Rania

Ranian Realm ⰓⰡⰐⰉ ⰂⰀⰎⰄⰀⰍⰖⰐⰕⰀ Rāni Valtakunta
Flag
Capital and largest city	Väglinn
Official languages	Ranian
Religion	Vaestism
• Banner	Ranian
Demonym	Ranian
Government
• Emperor of Rania	Siluve II
Unification
• Purity Expedition	1898
Area
• Total	85,086 km2 (32,852 sq mi)
Time zone	Vaestic Day

Rania (Ranian ⰓⰡⰐⰉ, Rāni), officially the Ranian Realm (ⰓⰡⰐⰉ ⰂⰀⰎⰄⰀⰍⰖⰐⰕⰀ, Rāni Valtakunta), is a Banner-State in eastern Outer Joriscia occupying the eponymous island of Rania and some minor surrounding landmasses to north-east of the Lyumā island group. Since 2011, Rania has been partitioned between two governments in a frozen conflict following a period of political crisis and foreign military intervention.

History

Chotar

A Chotarian expedition colonised the island of Rania in the third century, which grew into the independent Court of Rania by the fourth century due to the division of the mainland in the Equinox era. Besides Chotar, Rania also became a trading partner of the Undughu civilisation, which invaded it on a number of occasions. The Secote conquest of Outer Joriscia caused a collapse in trade with the mainland which Rania depended on, and under the pressure of economic and ecological crises the Chotarian Ranian state disintegrated by the twelfth century, its cities diminished if not abandoned. In the post-Chotarian era the island became a stopping point for traders from Undughu, Lacre, and Agamar, but was generally known only as a backwater.

Early Vaestic period

Vaestism emerged in Rania from the early to middle 15th century, with the earliest missions dispatched from the growing Vesnite communities in Agamar. In 1534 an expedition from Great Neritsia was dispatched by Sobiebor II to bring the island under imperial control, for the most part as a challenge to Agamar rather than because of Rania's own merits. It was this force that built the first fortification on the site of the Kaam (derived from Kyame), which served as the sole major centre of foreign power on the island until becoming the headquarters of the independent government in 1898. The broader political structure of the island, however, was largely left untouched. The Princes' half-hearted oaths of fealty were secured with the stick of military force and the carrot of ready cash gifts. The one significant change was the extension of a greater degree of integration between the existing parochial system of Scholars and the general imperial bureaucracy, but the small rural Ranian Schools remained almost uniquely independent of their notional superior in Väglinn.

In 1611, following the War of the Pact of Osan, the administration of Rania was devolved to the Polcovodate of Mirokrai at the Cession of Ekhpur, beginning more than 250 years of Agamari rule. The shift of power from far-away Great Pestul to the relatively accessible Zachograd would bring about greater foreign interference in Rania's internal affairs; but for almost the entirety of the 17th century the polcovodes on the mainland proved almost totally uninterested in their eastern island provinces, including Lyumā. In 1662 following cayvores which laid waste to portions of the island and subsequent harsh treatment by landowners, members of the Ranian peasantry appealed several times to the Polcovode to 'break the backs of the Princes that seek to break ours', but such appeals fell largely on deaf ears. Nonetheless, Rania was not entirely isolated - both Rania and neighbouring Lyumā developed a reputation as sources of hardy men, and as Mirokrai's Seranian explorations accelerated, a disproportionate number of the Mirokrai Company's sailors were Ranians.

In 1679 the dynamic Polcovode Jaromir ascended to the Mirokrainy throne with the intention of beginning the replacement of the Auditors with a Neritsovid-style bureaucracy of Scholars. Rania served as something of a laboratory for Jaromir's cautious reforms at home, and the period from 1679 to 1692 saw a number of steps taken towards a systematic re-organisation of Rania's Scholarly system and the island's incorporation into the central Agamari state. However, with the cayvores of 1692 and 1694, which destroyed huge swathes of Rania, Jaromir's interest in Rania was dramatically curtailed, and the Princes seized the opportunity to reassert their rights. Then the ascent of the Graviate of Lacre on the seas proved a continuous distraction for Agamari monarchs, and Rania was neglected for another half a century. However, Jaromir's reforms did have one significant legacy - the strengthening of the network of Scholars, which had been emerging gradually as a consolidated force for several generations and which had been given new institutional impetus by Jaromir. Although his hopes of incorporating Rania into a centralised Scholastic bureaucracy directed from Zachograd were dashed, a largely autonomous Scholarly system was now established in Rania itself, a development which would prove important in later years.

Post-Neritsovid period

More moves towards strengthening the structure of government in Rania were taken by Jaromir II during his brief rule as first King of Mirokrai, who saw the development of good government in his domains as an important bulwark in his claim to rule independently of the various imperial claimants of the period.

Lacrean Rania

Rania in the later 19th century was reaching a point at which social pressures were beginning to threaten an overspill. The islands had felt long years of neglect from the Mirokrainy metropole, while the expulsion of Ghost Savants and other dissenting clerics was accelerating a tide of heterodoxy and potential heresy within Ranian Vaestism. Political dissent was handled poorly by a Ranian Council often too focused on its own interests, while the rogue element was increasingly compromising the Schools, and inveigling itself with the island’s petty princes.

Two quite unexpected factors catalysed the drastic changes in Rania in the last years of the century. The discovery of large oil fields in 1895 gave the Ranian government an opening to line its members’ pockets through appropriations of land and forced evictions. While the Fire Pool protests over this action forced some climbdowns in the so-called “Harmony Compromise”, much remained decidedly disharmonious below the surface, and sentiments were indeed ramped up further by a shift to hardline stances after 1897 under the newly-elected Universal Prophet Yorsephor. Prysostaic censures, and a public revolt which briefly turned out the Council’s rule, demanded intervention.

The question of action was resolved when Oktar IV, the emperor of Lacre, offered to back a “stabilisation mission” which would quell the problems – and bring Rania into Lacrean control. The “Purity Expedition” (from the month in which it began) very quickly squashed flat protests in Väglinn – but any brief hopes by Sakari that the Lacreans would do their work for them disappeared quickly as disaffected Scholars and locally-raised militias rallied behind the Lacreans. The Prysostaia compounded matters with the “Ranian Decree” in late Empery, which turned loose the Office of Orthodox Thought and Intellectual Purification to root out the deeper-seated concerns. A desperate rally by Agamari loyalists took place across Sation before being beaten to a standstill, allowing Lacre – with Prysostaic connivance – to set itself up as Rania’s new overlord, with Siluve Setrek – the leader of the Purity force – installed as the island’s new “King-Marshal”.

Over the next twenty years, “Siluve I” became increasingly eccentric, withdrawing to his newly-built palace for long periods and occasionally leaving Rania altogether for extended absences in which he toured Joriscia, spending enormous amounts of money on a luxurious lifestyle which was entirely divorced from the lives of his subjects and all but a tiny number of his fellow expeditioners. For the first few years of his reign, this was tolerated by Siluve's Lacrean patrons because he spent significant amounts on weaponry; towards the end of his reign, however, Lacre paid increasingly less heed towards maintaining their hold in Rania, and treated Siluve with increasing coldness, to which he responded by shutting Rania's ports to more and more foreign ships. His premature death in 1916 is alleged by some to have been the work of Lacrean agents, and ascribed by others to his son, Sillis, who was confirmed only a few days later as King-Marshal.

Sillis was undoubtedly a considerably more able monarch than his father, and much more interested in ingratiating himself with the peoples of his kingdom, learning the Ranian language and making general use of the Ranian form 'Sjīlis' for his name. For most of his father's reign, he was absent from Rania, studying at the Weeping Library in Kozrat; he ended his studies there only a few weeks before his father's death. Sillis immediately distinguished himself from his father by dismissing some of the expeditionary old guard and replacing them with Ranians; although his administration was nonetheless dominated by the old guard from the Expedition for most of his reign, Sillis made great efforts to incorporate the Ranian nobility into his government. His 53 years in power were a remarkable period in which he enacted a series of ambitious projects aimed at industrialisation and modernisation, drawing on the country’s oil wealth; in the course of his lifetime, Rania was transformed from a rural backwater into an industrial powerhouse and owner of a respectable military.

Long War

As a Lacrean ally Ranian forces entered the fray of the Great Ephgil Campaign, mounting a naval invasion of the islands of Lyumā and Ehtama that was surprisingly successful and won the country a degree of interordinate recognition previously thought impossible. Although no territorial transfers took place at the Pasila Awards, economic concessions by a humbled Agamar and acknowledgement by the Three Power Bloc further consolidated Rania's status. In 1958, as Agamar was embroiled in the Sakari Revolt, Sillis made a second attempt at conquering Lyumā, but this was less successful than previously, and Rania was unable to make enough gains to be recognised at the Congress of Kethpor. Nevertheless, such military prowess earned Rania colonial concessions from the dismembered Lacre in Serania, as well as elevation to Banner status, with Sillis taking the title of Emperor.

Recent history

Sillis' death in 1969 marked the beginning of the end for the Ranian ascendancy. The neglect of agriculture in favour of oil caused a crisis during the years without summers which led to considerable unrest. Sillis' successor, Apoto, had little of his father's prestige, and relied on poorly-managed social spending to shore up support. The Terophatic Implosion of the late 1970s, however, caused a drop in oil prices and an economic downturn. Recovery began in the 1990s, as in the wake of the Garden Wars Joriscian powers turned to closer, safer, and unassertive Rania as a more secure source of oil; but in the 2000s depression the government was again plunged into a fiscal crisis, in which it became steadily more financially beholden to other powers, mainly Agamar. In 2009 a faction of dissatisfied generals and Scholars, the Monastic Party, overthrew Siluve II and put him under arrest, intending to steer the country away from foreign influence, initiating the Ranian crisis. The rise of the Restitutors and a major uprising that horrified Vaestdom led to the 2010 Ranian expedition, resulting in the partition of the country between occupying powers. The Haljanlinn government in the north is backed by a coalition of Joriscian countries and aims to restore Siluve II to full power, while the Väglinn government in the south is supported by Agamar and aims to implement eclectic and often controversial Scholarly proposals for reform.