Megelanese people

Megelanese people

Mesiolanesi
The flag of Megelan
Total population
10,394,786 (2021)
Regions with significant populations
Megelan (4,237,301), rest of Tyran (6,157,485)
Languages
Primarily Italian; but also Eastern Lombard, Western Lombard, Emilian, Ladin, and Walser
Religion
Primarily Traditional witchcraft and Sofianism; but also Concordianism, Vallyar and Kisekidō
Related ethnic groups
Primarily Cacertans; but also Delkorans, Gylians, and Akashians, both Gothic and Miranian

The Megelanese (Italian: Mesiolanesi) are the citizens of Megelan, a country in northern Tyran, or people of Megelanese ancestry. Legally, only people born and resident in Megelan that can trace their direct ancestry to at least one Megelanese parent are considered citizens of Megelan, but people of Megelanese ancestry can be found all over Tyran, especially in the areas between Cacerta and Gylias that used to constitute the polity of Alscia.

Today, there are 10,394,786 people of Megelanese ancestry in Tyran: 4,237,301 of these live in Megelan itself, while 6,157,485 of these live in the rest of Tyran; due to the devastation brought by the Megelanese Civil War, there are less Megelanese in Tyran today than there were in Megelan alone in 1919. Due to high abortion, euthanasia and infanticide rates, the Megelanese population's total fertility rate is quite low, if still above replacement level.

Ethno-linguistic composition

The ethno-linguistic composition of the territories of modern Megelan includes the following components:

• The Western Lombard-speaking Megelanese (38.8% of Megelan's population) and the Eastern Lombard-speaking Megelanese (23.7% of Megelan's population) inhabit central Megelan; their culture and language has been influenced the least by the polities surrounding Megelan. They have been instead shaped by two distinct centers of power in Megelan itself: Alba for the Western Lombard-speaking Megelanese, and Vergate sul Membro for the Eastern Lombard-speaking Megelanese.
• The Emilian-speaking Megelanese (8.5% of Megelan's population) inhabit the bogs and marshes of eastern Megelan, and have traditionally been under heavy Cacertan influence, the Sofian creed having reached Megelan through this region. They adopted agriculture only after the introduction of rice to Megelan via Akashi, having engaged in nontaxable subsistence activities, such as swiddening and foraging, until then. The fertile nature of the soil of eastern Megelan nonetheless allowed the Emilian-speaking Megelanese to have the highest recorded population density of any known hunter and gatherer society in Tyran.
• The Ladin-speaking Megelanese (6.0% of Megelan's population) and the Walser-speaking Megelanese (4.8% of Megelan's population) inhabit the peaks and valleys of western Megelan, and have traditionally been under heavy Delkoran influence, Vallyar having reached Megelan through this region. The western Megelanese states have been governed by political institutions based on direct democracy for as long as they have existed, and resistance to patrician oligarchy first and Futurist authoritarianism later was strongest there, to such an extent that western Megelan did not fall to Futurist forces at any point during the Megelanese Civil War.
• The Half-breed Megelanese (18.2% of Megelan's population) are a heterogeneous group of Megelanese residents that includes people of Megelanese descent that returned to Megelan after the end of the Megelanese Civil War, expatriates and immigrants from the rest of Tyran, people who left Megelan and then returned later in life, as well as the children and descendants of all of these; their status as residents is evenly divided between aliens, subjects and citizens.

Italian, in its standard variety, is used by the entirety of the population of Megelan as a lingua franca, while also being the official language of business, culture and politics. As speakers of Eastern Lombard, Emilian and Western Lombard make up the vast majority of Megelan's population, these languages are official in the communes where they are spoken, alongside standard Italian; on the other hand, as Ladin and Walser are only spoken by small minorities in the western mountain ranges of the country, they are only official below the commune level - usually in civil parishes and villages deep in the valleys of western Megelan - alongside standard Italian and at least one of the country's national languages.

Cultural history and national identity

The first known ancient inhabitants of the thick forests and swamps of prehistoric Megelan belonged to a neolithic people who, while being counted among the greatest producers of rock art in Tyran, began to turn the naturally marshy country they inhabited into flat, dry, low-lying agricultural land, through a system of drainage channels and man-made rivers; while genetic studies have indicated that there is a direct and unbroken link between the past and present inhabitants of Megelan, little has survived of the original prehistoric culture, as the country fell under the cultural and linguistic influence of neighbouring polities, chiefly Cacerta and Delkora, quite early in its recorded history.

As a result of these influences, the inhabitants of the multiplicity of small, autonomous city-states that arose in Megelan by the 10th century CE considered themselves ethnically or even racially separate, to such an extent that the Community of Megelan was, at first, seen only as a military alliance, established to protect the rapidly expanding commerce of Megelan's highly mobile and demographically expanding society. The unifying factors of the Megelanese polities were chiefly religious and societal, as the near totality of the population adhered to Megelanese traditional witchcraft while taking part in a political system in which all decisions were made by communalism, with the city-states founded, governed and defended by cooperative decisions.

Only between the 19th and the 20th century, with the birth of romantic nationalism and the development of anthropology and genetics, the Megelanese came to see themselves as inhabitants of a nation-state, and not just (as was the case earlier on in the history of Megelan) as inhabitants of a consociational state based on a shared societal, religious and political outlook, even though, to this day, these two identities coexist without challenging or contradicting one another. Due to the extensive use of chemical weapons during the Megelanese Civil War, the Megelanese carry a large accumulation of genetic damage, which leads to fewer successful pregnancies and higher infant mortality; for the same reason, abortion, euthanasia and infanticide are accepted and widespread throughout the country.

Citizenship and naturalization

Megelanese citizenship is based on both jus sanguinis and jus soli, as only those born and resident in Megelan that have at least one Megelanese parent can obtain full citizenship in Megelan. Moreover, Megelanese residents are subdivided into three different categories, a classification that has not changed since the city-state era: citizens of another nation that reside in Megelan but have not applied for or have not been granted the status of subject are referred to as aliens; they are entitled to basic civil rights, but have no political rights.

Aliens that are considered well integrated into their locale, that have both oral and written competence in one of the national languages of Megelan, and that can prove their knowledge of the history and traditions of their place of residence can apply for the status of subject; just like aliens, they have no voting rights, can not hold any position within the Community, and possess none of the rights and civic responsibilities conferred on citizens.

However, the children of a Megelanese citizen and a subject are eligible since birth for the bestowal of Megelanese citizenship; in practice, this has resulted in a high rate of intermarriage between ethnic Megelanese and Megelanese of foreign descent, hailing for the most part from other Common Sphere countries. Moreover, as the Community is heavily concerned with balancing population size and optimal standards of living, emigration and immigration from and to Megelan are subject to quotas, with those hailing from said countries - especially Cacerta and Gylias, due to the cultural and historical ties that exist between Megelan and these nations - being heavily favoured as prospective immigrants.

As of 2020, foreigners constitute 11.4% of the Community's population, whereas 18.2% of Megelan's population has foreign ancestry; the largest group of resident foreigners consists of the descendants of those Megelanese that left the country during and after the Megelanese Civil War.

Genetics

The genetic composition of the Megelanese population is not unlike that of the rest of Eracura: the prevalent Y-chromosome haplogroup in Megelan is R1b, specifically the U152, or Italo-Celtic, subclade; the prevalent maternal lineage in Megelan is represented, on the other hand, by the H1 subclade of the H haplogroup, that is believed to have evolved before the Last Glacial Maximum.

Genetics therefore seem to indicate that there might be some truth to the origin myth of Megelan: as the city of Alba was founded by the king of a confederation of six tribes hailing from beyond Megelan's western mountain ranges, it's very likely that the members of this confederation, belonging to an Indo-European people, had children with the neolithic inhabitants of old Megelan, a land that used - until the Last Glacial Maximum - to be covered by sea level to a great degree.

Megelanese diaspora

Megelanese migration outside Megelan took place, in different migrating cycles, for centuries. The first such wave took place in the Renaissance, as the divide between the democratic but poor rural city-states and the oligarchic but rich urban city-states resulted in several people from rural Megelan sailing abroad to earn a living as soldiers of fortune, especially in the Liúşai League; mercenaries and sailors of Megelanese descent reached Akashi as well, serving as infantry and privateers in the local conflicts.

As those that migrated were largely male, and unable for the most part to find Megelanese spouses in their host countries, they assimilated into and intermarried with the local populace rather quickly; these rural Megelanese nonetheless gained somewhat of a reputation for common sense as well as martial prowess. The most successful mercenary captains and soldiers were able to sail back home, with enough followers and wealth to establish patrician families of their own and become well-connected and wealthy patrons of the arts and sciences.

The second such wave coincided with the rise of the Futurist regime and the ensuing Megelanese Civil War, as several groups of political exiles fled to Alscia, becoming known as the Free Megelanese; as these migrants were largely urban and wealthy, unlike those that came before them, their influence on Cacertan and Gylian society was, for the most part, cultural as well as political, as the Free Megelanese helped pioneer the telefoni bianchi film genre, while contributing to Gylias' conservative politics.

After the end of the Megelanese Civil War, most of the original exiles and their descendants returned to the Community, but those who had been born in Gylias from Megelanese parents that had died in the meantime - and that, therefore, had no surviving connection to Megelan - largely stayed in the former Alscian territories, and do not hold Megelanese citizenship. They are, nonetheless, even more heavily favoured as prospective immigrants than the rest of their Cacertan and Gylian compatriots.