Arvorig-Lithau

Old Kingdom of Arvorig
The petty kingdoms of Arvorig, pressured by Lynian raids and the rise of the empire of Eicenrad, first consolidated into a single state in the ninth century and began to shift to a feudal society, while Lithau remained an island of effectively independent tribes, split between three loose overkingdoms and with the occasional appointment of a ceremonial high king.

Two Kingdoms era
In the fourteenth century, the Arvorese king gained a claim on the throne of the northern Lithavian overkingdom through a complicated series of dynastic marriages and promptly invaded and conquered it. Over the next through centuries Arvorig would gradually extend its rule over the rest of the island through conquest, marriage, and diplomacy, with the kings of Arvorig formally securing a permanent hold on the title of high king of Lithau by 1600. However, Arvorig and Lithau remained administratively separate realms, with the former a more consolidated feudal state while the latter was a tense patchwork of ancient Lithavian clans and newly planted Arvorese feudal lordships.

Colonial era
Sinjuan explorers reached the region in the 1700s. When a mission of Jihwan envoys to Arvorig was executed, Jihwa dispatched a punitive expedition that forced Arvorig to cede Jihwa a treaty port. This became a springboard for a number of Jihwan expeditions over the following century that steadily eroded Arvorese sovereignty, culminating in the death of much of the ruling Warochian dynasty in battle, sparking a succession crisis that Jihwa took advantage of to take over the whole country (except for the southern tip of Lithau which was instead taken over by Meisaan).

Jihwan rule continued the patchwork political structure, combining areas of direct colonial administration with vassal tribes and fiefdoms, including one ruled by a surviving cadet branch of the Warochians. Jihwa favored ethnic Arvorese over Lithavians and other groups and used them as a relatively more educated and privileged administrative class, perpetuating an unofficial ethnic caste system. It would be this class that began to lead the anti-colonial independence movement in the 1900s. The movement that greatly intensified during Eulhae, when Jihwa itself was occupied and the colonial administration was left rudderless, resulting in a Contingent-backed uprising that was only quashed by Allied intervention.

United Kingdom
Despite that setback, Arvorig-Lithau would eventually be granted independence in 1961 amid the global wave of decolonization, as a monarchy with the Warochians restored to the throne (despite the wishes of many Lithavians who preferred a republic). The absence of an overarching colonial authority exacerbated the patchwork of jurisdictions that made up Arvorig-Lithau and many nationalists seized on this disunity as a cause for the country’s lagging development and instability. They found an ear in King Alan VI, who ascended to the throne in 1973 and began moving forward a plan to merge the entire country into a unitary and centralized jurisdiction. Lithavians saw this as a move to entrench ethnic Arvorese domination over the entire country, as Arvorese already made up a majority of the national administration and economy despite being a minority of the population and the king’s plan would roll back what limited autonomy Lithau had.

Protests ensued, culminating in an open rebellion and the outbreak of the First Lithau War in 1978 that pitted the monarchy against Lithavian separatists and communists. The war lasted until 1985, when Alan VI was overthrown in a palace coup by his sister Janed II, who accepted a peace deal with the moderate rebels to implement a constitution (the first in the country’s history) that made the country a union of two constituent realms and increased the power of parliament, while maintaining some of the monarch’s political power; they then joined together to defeat the communists.

Dual Monarchy
Though ethnic and regional disparities were lessened slightly, the new government remained disproportionately made up of Arvorese with Lithau continuing to lag behind the mainland in development. The new government also gained a reputation for corruption, and in particular for allowing Sinjuan countries and companies to exploit the country’s natural resources (especially Lithau’s) and erode its culture.

These tensions resulted in the outbreak of the Second Lithau War in 2003. While the initial rebellion seemed to be defeated by 2005, it instead shifted into a long-term insurgency that came to be dominated by druidic religious fundamentalists seeking to establish Lithau as an independent druidic theocracy purged of Arvorese and Sinjuan influence. Much of rural Lithau remains under the control of either these or other insurgents or of local self-defense militias, contributing significantly to Arvorig-Lithau’s ongoing status as a least-developed country.