupying an equal amount of territory within the confederacy. Being under constant threat of being conquered by the neighbouring Loa polity has largely made the confederacy try and reach to its neighbouring polities, including the Viceroyalty of Los Rumas which developed close relations with the three kingdoms, seeing them as a buffer state between them and the Loa.
Romany Kingdoms Regnorum Romanium (Caphiric Latin) | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1503-1751 | |||||||||
| Status | Three independent Latinic kingdoms under a loose confederation during the early modern period | ||||||||
| Official languages | Caphiric Latin | ||||||||
| Common languages | |||||||||
| Religion | Christianity | ||||||||
| Demonym(s) | Romany | ||||||||
| Government | Confederal monarchy | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
• Union of the Prefects | 1503 | ||||||||
• Alliance with the Viceroyalty of Los Rumas | 1643 | ||||||||
• Loa invasion begins | 1748 | ||||||||
• Ruin of the Romany | 1751 | ||||||||
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The confederacy was landlocked and small both in terms of territorial size and population which meant that they were almost always going to be on the defensive whenever the Loa realm would decide to invade the confederacy so as to secure a vital natural border as well as eliminate a potential nuisance. Indeed, the kingdoms had to rely on the support of other polities for protection as well as for trade as there was no way for the confederacy to trade with the Loa Kingdom and the subsequent Loa Empire. Nonetheless, the confederacy was able to thrive during its early years, becoming very good at defending itself against Loa attacks.
The Romany Kingdoms, as the name suggests, was a loose confederacy of three kingdoms which were accorded large amounts of independence and sovereignty over internal affairs, with the confederal government being exclusively in charge of external affairs which were subject to the approval of the representatives of the three kingdoms. It was more akin to an alliance with a central council than an actual nation state. The three kingdoms were each ruled by a hereditary monarch and were govern by their own legislative assemblies which were largely advisory and yet had enough influence that it was generally seen as a bold yet hugely unpopular move for a monarch to go against the advice of his legislature.
The power imbalance inherent in the confederacy's political system would begin to emerge during the latter years of the 17th Century as the kingdoms began to abuse their ability to sway the vote in the confederal government just through the amount of representatives that were sent to the confederal legislature. This resulted in the confederacy getting weaker and weaker during the 18th Century as the Loa Empire grew and grew through its conquests of other neighbouring states before finally turning its attention towards the Romany Kingdoms in 1748 and embark on a three-year invasion that would lead to the kingdoms getting conquered, thus becoming the newest territorial acquisition of the Loa Empire through war for the next century until the empire collapsed in the 1870s. The Romany Kingdoms are a major focal point for Navidadian history as many Navidadians self-report having some Romany ancestry.
History
Background
Prior to the emergence of the three Romany Kingdoms and the Second Vallosi Warring States period, most of the Vallosi subcontinent was under the jurisdiction of the Undecimvirate vassal kingdoms. During this time, it was largely a backwater area with few settlements asides from a few small Latinic villages. The area would not see development until after the collapse of the Second Caphiric Imperium and the subsequent fall of the Undecimvirate kingdoms. Among the petty kingdoms that broke free from their former lieges, there were approximately twelve Latinic petty kingdoms in the area of the Romany Kingdoms. Many of them were no larger than the average city-state, and were highly centralised realms due to their small size and population allowing for the petty kings to rule over their realms directly without having to rely on creating vassals. This would prove especially important to the survival and overall stability of these polities as without vassals there were very few ways for them to collapse due to internal factors.
After the initial chaos that came after the collapse of the eleven Undecimvirate kingdoms, the multiple petty kingdoms would begin to interact with one another. Unusually for the period in Vallosi history, these interactions were cordial and often beneficial for all polities involved. This allowed for the rulers of those polities to develop good relations with one another and even enter into negotiations over which heir should marry which daughter. Most of these negotiations involved interested kings sending their most eligible daughters to the prospective groom who, alongside his parents, were in charge of selecting which daughter should be his bride. This practice had allowed for the petty kingdoms to peacefully consolidate into three kingdoms with no bloodshed. These three kingdoms, known as Iria, Nova Venceia, and Constantia, would remain very good allies with one another.
Union of the Prefects
As the polities of southwestern Vallos began to consolidate, there would emerge a rival to the three Latinic kingdoms in the form of the nascent Loa Kingdom which was starting to consolidate the Polynesian polities on the southeastern coast and was beginning to consolidate areas further inland. Fears of what could happen if the three Latinic kingdoms did not form a formal alliance began to emerge due to the uncertainty of how the Loa would treat them once they began to encroach on their territories. These fears would urge the kings of the three kingdoms, alongside their nobility, to find a solution that could potentially help out with their goals of ensuring long-term independence without suffering humiliating defeats at the hands of their nascent rival. This would soon culminate in 1503 with the signing of the Union of the Prefects which established a mutual alliance between the three Latinic kingdoms against the Loa Kingdom and any potential Loa successor state that may emerge in the future.
The exact details of how the alliance would be structured necessitated a long series of negotiations between the most prominent people of the three kingdoms such as whether or not the new alliance should be a sovereign government that would handle both internal and external affairs or a collective government that can only handle external affairs while the kingdoms, which would be largely independent, would be in charge of their own internal affairs. A confederal legislature would be established at the confluence of the three kingdoms so as to prevent any of the three kingdoms from attempting to sway the confederal government in favour of their policies, and representatives would be sent from each of the three member kingdoms with no lower or upper limit on the amount of representatives that a kingdom may wish to send. Ultimately, there would be no designated head of state for the alliance, which by then was organised as a confederacy, due to concerns over potential biases that a hypothetical head of state might bring as well as to ensure that it is ultimately the kingdoms that were in charge of the new confederacy, and not the confederal government.
Conflict with the Loa
The Romany Kingdoms was noted for being a rather formidable opponent to the growing Loa Kingdom which had started to emerge sometime before the Union of the Prefects. During these early years, conflicts with the Loa were not over either nations attempting to conquer one another so much as the two nations attempting to subjugate one another. Although none of these conflicts resulted in a conclusive victory, they did increase overall pride in the confederacy thanks to it being able to form an effective fighting force against militaristic rivals. However, the earlier conflicts were much less frequent and both the Romany and the Loa were initially more likely to establish stable trading relationships for decades at a time while maintaining their own spheres of influence. For the most part, the rivalry between the Romany and the Loa was much less important to either nations beyond the occasional fight to attempt to subjugate the other once every few decades.
It would not be until the early half of the 17th Century that the overall dynamic and rivalry between the Romany and the Loa would begin to intensify as the latter's growth began to exceed the former at a much faster rate than before, and with the Loa beginning to enter into an era of expansionism. With relations between the Romany and the Loa deteriorating, conflicts between the two polities were starting to become more frequent, and the Romany was beginning to realise that these new conflicts were no longer in the name of subjugating their rival, but rather to ensure their own survival against an increasingly imperialistic power that was slowly conquering its neighbours whether through forced treaties or brutal and devastating invasions. It was also during this time when the Romany began to sought the alliance and hopefully the protection of a larger polity, which it would find in the growing Viceroyalty of Los Rumas. It did not deter the Loa from attempting to invade, however, but it did give the Romany a much-need trading partner and a reliable source of supplies.
Fall of the Romany
The confederacy began to experience a decline during the second half of the 17th Century as the nobility began to get largely complacent with the long-term survival of the kingdoms. For one, the overall political process in the confederal government had began to veer towards a more personalistic culture wherein legislators began to squabble against one another over highly trivial matters and often tacking on last-minute amendments to proposed external affairs decisions in an effort to either further their own interests or to force the voting process on the particular decision to start all over again. This was often further compounded by the highly common practice of the kingdoms attempting to sway the vote by sending representatives that exceed or go far below the average, thus resulting in situations in which external affairs decisions take much longer to be finalised due to the sheer amount of representatives being sent or are defeated all because one kingdom decided to send only one representative.
It was a miracle, however, that the Romany Kingdoms were able to survive so long despite the deteriorating political situation all because the Loa Empire was more focused on conquering other Polynesian petty kingdoms and securing the rest of their borders in an effort to isolate the confederacy from just about any potential ally that could have been found in the few remaining small, independent polities. The last of these smaller polities were conquered in 1748, and soon the Loa Empire began to turn its attention towards the Romany Kingdoms and would embark on a three-year-long invasion against the confederacy with the intent to secure the last segment of their border as well as to put an end to a consistent threat to their territorial integrity. The confederacy, although initially doing well enough to hold back the Loa invasion to the point that the Loa advances were often slow and the result of long, drawn-out battles, the Romany forces were eventually eliminated in early 1751, thus allowing the invading forces to conquer the kingdoms and forcefully integrate them into the empire.
Flight of the Romany
The conquest of the Romany Kingdoms by the Loa Empire was only the beginning of the woes of the Romany. Not only were the Loa particularly expansionistic at this time, they were also not really keen on ruling over land if said land's people have not been properly assimilated into both the culture of the Loa as well as the faith of the Loa. Thus, the empire began to embark on a huge assimilation campaign against the Romany, targeting their culture, religion, and nobility. These measures were noted to be exceptionally brutal and saw people being killed if they had refused. The news of this brutality was initially suppressed as the empire had largely prevented any independent reporting of the assimilation measures, knowing full well that if word to get out there would be retaliation from the Viceroyalty of Loa Rumas which had designated itself as being the main guarantor of the independence of the Romany Kingdoms.
News of the conquest and brutal persecution of the Romany would not emerge until the Romany began to flee their homeland for safer lands such as the Viceroyalty where they had brought along horror stories about their land under the rule of the Loa. Tales of savage massacres of entire villages just for refusing to convert from Christianity, and families being forced into positions of permanent domestic servitude just for not being deemed Loa enough. Many of these stories were fast to be published by the Viceroyalty's biggest publishers and were sold at high profits due to the sheer notoriety that the Loa had garnered in the eyes of the colonists as well as the overall sympathies expressed towards the Romany for being persecuted for sticking to their beliefs as well as for preserving their cultural identity in the face of often violent assimilation measures. The Romany were seen as practical martyrs by the Viceroyalty and their descendants, inspired by those horror stories, would settle in their ancestor's former homelands and establish Navidadia.
Government
The Romany Kingdoms was a loose Latinic confederacy which had three member kingdoms, each being largely independent and had their own governments. The confederal government was seated in a central location known as Prefectoria, which was a palace located at the confluence of the three member kingdoms and was surrounded at all sides by numerous settlements. Membership in the confederal government consisted of aristocrats, and since 1674 some merchants, from each of the three kingdoms; there was no set limit on the amount of representatives each kingdom may bring, but the average was usually ten per kingdom. Because of the overall independence of the member kingdoms, the exact power and authority of the confederal government was exclusively limited to external affairs and even then any decisions pertaining to the external affairs of the Romany Kingdoms required the approval of a majority of the representatives from each kingdom. Oftentimes, these decisions could be somewhat influenced by the amount of representatives a kingdom sends to the confederal government for each meeting; those who wished to delay proceedings as much as possible often sent far more than ten representatives while those who wished for more decisiveness often sent just one representative. This abuse in power imbalance is often cited as one of the reasons why the Romany Kingdoms wound up falling to the Loa Empire in the 1750s.
Each of the three kingdoms were ruled by their own kings who became as such through hereditary succession, and each kingdom had their own legislature which dealt with the internal affairs of their respective kingdoms; membership in these legislatures were also limited to nobles and, eventually, a few merchants. They were often highly influential, particularly as it was up to these local legislatures to appoint who would represent their kingdom at the confederal government which was especially apparent whenever they send far below or far above the average so as to influence certain decisions over how the confederacy conducts its external affairs that may or may not be popular to a particular kingdom. Although initially uncommon during the early years of the confederacy, the practice of blatantly tilting the vote towards or against such matters became more and more common during the latter years of the 17th Century and up until the end of the confederacy. No current confederations use such a form of confederal government, mostly out of concerns that it would only destabilise their governments to the point of collapse or dissolution.