Lutoborovid Confederacy
Lutoborovid Confederacy | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1135–1319 | |||||||||
| Common languages | Lutoborian, Joghic | ||||||||
| Religion | Siriash, Cairony, Undughu religion | ||||||||
| Government | Confederacy | ||||||||
| High King | |||||||||
• 1135–1151 | Lutobor | ||||||||
• 1315–1319 | Mechyslav III | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
• Establishment by Lutobor | 1135 | ||||||||
• High Kingdom proclaimed | 1181 | ||||||||
• Mistipolk's War ends | 1215 | ||||||||
• Dissolution | 1319 | ||||||||
| |||||||||
The Lutoborovid Confederacy (Lutoborian: Ljutobors'kyj sojuz) was a Secote state in northern Outer Joriscia that existed from 1135 to 1319. It was a nomadic empire centred on the Dovhyi Tableland, which also had vassals and tributaries extending as north as Kadalkhia, west into the Joghunmal Plain, and east into coastal Unscany, although the reliability of these ties was inconstant and often nominal. The confederacy gave its name to the Lutoborsk.
History
The Lutoborovids originated from a clan that arrived in northeast Joriscia with the Yarovids in the 1040s, and welcomed the Mstigonovids in the 1100s, when the Secote Empire quashed the Yarovid secession under Nachir. Following the Secote Empire's collapse, and upon the death of Mudromir Mstigonovid in 1135, the Dobrivoyevids usurped the office of Steward of the Undughu, to which the founder of the dynasty Lutobor and allies on the Tableland responded by organising a rival confederacy laying claim to incision and ožidomy rights in the Steward's jurisdiction. After a series of wars, by 1155 the Dobrivoyevids were denied rights north of the Fence of Chornohora and the title of Steward; they would claim the title of vladyka as consolation and found Great Doyotia.
In the meantime the Lutoborovids confirmed their suzerainty over the New Despotism along the east coast and began expanding north. In 1160 they installed a branch of their family over the Mezhadchenye, and a campaign began against the Neghay League, culminating in the Khuikh War of 1172–8 which broke the League's power and installed a Prince of the Khuikhs to stabilise the northern lands of the Khuikh Quests. Until this point the Lutoborovids primarily held authority as Stewards for a nonexistent Secote Empire; in 1181 the new title of 'High King' was adopted, although in claiming only kunentsy and not vladyka status, the Lutoborovid monarch still implied some degree of imperial humility. On the other hand, this titulature did little to hinder ambitious campaigns into the steppe in the 1190s. Lutoborovid dynasties were installed as far as the Kesruba desert (the Aborovids) and an expedition in 1204 reached the Great Lakes. King Gordislav, who even converted to Cairony as part of a Messenian-facing diplomacy, seemed almost about to restore the Secote Empire under a single dynasty, if not for succession struggles in the 1210s after the death of Tverdyslav II. The outcome of Mistipolk's War and other conflicts settled the division of the Lutoborovid empire based on the newly established lineages, and the independence of the more far-flung clients on the steppe. Former Namaru vassals also established themselves as powerful autonomous lords.
The removal of the ruling house from direct power initially lent to relatively long and stable reigns for the High Kings, but in the 1280s the confederacy saw another major conflict between nobles over the adoption and patronage of new forms of Siriash, known as the Finger-Cutting War. Once it was delivered from the crisis by Derzhymir, who centralised power in the name of upholding religious harmony, a misguided and overambitious foreign policy saw ties with steppe kinsmen and Unscan vassals collapse. The ambitious Aborovids under Dorohodar invaded in 1313, subjugating the Tableland by 1319 when the last Lutoborovid king Mechyslav III surrendered his title, inaugurating the Aborovid Confederacy.
Politics
As with many post-Secote states, the Lutoborovid Confederacy was dominated if not essentially constituted by a nomadic military elite, who maintained complex relations with various sedentary vassals and tributaries. In the course of its conquests, the Lutoborovids installed cadet branches in subjugated lands as rulers who often sedentarised, tasked with tribute collection to the confederal centre in the Tableland. In economic terms, though, vassals without such ties, such as governors of the Tableland (usually drawn from Namaru champions), or even the independent New Despots of Unscany, could often prove more important and close to the ruling house in practice.
Early on, unwilling or unable to claim the Secote imperial title and the ability to confederate clans it conferred, the Lutoborovids sought to directly expand the dominion of their own dynasty, and place the use of most of their empire directly under a single family. However, this caused the rapid secession of newly installed princes who sought privileges and dignities as part of their kinship, and weakened Lutoborovid control of their immediate clients in favour of vassals without kin relations. As a further evolution of this structure, the Aborovids later resolved these issues through a more liberal policy of intermarriage and adoption and decentralising measures such as the Sanguine Oaths.
Society
The Tableland's Agnujogh population began a fast process of Secotisation under the Lutoborovids, forming the Lutoborian people. A top-down process starting with the Namaru champion elite who defined the culture of their aganes, they began adopting the Secotic Lutoborian language, Secote names, and various Secote customs. Politically, this occurred as the champion adventurer-nobility, including Joghs, Undughu, and Secotes, merged into agane culture, turned them into kin associations along Secote lines, and claimed authority through newly established recognitions of lineage precedence. Through this, they established themselves as representatives to the Secotes in tributary affairs and consolidated their authority within the townships. The actual character of this new Lutoborian gentry varied, some staying or becoming vagabonds or nomads, pursuing Lutoborovid affiliation and eventually status as knyazy, while others became landowners that would later give rise to the knyazchiks.
The lands associated through the Confederacy were religiously diverse in the aftermath of Secote conquest. Siriash and Cairony had been introduced from Messenia; Cairony had managed to make more headway in northern Joriscia than in former Chotar, where it had been hindered by Sirian Plumage Factions, while many of the Messenian troops and northern steppe bands that conquered the Lutoborsk had greater ties with Cairan lands if not being Cairan. A more zealous form of Siriash was also introduced in the 13th century with the Leavening of the Land. The polytheism of Undughu religion most recently introduced in the Anabasis to Tonjir, and Joghic practices of worshipping rulers and their dynasties as fictive relations, also persisted, and syncretised with considerable liberty; the Lutoborovids both propitiated Undughu spirits and observed Cairo-Sirian rites, as with the first Secote commanders that conquered the area. New philosophies such as Urgentism were also emerging from the mixture. While religious conflicts were not unheard of, as with the Finger-Cutting War, for the most part different religions accepted co-existence as separate professions or factions in Lutoborian society.
List of High Kings
- Lutobor (1135–1151)
- Boromir (1151–1153)
- Tverdyslav I (1153–1158)
- Spytignev I (1158–1170)
- Chistimir (1170–1189)
- Mstivoy I (1189–1192)
- Gordislav (1192–1207)
- Tverdyslav II (1207–1210)
- Mstivoy II (1210–1219)
- Spytignev II (1219–1233)
- Mechyslav I (1233–1251)
- Tverdyslav III (1251–1289)
- Mechyslav II (1289–1291)
- Derzhymir (1291–1300)
- Sobemir (1300–1308)
- Bohomir (1308–1315)
- Mechyslav III (1315–1319)