Elland

Kingdom of Elland other languages Riocht an Éile (Dael) Royaume d'Eliétèrre (Embute) Κϙνιγρειχ Ελλανδ Königreich Elland (Zepnish) Կոնւնգսրիկիð Ելլանդ Konungsríkið Elland (Hártal)
Flag Coat of arms
Motto: Steadfast in loyalty
Anthem: The Ellish March [1]
Location of Elland in Messenia
Capital and largest city	Etherley
Official languages	Ellish
Recognised regional languages	Dael, Embute, Hártal, Zepnish
Religion	Cairony
• Argan	Orthodoxist Ellish
Demonym	Ellish
Government	Respublican monarchy
• King	Henry VI
• Lord Chancellor	Earl of Mondegreen
• CC	C
Legislature	Parliament of Elland
Establishment
• Declaration of kingdom	1479
Area
• Total	579,246.14 km2 (223,648.18 sq mi) (25th)
Population
• 2022 estimate	41,126,441
• Density	71/km2 (183.9/sq mi)
Currency	Ellish crown (ELC)
Time zone	Ellish Time IAT - M-1

The Kingdom of Elland (Dael an Éile, Embute Eliétèrre, Hártal Ելլանդ, Zepnish Ελλανδ, both Elland) is a landlocked country located in central western Messenia. It is bordered by ten countries, more than any other Messenian polity: these are Odann (in the north), Emilia (north-east), Saint-Calvin and Rochardy (east), Reinwald (south-east), Zeppengeran and Alcasia (south), Helminthasse, Grand Fenwick and Vettermark (west).

Elland is a Cairan respublican monarchy, although its territory, centrally located in Messenia as it is, encompasses populations of diverse religious and cultural backgrounds. The King of Elland is the country's hereditary monarch, although the position can be elected under exceptional circumstances; these rare instances have usually arisen where the direct line of succession has died out and a decision has had to be made between cadet lines of descent. The monarch's authority, although still absolute in theory, is in practice bounded by strict checks imposed by the Parliament of Elland, an assembly of the nobility. The head of government is the Lord Chancellor, who is drawn from the Parliament's ranks.

Political life is very substantially the domain of the Ellish nobility, with the majority of the non-noble population having no voice on the country's affairs; noble dynasties (locally known as the Great Houses) generally control important offices and concentrate economic power into their hands. The Ellish nobility is almost exclusively Cairan, and mostly Orthodoxist. Cairony is the state religion and the professed faith of the royal family. The Argan of Elland has an exclusive control of the education system and a very important role in the judiciary; it yields a strong indirect influence over the country's politics, although to a lesser extent than in northern neighbour Odann.

Although Elland is an industrialised state, its economy is still largely dominated by agriculture. This is explained both by the country's fertile alluvial plains, which have been one of Messenia's grain baskets for millennia, and by its relative latecomer status in the industrial revolution. Thanks to the modernisation of farming techniques, Elland is now the second largest Messenian exporter of agricultural products behind Savam. Farming, animal husbandry and industrial transformation of agricultural products accounts for slightly less than 15% of Elland's gross domestic product.

The government and Great Houses have sponsored industrial development, with mitigated success. Elland has suffered from the movement of consumer goods manufacture to Ascesia in the post-Long War period. Its most successful industrial productions (excluding the agri-business) are transports (cars, buses and train carriages), glass, and chemicals (including medications). More recently, benefiting from its multilingual population Elland has found some success in the outsourcing of services, such as call centres, for neighbouring countries, especially Odann and Zeppengeran.

Elland is at the crossroads of several major cultural groups in Messenia, and thus presents characteristics from all of them. Mainstream Ellish culture can be described as a Sabamic-Palthosunnic hybrid with significant Dael influence. This is shown best by the history of the Ellish language which is (broadly) based on a Palthic grammar with a vocabulary heavily larded with Sabamic loanwords and other adoptions. Despite its mostly Palthic Old Ellish native population, Elland was frequently regarded as part of the Savamese realms following the mass migration of Sabamic people into the region under the Montalbian Empire. However, subsequent intermixing with the Old Ellish and Dael migrations led to enough of a cultural shift that, apart from its eastern third, today still inhabited by the Embute people, Elland had largely shifted outside the direct sphere of Savamese influence by approximately 1400 CE.

Etymology

The name Elland is derived from Old Ellish, originally spoken in the central regions of the modern country and the precursor of the modern Ellish language. The first references to Heallaland, probably from Old Ellish heall, "hall", appear in the early ninth century, although the territory referred to by that name covered only around one-third of present-day Elland in the central regions, rising into the Aphrasian foothills in the west. The term retained currency as a poetic description of the region as a whole, something which almost certainly influenced its adoption as the name for the newly-established Kingdom of Elland in the later 15th century.

Geography

Elland is one of Messenia's largest countries, with an area of close to 470,000 km², the subcontinent's fourth. It has a diverse geography. Elland encompasses almost all of the Upper Gaste basin, as well as parts of the northern Anser basin; those regions form large alluvial plains that are part of the Central Messenian Plain. In the country's east, terrain rises into the mountainous Galban Massif up to 1,100 metres (the highest parts of the Massif are purely within Rochardy). The Aphrasian range rises above 2,000 metres in the country's western quarter, with the highest peaks reaching 2,400 metres at the border with Grand Fenwick.

History

Pre-Common Era

The southern part of present-day Elland was conquered by the expanding kingdom of Dammuri, at least in part, as early as the 16th century BCE, although it remained very much a border march for the empire, drifting in and out of its hands over the next few centuries as the Dammurites metamorphosed into the later Larhine Empire. The fall of the empire in the middle to late ninth century BCE saw an extended period of confusion as a succession of pocket statelets disputed dominance in southern Elland and the north of present-day Zeppengeran.

The development of a more settled culture around the western shores of Lake Carles saw the rise of the original polity of Emilia, which challenged the stronger Sabamic territories to the east as well as expanding along the upper Gaste into the north-east of modern Elland, and across the Marduine into the south of present-day Odann.

The first millennium

During the first century of the Cairan Era, Elland was colonised by Palthosunnic nomads who moved en masse in Messenia during the period of the Second Great Invasions. They effectively assimilated local populations and settled, forming the Proto-Ellish civilisation. For about 3 centuries, Elland remained a shifting patchwork of palthosunnic polities, with the greater south being at times placed under control of the Neokos Empire and northern Elland regularly exposed to Dael raids. Siriash started to spread from its stronghold in the south.

Starting from the third century, the expanding Third Sabāmani Empire drove deep into Elland, pushing hard against the Neokos in the south, and reaching the outer edges of Siur territory in the west before being forced to fall back after its defeat in the Battle of Hydrædsdalur in 485. The Sabāmanians lasting influence on the region was the beginning of its caironisation as well as infrastructure developments, especially in the north. Outside of religion and the heavily Sabamanic cities, Palthosunnic culture was mostly preserved in rural lands. Most of northern and central Elland remained in the empire until the 760s and the arrival of the Secote.

With the fall of the Sabāmanians to the invading Secote Empire towards the end of the eighth century, the open plains of Elland were easy meat for the horsemen from the east. Most of present-day Elland fell to the Secote during the early years of the ninth century, although their advance west was stymied in part by the natural barrier of the Aphrasians, as well as the vigorous defence put up by the Siur in what is now northern Helminthasse.

In common with most of the rest of the empire, Elland was divided into smaller territories, administered by chosen war-leaders of the Secote (Kŭnędzi, princes), and underwent the same rural-focused manoralisation aimed at braking the power of the Sabāmised urban elites. Under the occupation, many Daels moved from the Odannach Uplands to settle in the plain, starting the ethnic and cultural mix that characterises modern Elland. Palthosunnic culture saw a revival as the relative power between the countryside and towns shifted.

1000-1500

As the Secote hegemony broke down following the death of Volomir the Magnificent in 1120, it left behind a political vacuum that demanded to be filled. The first attempt at so doing was made by the Secote warlord and Cairan Nihilist heretic Kazivit during the middle twelfth century; although his first attack in 1150 was tentative and was withdrawn in the face of Leszekevid expansion from the Sirian lands to the south, Kazivit returned in force in 1160, with war bands under his command sacking Gannsford and levelling a hastily-assembled counter-force raised by several Ellish principalities at Low Hett, to the north-east of modern-day Etherley. Nihilist forces laid waste to much of central Elland over the next few months before threats to the heartlands of his control in modern Brocquie forced Kazivit to withdraw.

The expansion of the Montalbian Empire through Valdenois saw their forces overrun most of the north of modern Elland over the period between 1220 and 1240, in what was the greatest expansion of power in the Savamese realms in almost eight centuries. Although their presence in the country was relatively short – a matter of no more than two, perhaps three, generations – the Savamese left a substantial legacy in Elland. Coming both as rulers and settlers, they once again entrenched their culture in northern Elland against the Palthic Old Ellish people and the Daels, and fostered the development of further Cairo-Sirian syncretism in Elland's south, as Cairony once again integrated with local Siriash. More significantly, the influx of Savamese-speakers in positions of authority and influence would both elevate the status of that language in the Ellish lands and begin a process of assimilation which would drastically pull Old Ellish away from its Palthic roots and enforce a much less inflected grammar along Savamese lines, as well as expanding the vocabulary with a generous amount of Savamese loanwords, particularly in the developing fields of medicine and the law. Ellish law would become very strongly sabamicised – the process continuing even after the high tide of the Montalbian expansion – and would continue to take some influence from Savamese practices, at least in general form, well into the second millennium.

In the early 14th century the country was devastated by the Great Plague; during the post-plague recovery, the cultural framework of Elland was further modified as Old Ellish and Old Savamese people were forced into further mutual assimilation, while further Dael people moved in from their homeland in the north-west, which had been relatively preserved from the plague. This period also saw the practice of Cairony in Elland start to diverge from that of the Savamese realms, with the beginning of a formalised Dael rite in Elland and the Daelic countries.

The by-now strongly sabāmised Ellish princedoms emerged as regional powers during the later 14th century, taking on the role of counterbalance in the region against the Arganite States, by this point beginning a slow decline in influence as Orange Revivalism struck deeply at its underpinnings, and the Respublic of Quesailles. Orangism had already made much further headway among the arganic leadership in Elland and in the Daelic lands to the north; Elland was therefore mostly spared the violent disruption which pro- and anti-Orangist disputes wrought on the Savamese for most of the period. More distant from the former imperial centres, the various Ellish argans absorbed easily the changes prompted by Orangist advocates, and sometimes watched with incredulity the violent struggles in the east. Nonetheless, Ellish princes were steadfast in defending their power against the Arganite States' theocratic expansionism, finding themselves aligned with the Savamese secular princes in Quènie and Dordanie.

Ellish influence in central Messenia would continue to grow over this period, with this state of affairs being cemented by the formal establishment of the Kingdom of Elland under its first ruling monarch, William I, in 1479, following his intervention in the Salles Revolt of that year and the unification of his own principality of Middlechamp and the neighbouring Salles. William was arguably the first Ellish ruler of any real stature to regard Ellish as his first language, and while the use of that language in affairs of government had been growing for most of the preceding half-century, William particularly fostered the process as a mark of distinction for his new kingdom. While Sabamic languages remained in widespread use – even to the extent that William’s coronation ceremony was carried out in Old Sabamic, including his acceptance of the title of defensor restitutorque (“defender and restorer”, signifying his role as protector of the new Argan of Elland) – Ellish would increasingly become the language of commerce and administration across the country. Although the lands that form modern Elland would continue to be influenced by their various minority communities well into the modern era – with continuing demands for parity of status by the mainly Sirian south causing at-times dangerous distractions for the Cairan monarchy – William’s coronation would establish his new kingdom as an identifiable state long before parallel developments would take place elsewhere in Messenia.

However, while William may have proclaimed a kingdom and taken steps to enforce unity upon it, regional loyalties – and more significantly, loyalties to local rulers which threatened to override that which the king claimed as his due – remained a sizeable problem with which William, particularly in the last years of his reign when he became increasingly reclusive, never properly came to grips, contenting himself with accepting pledges from his subordinate lords which functionally allowed them very wide leeway at local level, provided that they fulfilled their obligations to him.

16th and 17th centuries

At William’s death in 1505, the nominally unified kingdom of Elland was still, underneath the surface, very much bound by these localised loyalties and affinities. While William had begun a process of creating supra-regional institutions such as the kingdom’s new coinage, it would not be until his successor Peter I settled into his rule that concerted efforts were made to drive this process forward. Elland’s court structure and legal system, still fragmented and variable across different parts of the kingdom, was systematically restructured and taken under central control, with the establishment of the Court of Rares in Etherley as the final arbiter of Ellish justice. Over the course of some ten years between 1508 and 1518, the dense and sometimes impenetrable thickets of Ellish law were cut down and brought into order; while practice was not made uniform with the earlier Maximilian Corpus, the Savamese system served as an inspiration and an at least partial guideline. Much of the structure created by the Petrine reforms remains extant today.

In common with the rest of Messenia, the Ellish country was devastated by the spread of Seranian fever across the region in the early 17th century. Mostly spreading northwards from present-day Zeppengeran, the disease was endemic across the south of Elland by the summer of 1606 and had extended across the rest of the country before the end of the year. Estimates of losses of population by historians specialising in the period are generally no lower than 40%, and in some instances have reached as high as two-thirds. That Elland as a polity did not collapse as a result is largely due to its neighbours being just as hard-hit; population in the region as a whole would not recover to its pre-disease level for almost 150 years.

The long reign of Stephen I came to an end in 1632, bringing with it a period of political dispute and a descent into war. With the direct royal line brought to an end on the king’s death, Stephen’s Lord Chancellor (and father-in-law) the Duke of Cottesmore acted promptly – and with questionable legality – to install the king’s eldest son as his successor. Although Stephen II received the acceptance of the greater majority of Ellish nobles in the Council of Etherley, his claim to the throne was disputed by the prince of Valdenois, who traced his own ancestry to a cadet line of the Ellish royal family. The dispute began the Ellish-Valdenois War, which would continue until 1638 and would cause extensive damage across much of present-day Emilia before the Valdenois withdrew from the field and made reparations to the Ellish treasury.

As the coastal polities of Messenia began to reach out across the oceans to establish colonial empires, landlocked Elland was forced to some extent to stand to one side; however, its continuing strength as an agricultural powerhouse and its strong position in internal Messenian trade allowed it to retain a position of power and influence even as its regional rivals began to gather their own strengths. This translated to some extent into success on the battlefield, with the country assuming its current borders in the south with the capture of the duchy of Northmark from a steadily decaying Palthic Empire at the conclusion of the Northmark War in 1712.

18th century

William II, who had prosecuted the war in Northmark, maintained a presence as a threat on the Empire’s northern border, and continued to lend support to independence-minded Zepnish nobles in the early years of an extended weakness of Palthic rule in the Long Interregnum (1708-40). Under his nephew and successor Henry II, Elland aligned itself firmly behind the Orange Orthodoxy as schism began to expose the faultlines within contemporary Cairony; and Henry played a leading role in prosecuting the First Reform War, mounting an invasion of reformist Brocquie alongside Valdenois and Odann in 1732.

The battle for the heart of Cairony continued to play out across the next forty years; as the Savamese states coalesced behind the reformist banner, they were squeezed from the flanks by Elland and Odann in the west, and by Ceresora in the east; the Third Reform War (1760-71) was probably the most brutal conflict of the period, prompting savage bloodbaths like the Battle of Lapetrelle. At the height of the war, the Savamese orthodox argan refused to accept the authority of any of the Savamese monarchs, instead enthroning Henry III of Elland as Henri I of the Cairan Empire in an elaborate ceremony in the city of Etamps-La-Sainte. While Henry’s claim to empire was repudiated elsewhere – and was essentially thrown out in its entirety by the Blessed Conciliation of 1771 – the issue would remain a continuing irritant in relations between Elland and the Savamese kingdoms (as well as the later-unified Savamese Empire) for a further generation.

19th century

The increasing movement towards unity in the Savamese realms caused consternation in Elland, which had prospered markedly in the past on the back of internal Savamese squabbling; and Ellish concerns over the consequences of Savamese unity prompted the attempted Valdenian Opposition of 1797. The failure of the Opposition caused dismissals in high places within the Ellish court, and acted almost as a dagger strike to the idea of independent Ellish power; and while the Savamese-Ellish War of 1804-07 was notionally fought over the continued claims by the monarchy of Elland to the throne of the Empire following Henry’s death in 1777, it can in many respects be seen as a last throw of the dice by an Ellish king and state determined to secure its own fortunes at the expense of the Savamese.

The loss of the war seemed to send the Ellish monarchy and people into a tailspin from which it has, arguably, never completely recovered. Savam’s gathering strength saw it outperform Elland in agricultural productivity from at least as early as 1840; plagued by internal conflicts, particularly prompted by the competing interests of the Ellish noble houses against a weak and ineffective central government, the country was largely by-passed by the early stages of the Industrial Revolution in Messenia, and would not become a significant industrial power until very late in the 19th century.

The fractured state of the Ellish polity under its surface veneer of Cairan-imperial glory continued to draw the attention of its neighbours; and in the early to middle 1860s it was the turn of the Odannaigh to cast hungry eyes over the Ellish body politic. Substantial parts of northern Elland, then as now, were majority Dael-speaking, as well as sharing the Orthodox Cairan religious practices prevalent in Odann; and the aim of reuniting all of the Daelophone regions of Messenia under the rule of the Sacred Kingdom – known as an Filleadh or “the Return” in Odann – had been a long-held ambition in the country. Seeing Elland as weak and divided – and with their perennial rivals in Savam preoccupied in their own east by the ongoing Great Verborian War – the Odannaigh launched an attack on Elland in 1867 which began the Autumn War. Despite support from neighbours Helminthasse, the war in the north was short-lived and disastrous for the Ellish; a large swathe of the north as far as the Gaste was annexed by Odann, forming the new province of Trasmardúinn. Even Etherley itself fell under the sights of Odannach cannon, with the royal family being forced to flee the city temporarily for the safety of family estates in the Ellish midlands; the sense of being a “city under siege” lingered in the capital for years, even as relations with Odann gradually improved over the next generation.

Elland’s regional reputation as a military makeweight was dragged further into the mire by an expansionist Savam invading the country’s north-east in 1889. While this attack was intended as part of its bid to bring the Embutes, whom they considered to be part of the greater Savamese cultural sphere, into the arms of the empire, there was a clear determination by the Savamese to take advantage of their neighbours’ internal strife and somnolent economy to break the challenge posed by Elland once and for all. However, on this occasion it was the Savamese who overreached themselves; although the invaders were supported by a strong assault from Zeppengeran in the south – functionally severing large parts of the Zepnish-speaking territories in the south by the middle of 1892 – a besieged Elland made common cause with old foes in Odann to force the Savamese into defeat in the Embute War in 1893, with the victors enforcing the loss of large tracts of the empire’s south-west and restoring the status quo ante bellum as against the Zepnish.

Early 20th century

The beginnings of the 20th century saw a distinct shift in domestic sentiment in Elland. The country’s victory over their perennial rivals in Savam prompted a growth in collective confidence, something further energised as the first flowering of industrial development began to be felt across the country. While Elland was perhaps unable to recover its old dominance in central Messenia, it nonetheless succeeded in re-establishing itself as a legitimate secondary influence in geopolitical terms, with an associated increase in both funding and influence for its military. The development of heavier-than-air flight during the 1920s saw an unusual development among Elland’s generally male-dominated armed forces, as women were trained as pilots because their generally lighter body weight created less strain on sometimes unreliable and often fragile aircraft. The Fritillaries, as they styled themselves, gained a well-deserved reputation as pioneers of the air throughout Messenia.

The relationship between Elland and Savam had entered a more positive phase by the mid-1930s, helped along by both countries’ enmity towards Odann, which was now displaying greater signs of belligerence – something that would be demonstrated by the Snow War which engaged both countries around their border regions and in the north of Emilia during the winter of 1938.

Elland’s long-standing enmity towards Odann flared into life again during the 1950s, when they broke a long period of neutrality by siding with Savam as the northerners turned to attack the Sacred Kingdom, then somewhat weakened by its continuing involvement in the Ceresoran Civil War. Although largely motivated by irredentist claims over the Marduine territory, Elland’s siding with Savam and Zeppengeran – cemented by the Hemperth-Loiseau Agreement of Dominy 1955 – accelerated the assault on Odann by granting Zepnish troops transit rights across Elland. Units of the Ellish and Zepnish armies driving across the Mardúinn provided sufficient distraction for the Savamese to have a much easier run at the Odannaigh capital, Ráth, which fell during the summer of 1957.

Post-war Elland

With the restoration of peace, Elland began to return to stability, although – in common with much of the world during the late 1950s and early 1960s – it was severely hit by the continuing effects of the years without summers and, arguably, felt a disproportionate dampening effect on economic recovery during the period. This extended even into the social sphere, with a continuing sense of malaise seeming to hang over the country until, by some estimations, as late as the middle 1970s; and while it lacked the faintly menacing edge of the Dark Years in Odann, it was felt by many as enervating to similar degree.

In more recent times, Ellish industrial output has suffered as its position as a low-cost manufacturing centre has been supplanted by competitors outside the continent, particularly in Ascesia, and Elland remained distinctly weak in economic terms for most of the period between the end of the Long War and the early 1990s. This has been turned around to some extent in the last twenty years, as developments in agricultural industry have restored some of Elland’s old position as the granary and orchard of Messenia; the country has also emerged as a significant player in the global service economy, and its multilingual population has given it a growing niche in the provision of call-centre services for businesses based in more powerful neighbour economies.

Government and authority

A map of the thirty counties of Elland.

In an environment in which so many other countries across Messenia have seen compromises made between the elite and the masses on the sharing of political power, Elland has not been wholly immune. However, it can be argued that, of the major states of the region, the division between the two groups in political terms remains at its starkest and most yawning in Elland. The country’s Parliament is one of the largest bastions of such privilege in a country in which privilege and its exercise remains an entrenched part of daily life; scions of the country’s noble houses form the greater part of its membership, and any aspirations to a political career beyond the purely local or regional level remain largely dependent on wealth, status or inherited position. Some concessions have been made to creating a more genuinely representative franchise, but these have been minor and have had little real impact.

The Parliament, which is a single-chamber entity (the largest such in Messenia), has an official peak membership of 1,363 (767 observing members, the heads of officially-recognised noble houses, and 596 substantive members elected as representatives of defined geographical districts or hides), although attendance is not mandatory for the former group and, in practice, few of them attend unless for specific purposes. The leader of the Parliament, the Lord Chancellor, is officially merely the monarch’s most senior advisor, although in practice the office exercises significant delegated authority and possesses certain defined powers in its own right.

Administration

For administrative purposes Elland is divided into thirty counties; most of these are of long establishment, in some cases going back even before the creation of the modern state of Elland. While some limited powers are devolved to county level, principally those which can be realistically confined to a single county, local government is very broadly subordinated to central state authority, with only limited exceptions (most notably in Etherley, which as the capital has almost always been seen as having a character distinct from the country at large).

Religion

As with other aspects of its cultural life, Elland has been the crossroads for a range of religious influences; although regarded as primarily Orthodoxist Cairan – largely due to this being the professed faith of the Ellish royal family and many of its predecessors for centuries (with a strong influence in the country being wielded by the Orthodox Argan of Elland as a direct result) – the country is home to a substantial Sirian community (both in its pure form and as various forms of Cairo-Sirian Syncretism), and there is a significant Arlaturi community in the Aphrasian mountains in the far west. Both faiths have suffered at times from discrimination by the Cairan majority, which has enforced bans on open displays of “foreign” religious practices on a number of occasions over the centuries.

The Argan of Elland officially follows the Dael Rite of the Orange Orthodoxy. A point of contention exists within the majority-Embute regions where the Eastern Rite is more popular with the Orthodoxist population, although this has not reached a level at which there would be a significant split within the community. A more pressing issue for the Argan of Elland is that about 45% of the Embute population adheres to the Reformation, which has caused recurring issues with the champion of the reformed faith, Savam. After some years of quiescence, there is a sense that the Argan is beginning to challenge the communion’s long-standing tolerance of Reformer groups; incumbent Holy Mother Daphne Blake, a long-time affiliate of the conservative Rathfarnham Group, has been outspoken on the “wrong-headedness” of Ellish reformers prior to her elevation.

Elland hosts many important Cairan sites; the most important being the Sanctuary of Saint Viola, the world's most important place of worship for the patroness of the musical arts, and the occasional host of the Orthodoxist Ecumenical Sorority.

Language

The relatively open nature of most of Elland’s land area has resulted in the interplay of a variety of languages across its territory, several of which remain extant today.

The original Ellish language was itself heavily modified by the influx of Sabamic settlers, although only in the latter period during the early 13th century did they exert sufficient influence to break down its Palthic vocabulary and grammar and direct it towards the much more sabamicised form which it has today. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly in later centuries, the influence of neighbouring Embute dialects and liturgical languages shaped some further evolution. Liturgical Sabamic was abandoned by the Ellish Argan due to the influence of Orange Revivalism and replaced by the local form of Old Savamese then spoken by the elites, which became strongly influenced by the Urban dialect of Embute spoken as a vernacular in Etamps-La-Sainte. This prestige dialect was spread by clergy and shaped both modern Ellish and Savamese through its influence on the educated.

For much of the early period following the Secote collapse Savamese languages retained widespread prestige, and were spoken almost exclusively at court; William’s establishment of the modern kingdom came at a time when the use of vernacular Ellish was forcing its way into general acceptance (and was to some extent fostered by him during his later reign).

In the modern country several languages other than Ellish are spoken by significant regional minorities. Dael is prevalent across the north of the country bordering Odann; Embute is widely spoken in the east around the borders with Emilia and Cantaire, some regional Zepnish dialects can be heard across parts of southern Elland, and Hártal is spoken to some extent in the far west bordering Helminthasse.

The attitude of the Ellish government and ruling institutions towards the use of languages other than Ellish has varied widely over the years; previous crackdowns on the acceptability of minority languages have been acknowledged as one of the root causes of the 19th-century Autumn War. At present, the position is one of broad tolerance, with widespread use of bilingual road signs in some areas of the country as perhaps the most visible manifestations. Many Ellish government departments allow the use of minority languages in routine correspondence, and will make interpreters available to non-Ellish speakers where required.