Marshalate (political office)
In Vaestopolitics, a Marshalate (High Secote: ⰔⰕⰓⰀⰕⰅⰃⰠⰔⰕⰂⰑ, strategĭstvo) is a subsidiary state organisation within an Empire, headed by a Marshal (ⰔⰕⰓⰀⰕⰅⰃⰟ, strategŭ) with viceregal power. Although the Marshalate itself belongs constitutionally to the imperial portion of the Vaestic state's sovereignty, Marshals today also have a privileged position within the Banner structure, where they are recognised as intermediaries between the Standard-Bearer and a subset of his subjects by the granting of Colours; Vaestism as practised by those under the Colours of a particular Marshal may thus vary somewhat in terms of practice from that of the central Banner. Whilst prototypically autonomous, albeit ultimately under the sovereign power of the Emperor, the actual degree of autonomy and separation from the main state enjoyed by a Marshalate varies considerably.
History
Neritsia
The modern Marshalate system developed from the Marshals of the Great Neritsovid Empire, who were essentially viceregal military leaders who represented the Emperor of the Vesnites in his various capacities in different sections of the empire where the empire could not be physically present. The title itself was inherited from the Commandery of the Tirfatsevid Empire, in turn introduced by the Secotes' usage of Old Messenian strategos beginning in the Secote Dominion. As imperial power absorbed the position of Universal Prophet, the Marshals became correspondingly more powerful, and as the empire's borders expanded, their numbers increased; at the height of the empire there were four Marshals in Outer Joriscia (north, east, south and west) and a Marshal in Messenia (the short-lived Marshalate of Messenia). Many of these positions in the later empire became de facto hereditary within families of the High Nobility; the Marshalate of the East, for example, formed the basis of the modern state of Lacre. Following the Great Imperial Restoration, the Marshalates of the North and East became major sources of legitimacy for the emergent Lacrean and Azophine states, and the Marshalate of the West was granted to the kings of Anabbah in perpetuity by the notional Emperor of the Vesnites, Spytihnev III.
Pluralism
The transition to the modern system truly began, however, with the emergence of multiple imperial powers following the Chotarian Restoration in Lacre. As Chotarian Emperor Oktar Matolchy created his own Marshalates in Seter and Kethpor and sidelined his own title to the Marshalate of the East; these Marshals were subject to him, and inferiors of the Marshals who stood viceroy to the Emperor of the Vesnites, but shared the same title. The 1793 Troborine Restoration saw the emergence of an analogous Azophine title and the submission of Anabbah, which over the next hundred years would become a Marshalate subject to Azophin, not to the Emperor of the Vesnites. The 1845 Treaty of Tharamann after the Great Peninsular War finally dissolved the Vaestic Empire and provided for the existence of Marshalates subordinate to an emperor; further sporadic diplomatic developments, concluding in the Purity Council of 1855, extended this system to the entirety of Outer Joriscian Vaestdom.
Kethpor
The full articulation of the contemporary framework of Marshalates would remain for the 1959 Congress of Kethpor, which concluded the Long War. Under the plan developed by Vsevolod the Great and his diplomats, Terophan's Cathedralist aspirations at this time would be confirmed by the establishment of a system under which the zones of conflict that had been the perennial causes of contention in the Long War would be frozen in place under the rule of specific local Marshals. These were initially envisaged, in large part, as positions invested by the Terophatic Emperor with specific mandates to restrain future conflict in Vaestdom, while retaining some notional tributary status to one or the other Banner.
Despite Terophan's temporarily hegemonic position, this initial version of the plan quickly fell through at the Congress owing to dissent from the other Powers, and in the resulting Kethpor Accords a more consensual version was elaborated in which the mandatory Marshals would be invested by and responsible to the various Standard-Bearers in their own right. Most of Vaestdom's existing Marshalates are artificial constructs of this nature, such as the various fragments created by the dismantling of the Sixth Chotarian Empire. In contrast to the preceding Pasila–Blue River framework of 1942–43, explicit territorial transfers from one Banner-State to another within Outer Joriscia were quite limited in the Kethpor settlement; ceded regions were mostly instead established as Marshalates.
The primary exceptions to this version of the office are the great Terophatic Marshalates of Dekoral, Anabbah, and (after 1969) Lefdim, states with longstanding independent identities that are generally larger, more autonomous, and more prestigious than other, more typical Kethporian Marshalates. Other examples such as Agamari Koloma are simply recognitions of ceremonial monarchies previously vaguely subordinate to an Emperor, who are not administratively separate from the Banner-State at all. As was done in Lause and Rasintia during the Zemayan Reconstruction, the erosion of marshalates' effective autonomy, as opposed to their formal mediacy, was also quite easily accomplished. Nevertheless, the decades since the Congress have seen the development of local identities in many of the Marshalates with a more recent and specifically political provenance, such as Partia.