Uluujol

Land of the Great Road Uluujoldunjeri
1432–1739
Flag
The Jade Road Khaganate at maximum extent, c. 1550 CE
Status	Defunct
Capital	Ozhe
Government	Absolute Elective Monarchy
Historical era	Middle Ages
• Marriage of Niri of Ozhe & Shui of Lo	1395
• Coronation of Ozkan I	1432
• Fall of Ozhe	1739
Preceded by Blue Khanate White Khanate Nanjut Federation

Uluujoldunjeri (from Ozhchuyan, literally "Land of the Great Road"), commonly referred to as simply Uluujol (uː-luː-ʒɒl), sometimes rendered as Yuzol or called the Great Road Khaganate or Jade Road Khaganate, was a land empire located in central Ochran. Situated along major east-west overland trade routes between Belisaria & the Periclean Basin and Eastern Ochran, the realm was a primary political hegemon in Central Ochran, and a successor realm of the Bayarid Empire. In the present, the lands occupied by the Khaganate include the nations of Untsangasar, Shimlar-Pashmir, and [other nations].

Unlike its Bayarid predecessor, Uluujol was created through a mix of conquest and dynastic unifications, with the final and most major one being the marital union of the Chuyan Khanate in the west and the state of Lo in the east, in which the two eventual heirs of the Khanates, Niri of Ozhe and Shui of Lo wedded. The couple ruled the combined realm together, and when they passed on both thrones were united in the person of their son, Ozkan. Ozkan's descendents would rule the realm for the next three hundred years, until the War of the Banners would effectively destroy the Ozkanid powerbase and would leave the state a shell of its former self, finally destroyed for good by the burgeoning Zilung Empire, the resurgent White Horde, a nascent Qavar Khanate, and independence movements in Shimlar-Pashmir.

The Khaganate was central to Ochranic history and politics during the approximately three hundred years of its existance, due to its central position and influence over the overland trade to eastern Ochran.

History

Founding

The Jade Road Khaganate was largely the result of the conquests and consolidation of various post-Bayarid realms under the aegis of the central Blue Horde. Its primary opposition were the other post-Bayarid states, including the western Red Horde, the northern White Horde, the Lo State, and, importantly, the Nanjut Federation. While many of these others fell to conquest, the last of these would join the Blue Horde in a dynastic union, with the prince Niri wedding the Nanjut princess Shui in 1395 to seal the Treaty of Eternal Friendship. Niri, the heir to Ozgur II Khan, and Shui, sole surviving child of Mutengge IV of Nanjutia, effectively merged the two dynasties, with their new combined realm ultimately to be ruled by their eldest son, Ozkan I Khagan

Early Empire

Efforts to centralize the governance of the Khaganate and improve trade routes were energetically pursued by Ozkan and his immediate successors, because money.

Politics

Uluujol was an absolute monarchy, in which the Khagan was elected upon the death of the previous Khagan from among the eligible members of the imperial house by their kin. The members of the imperial house, along with high officials, and representatives of a number of other prominent houses, both Chuyan and elevated from among the Khaganate's subject peoples, formed the Imperial Shuukh (Imperial Court), in which all power was vested as an extension of the Khagan's will. High officials were often drawn from the Shuukh, either from among prominent courtiers or from the Ozkanid clan itself.

Selection of the Khagan

At the death or abdication of a Khagan, the new Khagan would be elected by the Imperial Clan from among the previous Khagan's descendants. To be eligible, a would-be-monarch needed to be a legitimate (or legitimized) child of the Khagan, or an immediate blood relative (generally a sibling or the legitimate child thereof). A Khagan with adequate foresight could designate their heir, making it extremely difficult to stop their ascent to the throne.

The succession was voted on by all members of the dynasty with three degrees of separation or less from the previous monarch: this generally meant that, functionally, any of the Khagan's surviving wives (above a certain rank), their parents and any surviving direct ancestors, their great-aunts and great-uncles, their aunts and uncles, first-cousins (aunt's and uncles' children), their siblings, their nieces and nephews, great-nieces and nephews, and the Khagan's own children, grandchildren and, potentially, great-grandchildren, including those by concubines.

In most cases, the previous Khagan designated their desired successor. In those instances, the designated successor generally ascended the throne; the House of Ozkan's internal laws held that a three-quarters supermajority in opposition within the Imperial clan could stop this from happening, but in practice, this never occurred at any Kurultai of Succession. In cases where no successor was named, each of the Khagan's legitimate children (children by his Khatun, and any imperial consorts) were considered by the clan for the throne in order of seniority. While women could (and in a few cases, did) become Khagan, the order of consideration required that each of a consort's male children by the Khagan be considered in order of seniority before any of their female children by the Khagan.

During the early years of the Jade Road Khaganate this process often proceeded relatively smoothly; even in cases where an obviously-unsuitable heir was bypassed, either the deceased predecessor ruler had the foresight to designate a preferred heir, or support solidified quickly around a more viable alternative. However, as the Khaganate grew richer, bloated, and less-stable, and the House of Ozkan increasingly factionalized, Kurultais became much less certain affairs and it became increasingly-common for the death of a Khagan to trigger a spate of murders among possible claimants to the throne as the succession became muddled. These problems eventually culminated at the death of Ozkan VI Khagan, who left no legitimate children, and whose cousins and siblings each found themselves used as proxies by factions in the Shuukh, triggering the War of the Banners and ultimately beginning the terminal decline of the Khaganate.

Legacy

The Jade Road Khaganate ultimately proved to be an incubator for a great number of successor states that would go on to shape Ochranic history. But even beyond the immediate political impacts, Uluujol's nature as a continent-spanning trade-based empire allowed the transmission of culture, language, commerce and art along a secure east-west route. The realm's nature (and that of its ruling elite) as an ethno-linguistic melting pot transmitted advances in the sciences and arts in both directions along its route, helped to foster the pan-Chuyan identity, while also setting patterns of governance and lifestyle for its successor states. Influenced by its western Azagartian subjects, Uluujol's standardization of familial surnames is still felt in Untsangasar, which orders names differently from most of its immediate neighbors. It would help spread the Chuyan alphabet, still in use in many parts of the former Khaganate, most-notably Untsangasar.

[Please add cultural and/or political knock-on effects your nation has that are attributable to being formerly part of Uluujol I guess]