Argan of Elland

The Argan of Elland is the governing body of Cairony in Elland, and was established in its present form in 1479 CE at the beginning of the reign of William I of Elland. The argan is considered to be orthodox within the context of Cairony overall, and its leadership played a prominent part in the various Reform Wars which disrupted the fabric of the faith during the 17th century. While an important factor in the social, cultural and political life of the country, it remains largely an adjunct to these spheres, as opposed to the much more vigorous role played elsewhere by the Argan of Odann, generally considered to be the most dominant of the orthodox argans in the temporal sphere.

The term “Argan of Elland” has also been used to refer to the Vastrelline Argan of Elland, a fringe puritan group which was active during the 1960s and 1970s, and the Monteverdine Argan of Elland, the aggregation of several smaller argans which is now recognised as the principal reform argan in the country.

History

Origins and first unification

The break-up of the historic organisation of Cairony during the centuries of Secote rule in Messenia had left it scattered and fragmented, with many small and individually weak argans struggling to maintain order; however, the growth of Orange Revivalism from its origins in the Savamese lands prompted arganic leaders to re-examine their activities and push for greater union, and was a distinct factor in the coalescence of the Arganite States, established as a distinct entity in 1332.

The presence of the States to their east as both exemplar and threat concentrated the minds of many in the Ellish lands; and as William of Middlechamp emerged as a central unifying figure with the establishment in 1457 of the Kingdom of Elland, he sought to draw with him a single unified argan to cover his new and enlarged domains. In large part this was driven by pragmatism on William’s part – he was not particularly known for the strength of his own faith, and was vigorous in his efforts to circumstrain the argan where he felt it to be threatening his own authority – but he deliberately set out his position on becoming king of the new Elland, taking as part of his royal titles defensor restitutorque, “defender and restorer” to indicate his self-assumed position as shield and protector for the new Argan of Elland. He reinforced this by his insistence on the appointment as Holy Mother of Adeline Bell – a “rogue” Cairan officiant who had been a key ally during the period of the Salles Revolt which had helped to pave his way to kingship.

However, if William pushed, the argan was entirely willing to push back. The generally conservative core of the new argan had resented his imposition on them of the former renegade Bell, and her retirement from office through illness allowed the old guard to reassert itself, which they did with increasing force as William became more reclusive towards the end of his kingship.

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The Reform Wars

For many within the Ellish argan, the scent of reformation coming to the eastern argans in the early 18th century was too far away to be of serious concern; however, with the successes which followed the Petition of the Sixteen Bolds in southern Valdenois and Sarre, interest on all sides of the growing dispute began to be ramped up amid fears that further intransigence by all parties could only lead to war. The ratchet was moved up a few more steps in 1730, when the Argan of Brocquie was suspended by Archprince Léon-Valentin until such time as it toed the reformer line. Victoria Bromyard, then Holy Mother of the Ellish argan, was a pivotal figure alongside the firebrand Téodora de Beldopoule in efforts by arganic leaders to bring the temporal princes of Cairony onside against the heretics (as, by this time, the Brocquians had been declared to be), even as the argan took steps to purge the reformer stain from its own ranks, with more than 700 churchwomen being expelled after they refused to repudiate the Petition, as required by the 1730 Act of Association. Bromyard’s vehemence – indeed, calling it bullying may not be unreasonable – in pushing the case for war was crucial in swaying the opinion of Henry II and bringing Ellish force to bear. Henry required arganic support for some of his own actions around this time, and presumably saw acquiescence in Beldopoule’s war aims as a quid pro quo.

Resistance in Brocquie was finally, and savagely, beaten down in 1737; retribution by the Orthodoxists in the wake of victory was fearsome to behold – with large-scale purges of reformer clergy, including the Archmatron of Bar, Priscilla d’Uthêl, and the forced abdication of Léon-Valentin in favour of his cousin Julien, who would become justly known as “le Mal-Aimé” or “unloved”. Bromyard herself led the case for the prosecution against d’Uthêl in what was arguably one of the most openly vindictive acts to take place in the wake of the Brocquian defeat.

However, spreading reformism was already passing like quicksilver through the fingers of the orthodoxist hierarchy. Even as d’Uthêl came to judgment, the Quènien parliament had granted acceptance to the reformers, and had even permitted the operation of a reform argan. Even the strident Bromyard began to recognise the growing futility of protest; in a letter to her colleague and successor Honor Staveley in 1738 she observed that “we may no more turn back these changes than we may make rain fall upward.”

Staveley’s tenure as Holy Mother was passed in the shadow of further strife, albeit further afield in the Sabamic lands, with Elland contributing to an occupation army in Brocquie; for much of her term, and also during the early period of her successor Geraldine Granger, the argan exerted little influence at court, and as Henry III took the throne this state of affairs looked set to continue. Henry, in a stance harking back to that of the first Wilhelmine period, clashed frequently with the argan, harassing it through the courts when it sought to hinder royal authority and comparing its actions to the much more overt influence wielded by the Argan of Odann.

The Reformation made a sharp lurch towards Elland in 1755, in which year Valdenois shifted into the reform camp; but the pivotal moment came in 1760, when the aging but still fiery Beldopoule – at the time functionally a hostage of the Archprince of Brocquie following the capture of Etamps-La-Sainte – clandestinely published the pamphlet De Fragilitatis Facies Corporis (“Of the Fragility of the Physical Facet”), in which she openly called for war against the reformers and offered the crown of empire to the king who would end the reformist menace once and for all.

Henry, who had nursed ambitions for conquest beyond Elland for some time, rallied almost immediately to Beldopoule’s banner. Granger, whose natural instincts ran to conciliation more than to conflict, was forced to tack alarmingly towards the war camp in order to stave off opposition within the argan. Doggedly and unwillingly, she followed in Henry’s wake as Ellish armies fought across the southern Savamese lands over the ensuing five years.

Beldopoule was freed from captivity in 1765, and Henry exacted his reward from a hastily-convened Arganite Sorority as he was crowned Henri I of the Cairan Empire in a lavish ceremony in Etamps. However, as the war descended into stalemate and the “settlement” of the Blessed Conciliation of 1771, Granger and Beldopoule were outnumbered by a sorority which denied the imperial claim in the greater interests of their own tenuous unity. Henry became an emperor without an empire; Granger was almost wholly discredited as a result. Although Henry vindictively pushed for her removal, Granger – wearied by almost a quarter-century in office, the longest of any Holy Mother in the history of the argan – was in any event a spent force, passing her mantle to Alice Tucker in 1774. It would be another twenty years before the argan was once more in a genuine position to influence affairs of state in Elland.

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The Long War years

As the Gaste War began, the Argan was in some disarray following the recent death of Eleanor Sanders, and its appointment of Genevieve Custer, whose past experience had been principally as an academic more than as a working clergywoman, has been seen as a misstep by many observers of arganic politics. Certainly, as Elland moved towards a war footing itself, Custer struggled to find the proper tone for her actions, and she was increasingly sidelined by more forceful elements within the argan as the war progressed. Ernestine Peace, previously one of Sanders’ chief aides, was particularly prominent in these actions, even to the point of travelling dangerously close to the front lines in support of Ellish troops.

The post-war Argan

With peace restored along the borders, Custer resigned her office in 1960, largely out of frustration at the manner in which Peace and the hardline element within the Argan had “undermined” her efforts; it was, perhaps, unsurprising that Peace succeeded her in the position.

The supposed “hawk” showed a surprisingly conciliatory tone at first as she settled into her new role. Her meeting with her Odannach counterpart Aibhlinn níc Uidhir in 1961 is widely seen as beginning the healing process between the two argans in the wake of the Gaste War. However, Peace’s generally stern position on many social issues, as communicated through the arganic office, cast a long shadow over much of day-to-day life in Elland; the description of small-town Ellish life in Dulcie Mangham’s The Lily-White Boys (1967) as “like living every day as if it were a wet weekend in Boxhampton” encapsulated the sense of an all-enveloping rectitude which many felt during her period as Holy Mother.

However, by the late 1960s there were already some signs of daylight; some commentators have seen the aftermath of the 1969 Sans Souci affair as the tipping point at which the argan realised that it could no longer press down with such a heavy hand. Although Peace did not step down until 1972, a sense of increasing openness began to spread through public and private lives in Elland – to some extent pushed by similar relaxations being felt elsewhere in Messenia. Peace’s successor, the fortuitously-named Sophia Light, presided over a more consultative approach in the Argan’s dealings with civic authority during the 1970s; she also led a small, but noticeable, rapprochement with neighbouring reform argans. She forged a particularly strong relationship with her counterpart in Emilia, Adrienne Marcheux; and through this bond Marcheux became, in 1975, the first Holy Mother of a Reform argan to conduct services in an Orthodox temple since the end of the Reform Wars.

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For much of the last half-century the Argan of Elland has pursued a policy of accommodation and co-existence with the reform argans of Savam and its neighbour states. However, there has always been an element within the argan which has seen this practice as giving ground to practices which are at best irrelevant to, and which at worst actively hinder, the work of Restoration which has always been the argan’s prime objective. One of the key actors on this hardline conservative wing in the last decade has been the Rathfarnham Group, named after the north-western town in which they are headquartered; their growing influence within the councils of the argan saw one of their number, Daphne Blake, appointed as Holy Mother in 2012. While Blake has not yet created grounds for concern by reformist elements, her past history both within and outside the Rathfarnham Group suggests that a new willingness to accept confrontation may be emerging within Orthodox Cairony.

Organisation

The Argan of Elland is organised along broadly similar lines to other argans within the Orthodox communion, operating at the national level from central offices at 19 Newmarch Road in the Etherley city-centre district of Leadhill, having moved from the Temple of Remesiana in 1821 as facilities there became inadequate. (“Number Nineteen” is still often used as a shorthand descriptor for the Argan and arganic officialdom, particularly in the Ellish press.)

At subordinate level are the argan’s five triburions, centred on Clairgrave (north and north-east), Mardenborough (west), Newmarch (north midlands), Otway (south midlands and east) and Semmerbruck (south). These are further divided into a total of thirty-one individual familiae, which broadly map onto the traditional Ellish counties. Etherley, although the centre of control nationally, forms part of the triburion of Newmarch for administrative purposes.

Although Orthodox Cairony is officially recognised as the religion of the Ellish state, the Argan receives no direct state funding. However, it has for centuries been one of the country’s largest landholders, and much of the profits from Elland’s still formidable agricultural industry has funnelled into the argan’s coffers over the years. Its wealth has been helped further by generous tax exemptions, with arganic-owned companies being covered by similar rules to those applied to the honourable companies of Elland. A comparative study made in 2011 showed that, if the argan were a state in its own right, it would have a gross domestic product greater than that of Tisana.

Past Holy Mothers (partial)

• 15th century: Adeline Bell (1479-87); Claire de Laurigny (1487-99)
• 16th century: Lucille de Salles (1532-46): Alison Wray (1580-91)
• 18th century: Victoria Bromyard (1722-39); Honor Staveley (1739-49); Geraldine Granger (1749-74); Alice Tucker (1774-80)
• 20th century: Eleanor Sanders (1940-55); Genevieve Custer (1955-60); Ernestine Peace (1960-72); Sophia Light (1972-79); Dominy Stratton (1979-87); Rose Marchmont (1987-2001)
• 21st century: Cherie Truran (2001-12); Daphne Blake (2012- )