Lawful Commonwealth

Woodcut print of Emperor Ĥ the Pentorchid

In Coscivian historiography, the Lawful Commonwealth (High Coscivian: Gxcasvix tóxuréaχita, Kiravic Coscivian: Áldóriþísāv) was the first incarnation of the Coscivian Empire. The foundations of Coscivian law and the metaëthnic identity of the Coscivian people are attributed to the Lawful Commonwealth.

The Lawful Commonwealth was, in essence, a confederacy of tribal units (initially seven) that accepted the Four Laws and Four Precepts, pledged to defend one another from attack by tribes outside of the confederacy, and agreed to bring their disputes to the Emperor for arbitration instead of making war on one another. In this regard it was fundamentally different in nature from later Coscivian Empires, which were true state societies, though these later polities would nonetheless claim continuity with the Lawful Commonwealth and derive legitimacy therefrom in a chain of translatio imperii, while continuing to apply and develop the legal system that they had inherited from it.

Chronology

If interpreted as linear (which would be a mistake), traditional Coscivian chronologies would date the foundation of the Commonwealth to around 19,600 years ago (c. 17,577 BC), during which time Great Kirav was almost entirely glaciated and populated only by small hunter-gatherer bands, which would be inconsistent with traditional narratives surrounding the Commonwealth. Among modern scientific scholars who accept the Lawful Commonwealth’s historicity, the presently dominant theory places the Lawful Commonwealth in the Boreal Mesolithic, around 6,000 BC. Minority factions (found almost entirely in Coscivian countries) contend that the Lawful Commonwealth actually existed during the very early Holocene of the Society II culture, or even during the Late Ice Age of the Society I culture. Occidental scholars regard the former hypothesis as possible (if unlikely) and the latter as batshit.

Many critical scholars, especially outside of the Coscivian world, doubt the historicity of the the Lawful Commonwealth, regarding it as an etiological myth constructed to justify the civics of the First Empire and assert the moral superiority of the Ancient Coscivians over the more technologically sophisticated Adraï whom they had conquered at said Empire's formation. Some Kiravian deep philologists believe that the traditional narrative is rooted in truth but should be treated with caution as a historical document, having been "compacted" over time from a more complete oral history into a digestible credo of the Coscivian Empire's civil religion.

Narrative

According to tradition, primitive agricultural Kirav was a violent and brutish environment characterised by near-constant endemic warfare between small tribal units, and widespread murderous practices such as infanticide and uxoricide within tribes due to both ritual demand and resource scarcity. Lifespans were extremely short, with the prelude to the Great Law Chant reminding Coscivians that "mere beards - not white but rich with ūmar were the mark of the elder; fortunate and few were those who survived to full manhood, for the earth was bathed in the young blood of hairless youth." It was only with the rise of the Emperors, through their imposition of the Four Laws and patronage of the Four Rites, that communities were able to know peace and order. During this nascent stage of Coscivian civilisation, the Four Laws and Four Rites spread by voluntary diffusion more so than conquest, and from this emerged a binary identity of Lawful tribes who accepted the Emperor's authority versus Lawless tribes who did not.

Demise

The key military advantage ensuring the security of the Lawful Commonwealth was its primitive form of collective security: Lawful tribes were safe from attack than Lawless tribes because they could rely upon neighbouring Lawful tribes for assistance in a simple threat environment wherein numerical superiority was sufficient to guarantee victory. The deterrent effect of collective security allowed the Lawful tribes to become more populous as they were spared the extremely high death rates from warfare that afflicted the Lawless tribes, providing additional fighting-age men that galvanised the deterrent effect. The Lawful Commonwealth would eventually include most of the tribal territories on Ilánova, and it is possible that some nearby areas of the Kiravian mainland (i.e. coastal Harma) may have somehow participated in or imitated its model.

It follows that the Lawful Commonwealth could only be defeated in toto by an adversary if a countervailing tribal alliance was able to assemble more fighters, or if the Commonwealth itself became unable to maintain its own cohesion. The available sources from oral literature maintain that the latter happened: After the death of the Emperor Akˣɛ, a struggle for succession ensued between five different claimants, each with the backing of different cohorts of tribal allies. The civil war - if it can be called that - resulting from this dispute is said to have ended inconclusively, with each faction diminished into a small splinter confederacy under the leadership of its preferred Emperor. There is no clear archæological evidence to confirm nor controvert this narrative. Tradition maintains - and later history would appear to confirm - that even after the splintering of the Lawful Commonwealth, members of the former Lawful Tribes "carried the Law with them to the edges of the Sea," taken to mean that they would go on to emigrate from Éorsa and establish new Lawful settlements along the coast of mainland Great Kirav and in Suderavia-Levantia.

Institutions

The Lawful Commonwealth was certainly not the first attempt at alliance formation in the anarchic environment of tribal Kiravia. Its novel and inventive feature, and that which accounts for its success and enduring legacy, is the introduction of a supratribal authority and the concept of Law.

Emperor

Main article: Coscivian Emperor
The Emperor was the central and constituting figure of the Commonwealth. He laid down the Law, performed the Four Rites, guaranteed protection of the Lawful tribes and arbitrated disputes among them, and waged war on the Lawless tribes.

According to the traditional chronologies, Ĥ led the Commonwealth for the improbably long majority of its existence. Succession to the office thereafter is believed to be hereditary - the relation of the Second Emperor and Third Emperor to Ĥ is not explicit in primary sources, but the Fourth Emperor is said to be the great-grandson (and great-great-great-grandson) of Ĥ - though a specific dynastic law of succession for this period is not specified. Indeed, as the language of the time is uncertain, the kinship system used by the Pentorchid Dynasty is also not definitively known, and in the bifurcate merging reckonings used by most Coscivian peoples, a "son" may in fact refer to a nephew. As such, it is entirely possible, even likely, that succession was not strictly lineal but perhaps selective or elective within the bounds of an Imperial lineage or sept.

X̆aumauv

The X̆aumauv was the deliberative assembly of all the Lawful tribes. Whatever power it had must have been informal, as the Great Law Chant does not address it. Whether it was convened periodically or sporadically is also not known.

It is assumed that the Lawful Commonwealth had neither the mechanism nor the need for taxation or the collection of tribute, as it appears to have lacked any apparatus for the the allocation of resources other than military manpower, which at this stage of technological development did not involve financial or logistical concerns complex enough to merit a tax-supported war machine.