Second Vallosi Warring States period
The Second Vallosi Warring States period is a period in the history of Vallos in which the subcontinent was divided into numerous small, independent polities that have emerged after the fall of the Second Caphiric Imperium and the vassal kingdoms of the Undecimvirate period. The Undecimvirate kingdoms were mostly able to keep themselves stable throughout the Great Civil War that had been happening in Caphiria by stockpiling wealth to pay back tribute payments should the civil war end with the Imperium remaining. When the Imperium wound up collapsing instead after the end of the Great Civil War resulted in there being no winners, there was no longer a threat of force to keep the vassal kingdoms in Vallos from rebelling or collapsing, and soon much of the nobility of these vassal states began to declare themselves as independent states, often taking in some of the stockpiled wealth after raiding the lands under the direct rule of their former lieges and threatening to do further raids unless they were paid off.
Second Warring States period | |||||||||||||||
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| 1172-16th Century | |||||||||||||||
| Status | Multiple independent microstates with the occasional larger realm | ||||||||||||||
| Official languages | Varied | ||||||||||||||
| Common languages | |||||||||||||||
| Religion | Christianity Polynesian Polytheism | ||||||||||||||
| Government | Various feudal absolute monarchies and microstates | ||||||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||||||
• Fall of the Second Imperium | 1172 | ||||||||||||||
• Fall of the Undecimvirate kingdoms | 1180 | ||||||||||||||
• Privateering begins | 1450 | ||||||||||||||
• Arrival of Mauricio Delepas | 1497 | ||||||||||||||
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Very few of the realms that have existed throughout the Second Warring States period were larger than the multitudes of small, petty kingdoms. Some of the most well-known cases include the kingdoms of Septemontes and Sumania, which were also the only two Undecimvirate vassal kingdoms to have survived with their royal lineages intact. The rest of the vassal kingdoms, on the other hand, have largely collapsed and their royal lineages eliminated altogether in the ensuing chaos whether through civil wars like in Oduria or through the nobility fighting against each other in multi-front battles. As such, the overall stability of the subcontinent would not return to the kind found during the Undecimvirate period until the beginning of the colonial era in 1497.
When the Second Vallosi Warring States period actually ended is largely a subject to historical debate, and the year 1497, which was when the Viceroyalty of Los Rumas was established has often been used a the year when the Second Vallosi Warring States period started to end as the Pelaxian colonists began to establish their sovereignty over much of the subcontinent and conquering the various petty realms of central and eastern Vallos as well as the southern Latinic kingdoms of Vallos which now make up modern-day Vallejar. Regardless, most Occidental inhabitants of Vallos from the colonial era up until the 1980s have largely attributed this period in Vallosi history to be the natural state of Vallos, and that the Occident was eventually able to civilise the subcontinent and turn them from multiple warring polities into a few, sizeable, stable, civilised countries.
Geographical groups
The overall political geography of Vallos had allowed for a few polities to become dominant in their given home regions. The three largest and most predominant polities during this regions were:
- The Kingdom of Septemontes, located in the western half of the Astol Plains, was highly reliant on maintaining vassal states around its borders to ensure its overall protection, but the predominantly flat geography did allow for the kingdom to project its influence to areas that were pretty far from its core which more than made up for its geographical vulnerabilities. It was one of the most successful realms in Vallos during this period; it was also one of the only two Undecimvirate vassal kingdoms to have survived the collapse of the Second Caphiric Imperium.
- The Kingdom of Sumania, located primarily in the southernmost peninsula in Vallos, was mostly protected by the mountains and rivers that made up its borders. Although this did ensure that the kingdom would be protected, it also mostly isolated it from the rest of the subcontinent beyond its immediate neighbouring realms.
- The Loa Kingdom, located to the east of Sumania, had not only mountains for defense, but also a large river that led to an inland sea. This, coupled with the Loa's excellent navigational skills as per Polynesian tradition, had allowed for the nascent kingdom to not only survive, but to also thrive during this period in Vallosi history. This highly advantageous geographical position had allowed for the kingdom to consistently grow even after the colonial era had begun, thus ensuring that it would become the Loa Empire in the 18th Century.
Cultural groups
There are approximately five cultural groups that were extant throughout the Second Vallosi Warring States period, with all of them having had their own realms of one form or another. The main reason behind the categorisation of the petty kingdoms into their main cultural groups are mostly because the predominant cultural group often determined the main cultural values of these polities as well as their own flavours of government. These are the five main culture groups that existed during this period in Vallosi history:
- Latins: The Latins were the direct descendants of Adonerii settlers, and were the first Occidental people to reside in Vallos. It was through them that Occidental forms of government were introduced to the subcontinent for the first time; initially republicanism before the First Vallosi Warring States period had made them become more and more supportive of monarchism as they began to actively fight against the other inhabitants of Vallos. Since the fall of the Undecimvirate, they were more often than not supportive of more feudal forms of government as a means to effectively administer their polities.
- Taineans: The Taineans usually served as either an agricultural class or as the ruling class depending on the main culture of the petty kingdom they resided in. As a group with origins in Crona, the Taineans have had their own unique adaptations of government and political structures in the petty kingdoms that they happen to rule over. They were noted for being more democratically-minded and relied heavily on maternal lines of succession to determine who should be their leaders. Another major aspect of the Taineans is the multitude of dialects found in their language with some dialects being completely unintelligible from one another despite being the same language; this disunity in dialects in often cited as a reason with there exists even to this day a very noticeable division between northern Taineans and southern Taineans.
- Loa: The main Polynesian group in Vallos, the Loa rose to predominance during the Second Vallosi Warring States period once the latinised Polynesian ruling classes were overthrown during the fall of the Undecimvirate. Their main realm, the Loa Kingdom, was one of the few realms during this period of Vallosi history to have attained a much greater size and power in relation to the petty kingdoms that were highly common throughout the subcontinent. This has allowed for their civilisation to survive the colonial era with very little to no colonisation attempts landing on their lands. This has also made them the only major cultural group in Vallos to have largely been spared from occidentalisation which has often led to them becoming highly hated upon by the Occidental-descended people of Vallos.
- Cuasilatins: Exclusive to the Kingdom of Septemontes, the Cuasilatins are a group of people of mixed Latin and Tainean ancestry who have mostly emerged during the Undecimvirate era. Being a mixture of two major cultures, the Cuasilatins, not to be confused for the }Mestizos who have emerged during the colonial era, have largely embraced an adaptation of Occidental values as well as an Occidental form of government that is mixed with elements of the Tainean culture. They are often used as high-level administrators during the colonial era, and yet were largely excluded from being considered Delepasians due to their emergence long preceding the colonial era.
- Vallosi: The remaining purely indigenous people of Vallos, as well as the people who had established the first known form of society on the subcontinent known as the Glaistic civilisation. Due to their overall rarity, there were very few petty kingdoms that were under indigenous Vallosi rule, and for the few of them that were they were generally in more remote and isolated areas where the indigenous Vallosi were not assimilated into the more predominant cultural groups. Of the main cultural groups during this time, they are the only ones to have entirely disappeared with little to no people in modern-day Vallos identifying as indigenous Vallosi.
Proposed starts and ends
Traditionally, the Second Vallosi Warring States period is given the timespan of having started in 1172 and having ended in 1497. There have been numerous disagreements amongst historians over when this period on Vallosi history began and when it had ended, often with many different proposals over a probably timespan. Nonetheless, all historians have agreed that the Second Vallosi Warring States period had started due to events happening in Caphiria which had had drastic effects on Vallos. The following timespans are considered to be acceptable amongst historians of Vallosi history:
Start years:
- 1127: 1127 is the year in which the Great Civil War began in Caphiria, with the Undecimvirate vassal states beginning to stockpile on wealth for lump tribute payments pending the eventual end of the civil war.
- 1170: The Second Caphiric Imperium began to collapse at around this time, with numerous realms splitting away in fear of the potential devastation that may happen once the Imperium collapses. It was also during this time that the Undecimvirate kingdoms were beginning to enter into a period of instability once it was becoming clear that Caphiria was not going to survive the end of the Great Civil War.
- 1172: The traditional starting year of the Second Vallosi Warring States period, 1172 was when the Great Civil War had finally ended and the Second Caphiric Imperium would collapse after almost fifty years of civil war.
End years:
- 1450: 1450 is the year in which the petty polities on the north and eastern coasts of Vallos began to focus more on taking advantage of an immense increase in trade through St. Brendan's Strait through privateering efforts, thus being the prelude to the era of the Vallosi piratocracies.
- 1497: The traditional ending year of the Second Vallosi Warring States period, the year 1497 was when Isurian Captain Mauricio Delepas arrived on the shores of Bahia de Los Rumas and established the Viceroyalty of Los Rumas.
- 1566: 1566 is usually given as an alternative year that signified the end of the Second Vallosi Warring States period, particularly by Tainean regionalists and Castoustecists who prefer a history of Vallos that does not focus too much on the Occidental peoples of the subcontinent. This year is significant for it being when the pirate kingdom of Oustec was established; it would conquer the last of the petty kingdoms in northern Vallos.
History
After over four hundred years of relative stability brought upon them by the possibility of another Caphiric intervention, which had happened often whenever tributes were not being paid, the fall of the Second Caphiric Imperium had put an end to the main motivator behind the vassal kingdoms of Vallos being able to remain stable for so long despite the interventions and the occasional insubordinations. The lack of the threat of Caphiric intervention had allowed numerous nobles in the Undecimvirate kingdoms to begin to extort some of the stockpiled wealth from their lieges, often declaring a state of open rebellion against them if they felt that the amount of money that they had gotten was simply too small, and even then many had decided to rebel anyway after realising that their lieges were simply unable to stand up for themselves without a major power backing them. With that realisation, many of the vassal kingdoms would undergo a period of rapid decline, almost like a devolution back into the multiple petty kingdoms that were prevalent during the First Vallosi Warring States period, often with the former royal families falling into either obscurity or were entirely wiped out altogether.
The former Kingdom of Oduria was one of the few exceptions amongst the Undecimvirate kingdoms that had collapsed. It did not collapse because of rebellious nobles wanting to extort money from their lieges, but rather it collapsed because it entered into a state of civil war. The major factions were between those who wished to usurp the Odurian throne and declare themselves to be the rightful Imperator in Vallos while others had wished to split away from a kingdom that was clearly trying to become a Caphiric government-in-exile which would risk reducing them to the status of second-class citizens. The Odurian civil war would last for approximately two decades, and by the time all major fighting had ceased there was no longer a realm that had much of an interest in claiming the Odurian throne anymore as pretty much all of the former Odurian nobility had either been wiped out or have fled to safer regions.
For the two Undecimvirate kingdoms which were able to survive without the protection or threat of Caphiria, the exact reasons behind their survival are different and yet were significant enough to ensure their continued stability even after the fall of the Second Caphiric Imperium. For the Kingdom of Septemontes, it was able to survive thanks to not only the king being a highly capable ruler in his own right, but also because the nobility were largely loyal to their liege and thus had no interest in extorting and threatening him. Thus, Septemontes was able to not only remain, but to also expand its influence far beyond its capital city, also named Septemontes. The only other Undecimvirate kingdom to have survived, the Kingdom of Sumania, was largely geographically isolated thanks to its borders being mountainous areas, and thus was rendered safe from most external threats which allowed it to focus more on internal threats such as unruly nobles and pretenders to the throne trying to take advantage of the fall of the Second Imperium.
Governance
Unlike the First Vallosi Warring States period, which had more variety in the governance of each of the petty states in Vallos, all of the petty states during the Second Vallosi Warring States period were various forms of absolute monarchies though the exact structure of each of these petty governments were mostly dependent on the demographics of each of the kingdoms. For the Latinic kingdoms, their governments were mostly feudal in structure mostly in an attempt to lessen the chances of members of the aristocracy rebelling against their lieges which would often risk in a petty kingdom outright collapsing. The Tainean petty kingdoms were effectively a crowned republic of chiefs, with the chiefs serving as legislators for their kingdom's chiefly assembly. These chiefly assemblies varied in terms of their exact power in relation to the power of the monarch, but they still represented all of the kingdom's localities through their local aristocrats. The Loa kingdoms were more often than not forms of elective monarchy, which was a huge departure from the more hereditary forms of succession found throughout the rest of the subcontinent.
For the few larger polities that have existed throughout this era, such as Septemontes, their forms of government were largely more akin to a rudimentary form of the late-medieval structures of government that would emerge in mainland Sarpedon. Due to their larger territorial extents, they were often composed of multiple provinces overseen by regional administrators that were appointed by the king. They often had vassal states of their own as well, those being bordering petty kingdoms in need of protection and stability. Overall, these larger polities were more often than not regional powers which allowed them to wield quite a bit of influence over their neighbours, and were more often than not the most powerful nations on the subcontinent until the beginning of the colonial era, and even when these kingdoms were integrated into the Occidental colonies their royalty and nobility were often integrated into the social system of their new lieges which ensured their continued existences well into the 19th Century when much of these remaining royal families became the rulers of their old realms once again.
Society
Organised society in Vallos during the Second Vallosi Warring States period had largely collapsed in most parts of the subcontinent almost immediately after most of the Undecimvirate kingdoms collapsed, with the few remaining organised societies being relatively far apart from one another after communications have all but collapsed in the chaos. Because of the overall size of most of the petty kingdoms, most of them had a very small yet militarised noble class that often held far-reaching privileges which would rival the powers of the monarch most of the time. This has effectively ensured that any and all social mobility in Vallos would be very difficult at best and nearly impossible at worst; barring exceptional cases, most people would die in the same social class that they were born in. Religion, although prevalent in Vallosi society, was still highly decentralised and disconnected from episcopal hierarchies; it would not be until the 1530s when Vallos would finally have its first ecclesiastical province, the Ecclesiastical Province of Los Rumas.
Legacy
Much like the First Vallosi Warring States period, the Second Vallosi Warring States period would contribute to the overall idea that Vallos, prior to the establishment of colonies, was a subcontinent that was almost always in a state of war. It was seen as the natural state of Vallos prior to the arrival of permanent Occidental civilisation with the establishment of the Viceroyalty of Los Rumas. Indeed, during the rise of romantic nationalism in the late 19th Century, most Occidental-descended cultures in Vallos, most especially the Delepasians, have had this idea that if it were not for the arrival of the Pelaxians in the late 15th Century, Vallos would probably have remained as it was during the Second Vallosi Warring States period with numerous warring petty kingdoms that they saw were simply too uncivilised to be able to effectively govern themselves without outright exterminating one another. This viewpoint has also given them a tremendous disdain towards the Loa, who were the only cultural group to have never been colonised and thus were seen as still carrying the warlike savagery of the pre-colonial periods.
As a consequence, more extreme forms of nationalism such as Delepasian exceptionalism were able to emerge by incorporating the rhetoric of Vallos being too uncivilised to remain stable without the help of the Occident, and the Loa were thus heavily discriminated against through the passage of the Loa Laws under this belief during the latter half of the 19th Century, which was further emboldened by stories that were being told of the sheer brutality that they had inflicted against the people of the Romany kingdoms after conquering their lands in 1751. The Loa Laws would soon form the basis of the Navidadian System which would consider the Loa to be simply too uncivilised to be educated about Occidental values and traditions and thus the only solution was to segregate them from just about anything that would guarantee an upward social mobility for them with the final part of this mission of segregation being to establish an ostensibly independent republic under the close watch and guidance of the Delepasians.
See also
- List of post-Undecimvirate warlords and monarchs
- Conquest of Vallos, a three-player strategy board game that uses the Second Vallosi Warring States period as the main backdrop.
- Castraedilian Republic, a Latinic aristocratic republic that was seen as the Occident's window into Vallos prior to the colonial era.