Polcovodate Mirokrai
Polcovodate of Mirokrai ⰏⰋⰓⰑⰍⰓⰀⰉⰐⰑⰋⰅ ⰒⰎⰟⰍⰑⰂⰅⰄⰠⰔⰕⰂⰑ Mirokrainoje Plŭkovedĭstvo | |||||||||
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| 1560–1773 | |||||||||
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| Status | Polcovodate of Great Neritsia | ||||||||
| Capital | Zachograd | ||||||||
| Common languages | Agar, High Secote | ||||||||
| Religion | Vaestism | ||||||||
| Polcovode | |||||||||
• 1560–1572 | Godemir I | ||||||||
• 1773 | Jaromir II | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
| 1560 | |||||||||
• Expulsion of Andromir of Axopol during the Imperial War | 1773 | ||||||||
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Polcovodate Mirokrai refers to the period of Agamari history between the 1560 Investiture of Karilinna and the repudiation of Agamari subordination to Axopol following the Swing of the Mace in 1773. During this period Agamar was subordinated to the Prophet-Emperor of Great Neritsia (until the Great Imperial Restoration and the dramatic events of the Crown Wars) and then, from the Majestic Peace, to the Terophatic Emperor of the Vesnites in Axopol. As such, the period is sometimes referred to as Neritsovid Mirokrai or Neritsovid Agamar. Although formally a subject of the Neritsovids, the Agamari polity remained highly autonomous during this period, and in fact reached the apogee of its early modern power, dominating the Gulf of Joriscia and acting as the main agent of the Neritsovid exploration of the Seranias.
History
Background
The First Kingdom of Mirokrai had emerged as a centralised Vaestic polity under Tomislav I in 1490, largely independently from the concurrent emergence of Great Neritsia to its north. As the early Neritsovids went from strength to strength, eventually seizing the Prophetic title in 1516 under Sobiebor II and asserting a claim to universal rule over Vaestdom, the Kings in Mirokrai largely stood aloof. While the anti-Prophet Fēṇe's defeat and the 'Breaking of Aranmezo' in 1522 had curtailed Mirokrainy attempts to form an anti-Neritsovid bloc in the Gulf, the Mirokrainy Kings generally maintained the Desuetudinalist position that the Sacred Prophecy had withdrawn from the world, and that there was no legitimate Universal Prophet. The popular, antischolastic Vaestic order cultivated by Volemir I was spared further Neritsovid aggression during the 1540s by the many domestic difficulties that faced Spytistan I and by a defensive alliance with the Kingdom of the Lopts. But in 1558 the new Prophet-Emperor Ostrobor the Pious brought the Empire's full military weight to bear against the Lopts and Mirokrai in the Agamar War. In 1560, with the Lopts defeated and Volemir dead on the battlefield, the heir apparent Godemir the Wise sued for peace. In exchange for returning Agamar to Prostration and accepting Neritsovid suzerainty, he was recognised as legitimate ruler of his father's domains and invested into the Commandery with the rank of Polcovode, paralleling the relationship with the Polcovode of Anabbah.
High Neritsovid period
Although now part of the Neritsovid domains, Agamar maintained almost total domestic autonomy and a fairly free hand in foreign policy as well. In principle the Emperor was entitled to a share of the customs money (the West Wind Tax), to control certain senior Scholarly appointments, and to invest new Polcovodes, either in person or (more commonly) via a proxy; over the course of the 17th century this proxy would become institutionalised as the Plenipotentiary. In practice, however, these rights could only be exercised intermittently, and carefully. At the same time, the return to orthodoxy benefited Mirokrai enormously. The relative hostility to the orthodox Scholarchy evinced by Godemir's predecessors was now cast aside, and Sachograd was able to take its natural place as the most prominent source of patronage on the eastern seaboard. A series of Polcovodes became major sponsors of prestigious intellectuals and, perhaps more significantly, of the explorers who began during this period to look even further eastward. It was Godemir himself who sponsored the first voyage to the Seranias under Felix Oddivosius in 1567 and the subsequent establishment of a specifically Mirokrainy fort at Novigavan, the first human settlement there. At the same time, Mirokrainy traders, in combination with their Lacrean counterparts, competed with Great Doyotia for Gulf trade.
The Errancy Era dramatically changed the trajectory of Mirokrainy development. Although Mirokrai itself avoided the violent succession struggles that wracked the imperial centre, it did not escape unscathed from the great wave of popular heresy that broke across all of Vaestdom in the late 1590s: the forces of the Society of the Gathering Dark at one point drove Polcovode Godemir II out of Sachograd and into hiding, and he was only gradually able to restore order. The victorious Lyudodar forced him to accept an Oblitor garrison in 1601 (although this was dissolved by Ratibor I on his accession and replaced by a much smaller pièche force). As a result, Mirokrai was unable to avoid the general process of centralisation that affected all of the Empire; the effects of the Anti-Errancy Petition led to a great expansion in the number of Schools endowed by the Emperor, and there were far-ranging cultural influences, too (not least the adoption of High Secote by the fashionable Mirokrainy nobility). Nonetheless, the fateful decision to make the Polcovode the General Maintenant of the Sea and Prince of Laukuna during the War of the Pact of Osan – essentially making him responsible for shipping in the Gulf – also strengthened his hand enormously.
During the second Neritsovid century, the Mirokrainys carved out a new niche for themselves as the naval counterpart to Neritsovid land power. Mirokrainy traders and adventurers became deeply involved not only in Seranian business but in political and military ventures around the Gulf, particularly in the Lutoborsk, where they played a crucial role in the conversion of that country to Vaestism. With the defeat of Doyotia in the Tri-Insular War, the transformation of the Gulf into a Mirokrainy lake was more or less complete, an altercation with Great Pestul over the West Wind Tax in the 1651–2 Purity War notwithstanding.
Low Neritsovid period
Even at the time of the Agamari victory over Doyotia, however, the signs of relative decline had been beginning to emerge. Lacrean shipping was beginning to break free of Mirokrai's influence, Messenian ships had been seen in the Seranias, Agamar had given up on any claim to exercise power in Laukuna, and the capable Vladibor I had brought the Lutoborsk out of the chaos of the Antiprophetic Rebellion by adopting a distinctly anti-Mirokrainy line. The Auditor bureaucracy that had underpinned the Polcovodes' rule had become sclerotic, and the Neritsovid government had succeeded in establishing an alternative source of authority in the Gulf. At the turn of the 18th century Scholarchate conspired to instigate the White Tiger risings and take power, which was defeated and resulted in further exclusion of Scholars from power, creating a culture of Ghost Savants that was to view the established powers of Agamar with even greater disdain.
Nonetheless, Mirokrai was able to hold firm, in large part because of the security offered by the comforting umbrella of Neritsovid power. The abrupt collapse of the Neritsovid order into the bloody chaos of the Crown Wars after the Great Imperial Restoration of 1701, however, made the Mirokrainy position increasingly unsustainable. Desperate to avoid becoming involved in the land war itself and keen to see a quick end to the conflict, the Polcovodes attempted to play both sides throughout the early 1700s (while invading the Kingdom of Koloma to secure their flank) before being forced by the death of the Plenipotentiary to choose a side in 1717, when they came down decisively on the Restorationist side following Kalodar II of Lacre's intervention against the Legitimists. Despite Spytihnev II's ultimate victory, however, this proved disastrous for their Lutoborian policy: a series of Mirokrainy-backed Lutoborian Polcovodes were murdered or deposed in the War of the Banner. A doomed attempt to build a coalition against the Lethpol Covenant in the 1730s sealed its fate in the north, and at the Majestic Peace of 1754 the Lutoborsk's freedom from Agamari ties was affirmed by Spytihnev III's personal investiture of Vladibor the Great.
End
At the Majestic Peace, Jaromir I recognised Spytihnev's authority as Emperor of the Vesnites and agreed that future Polcovodes would continue to be invested by Plenipotentiaries appointed in Axopol. By this point, however, disillusionment with the crumbling imperial system had begun to spread, fed by resentment of Agamari decline and a sense of the injustice of the Peace. At first this feeling sat uneasily alongside a general belief that the unity of Vaestdom must be preserved at all costs. But imperial authority continued to deteriorate over the following decades, undermined first by Terophatic impotence in the face of violence in various parts of Vaestdom and then by the effective repudiation of the unitary order by Oktar Matolchy with the conferral of the Banner of Lacre Undivided in 1769. Under Jaromir II, and taking its lead from Matolchy's own attempts to chip away at the imperial rights enshrined in the Peace, Mirokrai began to delay payment of the (now symbolic) West Wind Tax and to impose humiliating restrictions on the movements of Andromir of Axopol, the Plenipotentiary. In 1770-71, Matolchy's more strident attempts to seize control of Scholarly appointments escalated into the Imperial War, in the course of which Spytihnev III was politically marginalised by the palace coup known as the Swing of the Mace. Months later, Jaromir expelled Andromir and proclaimed that from now on he would rule 'in his own right', beginning the period known as 'Second Mirokrai'.