Palmyrion (Levanora)

Royal Palmyrian Commonwealth Makahang Mankomunidad ng Palmyria
Flag
Motto: Kalayaan, Katarungan, Kaunlaran (Liberty, Justice, Progress)
Anthem: Mahal kong Palmyria (My Beloved Palmyria)
Capital	Aragon
Largest	Quezon City
Official languages	Palmyrian and English
Recognised national languages	Palmyrian
Recognised regional languages	Various other language in the Palmyrian language family
Ethnic groups (2018)	70% Palmyrian 5% Indigents 10% Marshite 10% Romandean 5% Other
Religion (2018)	46.5% Christian 40.5% Marshist 5.0% Muslim 2.0% Atheist 1.5% Other
Demonym(s)	Palmyrian
Government	Federal semi-constitutional parliamentary monarchy
• Head of State	Lakambini Elizabeth the Commoner (2019~)
• Head of Government	Katerina Defensor-Guzman (2015~)
• Head of Assembly	Manuel Vito-Gonzales II (2015~)
• Chief Justice	Enrique Kalaw-Pangilinan (2010~)
Legislature	Commonwealth Assembly
• Upper house	Senate
• Lower house	House of Representatives
Formation of Palmyrion
• Founders' Arrival	400 CE
• Spanish colonial regime	1600 - 1764 CE
• British colonial regime	1764 - 1820 CE
• Royal Confederation of the Palmyrian Dominion	1 July 1820 - 7 August 1920
• Southern Lardite Empire	8 August 1920 - 1 July 1944
• Federal Republic of Palmyrion	2 July 1944 - 5 January 1952
• Palmyrian People's Commonwealth	5 January 1952 - 1 July 1984
• Commonwealth Junta	1 July 1984 - 1 July 2000
• Royal Palmyrian Commonwealth	1 July 2000 - Present
• Current constitution	1 July 2000
Area
• Total	6,975,750 km2 (2,693,350 sq mi)
• Water (%)	16
Population
• 2019 estimate	2,012,145,699
• 2018 census	2,008,329,872
• Density	289/km2 (748.5/sq mi)
GDP (PPP)	2018 estimate
• Total	$41,160,720,726,640‬
• Per capita	$20,495
GDP (nominal)	2018 estimate
• Total	$37,612,073,052,968
• Per capita	$18,728
Gini (2018)	0.375 low
HDI (2018)	0.795 high
Currency	Royal Rupia (PRR)
Time zone	UTC-8:00 (Palmyrian Standard Time)
Date format	DD MMM YYYY
Driving side	right
Calling code	+77
ISO 3166 code	RPC

Palmyrion (Palmyrian: Palmyria), officially the Royal Palmyrian Commonwealth (Palmyrian: Makahang Mankomunidad ng Palmyria), is a sovereign country in the southern tip of the Greater Dienstadi continent of [CONTINENT NAME]. The Royal Commonwealth is composed of its 40 constituent provinces and its overseas territories, primarily the Protectorate of Palawan, the Protectorate of Northern Frojo, and the Protectorate of Eastern Vekta. It shares land borders to the north and east by its long-time allies Holy Marsh and Romandeos, respectively; to its west is the [NAME] sea, which serves as a maritime border between the Royal Palmyrian Commonwealth and the Solisian Union; to its south lies the Palmyro-Aquileian Strait, a maritime border between Palmyrion and the nation of Aquileie; to the east of its southern archipelago is the Imbrinian dependency of Philotas Islands. The Royal Commonwealth occupies a vast swath of land, covering nearly 6,975,750 square kilometers of land (exempting insular bodies of water), 16% of which is freshwater bodies such as rivers and lakes. It had an estimated 2,008,329,872 on 2018, which makes it rank as one of the least populated countries in Greater Dienstad.

The Royal Commonwealth is a federation ruled by a semi-parliamentary monarchy. The monarch is Lakambini Elizabeth the Commoner, who has reigned since 2019. Its capital is Aragon, with Quezon being the largest; both cities are global cities and major financial centers. Other major urban centers in the Royal Commonwealth are the cities of Naga, Iloilo, Sultan Kudarat, Cebu, Davao, Makati, Batangas, and the vassal city-state of Port Elizabeth on Palawan. It has 40 provinces, each with their own unique ethnic and sociocultural identities; these ethnicities and sociocultural identities have undergone a vast extent of cultural and genetic intermingling, and this intermingling has resulted into a high degree of ethnic, social, cultural, and political homogeneity and unity among the native Palmyrian populace. Palmyrion in its most recent reincarnation is relatively young, having existed only since 2000 - for nearly the past 1,600 years of its existence as a distinct ethnic identity from their Marshite origins, Palmyrion has existed as 8 states before its most recent incarnation as the Royal Commonwealth. While Palmyrion has a staunch opposition to unlawful occupation of sovereign states by foreign powers, Palmyrion had, ironically, obtained some dependencies, namely the Protectorate of Palawan, the Protectorate of Eastern Vekta, and the Protectorate of Northern Frojo, in order to help these territories stabilize and develop in preparation for future independence.

The Royal Commonwealth is a developed country and is a high-tier middle income nation, with relatively medium nominal and GDP figures for its population. It also has a high Human Development Index, the result of some ongoing social welfare, sanitation, and healthcare policies of the government, combined with a financially and academically literate populace, a free, robust, well-regulated, and highly-productive market, and a well-paid, highly skilled, and highly productive labor force. In its existence as the Royal Confederacy, it has been one of the latecomers to the regional wave of industrialization, but quickly caught up with the use of groundbreaking scientific and technological advances, discoveries, and inventions in its industrial pursuits despite having to begin from a small capital base during its early days as a sovereign state that had just broken free from Spanish colonial rule. The Royal Commonwealth is touted as an emerging great power with an increasingly-improving military and economic capability to pursue a stronger and more visible place in worldwide geopolitics. It is currently a member of a select number of influential diplomatic coalitions, ranging from the International Freedom Coalition, to the Romani-Mar'si Union.

Etymology

The name Palmyria is not a native invention; in fact, the very first name that referred to a formal nation-state encompassing the present-day Palmyrian territorial landmass and waters is Makiling, named after the mountain upon which the Makiling Confederation Accords were ratified, formalized, and set forth into power, leading to the birth of the Thalassocratic Confederation of Makiling. The name "Palmyria" is the corruption of a Spanish term that referred to the cultural significance of the coconut plant, now a national symbol of the Royal Commonwealth, among the natives when they first encountered the natives of what is now Palmyrion; the British have used the same name to refer to the present-day continental landmass. The earliest known mention of "Thalassocratic Confederation of Makiling", at least in the form of its native language cognates (the most well-known being in Buendian: Makakaragatang Kahugpongan ng Makiling), was found on the Los Baños Vellum Scrolls found on 1967 by an state-hired archaeological team of the now-extinct Stalinist regime, and from which the original text of the Makiling Confederation Accords were translated into modern Palmyrian (a modern, standardized form of Buendian) and English. Eyewitness accounts to the deliberation and signing of the Accords state that the decision on the name of this newborn nation-state entity was arbitrary to some extent, as the delegates to the deliberation decided out of jest to name the state after the mountain whereupon the accords were formalized into power.

Upon their successful conquest of present-day Palmyrion, the Spanish named the land "Tierra de las Palmeras" after the relative abundance of the coconut tree in its lands and in part to pay tribute to the plant's cultural and economic significance to the native Palmyrians; the British, upon their conquest of Palmyrion during 1764 by the capture of Aragon from the Spanish, also paid homage to the plant's cultural and economic significance, renaming the colony as "Colonial Palmeras". When the Palmyrians obtained their independence, they used this name to refer to their newborn unified ethnic, socio-cultural, and political identity, and thus their newborn nation-state: the Royal Confederation of the Palmyrian Dominion (Pal. "Makahang Kahugpongan ng Dominyong Palmyria"), marking the first official use of the name Palmyria to refer to a people and their subsequent nation-state. The term "Palmyrion" is a modern-day foreign invention, a portmanteau of the words "Palmyrian dominion"; Palmyrians still call the Palmyrian mainland as ""Palmyria", oftentimes referring to it in English as the "Royal Commonwealth of Palmyria" (which has also been accepted as another official name for the Royal Commonwealth). Both the terms "Palmyrion" and "Palmyria", both being English and the latter also being both a Palmyrian word and an endonym, are official shorthand names for the Royal Commonwealth.

History

Prehistory

Recent discoveries of stone tools and fossils of butchered animal remains in Kalinga, Iloilo, and Naga has pushed back evidence of early hominins in present-day Palmyrion to as early as 800,000 years. However, the metatarsal of the Macahambus Man, reliably dated by both carbon-14 dating and uranium-series dating to about 70,000 years ago remains the oldest human remnant found in the Royal Commonwealth to date. Aetas and Negritos were among the first inhabitants of modern-day Palmyrion, but reliably dated remnants of permanent settlements date back only to the arrival of the Founder Clans back in 400CE. Some of these settlements still exist today and have become parts of modern-day cities, towns, and villages, which have since then become heavily modernized by the pace of technology.

Precolonial Epoch

The Los Baños Copperplate Inscription.

The earliest settlement of Palmyrion by modern-day Palmyrians dates back to 400CE by Proto-Palmyrians fleeing Lardite persecution in northern Holy Marsh and finding no land to call their own in the relatively densely-populated southern half of Holy Marsh. The demarcation line between Palmyrian prehistory and early history is on 14 July 400CE, the date of the earliest settlement of the Proto-Palmyrians fleeing Lardite persecution of their communities, based on artifacts such as, most notably, the Los Baños Copperplate Inscription as well as various stone tablets found across the northern provinces. 200 years later, on 600CE, the Emergent Phase of the Proto-Palmyrians began, which was marked by newly-emerging socio-cultural patterns that differentiated them from their northern Marshite origins, the initial development of coastal and riverine settlements, increasing social stratification and specialization, and the beginnings of an economy based on local and maritime trade. Meanwhile, socio-cultural integration of the Aetas, Negritos, and the Proto-Palmyrians effectively dissolved genetic, social, and cultural boundaries between them, with the former two shifting from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one based on agriculture and livestock rearing; in modern times, however, the indigenous peoples still largely live in villages and rural settlements situated on their ancestral lands like they have since time immemorial, while enjoying the same level of technological and, to a lesser extent, sociocultural modernity as their urban counterparts do.

The first iron tools on Palmyrion, marking the beginning to the Iron Age for Palmyrion, date back to 400CE, brought along by the Proto-Palmyrians with them as they resettled from northern Holy Marsh to the present-day Palmyrian landmass.

Ten Kingdoms Period (900CE - 1200CE)

The Proto-Palmyrians soon split into ten distinct socio-cultural ethnic identities, culminating into the beginning of the Ten Kingdoms Period. All the Ten Kingdoms traded with either Holy Marsh or Romandeos, whichever was nearer. The Ten Kingdoms period was marked by significant advances in agricultural and military technology, the result of an economic and military arms race to sustain a costly and bloody power struggle between the Ten Kingdoms.

A noble couple from the Kingdom of Tondo, depicted in the 14th-Century Chester Codex.

These early polities were typically characterized by a three-tier social structure. Although different cultures had different terms for each of them, they invariably included a class of apex nobility, the middling freemen, and a class of dependent debtor-bondspeople called "alipin" or "uripon". Among the nobility class were leaders who held monarchist political leadership roles: the datu, which was responsible for leading autonomous socio-cultural settlements called "barangay" or "dulohan". These datu were vassals of a larger, much more powerful political office: the king, each of which ruled one of the ten kingdoms present during the era.

The Ten Kingdoms Conflict, a 300-year long series of wars and conflicts between the pre-colonial polities, is estimated to have killed an estimated 40 million people over the course of 300 years. Notable battles and wars include the Cagayan Valley conflict (912-1194), the Ilocos Plateau wars (913-1195), the Battle of Pasig Strait (wet season of 965), and the Palawan Struggle (1084-1105).

Thalassocratic Era (1200CE - 1600CE)

The Kingdoms of Cagayan and Ilocos fell into the hands of Lardite conspirators and rebellions on 1100CE, all of which were led by Datu Bagwis. Over half of the present-day Royal Commonwealth fell into Lardite hands, with the borders of the provinces mostly retained. Anti-Lardite revolts sprang up across the area during the 12th century CE, fueled by long-standing hatred of the Lardites and a "convert or die" policy enacted by the ruling Lardite elite.

The leaders of the remaining eight kingdoms, alongside the Cagayan and Ilocano loyalists sympathising with the overthrown monarchies, convened at Mt. Makiling in the Kingdom of Tondo, where they signed the Makiling Confederation Accords, effectively signaling the conception of the first native nation-state encompassing the whole of Palmyrion. It was not until 1200 CE, however, when the Lardite governments in Cagayan and Ilocos were overthrown, and the reborn kingdoms signing the Makiling Confederation Accords, that the Thalassocratic Confederation of Makiling was born, which culminated into the ratification and official promulgation of the Makiling Confederation Accords.

Many historians refer to this era of Palmyrion, with the middle 200 years termed as the Pax Palmyria, as an era of numerous thrusts and advances in the fields of science, technology, culture, and economy, specifically in the following subfields:

• Architecture and Civil Engineering: Before the Confederate Era, stone quarries existed only as small-scale operations with the stone being used only for the houses of the elite. During the Confederate era, however, stone quarrying operations widened, which provided massive opportunities for civil engineering purposes. Confederate era Palmyrian architecture borrowed many styles from then contemporary Marshite and Romandean architecture, resulting into such monuments which stand until now in the present function:

• The Royal Citadel, the current seat of power of the Royal Commonwealth, constructed in 1365 as a military fortress and the Confederate Council's seat of power. It has undergone construction shortly after the Fourth Civil War to serve as the seat of power of the Commonwealth Junta and, eventually, the monarchy of Palmyrion. At present, the Citadel refers to a fortified complex on the similarly-fortified Marhalika Island, consisting of the Royal Palace (the residence of the Palmyrian monarch), the Chancellery, the Assembly House, and the Supreme Court.
• Idjang Kalinga, the oldest continually-occupied military installation of the Royal Commonwealth, located in Kalinga province. It finished construction on 1353 and served as a military fortress of the Confederated Kingdom of Ifugao until 1600. Heavily damaged during the Fourth Civil War, Idjang Kalinga was reconstructed starting on 1985, with reconstruction efforts (which included retrofitting of modern electrical and plumbing systems) finished by 1990; it currently serves as the provincial headquarters of the Armed Forces of Palmyrion in the province of Kalinga.
• Tall and expansive apartments, which were relatively spacious compared to their contemporaries, were also built as part of multiple housing projects by both private and public entities. Extensive piping and sewage systems were constructed, and great numbers of hospitals were established, both of which went hand-in-hand in advances in public sanitation, medicine, and public health.

Indian mail and plate armour, Met Museum

• Military strategy, tactics, and technology: Firearm technology advanced as firearms, and the equipment needed to produce them, were improved, not least due to pressure from Lardite incursions that happened regularly. Fortifications used novel inventions and discoveries in the field of architecture and civil engineering to create formidable fortresses, which still stand until today in their present, modernized forms. Firearm emplacements became more common in major fortifications, and hand-held firearms became more common among the infantry of the era. Ballistae and trebuchets were supplanted by gunpowder cannons, and Palmyrians made highly crude attempts at executing Time-on-Target artillery firing; alongside this, primitive firing tables, based on standardized raise angles, were developed to aid Confederate artillerymen in coordinating and executing accurate artillery gunfire. On sea, naval use of gunpowder became increasingly widespread, and the first carracks, still named Karakaws despite being many times larger, heavier, and better armed, set sail under the flag of the Confederate on the 1400s.

• Public health, sanitation, and medicine: Knowledge of traditional medicine in then contemporary Palmyrion soon became widely available with the publishing of the Compendium of Medicinal Plants and Practices during the late 1400s, coupled with the rise of the printing press and the establishment of hospitals. The Compendium, itself a pharmacopoeia, was in effect a go-to medicinal almanac during the day, as it was a comprehensive guide to contemporary medicinal practice, ranging from known illnesses, to plants with therapeutic and medicinal properties, to contemporary surgical procedures. The Compendium has, in recent times, been supplanted by the International Pharmacopoeia in Palmyrian medical usage, but is still regularly updated as a database of Palmyrian herbal plants in both print and online editions.

In the fields of public health and sanitation, Dayang Dimasalanta (herself tutored from a young age by her noble family's physician), the wife of a local ruler, compiled onto a series of essays the observations made and lessons learned when she visited the settlements of neighboring Holy Marsh and Romandeos, specifically in how epidemics and pandemics came, stayed, and went in those settlements, and how those settlements are preventing such events from happening again. Her work was vital to the establishment of public sanitation facilities and measures in the growing cities, towns, and villages of the Thalassocratic Confederation.

The Lagaue Rice Terraces, Ifugao province. The Lagaue Rice Terraces are one of Palmyrion's oldest still-productive rice terraces, paddies, and fields.

• Agriculture, aquaculture, nutrition, and cuisine: Agriculture, aquaculture, nutrition, and cuisine have a lot of strings with each other. Palmyrion started trade with the Marshites and Romandeans, and one of the trade goods included was food crops. The legacy of such trade is still evident until now, with both the cultivation and import of food crop species originally native to Holy Marsh and Romandeos, and the inclusion of such foods in present-day Palmyrian cuisine. Agriculture flourished in the volcanic soils of Bicol, the floodplains of Buendia and the Cagayan Valley region, and even on the harsh slopes and peaks of the Palmyrian Cordilleras and the Ilocos Plateau; this was a combined effort between advances in civil engineering, agricultural engineering, and agricultural biotechnology, all working together to create a system of agricultural practices and infrastructure adapted to the Palmyrian terrain and climate.

Palmyrion also had a rich maritime culture, and with it came aquaculture and the fisheries. Various guides in aquaculture and the fisheries were published during this era, which compiled into several books major aquacultural and fishing techniques and methods, and a list of edible, non-edible, harmless, and hazardous aquatic creatures. Those works became the foundation of then contemporary aquacultural knowledge, which was then used to great benefit by fisherfolk and agriculturists in their work.

Internal issues and the downfall of the Thalassocracy

The Thalassocracy had several internal issues, chief among them being how to integrate its various ethnicities with each other. While ethnic violence had died down, inter-ethnic communication and interaction was still a primary concern: attempts to create a lingua franca would be met by opposition from various ethnic groups that found issue with favouritism in the creation process; interfaith and interracial marriages, alongside commercial and land disputes (the latter often feeding into range wars), have become tribal casus belli for honor killings and clan wars which, in the lesser-developed parts of Palmyrion, last to this day, though largely mitigated by law enforcement and, in extreme cases, armed intervention by government forces.

The resurgence of the apocalyptic Lardite cult among the Thalassocracy would become perhaps its most threatening internal security issue, as inter-religious clashes between Lardites and non-Lardites soon evolved into large-scale riots and, ultimately, civil conflicts. Perhaps the most notable incident would be a Thalassocracy-wide epidemic of super-gonorrhea which killed approximately 10 million, the result of the large-scale use of sex as a weapon (either by wartime rape or sexual courtship) by a sect of the Lardite cult which syncretised with the Temple of Balesh (whose followers formed the Urban Community of Kesslerstaadt). The Thalassocracy soon waged the Intercessor Crusade (1520s-1530s) to quell the religious conflict and, ultimately, wipe out the Lardite cult; the Intercessor Crusade was largely successful in achieving its goals, but it was largely a Pyrrhic victory, for it resulted into heavy military losses and severe socioeconomic ruin for the Thalassocracy; at present, it is suspected that the remnants of the then Lardite cult, especially that of the Balesh-syncretised sect, are hiding in Kesslerstaadt.

In the aftermath of the Intercessor Crusade, long-suppressed tribal and familial disputes soon evolved into sporadic skirmishes and, ultimately, into civil conflicts, a situation which a decimated and poorly-supplied Thalassocratic military was not able to contain and quell, and one exacerbated by the socioeconomic ruin brought by the Intercessor Crusade. This internal conflict gave an opening for Spanish colonizers to colonize the Thalassocracy by exploiting the internal strife to their benefit.

Colonial era (1600-1820)

Palmyrion was colonised, first by Spain, and second by the British, each of which have imparted major cultural influences into the native Palmyrian populations as a colonial legacy. Nowadays Palmyrion is branded as a

Palmyrion was colonized by Spain from 1600 to 1764, after a conquest by Juan Ignacio Alvarez at a time when the Thalassocratic Confederation faced significant socioeconomic and political struggle, manifesting itself as a series of civil conflicts on the part of the Palmyrians. Juan Ignacio Alvarez successfully exploited the civil strife by utilizing the "defeat in detail" tactic to defeat Confederate military forces and establish Spanish colonial rule over Palmyrion.