Benovia
Benovia (Savamese Bénovie, Verborian Benovia), officially the Principality of Benovia, is a member state of the Savamese Empire. It is the easternmost state, straddling the foothills of the Severnistine mountains where Messenia proper borders Translacunia. It borders upon Transvechia (in the central north), the Rastovid Confederacy (east) and Ceresora along the river Védomagne (south), as well as having internal borders with Dordanie (north-west) and Occois-Garde (for a very short distance in the extreme west). The state's population is about 15 million.
Principality of Benovia Principauté de Bénovie Principato di Benovia | |
|---|---|
 Flag | |
 Location of Benovia inside the Savamese Empire | |
| Capital and largest city | Saint-Juste-sur-Védomagne |
| Official languages | Savamese, Verborian |
| Religion | Cairony |
• Argan | Reformed Savamese |
| Demonym | Benovian |
| Government | Parliamentary respublican monarchy |
• Prince | Maxime II |
• Chancellor | Carmen Pagnotto |
| Legislature | Parliament of Benovia |
| Establishment | |
• Secession from Dordanie | 1971 |
| Area | |
• Total | 110,623 km2 (42,712 sq mi) |
| Population | |
• 2017 estimate | 14,956,228 |
• Density | 135.2/km2 (350.2/sq mi) |
| Currency | Aurel |
| Time zone | Quesailles Time IAT - M reference |
Benovia is the second least-populated of the Savamese states, despite being the third largest, and is also the least dense, principally due to its harsher geography. Its capital Saint-Juste-sur-Védomagne (Santo-Justo-su-Vecchiomagno) is the sixth largest city in Savam, the largest bilingual city in Savam, and amongst the empire's fastest growing urban area. Benovia is one of Savam’s two officially bilingual states, and the Verborian language is co-official with Savamese.
Geography
Benovia's geography is characterised by the Benovian Range where Savam's highest mountains are located (peaking at the 1,617-metre Mount Belgoni); most of the state is located above 500 metres. The Range is cut by several large valleys that have been historic population centres; the easternmost part is truncated by the valley of the Turby, the state's second largest river.
The other major geographic features are the Great Lakes (specifically Lake Gorya) and the river Védomagne that form the state's southern boundary. Benovia shares with neighbouring Vallinia (in Ceresora) the two access routes into the Sabamic Plain from the Great Lakes: the Janneur Valley (only practicable for river boats) and the Sabamic Gate.
Far western Benovia in the Sabamic Plain forms the northern part of Outre Garde. This region is not considered to be part of traditional Benovia, but its mainly Verborian population brought it into the state when it became independent of Dordanie in 1971.
History
The emergence of Benovia as a territory and a defined people probably did not come about until the early 13th century, with the Montalbian Empire sending forces east into lands which had been ravaged and depopulated during the deprivations of the Nihilists in the previous century. Attempts to repopulate the region (even if suggestions that Benovia derives from la belle vie, “the good life”, can certainly be discounted) were probably driven to some degree by the region’s liminal status on the borders of the Montalbian lands and the Neo-Messenian Empire which was expanding from the south. By the 1270s the Messenians held Benovia and were even pushing further west into modern Outre Garde.
The decline of both empires as a factor allowed other forces to enter the vacuum. Benovia maintained a loose, if not unified, existence until the end of the 14th century, with the First Benovian War (1391–93) coalescing these petty states under the rule of Daniel de Flessandre, prince of the Sablons, bringing them under his banner. The new Sablons-Benovia would be one of the core components of what became Dordanie under its first king Maxime I in 1461.
The Flessandres’ hold over Benovia steadily loosened over time, to the extent that it was in some senses an independent state by the coming of the year 1500 – albeit in somewhat smaller form, with the Principality of Novigrad in control of much of the south. Even “loose” was insufficient for some, though, and a rebellion nurtured by the Benovian noble house of Branchi broke the willingness of Dordanie to hold onto the territory. Demetrio di Branchi and, after 1526, his nephew Augustus forced out Dordanian officialdom to create the Principality of Benovia, with the final break coming in the summer of 1531 – at least in the sense that Quesailles did not seek to enforce its claims to rule. While Dordanie never legally gave up the south, Aurélien I effectively stopped any actions to that end after 1549.
Some of the northerners’ reticence may have been because the Principality shared its enmities towards Vallinia and its successor Ceresora as it built a reputation as too unpalatable a prospect for any would-be conqueror. Nor was it averse to throwing its own weight around; with a declining Novigrad being strangled into submission by Ceresora in 1672 in the early period of the Fifteen Years’ War. Questions over whether Benovia bowed the knee to Dordanie were set to one side as both states increasingly saw their rivalry with Ceresora as an existential issue. The Treaty of Gué-le-Château, which ended the war in 1688, did little to resolve that issue.
For the Benovians, the strongest effect that Gué had was to place their own status as an independent state in jeopardy. Benovia’s presence in what was increasingly a choke point for access to Translacunia and the steppe beyond it gave rise to the so-called “Benovian Question” and brought the country under the guns of Ceresora and Dordanie alike in two extended wars (1701–08 and 1724–28). Dordanie ultimately prevailed, with Benovia’s being upgraded to an archprincipality scant consolidation for being forced under Dordanie’s wide apron once again.
The emergence of the Cairan Reformation as a phenomenon had its effects in Benovia as much as any other part of the Savamese country, although the worst of its effects were felt late. The Second Reform War, to the extent that it was initially a civil war in Dordanie, caused some affray as King Benedetto of Ceresora saw it as an Aedif-sent opportunity to prise Benovia out of Dordanie’s grip, weighing into the fight from 1743. For all that, though, the Reformation uprooted Orthodox Cairony here, too, with Archprince Maxime I declaring for the Reformation in 1751 and throwing his country firmly into the conflict even despite his and his people’s disputes with Dordanie.
Enthusiastic as they may have been for this cause, the Archprincipality still saw its uncomfortable association with Dordanie brought to a clear end by the Blessed Conciliation of 1771. As a corollary of Dordanie’s wider concessions in the east, Benovia was forced to surrender Novigrad and its control over river trade routes to Ceresora, and was obliged to break ties to the Savamese lands and resume a formal neutral position – thus providing Cavino with a respectable shield against future Dordanian aggression. The new status quo was perhaps more readily acceptable in Saint-Juste than this summary suggests; certainly Archprince Maurizio made a point of rubbing Quesailles’ nose in its discomfiture by playing up the Victorial Feast on 1 Ediface of that year as a more expansive public holiday (still marked as such there today).
Official “neutrality” was something more often recognised in the breach than in the observance, with Benovia being the subject of intrigue from both sides of the border – a state of affairs which the Savamese were unable to tolerate. The Great Verborian War which stretched over much of 1867 perhaps did little to damage the Vallinian north of Ceresora, but did see Savamese forces reoccupy the southern lands. With the death of the Archprince during the fighting, Savam felt itself able to revive the claim to the country that Aurélien had “never renounced”. The Settlement of Etamps-La-Sainte late in the year – in truth something shamelessly imposed from Quesailles – snuffed out Benovian independence for good and all and sent the house of Bragoni into its last eclipse by the Flessandres.
The status of Benovia as “Savamese by courtesy” persisted well after the Settlement, with Benovians proving all too adept at taking up issues which fed into their discontent and were longer-term headaches for Savamese rulers. The area retained strong Ceresoran sympathies during the Embute War – with Cavino stepping into the fray late and opportunistically – and Valentin d'Hoste-Labarre, then making a reputation as a stalwart defender which would carry him forward in later years, had to take action on several occasions on the southern front to put down seditionist support. The emergence of collectivism as a doctrine after the war likewise attracted support, with heavy crackdowns after Cornélien d'Havrincourt was elected as Viceroy in 1914.
The proximity of Benovia to the ant’s nest that was Ceresora during its civil war was a perennial concern during the period from the middle 1940s, although mitigated to some degree by Savam’s early intervention – in which the 1944 Battle of Novigrad severed much of the Ceresoran north country as a demilitarised zone. Large numbers of Verborian-speaking refugees nonetheless made their way north of the river, and their presence – and the militant Orthodoxy that some of them brought along – formed a persistent issue for Quesailles as the Long War continued. Many of these would later make permanent homes in Savam.
A decision was made in 1971 to reconstitute Benovia as a separate state within the Savamese realms, for the first time in more than a century. While this was largely advertised as Dordanie more properly recognising a status as “first among equals”, a case can be made for the Quesailles government recognising and seeking to neutralise some residual ill-feeling among Benovia’s Verborian population left behind from the Ceresoran civil war period. The Dordanian royal family was prevailed upon to give up their rulership over Benovia, with the Flessandre-Storret family, a cadet line of the main Flessandre family, being emplaced as Princes (specifically not kings) there. The Storrets, although themselves impeccably Savamese, have substantial links to the state’s Verborian-speaking nobility, most notably the House of Santo-Amadeo, which had ties to the pre-Etamps royal house.
Economy
The local economy is quite varied. Mountainous Benovia has a much smaller agricultural sector than other states, but retains some significant local products. The Benovian pig and poultry industries are quite significant; Benovian wines (mostly white varietals) are produced in the southern reaches of the state.
Benovia has a substantial mining industry. Coal-mining has now mostly stopped, but the region still produces iron, copper, zinc, and silver, as well as highly-strategic thorium. The state leads the country for hydroelectric production with about 10.5 gigawatts of installed capacity. With good mining sources and trade routes (through the Védomagne), Benovia has strong heavy industry, mostly in siderurgy and mechanical engineering. There has been a more recent boom in pharmaceuticals, centred on Saint-Juste.
Lower value-added industries have declined considerably in Benovia over the past century, mainly through outsourcing to the neighbouring Rastovid Confederacy – the Savamese- and Verborian-speaking region of Transturby, traditionally viewed as part of a “Greater Benovia” – drawn there by cheap labour and commercial concessions in the western autonomous provinces. Some service industries have also slumped. Winter tourism is dominant in the state’s north, and has strongly resisted the same outsourcing. Benovia is also a major logistics and transport hub.
Government
Benovia is a respublican monarchy with a bicameral parliament formed by a chamber of commons and a chamber of nobles; the Chancellor of Benovia exercises executive authority in the name of the parliament, with the Prince a mostly ceremonial head of state. The state’s institutions mirror those of Dordanie, except for the Dordanian High Assembly, which has no equivalent in Benovia. Constitutional provisions exist to allow the re-annexation of Benovia to Dordanie, although outside of national emergency or open rebellion situations this would require the approval of the local population via a referendum.
All government documents are printed in both Savamese and Verborian, and all government functions are officially bilingual. It is traditional for the Parliament to conduct its business in Savamese, but many parliamentarians use Verborian too. State-wide media are duplicated, but local media follow more closely the local usage patterns; for example, L’Echo du Lac is printed exclusively in Savamese, as Sainte-Valériane has a majority of primary Savamese speakers.
Demographics
Benovia is one of the two Savamese states that has two official languages. The state sits firmly within the Verborian cultural area, which extends from Transvechia to central Ceresora, and has regularly alternated between the two opposing poles of the Savamo-Verborian divide: Dordanie and Vallinia. The state has thus built a strong local identity but also exemplifies why Savamese and Verborian are generally regarded as part of the same nation. Despite its links to the south, Benovia is firmly Reformer, as are the Savamese realms generally. Most of the population today is bilingual, but about 65-70% of Benovians speak Verborian at home. Primary Savamese-speakers are found mostly in in the state’s far west (in the Dordanian plain), in the northern valleys, in the Turby river valley, and along the lake coast from Saint-Juste-sur-Védomagne to Sainte-Valériane.
The state also has some Transvechian minorities living in the northern valleys, mostly Roménian-speakers, with some isolated pockets of Orrannol-speakers. Those languages have no official recognition, but are still used for everyday communications in those communities, although those minorities usually are bilingual in, respectively, Savamese or Verborian.