History of Castadilla
The history of Castadilla goes back to a few millennia ago and spans from the emergence of the indigenous Vallosi Glaistic civilisation all the way to the present. The lands of what are now a part of Castadilla, excluding overseas territories, were inhabited for millennia by not only the indigenous Vallosi people, but also the Polynesians, who are now the Loa, the Taineans, who came from Crona via the Heaven Ships, and the Latins, who were settlers from the Adonerum. All four groups have had their own cultures, traditions, religious beliefs, and even various forms of government. Of the four groups, however, the indigenous Vallosi have long since faded by the end of the colonial era in the mid-19th Century with their existences only being proven through archeological artifacts and genealogical studies.
As for the Latins, the Taineans, and the Polynesians, they had largely fought against one another once they have managed to get into contact for the first time after several centuries of being largely isolated due to the sheer size of the subcontinent. As conflicts began to emerge, so too did there emerge multiple independent polities not only for consolidation, but also for easier protection. Regardless, most of these nascent polities would start to reach out to the First Caphiric Imperium for both an alliance as well as an attempt at establishing trade relations outside of Vallos. These alliances would lead to tributary relations which would soon result in a large-scale intervention from Caphiria so as to consolidate the polities as well as to ensure the continued flow of tribute payments through larger and easier-to-manage vassal realms, which would become the Undecimvirate. The Undecimvirate would ultimately collapse after the Second Caphiric Imperium collapsed due to the Great Civil War, and left the subcontinent in a state similar to how it was prior to the Undecimvirate.
Starting in the late 15th Century, explorers from Pelaxia began to colonise the Vallosi mainland with the establishment of an outpost on the shores of the Bahia de Los Rumas which would rapidly expand to become the Viceroyalty of Los Rumas. The initial outpost, Los Rumas, grew very quickly within a decade, and the initial Isurian explorers were soon out-populated by Pelaxian colonists. Further explorations would see the colonists come across both the indigenous Vallosi and Tainean populations further inland who subsequently intermarried with the inland colonists. The viceroyalty was also highly autonomous due to its high profitability which allowed for it to develop its own social hierarchy that considered itself to be Pelaxian if not in-name; it also ensured the viceroyalty's survival and stability even during times when Pelaxia (or, for most of its history, the Carto-Pelaxian Commonwealth) was experiencing extreme instability issues. The viceroyalty would not become its own country until the final abolition of the Pelaxian monarchy in 1852, and even then it would not become completely independent until the collapse of the Delepasian Kingdom, an attempted royalist Pelaxian rump state, just a few months later.
Delepasia was restructured into a highly decentralised confederation built upon a revival of medieval and semi-feudal principles known as foralism. During the foralist era, Delepasia continued to grow economically and had even established a colony in Peratra known as the Colony of Samalosi, now the state of Samalosi, in the 1880s. The overall wealth and prosperity of Delepasia would continue until the end of the First Great War when the economy, which had become hugely reliant on profits made from the war, had collapsed. The subsequent sociopolitical turmoil would soon lead to the rise in the acceptability of ultranationalist ideologies such as Delepasian exceptionalism which would culminate in the establishment of the authoritarian conservative and corporatistEstado Social in 1924. The regime lasted for about sixty years before it was overthrown in a popular revolt which began the ten-year-long Velvet Revolution in 1984. In the aftermath of the Velvet Revolution, Delepasia, which was renamed to Castadilla, would transition towards a socialist state with elements of parliamentary democracy. Presently, Castadilla consists of twenty states, and is a semi-constitutional monarchy under the rule of the vanguard socialist-aligned People's Democratic Party since 1997.
Prehistoric era
The earliest human inhabitants of Vallos were known as the indigenous Vallosi people with the earliest estimates of their existence dating back as far as 12,000 BC. This date makes the subcontinent one of the last places considered to be part of the Occident to have been initially settled. Based on the material culture of the indigenous Vallosi, evidence suggests that they may have originated in what is now modern-day Pelaxia. Sedentary society for the Vallosi was mostly agricultural in organisation, which by the year 2000 BC had consisted of an estimated forty percent of the inhabited lands on the subcontinent, though they would eventually develop into more advanced societies for the time with the Glaistic civilisation, the name of which had originated from ancient Istroyan texts, which also suggests that Vallos had contact with the Occident long before the arrival of the Adonerii, describing the indigenous Vallosi as being predominantly uncivilised and brutish. Two of the Glaistic civilisation's most well-known artifacts come in the form of objects known as "shark pottery", named as such due to its materials consisting of shark teeth and bones as well as depicted shark-themed motifs, and the widespread usage of masks which are among the most plentiful Glaistic archeological artifacts. The Glaistics reached their zenith sometime in 1800 BC, about three hundred years before the first arrival of the Polynesians, which by then has been classified as being the "later Glaistic civilisation" which had made great use of foreign innovations.
The first of the non-indigenous people to have arrived in the territory of modern-day Castadilla was the Polynesians. They have first arrived to the southern shores of Vallos in the year 1500 BC while the Glaistic civilisation was still at its prime. Initially from Peratra, now a subcontinent in Australis, the Polynesian people began to embark on a long series of exploration and island-hopping through the island chain that practically connects Peratra to Vallos. According to Loa legend, these initial Polynesian settlers would make their first contact with the indigenous Vallosi in an incident when the new arrivals had came across the local agriculture of their new neighbours. Seeing the local agriculture to be very suitable, the Polynesians attempted to harvest some for themselves, it having been a Polynesian custom for farmland to be harvested collectively based on what a particular family might need. They were instead met with intense hostility by the Vallosi, who had far different ideas on farming traditions, who subsequently forced the Polynesian newcomers to flee. In retaliation, the Polynesians would return in greater numbers and conduct multiple raids against the Vallosi settlements that had repelled them so they could establish the first permanent Polynesian settlement on mainland Vallos.
The second non-indigenous people to have arrived in what is now Castadilla were people who have originated from Crona sometime prior to the year 1000 BC. They have arrived from strangely-shaped ships which were designed to drift across the ocean with no means of steering nor navigation. These ships, known as the Heaven Ships, were designed as such because they were intended to be a form of punishment for both criminals and other undesirables. The arrival of these ships were mostly sparse, often with centuries between one arrival and the next. Due to the small amount of the new arrivals in the first landings, many of these newcomers opted to intermarry with the indigenous Vallosi and adopt the cultural norms and traditions of the Glaistic civilisation, but additional arrivals would be more and more numerous to the point that they would begin to supplant the Glaistic culture with their own culture as well as create new traditions. These Cronan people who have arrived between sometime before 1000 BC and 100 BC would eventually become the first Taineans sometime around the year 500 BC when the earliest instances of Tainean culture began to emerge.
The last of the non-indigenous groups to establish permanent settlements on mainland Vallos were also the first people from the Occident to settle in Vallos. Originating from the settlements of the Adonerum, the Latins first arrived in the year 650 BC from sizeable Adonerii settlements located in modern-day Cartadania to establish colonies on what is now Porta Bianca before heading directly towards the subcontinental mainland. The early Latinic settlements were also noted to be the first "true cities" in Vallos, with urban areas that far exceeded the sizes of even the largest cities in the Glaistic civilisation. Initially relatively sparse, the population of Latins in Vallos would grow rapidly in the year 500 BC when refugess from Urlazio began to arrive in Vallos. What further spurred Latinic settlement was the fertile soil that were very common, which not only ensured very successful harvests, but it also meant that Latinic farmers would earn enough money to hire Tainean farm hands. The arrival of the Latins would also mark the beginning of the end for the Glaistic civilisation as the indigenous Vallosi people began to move to Latinic cities to gain better employment which led to them gradually assimilating into the Latinic culture and completely drop the nomadic lifestyle.
First Warring States era
When the three main cultures of Vallos began to interact with each other on more official terms, Vallos underwent a long a lengthy period skirmishes between small, independent polities throughout the first half of the first millennium as well as into the 7th Century. As these centuries of warfare went on, each of the three major cultural groups have largely consolidated themselves into certain regions of Vallos, but not necessarily under the rule of a single polity. The Polynesians were predominantly congregated in the southern regions of the subcontinent, it having been where they have first arrived, which had largely spared them from much of the frequent skirmishes. The Taineans and the Latins, on the other hand, were not as geographically segregated and thus were much more likely to wind up in a state of war against one another over what ever dispute that may arise. This was especially apparent in the Latinic polities due to their reliance on Tainean labourers as both groups would often enter into disputes over certain sections of given agreements made between the two. Latinic and Tainean polities in southern Vallos, on the other hand were much less likely to fight against each other as they were instead focused on defending themselves against the more stable Polynesian polities.
These skirmishes would soon lead to numerous polities attempting to reach out to foreign powers outside of Vallos, particularly with the powerful nations located on mainland Sarpedon. Starting in the year 600, the First Caphiric Imperium expressed an interest in pursuing these overtures in foreign outreach and soon sent diplomats to the numerous interested polities that have wished to enter into an alliance with the Imperium. In exchange for an alliance and the guarantee for protection, the polities of Vallos would send an annual tribute to the Imperator. These tributes would prove to be especially lucrative for the Imperium, but the sheer amount of petty kingdoms and their tendency to fight against one another not only made it pretty difficult to maintain comprehensive records of each of the tributes, but it also led to several polities being unable to make the annual tribute payment on time. Wanting to continue to make money, and to make tribute record-keeping and payment a lot more easier for the bureaucracy, the Imperium chose to launch a series of interventions to the subcontinent under the personal leadership of the Imperator.
The Caphiric forces, which number to about 20,000 soldiers, was at that time one of the largest armies to have set foot into Vallos. With the help of the polities that have consistently made their annual tribute payments, the Imperium was able to wage a brutal war of subjugation against the numerous delinquent polities, overthrowing their rulers and setting up occupation forces to ensure compliance would be maintained. Once the last of the anti-Caphiric tributaries had fallen, the Imperium soon began to do a major reorganisation in Vallos, most notably by setting up larger tributary states which were divided based on geographical features instead of cultural commonalities. In recognition for their loyalty, the rulers of the compliant polities were appointed to become the new rulers and nobilities of the new tributary states, of which the Imperium was able to establish eleven.
Undecimvirate era
Septemontes | Oduria | Oeciania |
Castraedilus | Lacentralis | Sinuperior |
Sinuferior | Sumania | Aecia |
Rultania | Daesespia |
The eleven new vassal states in Vallos, often known as the Undecimvirate kingdoms, were largely autonomous for the most part thanks to the distance between Vallos and the Imperium, with the latter not involving itself in Vallosi affairs so long as none of the vassal kingdoms have been delinquent with their tribute payments. Tributes were initially one quarter of a vassal state's annual income whether it was monetary or in kind. Despite all being under Caphiric hegemony, however, the Imperium did not forbid the kingdoms from getting into skirmishes with each other, which would often meant that a kingdom could conduct raids against a neighouring kingdom just to take some of its wealth to pay off their own tributes. When the tribute rate was still at a quarter of a kingdom's annual income, these raids were rather uncommon as there was not incentive to do so as it was almost guaranteed that each kingdom would be able to make their tribute payment. Indeed, it would not be until the tribute rate was changed to a flat rate that there was finally an incentive to conduct raids since the new tribute rates often exceeded the quarter of a kingdom's annual income that used to be paid. This also meant that the Imperium would intervene in Vallos much more often as kingdoms were having a harder time in payment their annual tribute in full; the punishment for missing a tribute payment was severe and would lead to the offending vassal monarch being deposed and replaced with a more compliant monarch.
The overall Caphiric status quo over Vallos would not begin to break until 1127 when the Great Civil War broke out in the Second Caphiric Imperium which meant that there were no means to enforce the annual payment of tributes. Nonetheless, the vassal kingdoms were able to maintain their stability throughout the Great Civil War through the belief that the Great Civil War would end and the Imperium would still endure, though perhaps with some negotiations to secure some privileges. Of course, to ensure that they would maintain the upper hand in such a hypothetical scenario by stockpiling on their wealth with the idea being that if Caphiria were to accept some changes to the exact relationship between the Imperium and themselves then they would make a lump tribute payment. This belief as well as the stockpiling was what kept the Undecimvirate kingdoms from collapsing during the Great Civil War. Indeed, it would not be until after the end of the Great Civil War in 1172 that there would be no sign of a new Imperium to emerge out of the chaos in the near future, and thus the former vassal kingdoms would largely fall apart from both nobles looking for a portion of the stockpiled wealth and from the few remaining independent nations on the subcontinent taking advantage of the lack of Caphiric protection.
Despite the raids and the interventions, the four centuries of Caphiric hegemony over Vallo not only gave the subcontinent its first era known for its relative stability, but it also introduced more advanced forms of Occidental-based government which all three cultures would create their own adaptations of based on their own cultural values. Most importantly, the Undecimvirate also saw the introduction of Christianity to Vallos which not only had spread quickly throughout the Undecimvirate kingdoms, almost all of the vassal kingdoms adopted Christianity as the state religion.
Second Warring States era
The chaos that came to Vallos after the collapse of the Second Imperium in 1172 would reduce almost all of the Undecimvirate kingdoms to the size of small, independent polities like it used to be back during the previous period of warring states. Indeed, only two of the vassal kingdoms remained in the two decades immediately after the end of the Undecimvirate, with most of the royal families which had enjoyed rulership over a vassal kingdom being driven to extinction or at the very least irrelevance. For most of the nascent polities, they were often founded by a member of a Undecimvirate kingdom's nobility extorting some of the stockpiled wealth from their former lieges in exchange for becoming independent while threatening to conduct raids against them if their former lieges did not comply. The most dramatic of the collapses of the former Undecimvirate kingdoms was the Kingdom of Oduria which collapsed not from nobles wanting to extort their former lieges, but from a civil war due to certain factions wanting Oduria to declare itself the new Imperium while others preferred to become independent now that there was nothing to obligate them into staying.
The only two former Undecimvirate kingdoms which were able to not only to survive, but to thrive. Those two former kingdoms were Septemontes and Sumania which had managed to survive due to their nobility being very loyal to their lieges and were largely more concerned with maintaining their statuses over wanting to make quick money through raids and extortion. Their overall geography also played a significant role in ensuring their survival; Septemontes, although located on the Astol Plains, had the advantage of being able to spread their influence far from their realm and thus was guaranteed having multiple buffer states for neighbours, and Sumania, being surrounded by potential natural boundaries, was able to be isolated from most of the chaos the plagued the rest of the subcontinent and could instead focus on their own region even though they were not in a position to spread their influence as much as Septemontes had been able to.
During the latter years of the second period of warring states at least according to the traditional timespan, some northern petty kingdoms, wishing to take advantage of the rising international trade between the Occident and Crona through St. Brendan's Strait, began to sponsor pirate crews, offering them protection in exchange for a portion of their profits. These new privateers were not only able to amass a sizeable amount of wealth on behalf of their masters, but were also able to amass a much greater amount of wealth for themselves. For many of them, it was relatively easy to overthrow their sponsors and establish their own bases of operations along the coastal areas of northern Vallos. One of the most well-known of these piratocracies, at least in Castadillaan history, was Portas Gemeas, one of the few piratocracies not to have been founded by Taineans, but instead by Cartadanian pirates.
The legacy of the second warring states era in Vallosi history was once attributed as being just an example of the subcontinent's natural state without the intervention of Occidental powers, citing the Undecimvirate as being an instance of the Occident bringing order to an otherwise chaotic land, which was used to justify colonialism as well as some of the more ultranationalistic ideologies that have emerged during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.
Colonial era
Although the Undecimvirate era was immensely impactful to both the histories of Vallos and Castadilla, it is not considered to be a colonial era as not only were the kingdoms highly autonomous vassal states, they were also ruled by the people who had lived on the subcontinent for many centuries by that point. Instead, Castadilla's colonial era would not officially begin until the arrival of the Isurian captain Mauricio Delepas while under the patronage of King Jeronimo I of Pelaxia. Although a vassal state of the Third Caphiric Imperium, the nascent kingdom was looking to establishing a colonial empire, especially so as to maintain strategic positions over the Southern Route. Delepas would arrive onto the coast of the Bahia de Los Rumas in 1497 and established an outpost known as Los Rumas. This new Viceroyalty of Los Rumas would almost immediately introduce Vallos to the formal episcopal hierarchy of the Catholic Church for the first time with the establishment of the Diocese of Los Rumas.
Los Rumas was the original capital of the Viceroyalty as well as the first Pelaxian settlement to be established on mainland Vallos which allowed for its name to be given to the official name of the nascent Viceroyalty even after the rapidly-expanding territory moved its capital to the north when the newly-established city of Santa Maria was completed in 1505. The viceroyalty had also fast changed from a naval outpost to a highly profitable colony which not only attracted huge amounts of Pelaxian colonists, but also led to the Pelaxian crown to take more of a hands-off approach when it came to governing their newest colony. This approach was codified in the Charter of San Lina which Pelaxia had granted to the Viceroyalty to serve as both their constitutional document and as a way to further attract colonists with the colony's autonomy over economic and domestic affairs. This effectively made the Pelaxian monarch a ceremonial monarch as all viceregal authority was vested in the person of the Viceroy of Los Rumas.
With the new charter, the Viceroyalty was allowed to expand greatly throughout the 16th and 17th Centuries which was further bolstered by Pelaxia becoming an independent country after the Great Schism of 1615 as Latin Catholic refugees, fleeing from Caphiria to avoid religious persecution, began to arrive. Among these Latin Catholic refugees were the Isurian Knights of Saint James whose banner would quickly become an iconic military banner for the Viceroyalty. It was also during the 16th and 17th Centuries that the colony would begin to fulfil its primary strategic purpose in protecting Pelaxian interests in the Southern Route with multiple battles occurring between Pelaxia, Kiravia, and Burgundie becoming relatively frequent. This did not, however, necessarily mean that the Viceroyalty was the most important component of the Pelaxian lands, which became especially apparent once the Carto-Pelaxian Commonwealth was established which made the new Commonwealth's Cartadanian lands much more important to hold on to, which gave the Viceroyalty the perception that the Pelaxian crown has essentially snubbed them.
The Viceroyalty's perceived lesser importance, which became more obvious once the battles to secure the Southern Route stopped happening, would endure until after the collapse of the Commonwealth in the 1790s and most especially after the first abolition of the monarchy happened just a few years later. This first abolition would see the Viceroyalty be upgraded from a colony to an integral part of the nascent First Pelaxian Republic which coincided with the emergence of the new Delepasian identity in order to retaliate against the neglectfulness of the Pelaxian monarchy. Even after the Pelaxian monarchy was restored in 1814, the Viceroyalty was able to enjoy a more elevated status as it became the Pelaxian monarchy's crown jewel once more and especially as the returning aristocracy began to co-opt certain aspects of Delepasianism, even convincing the monarch to promise the Viceroyalty that plans would be drafted which would see the Viceroyalty be converted into an independent nation under a real union with Pelaxia. These plans were revealed in 2014 to be nonexistent, only existing as a cover for plans to integrate the Viceroyalty into Pelaxia proper as a means to take its immense wealth.
The Pelaxian monarchy would be abolished for good in 1852 due to the authoritarian efforts of King Luciano II against his very own parliament, with the vast majority of the former Pelaxian nobility, as well as the former royal family, fleeing to the Viceroyalty where they would establish a royalist rump state and exiled government which opposed the legitimacy of the Second Pelaxian Republic. This new Delepasian Kingdom saw itself as part of the hypothetical Pelaxio-Delepasian Union which was meant to be the fulfillment of that real union promise. The kingdom did not last very long, however, as three major political factions would emerge over disagreements pertaining to how the new kingdom should be governed, with the Royalists seeking to overthrow the republican government in Pelaxia and restore the monarchy, the National Constitutionalists seeking to end the kingdom's status as a rump state and exiled government in favour of making it an independent monarchy, and the National Republicans seeking to not only assert the kingdom's independence from Pelaxia but to also abolish the monarchy altogether. The overall instability caused by the political disagreements would see the kingdom dissolved with Luciano II referring to the Delepasians as being "ungovernable".
Foralist era
Shortly after the dissolution of the Delepasian Kingdom, the Delepasians would unite once again, but this time establishing the Delepasian Confederation, which was structured as being a very loose "foralist confederation". Foralism was a unique form of federalism which the Delepasian aristocrats had developed in which certain regions are given a distinct level of legal and fiscal independence from the central government while guaranteeing certain cultural rights. As a result, the confederal government was largely noted to be rather weak and was only responsible for matters such as confederal defense as well as major changes to the constitution, and even then both aspects could only be passed if it gains the unanimous support of all member states of the Confederation. The legislature consisted only of one house, the Foral Assembly, which was led by the confederal government's head of government the President of the Forals. The Confederation also had a nominal chief executive, known as the Prefect, and a cerermonial head of state known as the Emperor, who was a member of various Occidental royal houses and became the Emperor through an election; members of the last Pelaxian royal house, the House of Girojon, were legally barred from becoming Emperor due to their perceived "lack of majesty" according to the Confederal Charter.
The Foralist era, particularly during its early years, was predominantly marked with much more stability and wealth in comparison, and in spite of, the fast-escalating and increasingly chaotic socio-political tensions which ensure that the Delepasian Kingdom would collapse. The dramatic change from near-certain collapse to prosperity would help ensure that Delepasia would not only become one of the wealthiest countries in Vallos, but also one of the main migratory hubs in the subcontinent, with numerous immigrants originating from Yonderre. Although the immigrants were largely welcome, they would still prove to be a bit of problem due to fears and concerns over the possibility of the Confederation being overpopulated. In a desperate act, the confederal government would assign Larianan captain Andrea Crocetti with the mission of leading a voyage full of willing migrants in hopes of finding new land for them to live on. In reality, however, the confederal government had little interest in the knowledge of open oceanic navigation and was more focused on finding a way to not only get rid of the immigrants without deporting them, and had simply picked the first willing Occidental captain under false pretenses. It was nothing short of a miracle for the confederal government that the voyage not only landed safely in Peratra, but it also established a new colony now known as Samalosi.
The end of the First Great War in 1902 would put an end to the decades of stability and prosperity in the Confederation as sudden bank failures and major crop failures began to emerge. This became especially egregious as the First Great War saw an even greater influx of migrants, who came from parts of the world that have been devastated by the war, in hopes for a better life in Vallos. The ensuing chaos that came as a result would deteriorate the socio-political situation in a few member states of the Confederation to the point of total anarchy with one of the worst-affected members being the Republic of Rosaria which had been so adversely-affected to the point that it was a commonality for presidents and prime ministers to serve for very short terms. In an effort to salvage the republic, the Rosarian military overthrew the republic in 1920 and began to stabilise the republic, most notably by appointing noted university economics professor Fernando Pascual who, with his authority as Rosaria's minister of finance, was not only able to balance the budget of Rosaria, he had left the Rosarian government with a budgetary surplus; his methods were repeated by the other member states of the Confederation with equal success.
Pascualist era
As a reward for his efforts in saving the Rosarian economy from a freefall, Pascual was made Prime Minister of Rosaria in 1921 before being made President of the Forals just one year later. With widespread and universal support across the Confederation for saving the Delepasian economy, Pascual found it very easy to pass through a series of reforms which would establish a more centralised provisional government designated to govern Delepasia for the short-term pending the enactment of a new codified constitution. This new constitution, which was the Delepasian constitution of 1924, would centralise the former Confederation even further and would serve as the main foundational document for Pascual's new regime known as the Estadi Social. The new regime was designed so as to be tailored around the political and economic ideals of Pascual, which he envisioned a state that was to be governed based on a rather close interpretation of Catholic social teaching which would not only be able to protect the Delepasian culture, but to also determine the recommended treatment for ethnic minorities, with immigrants being slated for assimilation, the semi-civilised being granted limited civil rights, and the Loa being subject to the Loa Laws. The new regime was organised under the principles of authoritarian conservatism and corporatism with elements of a Julian-based government which saw Pascual becoming Prime Minister, the former Rosarian president Isidor de Santa Anna being made chief executive, and the Emperor remaining as a ceremonial figurehead.
The Estado Social would see Delepasia participating in the Second Great War right around the time it began in 1934. Much of its involvement was through Volonia, which Delepasia had been covertly aiding in its bid for independence from Caphiria for about a few decades at that point. The outbreak of the Second Great War simply made this aid much more active while also much more clandestine so as to not arouse suspicion from the Imperium. One of the main Delepasian leaders of the Volonian independence movement, a man of Larianic ancestry by the name of G. C. Lorenzo who was in Sarpedon under the pretense of participating in a filed study, was elected to stay in Volonia to train the rebels and had established the United Volonian Movement as a big-tent independence army; to keep suspicion away a double was paid to impersonate Lorenzo to make it seem like he left due to the war. In Samalosi, Delepasia would go on to occupy nearby islands that were Caphiric overseas possessions, but would soon withdraw upon the enactment of the Treaty of Kartika in 1943.
During the early post-war years, Samalosi took advantage of the autonomy it had gained from Delepasia thanks to the sheer distance between the two entities to formally legalise gambling in 1949 which would mark the beginning of the area's casino and entertainment industry. Even on the mainland Pascual had began to implement token reforms which would partially liberalise the Delepasian political sphere which extended to legalising the formation of opposition parties, but there were some caveats which would ensure that only "approved" opposition parties would be able to gain representation while the independent opposition parties were only permitted to run in elections. In the 1960s, the regime began to implement token economic liberalisation reforms, mostly so as to encourage neighbouring Lucrecia to become a co-founding member of the Vallosi Economic Association, which were supplanted by more sincere economic liberalisation reforms in the 1970s. In 1980, Pascual, after having suffered a stroke, was replaced by regime reformist Nicolas Torres in 1980 who would go on to further liberalise the economy and even introduce limited elements of democracy in the name of ensuring that the regime would survive for the next several decades. These reforms were put to an end once Torries was assassinated on the orders of commander-in-chief Francisco de Costa and replaced him with Alberto Bahamonde.
Revolutionary era
The Velvet Revolution was a decade-long period of socio-political upheaval which not only saw the end of the Estado Social, it also saw the transformation of Delepasia into Castadilla. Beginning with popular uprisings against the authoritarian reaction of commander-in-chief de Costa due to his part in the assassination of Torres which saw the resignation of both de Costa and Bahamonde in 1984, Delepasia would experience a tenuous election of the popular liberal figure Hector del Cruces as commander-in-chief who was subsequently overthrown by a conservative military coup led by general Raul Quintero in 1985 who attempted to reverse some of the more radical policies implemented by del Cruces in an effort to transition Delepasia towards a conservative stratocratic regime. Quintero's rule as commander-in-chief was followed two years later by an uprising lead by a coalition of both liberal and socialist forces respectively led by Ricardo Valentino and Vito Borbon which defeated the final remnants of the Delepasian stratocracy.
Borbon and Valentino would attempt to establish a new provisional government which would collapse very quickly due to ideological disagreements after Borbon had demanded that the new government should pursue socialist policies so as to swiftly reverse the years under corporatist rule which Valentino refused due to him being a vehement anti-socialist. This led to a few of Valentino's best generals, namely Fidel de la Pena, Augusto Ortega, and Hugo Castillo, breaking away from Valentino and defect to the Borbonists due to their more radical viewpoints. The Borbonists proved to be a highly effective fighting force, and in 1989 were able to tender Valentino's surrender which saw Borbon being made the new commander-in-chief. Borbon would soon spend the next few years having to fight off multiple rebellions and coups committed by liberals, conservatives, and even Pascualists that had wished to remove Borbon from power but to no avail. With Borbon having secured his faction's victory over the anti-socialist factions in 1994, he would fulfil his promise to step down once fighting had ceased and hold the first post-Estado Social elections to determine his successor. In a massive electoral upset and an unexpected landslide, Emperor Maximilian I, who was made the Delepasian Emperor in 1976, was elected to become the new commander-in-chief, and the civil war phase of the Velvet Revolution came to an end.
Modern era
One of the Emperor's first actions as commander-in-chief was to appoint socialist general Antonio Hernandez as the new provisional prime minister for the newly-formed provisional government which had amongst its membership socialists, Marxists, liberals, and christian democrats. The provisional government was set up to govern Delepasia until the 1994 Constituent Assembly election in September to govern the country as a wholly-civilian provisional government which is seen as the final end of the Velvet Revolution. Under the provisional governance of the Constituent Assembly throughout 1995 and 1996, the nation's new constitution was drafted. Much of the provisions that were added to the draft were designed to ensure that the new constitutional government would be governed under the principles of Velvetine Socialism, with the newly-formed People's Democratic Party being designated as the vanguard party, as well as finally abandoning the name "Delepasia" in favour of "Castadilla". Further provisions in the constitution would organise the new socialist state as a federal semi-constitutional monarchy with Pelaxian, Latin, and Reform Tainean being made the state's three official languages with all systems of racial biases being made unlawful. The new constitution was approved by the Constituent Assembly and would come into effect on 21 Janaury 1997 after the inauguration of Castadilla's first constitutional government.
Since 1997, Castadilla has been under a People's Democratic Party government, first as a coalition government with the Christian National Party, and then as a majority government, both with Francisco Carvalho as Prime Minister of the nation's first and subsequent post-revolutionary civilian governments.