Great Doyotia
Doyotian Empire | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1155–1754 | |||||||||
 Great Doyotia in 1720 with other states in northeast Joriscia | |||||||||
| Capital | Zlatograd | ||||||||
| Official languages | High Secote, Doyotian, Pitenet | ||||||||
| Religion | Siriash | ||||||||
• Compact | None | ||||||||
| Government | Semi-respublican, (after 1296) hierocratic monarchy | ||||||||
| Emperor of the Doyotians | |||||||||
• 1155–1159 | Izyaslav I | ||||||||
• 1742–1754 | Arkhtovoy IV | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
• Secote conquest of Rozman | 1054 | ||||||||
• Assertion of imperial title | 1155 | ||||||||
| 1296 | |||||||||
| 1754 | |||||||||
| |||||||||
The Doyotian Empire, usually referred to as Great Doyotia, was a Sirian power that existed along the northern coast of the Gulf of Joriscia, in the regions of Greater Doyotia and Greater Rasintia, now the southern fringe of the Lutoborian Banner, the Zemayan marshalate of Rasintia, and the northern reaches of the Zemayan Banner-State. The Doyotian Empire had a notably heterogeneous character, constituted as it was from three distinct sources: the Chotarian coastal cities that emerged from the Circuit of Rozman after the fall of the Fifth Chotarian Empire in 1052; the Dobrivoyevid dynasty who were appointed as knazes of the region under the Secote Empire and claimed the title of emperor from 1155 in repudiation of their nominal dependence on the southern Emperors of the Eastrons; and the Lamneants of Doyotia, originally Sirian court clerics of the Dobrivoyevids who founded lamnearies under the Secote Empire and later spearheaded the great Sirian mission of the Leavening of the Land in the 13th century. The terms 'Rozman' and 'Circuit of Rozman', in particular, continued to be used by the Doyotian cities as a form of shared identity until the end of Great Doyotia, and in Lacrean the state is still known as the Rozmani Empire.
History
Rozman and Doyotia (1054–1296)
The coastal fringe of the Circuit of Rozman had held out for some time against the northern invasion of Yar in the 1040s, relying on supplies from the Lacrean heartland by sea as the land connection through Gergotea had been rendered logistically unviable by the 10th-century Revolt of the Gergote Courts. With the fall of Kozrat in the wake of the westerly Secote invasion through Inabo and the death of the last Chotarian Emperor, Lēl VII, Rozman was left isolated. In 1054, the censors of the circuit temple-court at Namarāc (modern Zlatograd) were overthrown, and Rozman was definitively surrendered to the Secotes. The coast was annexed to the jurisdiction of the 'Doyotian' kunentsydom of the Dobrivoyevid clan, named after an earlier Secotic term for the lands east of the Pustavidēk. Nevertheless, under the Secote Empire and throughout the 12th century the Rozmani cities were allowed to govern themselves virtually autonomously, their Dobrivoyevid knazes to the north demanding only regular tribute and appropriate cultic veneration, as well as the installation of their clerical court dependants as Sirian lamneants. The cities themselves nurtured local government institutions, including urban temple administrations that came to fill a comparable role to the later Boards of Secrets in the Lacrean heartland. The title of the 'Circuit of Rozman' was effectively perpetuated as the name of a league of cities under Dobrivoyevid surezainty, which collectively exerted naval dominance over the northern Gulf of Joriscia. The first maritime footholds of Rozmani control were established at this time further south along the Gergote coast and in Aushria. In 1155, having freed themselves from tributary dependence on the Aborovids further north, the Dobrivoyevids adopted the Secote title of emperor, vladyka, primarily in order to refute claims by the Yaromirovid dynasty to suzerainty over Rozman as a part of the old Chotarian Empire, though the change proved relatively unimportant in practice.
The political landscape of this composite Rozmani–Doyotian state underwent an important transformation in the 13th century as the Sirian clergy began to assert themselves more forcefully. The latter had been given extensive access to usufructuary privileges by the Dobrivoyevids, and a Chotarianised form of official Siriash had developed in the Rozmani cities through lamnearic and princely patronage of academic institutions. From around the 1240s these gave birth to a great intellectual and missionary movement known as the Leavening of the Land. This initially provoked some degree of civil strife in the Rozmani cities as medieval Ishtinist cult clashed with the more rigorous formulation of Siriash promoted by the Leavening clergy: the Lamneant of Namarāc was expelled from the city in 1254 after promoting violence against Ishtinist sanctuaries. Both sides commanded considerable popular support, however, and with the increasingly overt backing of the Emperor the Leavening Sirians were generally able to overwhelm their opponents by the end of the century. Though the cities retained much of their self-governance, particularly in trade and maritime affairs, they now fell under the shadow of an increasingly powerful and rigorist Sirian clergy, who were used with growing frequency by the imperial court to bolster its own authority. After a long period in which Ishtinist, moderate Sirian, and in some cases Cairan elements defending a more strident conception of urban autonomy stood out against the Leavening, pro-imperial party, the imperial Proclamation of Dzekhevo in 1296 formally abolished the Ishtinist cultic status of the urban temple administrations and transferred them to the supervision of the lamneants. 'Doyotia', in many ways, had prevailed over 'Rozman', and Great Doyotia now emerged as a more firmly integrated state organised on somewhat hierocratic lines.
Contest for the Gulf (1296–1685)
With the consolidation of the Lacrean cities to the south of the Gulf in the 14th century, which culminated in the formation of the Lacrean League in 1385, the Gulf of Joriscia became an arena of competition and conflict between the Rozmani and the Lacreans, who contended for control of trade outposts and islands across the Gulf and its coasts. The birth of Vaestism and its rapid spread across the old Chotarian heartland in the early 15th century added a new dimension to this struggle. Doyotian holdings were established as far as Mirokrai. The War of Knowledge in 1474–76 saw the extensive use of Rozmani mercenary forces and naval support by Sirian cities in Lacre, and when the great cities of Kish and Starigrad seceded from the League they passed into the protection of Doyotia. The 1480s marked perhaps the greatest extent of Doyotian maritime power, manifest in a string of Sirian enclaves that stretched across the entire coast of the Gulf, and the conflicts in Lacre redirected even more of the Gulf trade towards the north. At this time Rozmani naval expeditions reached the Khuikh Quests and the outlying cities of Milling-era Kiy, where their merchants were well-established. This apparent hegemony was to prove short-lived, however: in 1490, the Pseudolacrean warlord Nerits was appointed the first Emperor of the Vesnites and began the conquest of the vast Vesnite empire of Great Neritsia; to the east, in the same year, a significant new power emerged in modern Agamar with the unification of the First Kingdom of Mirokrai, which would rapidly eclipse the Lacreans as the Doyotians' bête noire.
Great Doyotia held on throughout the Neritsovid era, though their remaining enclaves to the south were progressively lost to the early Neritsovid Emperors and their Gulf trade was repeatedly challenged by the Lacreans and the Agar. The overwhelming influence of Vaestism, which began to pressure Doyotia from the north with the conversion of the Lutoborsk in 1636 after the Great War of Enlightenment, as well as the loss of the autonomous southern holdings of the Rozmani cities, provoked a Sirian reaction and an ever tighter synthesis of the heterogeneous elements of the Great Doyotian state, which became at once hierocratic and monarchical, urban and maritime. The Empire became an object of interest in Messenia in the 17th century as the last and greatest bastion of resistance to Vaestdom in the East, though transcontinental diplomatic contacts remained sparse. Great Doyotia remained primarily a naval power, serving to limit Neritsovid ambitions in the north through its domination of the northern Gulf and much of the Gergote littoral in that region; though on land it proved a key belligerent in the Tardy War, containing Polcovodate Lutoborsk alongside equally zealous Khuikh kingdoms like Severnyye to the north.
The Tri-Insular War of 1679–85 resulted in Doyotia's defeat by the Polcovodate of Mirokrai, its chief rival in the Gulf, leading to the cession of the Gulf's northern islands to Mirokrai and the constitution of the Graviate of Laukuna, extending substantially further north than the preceding Principality and now firmly in control of most of the modern north Zemayan coast. A Mirokrainy-backed coup in Dialogic Kiy, the Uniformity Covenant, also challenged the Doyotian presence in the northern Esperasian Ocean with the island's new Critical regime. What is now Rasintia generally remained, however, under the control of Doyotia itself, either exercised directly or through various Sirian Gergote petty fiefdoms in the uplands; and for the time being the alliance with the Khuikhs was able to exploit Lutoborian internal troubles such as the Antiprophetic Rebellion and keep landborne threats at bay.
Decline and fall (1685–1754)
With Lutoborian incursions such as the Alnybysh War of the 1690s being fought to a standstill, the Tri-Insular War's settlement of the region lasted until the mid-18th century. Doyotia's involvement in the Tardy War was placed in peril during the Peridot Wars, in which it ceded territory to the Lutoborsk and its most important Khuikh allies were totally conquered. At that point, the increasingly ascendant Graviate of Lacre, then undergoing the first throes of industrialisation, began to challenge Agamari commercial supremacy in the Gulf, leading to a protracted contest between the two Powers.
In the 1740s, the Lacrean Civil War spilled over into Doyotia, as Selar Matolchy's Procuratorate, in combat against Mirokrai which backed Yarodar Dragodarhazi, sought to oust Mirokrainy forces from the Gulf. The Procuratorate thus committed an expedition in the “Last War of Great Doyotia” from 1751 alongside the forces of Vladibor V of the Lutoborsk. Under Oktar Matolchy, the defeat of Dragodarhazi's forces at home in 1753 allowed a surge of freed-up Lacrean forces into Doyotia. The Lacreans broke Mirokrainy defences while the Lutoborians swept through the Doyotians on land. In 1754, the Doyotians surrendered following the siege and capture of Zlatograd, and a Vesnite government was established with the Transmarine Marshalate.
The proclamation of the “Sublimation of Doyotia” was over-optimistic, although it outraged the Sirian west – even if that meant little in practice, with Messenian Sirian states in no position to intervene. The Marshalate was dominated by Lacrean interests primarily concerned with commerce over conversion, while Lutoborsk was inclined to ally with Sirian locals to undermine it, and even the local Vesnite population was unenthusiastic with regards to Sublimation. Vaesticisation proceeded gradually into the 19th century, while Lutoborsk's strategic maneuvers gradually neutered Lacrean power in the Marshalate to push its influence onto the Gulf of Joriscia.
Government
The government structure of Great Doyotia changed significantly over the course of the seven centuries after the Secote conquest. At the centre was the Dobrivoyevid dynasty—first merely as knazes, initially dependent on the Yarovids and Aborovids further north; then, after 1155, as Emperors. The Dobrivoyevids were among the longest-lasting of all Secote dynasties, and remained the monarchs of Doyotia until the fall of the state in 1754. Before the Leavening of the Land and the consolidation of imperial power in the 13th century, however, political authority was diffuse and exercised by a diverse range of competing institutions: other than the imperial court, which at first remained nomadic and roved the north of the country, there existed the coastal cities of Rozman with their self-governing temple courts, the Sirian lamneants who had been installed by the Dobrivoyevids, and minor Secote clans that each demanded some share in the ožidomy tribute. Against these various interests, the claim to imperial authority meant little in practice. It was the religious tumults of the latter half of the 13th century that gave the stature of the throne a more definite shape as militant Sirians aligned with the Emperors in an attempt to overpower the urban governments. The triumph of the imperial–Sirian party was formalised in the Proclamation of Dzekhevo in 1296, which brought the cities under the authority of the lamneant hierarchy, whose appointments were overseen by the monarch, and abolished their separate religious privileges.
With the Sirianisation of the cities after Dzekhevo the need to limit their autonomy diminished. The court had little ability to exert direct control over the extensive maritime interests of the Rozmani cities, and in practice the lamneants themselves began to seek new arrangements with the urban governments they oversaw in order to protect their privileges from overbearing monarchical authority. Urban autonomy thus quickly reasserted itself in the 14th century, though in a more rigorously Sirian form. (...)