History of modern Zemay
The history of modern Zemay spans from the country's independence at the Treaty of Tharamann in 1845 to the present day.
Marshalate period and reign of Siluve I (1845–58)
The first ten years of Zemayan independence were spent as a Sovereign Marshalate of Lacre, which was used by Tharamann to recognise the success of the Red Rising while saving Lacrean face, and which naturally carried connotations of continued lordship from Kozrat. On the ground, ignoring this development, Siluve I of Zemay had been elected by Zemayan scholars, and took the title of viešpats ('lord', originally a title of the Castellans), to dispense with the Lacrean title of fejedelem that was now much vilified. Besides a quest for the country to be elevated to Banner status as informed by Radiance ideas of what befitted a state, Siluve's reign was not intensely nativist or nostalgist; since it was perceived that the local Zemayan elites, whose status was mostly autonomous and secure as Lacrean subjects prior to Katapan, had accomplished all they needed, the new government took a hands-free attitude on most matters, inheriting the local policies and indeed administrative processes largely established in the Fejedelemate period, and focused on encouraging commerce to rebuild the wartorn country. However, Siluve had to reprise his steadfast position on the world stage when in 1852 Lacre invaded Lefdim in the Circuit War; though no meaningful fighting was conducted by Zemayan troops, the pressure exerted against Lacre was able to eventually force the latter to stand down, and for Vaestdom to reconsider the constitutional status of the post-Lacrean states.
In 1855, the Zemayan Banner was duly granted at the Purity Council from the resurrection of the medieval Banner of the Gergote Frontier; mass celebrations followed and Siluve was proclaimed Emperor. But having fallen severely ill by 1856 due to the notoriously gluttonous lifestyle he indulged in since his accession as Marshal, intrigue stirred in the oligarchy behind and under him. The 'Postuliechiai', a faction of mainly civilian and Lacrophile scholars from the south, who championed Radiant reform and commerce, began accusing the 'Laukuniechiai', comprising the inner circle of the Army of the Aram along with other aristocrats (though this made most of them also southerners), of hampering reconstruction and development with their corruption. Despite the Laukunites' leadership of the army, junior officers, who were particularly enchanted with Radiance ideas, were persuaded by Pestulite propaganda, shifting the balance of power decisively. They pressured the aristocrats to acquiesce to the election of a Pestulite candidate when Siluve died in 1858.
Reign of Zaikonis I (1858–92)
Zaikonis I's reign, the longest of any Zemayan emperor, was decisive in shaping the country. Already renowned as a respected internalist scholar from Lesser Pestul, he initially set out to rein in the aristocracy that his more radical supporters denounced as vestiges of Lacrean domination (this despite their background in the Great Peninsular War and the Pestulite scholars' own Lacrophilia), and which he himself castigated for their luxurious lifestyles.
Building on the Katapan-era administrative system and combining it with new Radiant ideas, he tightened the standards for scholarly qualifications and enscholation, particularly to political offices. Drawing on new economic theories in development protectionism, the Laukunites in turn attacked him for permitting the country to remain a nearly unfettered market for Lacrean and Azophine goods; the political struggles of the era were contemporaneously satirised as the 'War of Two Lacres'. In the end, however, a consensus was reached naturally: the military and landed elites, who wanted to conform to Radiance ideas of sophistication anyway, embraced and conformed to Zaikonis's administrative reforms and new requirements, while as other Joriscian economies fully recovered in the late 1850s worries of foreign domination made urban interests willing to see the urgency of industry.
State-led industrialisation through investments in military-related fields proceeded starting in the 1860s, financed by closer relations with a recovering Lacre in the interests of counterbalancing Azophin, as well as loans from the Consortium of Measures. Zemay became a considerable centre of invention and externalist discovery, activities heavily subsidised by the state. Economic and political integration welded aristocrats of all backgrounds into a single industrialist elite. Interordinately, there was considerable pursuit of prestige: the 1879–82 Rasintian War saw a Lacro-Zemayan alliance defeat the Lutoborsk, and secure considerable concessions on the northern coast of the Gulf of Joriscia. Less notable or successful ventures were made towards Ascesia, Lestria, and Serania. The period also saw thoroughgoing vernacularisation with the standardisation and promotion of the Gergote language in all fields; there was a boom in Gergote-language modern literature, and even a wider movement of Gergote nostalgism, expressed in art and architecture, as well as attitudes of cultural exceptionalism. Romantically conceived against the upheavals of industrialisation, this new 'Gergotism' also acquired a Lacrophobic character, influenced by previous decades of suspicion of Lacrean influences in popular politics: the ideal of a steadfast, pious Gergote warrior was juxtaposed against the cowardly and greedy Chotarian and Lacrean, while nostalgist historiography cast the Revolt of the Gergote Courts as a source of ancient enmity between the two cultures. The denunciation of Lacrean influence on government, and perceived supplication to Lacre diplomatically, continued to be an important vehicle for popular political sentiments.
Despite his background, starting in the 1870s Zaikonis began courting more and more Strong Externalists, who were indispensable to Zemayan economic and scientific programs. This became a source of major cultural dispute in the Kainish controversy, fed into by anxieties with social changes under industrialisation. Strong Externalist political radicals, raised from a generation of fully vernacularised scholars, also started advocating a centralised technocratic state to replace the aristocratic oligarchy, once again accusing the present order of being an anachronism of Lacrean rule. The outbreak of the Consistence War in 1888 created considerable anxieties about radicalism in general. The explosion of Zemayan industry also meant that it was increasingly in competition rather than cooperation with Lacre, and disputes over the concessions gained from the Lutoborsk, and trade access to Lacrean Serania, saw relations between the two countries cool in the succeeding decades of the Rasintian war. All of these crises built up with little attention from Zaikonis himself, who in 1883 appointed war hero Rimantas Grinius executor due to illness. Grinius was likewise hesitant to make any decisive intervention, inflaming tensions further.
Two Siluves (1892–1929)
Upon Zaikonis I's death, the firebrand internalist Siluve II was elected by aristocratic consensus. Despite Siluve's denunciations of Strong Externalism, his appointment was actually the product of a covenant with the radicals to control popular anti-externalist sentiment, in exchange for a limit to encroachments on conservative interests. This arrangement was met with much disagreement, however, not least from Siluve himself. Tensions flared up again with the Kainish purges in 1895, and in late 1897 the start of the Tempering of the Prophecy was seized by Siluve II as an opportunity. He used the interventions of the Prysostaic heresiologists to purge nearly every single Strong Externalist from government and elite circles, and other brands of radicals were similarly persecuted. He also heavily sponsored scholarly refutations of externalist social planning, accelerating the maturation of modern socialism, and contributing to that tradition's long-known vigour in Zemay. Diplomatically, however, he was much less staunch, conceding to many Lacrean demands to try to pursue stability in a time when Azophine hegemony seemed shaken by the Third Anabbine Insurrection. Concessions in trading policy alongside the purge of the externalist scientific apparatus were seen to have brought the Zemayan industrial ascendancy to an end. Disapproval of Siluve grew due to his harsh reactionary policies, an economic slowdown, and a general decline in enthusiasm for anti-externalism after Yorsephor's death in 1906; after prolonged pressure from many interests and an illness in 1910, he decided to abdicate. Both contemporary and later evaluation of Siluve II's legacy have been overwhelmingly critical, but the massive purges he conducted were in any case instrumental in establishing a cohesive Zemayan elite that more or less acted as a collective and refrained from factionalism in the next few decades.
The oligarchy exercised stronger control over Siluve III, who initially did little besides making diplomatic visits and endorsing the growth of socialist scholarship. Collective, deliberative, and respublican leadership returned to being the norm, and with a united scholarly aristocracy sweeped clean of major foes or discontents it proceeded rather smoothly. Diplomatically, the rapprochement with Lacre was now assessed unfavourably again: the industrial policy of Oktar V of Lacre was seen to particularly be at further Zemayan expense. Renewed overtures were made to Azophin in the 1920s, but the succession crisis of the 1925 Azophine Debates was concerning enough to warrant a return to a Lacrophile policy, though begrudgingly.
Long War (1929–59)
An economic pact with Lacre signed in 1928 caused popular outrage, and within a year the aristocracy arranged for the retirement of the sickly Siluve III. The popularisation of the socialists' critiques combined with Gergotist and Lacrophobic sentiments, as well as economic interests, into a loud voice for reform and reassertion of Zemayan power on the world stage — the existing order was even denounced as a 'Second Fejedelemate', originally referring to a period beginning in Siluve II's later reign, but soon extended all the way back to the post-independence era. Faced with this at home and the heated confrontation of Vesnite powers that became the Long War in Joriscia, Zaikonis II of Zemay, yet another career internalist, tried to funnel discontent into militarism, though this feeling was by no means purely concocted by the government.
Shortly after Zaikonis II's accession, the externalist Miervaldis Vytautas was appointed to a Nominal School tasked with preparing production and mobilisation for war. Drawing on Vsevolod the Great's Second Restoration and novel socialist ideas, Vytautas established the Vytautian system, a parallel state based on military-industrial co-ordination. These reforms, however, were presented in a conservative, 'common-sense' light if talked about at all, to stifle critical comparisons with Strong Externalist politics, or indeed the antipathy of many socialist scholars towards the appropriation of their ideas; a state-sponsored wave of nearly kitsch Gergotism was used to embellish what was effectively a mobilisation effort. Trade and increased cooperation with Lacre and Agamar were also key factors in the strategies being put into place, as Zemay mostly secured breathing space for its own industries by promising to act as an enforcer for the interests of the Lacro-Agamari entente.
Zemay announced an intervention in the Lutoborian Civil War in 1937, the first test to the army that Vytautas created. The Zemayans supported the Zlatograd Petition, a scholarly government based in the Lutoborian southern coast who were willing defenders of foreign and particularly Zemayan interests there. In late 1939, the outbreak of the Second Dekoral War invited Zemay to invade the long-coveted Argotean coast in the Littorean War, acting on prostatist pretenses. Pressures from a newly elected Azophine Interrex, Houb shelKhmus, forced Zemay to stand down from Littorea, while the belligerents in the Lutoborsk came to a compromise at the Blue River Punctation in 1943, but the tactical performance of Zemayan troops in both wars was proven impeccable. These interventions, however, were still regarded as unfruitful, with Zaikonis II abdicating in shame after the closure of the Littorean War in 1942. Relations with Lacre once again boiled over, not least because the two directly came to blows in Littorea and the Lutoborsk, though the founding of the Three Power Bloc in 1943 did soothe tensions somewhat. The bloc's dysfunction, however, made overtures to Terophan also necessary.
When the new Lutoborian government tried to overturn the Blue River settlement in 1947, the Tripod was brought to unexpected unity when it staged the 1947–49 Doyotian War in response. Another series of gruelling battles brought Zemayan soldiers to Hremel and indeed occupation of the entire Lutoborsk. The Tripod's unity quickly disintegrated, however, as their varying reactions to the Tormetian Campaign between Azophin and Terophan made for different strategic directions. A particular distaste was acquired for Zamor's government in Lacre, when in 1952 it tipped the balance on the Tripod to make Zemay withdraw from the Lutoborsk in 1952. Very soon, the aggressive diplomacy and suspect domestic policies of Zamor's regime made it the main assumed enemy of Zemay in the region, and it was felt that the two powers were on a collision course. But even as tensions built up, Zemayan society was not, at least overtly, being radically transformed by wartime measures.
In late 1957, the outbreak of the Sea of Flames in Tormetia seismically overturned the situation. The Robulite Insurrection seized control of Argotea, Zamor declared himself Emperor of the Vesnites and defied the Prysostaia, and a Lutoborian invasion of Rasintia in early 1958 demanded that Zemay throw itself into the ring again. The predations of heresiarchs on Argotea, the birthplace of Vaestism and of the Gergotes' brother-culture, gave rise to epic if not chiliastic feeling, and the stakes were raised further by the Thrall, when Zamor invaded the Prysostaia to proclaim himself Universal Prophet. After spending half a year fighting the Lutoborians to a standstill, the grand Zemayan Intervention began in late 1958. Zemayan troops routed the Lacrean invasion, executed Zamor, and were on their way to ransacking Partia before Cirran Miranzion's coup ended the neo-Chotarian state. Although a spectacular destruction of Lacre was not materialised, the dismemberment of its empire and the probation of its entire Banner at the Congress of Kethpor as punishment for the Thrall satisfied Zemayan Lacrophobic culture, who triumphantly sung of the Intervention as a 'Dominicide', at last a worthy revenge for the crimes of past Chotarian and Lacrean rulers.
Soteriocracy (1959–84)
The era after the end of the Long War in Zemay is known as the 'Soteriocracy', because of the dominance of various military aristocrats to whom the suppression of Lacre and the saving of the Prysostaia were credited, and because of the initial interordinate ascendancy made possible by that accomplishment. The honour of crushing Zamor and Robul, and saving Argotea, gave Zemay a heroic reputation around Vaestdom, while its consistently formidable military performance and alignment with Terophan made for its elevation to the newly created Panarchate and perhaps even the status of a Great Power. Argah, Partia, Littorea, and Rasintia were gained as marshalates, and smaller parts of Lacrean Serania went to Zemayan hands too. Popular support for the government was not in any doubt, and all these benefits more than made up, at least strategically, for the suffering of the years without summers, which most Zemayans relatively comfortably went through anyway, thanks to pressuring the Lutoborsk to provide grain on pain of another invasion.
Culturally, however, the post-war era was immersed in a sense of pessimism, that feared externalist hubris and the megalomania of rulers had indeed practically destroyed Vaestdom, and execration loomed ever closer. Zemayan socialists proved key in developing many ideas of the Post-Radiance, and depressive themes pervaded literature of the period in particularly striking ways. Gergotism and the nearly obsessive Lacrophobia that accompanied it swiftly vanished from public view or popularity after the Dominicide, for reasons still debated. Socially, the wartime political and economic system established by Vytautas secured the status of a new aristocracy of officers and technocrats. Using their positions in the military-industrial bureaucracy and excused by the supposed exigencies of war and crisis, they effectively assumed most political power and sidelined the regular scholarchate. Though their heroic reputation and the hardships of the 1960s made them initially untouchable, the development of corruption among their ranks, the popularisation of anti-aristocratic ideology in Agamar and Azophin, and the questionable persistence of the privileges enjoyed by their positions now that war was long over, made for increasing opposition to their rule.
The accession of Tyrumas of Aranpils in 1969 was the work of another covenant between opposing factions to soothe tensions, this time between the soteriocrats and the scholarchate. A military officer with enthusiasm for cosmic fiction and fantastical engineering projects, Tyrumas tried to weld together the scholarchate and the Vytautian system by sponsoring interdisciplinary research and socio-technical experiments, the Tyruman projects, that would render the activities of one inseparable from another. Most Tyruman experiments did not yield significant results, but the effort did create a natnet by 1978 to aid scholarly communications and economic policymaking, and Zemay came to occupy Joriscia's edge in cybernetics, computer networks, and information systems.
Tyrumas was made more confident to assert Zemay's status abroad as the Constellation Crisis unfolded in the 1970s, and the Terophatic Ascendancy seemed about to end. The disastrous Congress of Lesser Pestul in 1977, which failed to resolve the Lacrean emergency in the Ascendancy's favour and saw the diplomatic reassertion of Azophin and other powers, made Tyrumas decide on a series of revisionist maneuvers, starting with joining the Silver Phalanx during the Terophatic Implosion in 1979. By this time relations between the scholarchate (socialists in particular) and the soteriocrats became frayed again, as the further implementation of various projects (mainly computerised economic planning) was seen to be at the expense of soteriocratic privileges. Tyrumas was humiliated by a series of defeats with the Crisis at Chiklar of 1981 and the Three Week War of 1982. The only meaningful gain was the Tripartite Contract with the Lutoborsk to cooperate in Greater Doyotia, at last making a friend out of a long-time northern enemy. General unrest and intrigue caused a military coup in 1982 to install Aushris Ramunikas to the throne.
Aushris, largely a powerless figurehead, was used by the soteriocracy to purge the scholarchate and remove threats to their rule. But popular opposition to their rule was catalysed by the Implosion, the recent military failures, and the perceivedly brazen coup, finally boiling into mass protests after the Congress of Molot in 1983, which saw Zemay relinquishing Argah and Littorea, and also losing its seat on the Panarchate. The oligarchy survived embattled for almost two years, until the patience of even junior officers in the army ran out. In the Change Uprising of late 1984 the leading scholars of the political opposition were brought to power, and Vydunas Gaubikas was elected Emperor.
Reconstruction Zemay (1984–)
Vydunas proclaimed the start of the Zemayan Reconstruction, which aimed to finally bring the Zemayan state in line with socialist prescriptions. While Tyrumas-era cybernetic projects were picked back up in the much-advertised Shaknuyura, most of the first years of the Reconstruction were spent on dismantling the Soteriocracy and the Vytautian system. Vytautian estates were broken up in the name of efficiency, their rabtat managers abolished as a class, and major Vytautian figures were prosecuted for corruption (but most ultimately received very light sentences). Various other reforms sweepingly changing everyday life were carried out, such as the creation of the Janitors and the Third Foot, to ensure the exclusive domination of the scholarchate as much as to test out socialist visions.
In the late 1980s tensions began between the Pragmata Floor and the military officers who supported the Uprising, the latter having come to resent the extensive interventions of socialist projects in the course of the Reconstruction. The officers were placated by assurances of restraint on these politics and by being given freedom to pursue a more aggressive strategic policy, but when the Argote Emeute of 1991 turned out a failure Vydunas used it as an excuse to purge them. In 1995, however, Vydunas's death in a suspicious car crash was succeeded by the election of the officer Felix Sauvitis, who led the Change Uprising. Attending to popular grievances about the more intrusive nature of some Reconstruction reforms, Felix rolled back more interventive aspects of early Shaknuyura systems in public life and a number of other social engineering projects, although many of them later returned. Rather, he focused on completing the integration of the marshalates of Rasintia and Lause into the metropolitan political hierarchy. The Reconstruction was proclaimed to have triumphantly concluded in 2000.
The quiet counter-coup of Felix gave way in the 2000s to the negotiated reassertion of the Pragmata Floor's supremacy, although by this time, with most of their visions realised, they were to exercise their prepollency more as a faction beholden to more mundane concerns of favours and patronage. The opposition that backed Felix's initial efforts rallied behind the Homilists, an internalist-dominated movement echoing the Sage Precepts in wider Vaestdom. In the 2010s the Homilists led major protests against Pragmatist teachings in the Nadravery, entering the government in dominating numbers after a settlement. In the meantime, Zemay antagonised Agamar in the Ranian crisis with its support of the Haljanlinn government and leadership of the Kish sanctions, leveraged as a means to warm relations with Azophin and Lutoborsk that also had stakes in Rania.