Brolangouan

Brolangouan (Squade: Brolannwenn) is a country in northern Messenia located along the coast of the Arcedian Sea. It is bordered by Savam (to the east and south-east), Emilia (very briefly in the south), Odann (south-west) and Nation 60 (west).

Brolannwenn Brolannwenn (Squade)
Flag
Location of Brolangouan in Messenia
Capital and largest city	Pleyben
Official languages	Squade
Religion	Cairony
• Argan	Orthodoxist Brolangian
Demonym	Brolangian
Government	Constitutional monarchy de jure
• Viceroy	Lusian de Mérouz
Establishment
• Compromising Convocation and recognition of Brolangian independence	1790
• Savamese occupation	1955 - 1958
• Treaty of Ostari and renewal of independence	24 Animare 1958
Area
• Total	53,143 km2 (20,519 sq mi) (87th)
Population
• 2022 estimate	5,526,840
• Density	104/km2 (269.4/sq mi)
Time zone	Odannach Time IAT M-1

Etymology

The name Brolannwenn in Squade translates broadly as “the pure white land”, and as such is a reference to the state of the country’s coastline and the sandy beaches for which it was particularly noted by early Sabamic travellers in the region. In this form, at least, it predates the country itself; references to it in the Old Sabamic form Terra alba harenae (“land of the white sands”) are attested from around 100 BCE, and for much of the antiquity it was known by the derived forms Albarenaea or Albarenia.

Geopolitics

Brolangouan has long sat at the interface between the Savamese realms and the Daeltacht. Up to the early 19^th century the country was largely aligned with Odann, the de facto leader of the Daelic lands, but the events of the Fourth Reform War led it to be occupied by Savam for two decades, which begun a process of "neutralisation" of the country. Following the Savamese withdrawal in 1843 Brolangouan remained relatively neutral up to the end of the Embute War when it aligned itself again with the Grand Alliance and Odann. This remained largely in place until the end of the Long War, although the country served as one of the theatres of the Savamo-Odannach Cold War in the 1920s and 1930s.

The 1938 Pleyben Uprising, that saw Savam-backed rogue army units attempt to overthrow the government, almost spiralled into a large-scale war between Savam and Odann (with actual direct combat between the two in the Snow War); all-out war was only avoided through intense diplomatic activity by Siurskeyti and the organisation of the Second Feijerpoort Convention, in which Brolangouan was made officially neutral. When the Gaste War started in 1954 Brolangouan remained neutral, despite its pro-Odann proclivities. The country was forcefully brought into the war in late 1955 when Savamese forces crossed its borders as part of the Autumn Offensive. Brolangouan offered more resistance than had Emilia, which had been similarly invaded by Savam a year earlier, but their military was quickly overwhelmed despite support from several Odannach divisions. The Treaty of Ostari freed the the country again. but also provided for a significant reduction of Odann's influence over its government.

In the post-Long War era, Brolangouan remains the theatre of competing Savamese and Odannach influences, with the former being said to have the most sway. Indeed, the Brolangian economy is increasingly integrated with and dependent on that of its eastern neighbour (a side-effect of Savamese "méthode Couvier" diplomacy), with a large manufacturing sector having developed in the country's east along the Savamese border. While similar development initiatives have taken place in the west, these have yet to reach the level of Savamese penetration.

Geography

Most of the coastal region of Brolangouan is part of the larger Quenian Plain which extends eastward into Quènie; the Rúan, which forms the border between Brolangouan and Nation 60, is sometimes considered to be the western edge of the Plain. Parts of the eastern coast along Occes Bay are dominated by high cliffs with interspersed beaches, particularly west of the Beg-ar-Loc’h peninsula. The Rindarian Range of wild highland forms a sizeable part of Brolangouan’s southern border country.

History

Early Brolangouan

The first significant polities in what is now Brolangouan emerged in the First Aittecht period during the middle twelfth century; these were initially little more than free townships with a small amount of rural hinterlands, but some of these coalesced into larger entities, with the biggest of them, Brorskoed – centred upon Pleyben, today the Brolangian capital – had gained pre-eminence enough locally to rank as a “kingdom” (Dael ríocht) at the Convocation of Gárran na Ríthe in 1229 and be recognised among its peers at the Six Tables.

While never notably strong, Brorskoed gained a reputation among its neighbours for a fair measure of truculence and ill-manneredness – “rude as a Skoeder” was (and to an extent still is”) a maxim in the Ternic country – and its stubborn and hedgehog-prickly presence on the north coast kept at least some outside interest away. Outlying parts of the region were gradually brought under Pleyben’s sway during the later 14th and 15th centuries under the hand of Bror Trézeguet, the first recognised king of Brolangouan, and his successors – the name Brolangouan actually being adopted for his enlarged kingdom by Bror’s son and successor Téach in 1498. For most of the medieval period, the country looked to the sea for much of its wealth; it was, on the whole, not wealthy enough to boast a significant fleet, but was a large enough player in the region to feel under threat by the expansive interest of Quènie in the early 17th century. Brolangouan threw its support behind Odann during the Quènien-Odannach War of 1628–34, and the country would remain a fairly dependable ally of the house of Cláirhain in later years.

The great compromise

The beginnings of the modern state of Brolangouan can be traced back to the Odannach Encameration of 1780. In some respects, this institutionalised the dominant status of Orthodox Cairony in the aftermath of the Third Reform War; Odann’s leadership under Defender Liam VIII functionally abolished the loose federation in the Ternic sphere which had existed under the Six Tables and sought to bring the whole region directly under Odannach rule. The implied loss of ancient rights was protested with force in the largely free-standing territories of the Séaraiseacht along the coast west of Odann proper, and while the dispute broke into violent conflict only briefly, relations between the region and the former Tabular Odann soured in the next decade before Liam accepted political realities. Through the Compromising Convocation in 1790, Odann agreed to acknowledge Brolangouan, Nation 60 and Nation 59 as wholly independent states – although ties of alliance remained strong, with the elites of all four countries staying closely tied at a familial and personal level.

War and occupation

As the 19th century dawned over Brolangouan, the first rumblings of renewed discontent within the Cairan body politic were being felt; and while Brolangouan itself was relatively distant from the centres of this shift, it could still feel some of the tremors. Although the efforts of Richard II of Elland to dress his country’s grievances against Savam in religious raiment failed to convince – and the Ellish military in the Savamese-Ellish War did so even less – the question was still coming back to the table, with Odann pulling together a coalition of forces aimed less at breaking the Reformation (which even Ráth acknowledged as an impossibility) than at shifting the balance between the two interpretations in favour of the old Orthodoxy. Brolangouan’s willingness to become involved was uncertain; it was at relative peace with Savam – particularly due to the significant Orthodox minority in Quènie, which bordered it to the east – and it eventually threw its hand in with the Odannach more from a vague sense of pan-Daelic solidarity than from any prospect of gain.

Such half-heartedness would be the coalition’s undoing; and the Fourth Reform War was a remarkably sporadic affair for all its length (almost five years between 1818 and 1823). The Orthodoxists – who included Brex, Cantaire, Ceresora (to a limited extent), the almost insignificant Argevau and the rump of Saint-Calvin – rarely fought in the kind of co-ordinated fashion that their aims called for; and the Savamese eventually claimed victory in a war which was described in later years as “two fat men walking down a narrow corridor and trying to push each other out of the way”.

However, the Savamese victory in the Fourth Reform War would have significant consequences for Brolangouan; in the post-war settlement through the Treaty of Virkið in 1823, Savam began what would be a twenty-year occupation of their neighbour state, during which they would make every effort possible to break the influence of the small Orthodoxist Argan of Brolangouan over the country, to support the Reform interpretation wherever it could be encouraged to take root, and to force the country to orient itself away from its “big brother” to the south.

The absence of a viable royal house in Brolangouan might have been seen as an aid in that direction; the flight into “voluntary” exile in Savam of both the ageing king Ronhaël and his nephew and only potential heir Elan during the war had left a gap at the head of the country’s hierarchy which Quesailles now took the opportunity of filling. However, the idea of elevating a Savamese nobleman to the status of usurper king in Brolangouan held little appeal – although less for the effect on the local population than for the unwillingness of any of the Savamese sovereigns to see any of the others so preferenced. In the modern day, it tends to be forgotten that the Savamese union was still relatively new in 1823, and relations between its member states still often reflected pre-union rivalries and animosities.

The solution which was arrived at was drawn from some of the practices which the new Savamese union had introduced at home, with the creation of a new office of Viceroy of Brolangouan. The key difference was that, where the Viceroy of Savam was, in constitutional terms, the emperor’s chief lieutenant, the new Viceroy of Brolangouan officially derived his authority from a royal house which was functionally in abeyance – a situation almost unheard of in Messenia and, arguably, closer in spirit to the Empty Throne which would be established in the collapse of Great Neritsia more than two decades later.

The new Viceroy was almost entirely what could have been expected in the circumstances; Serge de Tyrouz was at least native to Brolangouan and was Squade by origin; but he had lived in Quènie for most of his life, was reliably Reform in his observances and had fought with some distinction as commander of a northern Quènien unit during the war. In almost all respects he made an excellent choice as a Savamese catspaw; and he made determined efforts to live up to Quesailles’ expectations of him as he settled into rule over his new fief.

Resistance to the Savamese occupation was scattered and unfocused in the earliest years, but became more obviously directed from roughly 1830. Several figures rose to prominence during this campaign, of whom the most significant was probably Arlène de Quinzel, more usually known by her alias of ar gaur piw c’hoarzhin (Savamese l’homme qui rit, “the Man who Laughs”; the use of a male pseudonym was entirely deliberate). Quinzel, whose Orthodoxist loyalties and Brolangian patriotism were in no way diminished by her past expulsion from the Brolangian argan for breaches of discipline while a junior officiant, was a constant thorn in the side of Tyrouz’s soldiery and his Savamese backers until his death in 1837. His successor, Maurice de Trélès, proved more willing to work with the Brolangians, and to encourage Quesailles to support a government which would be, if not a firm ally, then at least an uncommitted bystander in interordinate affairs.

Brolangouan renewed

Few observers of interordinate affairs genuinely expected Savam to voluntarily withdraw from Brolangouan when the twenty-year period laid down in Virkið expired; but the announcement that the first troops would be repatriated from Metrial 1843 – leading to a complete withdrawal by the end of Ediface – laid the first groundwork for dramatic changes in the country. Delight at regaining their independence was soured in the minds of many Brolangians by the prospect of their royal house returning. Ronhaël had become reviled in the country after his capitulation before the Savamese and what was seen as a comfortable exile in Jagues-Salins; and while his own death in 1836 had removed him as a factor, the new king Elan was very much tainted by association.

Elan’s public announcement that he would return to reclaim his throne on 1 Empery, the traditional Sovereign’s Day holiday recognised across the Cairan communion, pushed Brolangouan into further confusion; the new king was not entirely without support, and even those who would not accept him were divided as to an alternative. Even viceroy Trélès, who had been seen as at least more on the side of the people than the detested Tyrouz, and who was himself Brolangian (born in Pleyben), had his supporters. However, Elan’s support proved the telling factor – principally because most of it came from the Brolangian army, who were capable of both implementing and maintaining it by force. Elan’s coronation in Pleyben’s Temple of Betulae was effectively implemented by a military contingent which outnumbered the civilian congregation almost twofold; and one of his first acts as king was to expel Trélès, who fled into exile in Cairn, and replace him as viceroy with army general Hervé de Kerlédec.

It may perhaps be fairer to say that Kerlédec simply claimed the office and forced Elan to acquiesce behind the claim; this would certainly be to recognise the real dynamic of the relationship between the two men. Elan, after years of relative indolence in exile, was arguably more interested in the trappings of monarchy than in the responsibilities which came along with them, and Kerlédec – who described Elan dismissively in his own journals as “a fool with delusions of adequacy” – was entirely happy to leave the king to play with his toys while he accreted to himself increasingly more power. With an eye on gaining support from the argan – traditionally a centre of power in its own right in Orthodox Cairan countries – Kerlédec cultivated as an ally the Brolangian Holy Mother Méline d’Épernouen early in his tenure; and the two were largely able to block the king’s occasional ventures into self-assertion.

Once secure in his overall control, Kerlédec began to gradually prise Brolangouan free from the Savamese grip and direct it towards a generally neutral stance as against Savam and Odann. While this was popular in the country – with the Squade people being more closely linked by ties of language and culture to their southern neighbours – for the general this was done perhaps more out of a sense that encouraging the country’s larger neighbours to feel secure in Brolangouan’s lack of importance allowed him an almost completely free hand inside the country’s borders.

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The middle passage

As Savam and Odann jousted for supremacy against each other during the 1920s and 1930s, Brolangouan, which bordered both countries, became a natural location for this dispute to play out. While the Brolangians tended to lean more towards Odann, Savamese interests were assiduous in seeking out and exploiting any potential weaknesses in the relationship and seeking to wedge them open. An important issue in Brolangian’s internal dynamic which created such a wedge point was its continuing treatment of its Reform Cairan minority. The Reformers were a significant element in Brolangouan – some 20% to 25% of the population for most of the period between 1900 and 1940 – but were routinely treated as second-class citizens by an Orthodox government and commercial elite.

The support given by king Dizaon and the Brolangian parliament to Odann grated on the sensibilities of a contingent within the country’s army which was increasingly convinced that a realignment away from the “backward, superstitious, matron-ridden” Odann offered Brolangouan its best chance of breaking out of its economic backwater and achieving the prosperity of which they believed it capable. This sentiment grew steadily across the middle 1930s, but only in late 1937 and early 1938 did it begin to focus on a single figure. The prominence of lieutenant-general Malédith Kerrouan – who was both a Reformer and of common stock in what was then still very largely a noble officer corps – has at times unfairly obscured what was a dispute in which Orthodox and Reformer, noble and commoner, were found on both sides of the question.

The extent of actual Savamese support for Kerrouan’s renegades has been a subject of much conjecture over the years. Certainly Kerrouan himself seems to have believed that he was acting only in the best interests of the country; and his personality was known to be such that he would probably have been affronted at the idea of his being used in such a manner by foreign agents.

Kerrouan’s faction struck in the morning of 24 Nollonger 1938, as he led a contingent into the parliament building to place its officers under arrest and suspend its operations, alleging treasonous acts by the government under the leadership of Viceroy Taige de Traizhever (although he stopped short of any claims against Dizaon). The king was quick to condemn the action and to rouse army units loyal to the country within the capital; although there was some extensive fighting in central Pleyben as the coup’s supporters sought to take over the city’s main communication centres and transport nexuses, support there and in the surrounding country was limited and the rebellion petered out quickly.

The worst of the so-called “Pleyben Uprising” was actually felt well away from the city and in the southern highlands, where some of Kerrouan’s allies were able to gain a loose control over part of the region, with fighting between loyal and rebel units spilling into Emilia. Units of the Odannach and Savamese armies – both claiming to be acting to pacify the situation, and both shamelessly violating Emilian sovereign territory in the process – fought the brief Snow War over some seven weeks at the end of 1938 as a result. The agreement hammered into place at Feijerpoort early in the following year restored order – but forced Brolangouan into a strictly neutral position against its great-power neighbours which Dizaon, particularly, bridled against.

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Brolangouan under siege

The outbreak of the Gaste War in 1954 strained the fabric of the country even further, as Brolangouan’s government was shackled by its Feijerpoort-mandated commitment to neutrality, even as Savam trampled over the also officially-neutral Emilia to secure advance positions from which to strike without provocation against Odann. Public opinion in Brolangouan was firmly lined up behind the Sacred Kingdom; but incumbent Viceroy Gérard de Seiche held firm against any suggestion that the country should offer its support to its neighbour, insisting that it should honour its word and stay out of a fight that was not its concern.

In a certain light, Seiche may have even been justified; the initial thrust of the war bypassed Brolangouan, as Savamese forces – having probably learned their lessons over the hardships of war in the mountains during the Snow War – bypassed the Rindarian Range to attack up the Marduine valley. However, Seiche was ill-equipped by nature to lead a country under the shadow of war, and his government came under near-constant fire by parliamentary opposition led by his long-standing opponent Gounezer de Bréal. While Odann was able to hold the line against the Savamese during the summer of 1955, Seiche could at least maintain his support; but with the entry of Elland and Zeppengeran to the Savamese side and the beginning of the Autumn Offensive in Sation, the Viceroy’s weakening grip was finally broken. Bréal’s thunderous denunciation of Seiche’s “weak-willed, gutless perfidy” before a howling and blood-maddened parliamentary chamber gave King Dizaon – who was, perhaps, only looking for a credible reason to step in – to dismiss Seiche from office on 22 Sation 1955. Bréal, as the new Viceroy, threw aside any pretence at non-involvement with a formal declaration of war on 30 Sation.

Just how effective Brolangouan’s small army could have been was a debatable question; it lacked much of the necessary materiel to negotiate difficult roads through the Odannach Uplands and offer much support to Odannach forces under attack in the Marduine region. A direct attack on Savamese forces through western Quènie was the next most obvious approach; but a critical failure of nerve – whether by Bréal or by Brolangian general staff – led the army to stay its hand long enough for the Savamese to turn on it in force. Operation White Sands, which began on 15 Petrial 1956, was a second-order attack, using forces which had been in part diverted from the main front and which were arguably of lesser quality; but – as would be bitterly observed later by Bréal’s son Sioulan, “even their reserves were a street ahead of our first team.”

The attack was, in fairness, not as simple a matter as the Savamese high command might have expected; its army’s attack on Emilia in the previous year had come almost entirely out of the blue, and the Emilian forces had capitulated almost immediately as their government refused to countenance futile bloodshed. By contrast, the Brolangians had at least made some plans against an invasion, and were even able to implement some of them; and their Odannach allies were able to detach some forces in support, as the high command in Ráth recognised the prospect of a flanking attack by the Savamese. Where Emilia had abjectly surrendered after only a day, the Savamese drive on Pleyben took almost six weeks, and their assault on the royal palace stretched over almost two days and left the building in smouldering ruins. Although elements of the government were able to retreat into the country’s further west and south, from where a continuing resistance was mounted, Dizaon refused to flee the capital and was recovered from the wreckage, while Bréal was seriously wounded during a firefight elsewhere in Pleyben and captured.

As they had done with Emilia, the Savamese placed Brolangouan under military occupation; but where they had ruled with a fairly light touch in Pont d’Chélîn – where the locals were mainly Reform Cairans like the Savamese themselves – the Savamese boot came down hard on the Orthodox Brolangian neck from the beginning. Any major figure who could become a focus for resistance was targeted; leading parliamentarians and surviving members of the royal household were hunted down and captured over the first two weeks of the occupation, and most of them were executed by firing squad. The king himself, as a concession to his exalted status, was given the opportunity to commit suicide instead, which he took on 10 Metrial 1956. Five days later, the pro-Savamese politician Rouan de Fraget – a member of the country’s minority Reformer population – was appointed as head of an occupation government with the title of Intendant (Squade Amaezhier).

That Savam’s occupation of Brolangouan was comparatively brief – a little less than three years – did not mean that it was any less harsh. There have been suggestions during post-war studies of the occupation that, as Savamese viceroy Jules d'Aultey wound back the worst aspects of treatment of Orthodoxists at home, he used Brolangouan to some extent as a dumping ground for people whose anti-Orthodoxist positions were becoming a liability. This was arguably a necessity while Savam did not control the entire country, but with the last remnants of resistance along the southern border mopped up by the beginning of spring 1957, a ratcheting-back would not have been unreasonable. However, the attempted murder of Fraget in Sation 1957 – a few days after the final fall of Ráth – by a lone would-be killer driving a commandeered fishmonger’s delivery van forced the occupiers to tighten the screws further; and tensions remained high in Brolangouan even as the war elsewhere ground slowly towards a close, with small-scale fighting in Pleyben and other main urban centres after rumours circulated during the second half of 1957 that Savam would formally annex Brolangouan as a state after the war had ended.

The long road home

The truth of the matter was quite different; in Nollonger, Fraget was placed on notice by his Savamese puppet-masters that they would withdraw from Brolangouan on any peace settlement, and he later made private contact with resistance leadership with the aim of leading a transition back to normal government. This was dismissed out of hand, and on 30 Animare 1958 – only a week after the signing of the Treaty of Ostari – he and members of his government were arrested on charges of treason against the kingdom and collaboration in multiple murders across the country during the occupation period.

Amandine de Penarvaly, the Holy Mother of Brolangouan and arguably the most universally respected senior figure remaining in the country, accepted the exceptional role of Viceroy-in-Interim to lead the transition, while researchers within the argan climbed the family tree of the house of Trézeguet to find a legitimate successor to Dizaon. Ogier Cariveau, a retired land surveyor from the southern border country, had been 29th in the line of succession before the occupation, and his common ancestry with Dizaon lay five generations back into the past. The newly – and somewhat hastily-enthroned – King Ogier signed the death warrant upon Fraget’s sentence, which was carried out on 29 Floridy 1958.

Cariveau was 72 when he became king and had no heirs of his own; with this in mind, he recognised and accepted his responsibility to steer the country to true constitutional legitimacy, and he took a leading role in the convention in Pleyben in Ediface which created Brolangouan’s new government. This included a recognition that, on his own death, the role of head of state would descend upon the elected Viceroy – that title being accepted as legitimate, despite its origins as a Savamese imposition.

The reign of “Ogier the Last” was a brief one – lasting only until 1966 and his death from combined lung and renal failure, at the age of 80 – but he was widely respected across the country. He was sometimes known as the “commoner king” given his upbringing – as well as some discreet suggestions that Penarvaly had faked his ties to the royal house, so as to bandage Brolangouan’s constitutional wounds – but his unprepossessing nature overlay a remarkable strength of character in bringing the country through the traumas of the late 1950s’ climatic disruption and guiding the reweaving of his country’s diverse strands into a functioning whole once more. Although Brolangouan was pulled more into the orbit of Savam in the post-war years, Ogier maintained that it must strive for friendship and understanding with all states. In this respect he developed a strong personal friendship with Defender Rónán II, three years his junior, at a time when Odann was still somewhat isolated on the world stage.

Government

Brolangouan in the present day is somewhat unusual in that it styles itself as a kingdom without actually having a king. The post-war political settlement settled the role of head of state on the Viceroy (Squade Bezroue) after the death of Ogier – his full title is properly “general governor by the leave of the king” – although the viceroyalty itself is explicitly not a hereditary title, and its holders are limited to a single term in office of no longer than seven years’ duration. The current holder of the office, Lusian de Mérouz, is the tenth viceroy of the new (post-1958) creation.

The Viceroy’s previous role as the head of the parliamentary government is now held by the Superintendent of State (Merour dreist a stad). As is often the practice elsewhere in Messenia, the Superintendent has the support of the controlling faction, or alliance of factions, within the parliament, and holds the office while this remains the case or until dismissed by the Viceroy.

Culture

Brolangouan’s position, effectively along the fault-line between the Ternic and Sabamic cultural spheres, leaves it a remarkable mixture of both, even extending down to the words in their mouths: the Squade language which predominates in Brolangouan is recognisably Ternic in structure and much of its grammar, but its vocabulary has borrowed sizeably by Savamese.