Brocquie

Brocquie, officially the Kingdom of Brocquie, is a member state of the Savamese Empire, located in the Sabamic Plain to the north-east of Lake Carles, in Savam's west. It is the third most populous of the Savamese states with a population of 19.5 million, and the fourth largest with an area of 68,864 square kilometres. Brocquie's capital and largest city is Bar, the third largest city in Savam with 4.8 million inhabitants. Maconfle is the state's second largest city, the eighth nation-wide.

Kingdom of Brocquie Royaume de Brocquie
Flag Coat of Arms
Location of Brocquie inside the Savamese Empire
Capital and largest city	Bar
Official languages	Savamese
Religion	Cairony
• Argan	Reformed Savamese
Demonym	Brocquian
Government	parliamentary respublican monarchy
• King	Bénédict
• Chancellor	Virgil de Minoret
Legislature	Parliament of Brocquie
Area
• Total	68,864 km2 (26,589 sq mi)
Population
• 2017 estimate	19,536,718
• Density	283.7/km2 (734.8/sq mi)
Currency	Aurel
Time zone	Quesailles Time IAT - M reference

Geography

The state’s extreme south, around Maconfle, is part of Adaque, also the westernmost part of the region of Middle Gaste. Some classify Maconfle as the northern boundary of Sarre. Beyond north-eastern Piémont, far northern Brocquie tends to be hilly, extending into the more rugged country of the Massif Cardussien, of which the highest point, at the Quicherie de Bollère (959 metres), stands where Brocquie’s border meets those of Dordanie and Quènie.

Economy

The Brocquian economy combines a strong agricultural sector with advanced industries and a developed service sector. The Gaste alluvial plains is a fertile and well-developed agricultural land, supporting intensive grain farming in the south and viticulture in the north; the southern foothills of the Massif Cardussien in the Piémont are Savam's largest wine producing region. Pisciculture is a developing industry on the shores of Lake Carles, while the production of rogue noire is a traditional activity on the lake that is now associated with fine food production. Brocquie also produces most pays carlois-style eau-ambrée.

Bar and Maconfle concentrate the state's industrial and manufacturing activities; local industries usually focus on electrical engineering, the automotive industry, and chemical production. Located where the Gaste exits Lake Carles and near the confluence of the Réale leading into Brex-Sarre, Maconfle remains, as it has long been, a major shipping and logistics centre in Savam. Mining was significant in Piémont in historical times, but the industry has declined in the last century.

Tourism and education are important aspects of the service sectors. At the heart of the Old Sabāmanian Country and the so-called Savamese southern coast on Lake Carles, Brocquie is rich with historical sites and is a major tourism destination for intra-empire travellers. Bar has many renowned tertiary education institutions, making it one of the most attractive cities for students along Quesailles, Poignes, or Belny; numerous smaller institutions also attract students in numbers to the state. Culture and the media have a strong place in Brocquie’s economy: attractive tax concessions have focused Savam’s film industry in the state (particularly in Litoine), along with numerous media production facilities are found there, thanks to an attractive tax régime. A large number of Savamese publishing houses have their headquarters in Bar.

History

By 1345 the Brocquian states had all been forced to bow to the rule of the argan out of Etamps; Arganic control over effectively the whole of modern Brocquie was complete by around 1350, with a later push in the south to take Taurive during the Adaquian War of 1360–61; but these territories were only short-lived gains, and Quesailles’ recovery of them perhaps caused a failure of nerve within the argan, with a vigorous crackdown against the Orange Revival seeking to hammer home its authority once more.

Continuing frustration over arganic rule was a persistent undercurrent of Brocquian life and culture in the early 15th century, with some looking to the strong secular rule of the house of Flessandre in Dordanie as an example to be emulated. By the 1430s this sentiment had coalesced around the house of Flibert, which held the fief of Bar in central Brocquie. Marcus de Flibert, and in later years his nephew, Luc, emerged as central figures in the battle for an end to the argan’s secular control which broke out in 1439. This would drag out for more than two decades before Luc could lay claim to the title of archprince of a free Brocquie.

As much of the traditional Cairan Heartland was caught up in the Reformist zeal of the Petition of the Sixteen Bolds, the decision of archprince Léon-Valentin I to declare for the Reformation in 1730 was one of the key points within the Reform Wars period. Shortly after, Brocquie’s parliament effectively declared war on the argan by revoking much of its secular power until it addressed the Petition; an attempted coup led by local nobles under some arganic pressure failed in Fabricad, and this prompted the incumbent Holy Mother Téodora de Beldopoule to denounce the Brocquians in whole as heretics. In the next year she pulled together a force from its neighbours to bring them back to heel. A largely outmatched Brocquie fought doggedly for five years to hold off retribution, but with its surrender in 1737 Léon-Valentin was forced from his throne, with his cousin Julien I – known to his chagrin as Julien le mal-aimé (“the unloved”) – leading a fearsome backlash.

For all this fury, however, the Reformation had taken firm roots in Brocquie which Julien’s reign of terror could not tear up; and the fire would spread in due time across the whole of the Savamese states as time passed. During the Third Reform War, Brocquie would join the others in a unified front for the Reformation, and would become a significant battleground as Henry III of Elland led an army set on strangling the Reform. In 1771, with the end of the war and the signing of the Blessed Conciliation, the free-standing county of Sarre was taken into Brocquie’s remit; by long-established custom this entitled the kingdom to style itself “most blessed” (bienheureux) as the protector of Etamps, Cairony’s “holy city”, in western Sarre. In part because of this, the archprince was elevated in dignity to the status of king to match his counterparts in the other Savamese states.

The increasingly converging interests of the Savamese states ultimately brought about their convergence as a single Savamese Empire in 1798, with King Sébastien III of Brocquie chosen as the first Emperor of the Savamese (with the regnal style Sébastien I) – a somewhat unexpected decision, but caused in part by the King of Dordanie recusing himself from selection given fears (particularly in Valdenois) of this process cementing a “Dordanian Empire”.

Perhaps because of the responsibility for Etamps, Brocquie was the first of the Savamese states to seriously examine its issues over prejudice and discrimination against Orthodox Cairans. Pressure from the king and parliament in Brocquie strongly drove debate at federal level which brought about the Naturalisation Act in 1836, and the restoration of citizenship rights to the Orthodox in Savam.

Brocquie came under attack during the Embute War, with forces of the Grand Alliance driving around Lake Carles both north and south. In Sarre, Etamps was surrendered in Fabricad 1893, and the southern advance came within striking distance of Maconfle; in the north Bar was the site of two separate battles at which the Savamese barely held off an allied attack in a war which a hubristic Savam was forced in the end to yield. The state was savaged by the Treaty of Ráth, with Sarre being torn from it and attached to neighbouring Brex.

Government

Brocquie is a typical modern respublican monarchy, with a bicameral parliament formed by a chamber of commons and a chamber of nobles – although it remains an executive monarchy where the sovereign is also head of government (closer to the traditional respublican model than elsewhere in Savam). The Chancellor of Brocquie still has some power over the executive branch, but can only exercise those at the sovereign’s discretion.