Palmyrion (Levanora)
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Royal Palmyrian Commonwealth Makahang Mankomunidad ng Palmyria | |
|---|---|
 Flag | |
| Motto: Hiraya Manawari (May our wishes be fulfilled) | |
| Anthem: Bayan Naming Mahal (Our Beloved Nation) | |
| 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 (2020) |
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| Religion (2020) |
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| Demonym(s) | Palmyrian |
| Government | Federal semi-constitutional parliamentary monarchy |
• Monarch | Lakambini Elizabeth the Commoner (2019-) |
• Chancellor | Ricardo Duterte |
• Chief Justice | Raniag Aglipay |
• Senate President | Harold Dimaculangan |
• House Speaker | Sakura Angel Takahashi |
| Legislature | Commonwealth Assembly |
| Chamber of Senators | |
| House of Representatives | |
| Formation | |
• Founders' Arrival | 400 CE |
• Thalassocratic Confederation | 1200-1600 |
• Spanish colonial regime | 1600-1764 |
• British colonial regime | 1764-1820 |
• Declaration of Independence | 1 July 1800 |
• Royal Confederation | 1820-1935 |
• Fascist Tripartition | 1935-1955 |
• People's Commonwealth | 1955-1975 |
• Commonwealth Junta | 1975-2000 |
• Royal Commonwealth | 1 July 2000 - present |
| Area | |
• Total | 6,975,750 km2 (2,693,350 sq mi) |
• Water (%) | 16 |
| Population | |
• 2019 estimate | 2,009,844,247 |
• 2020 census | 2,013,662,951 |
• Density | 288.66/km2 (747.6/sq mi) |
| GDP (PPP) | 2020 estimate |
• Total | $63,539,120,755,854 |
• Per capita | $31,554 |
| GDP (nominal) | 2020 estimate |
• Total | $58,990,929,916,050 |
• Per capita | $29,295 |
| Gini (2020) | 0.595 low |
| HDI (2020) | 0.705 high |
| Currency | Palmyrian Sterling Peso (PSP) |
| Time zone | UTC-8:00 (Palmyrian Standard Time) |
| Date format | DD MMM YYYY |
| Driving side | right |
| Calling code | +77 |
| ISO 3166 code | RPC |
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- This page refers to Palmyrion in Greater Dienstad. To visit Palmyrion in Kali Yuga, click here.
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, high-income nation. It also has a high Human Development Index, the result of many 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: Kabaybayang 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 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 1 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 entry 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.
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 Cordlleran Wars (913-1195), the Battle of Batangas 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 Pact, 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, was constructed from 1265 to 1280 as a military fortress and the Confederate Council's seat of power. It has undergone construction shortly after the Counter-Revolutionary 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 encompassing a nearly 500-hectare domain containing, notably, the Royal Palace, which is the residence of the Royal Family and the Sovereign's seat of power.
- Idjang Kalinga, the oldest continually-occupied military installation of the Royal Commonwealth, located in Kalinga province, finished construction on 1297 and served as a military fortress (and the largest) of the Confederated Kingdom of Ifugao until 1600. Heavily damaged during the Counter-Revolutionary War, Idjang Kalinga was reconstructed starting on 1976, with reconstruction efforts (which included retrofitting of modern electrical and plumbing systems) finished by 1980; 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.
- The Aragon Marshite Temple in the capital city of Aragon, constructed from 1301 to 1320 with assistance from the Marshite church in Holy Marsh, is one of the largest religious buildings in the Royal Commonwealth today, with the Aragon Cathedral and the Omar al-Dinar Mosque in the same city following close behind. Having been reconstructed - again, with assistance from the Marshite Church nearly 670 years later - from 1978 to 1989 in the wake of the Counter-Revolutionary War, the temple operates to this day, serving as the nexus of the Marshite faith in Palmyrion alongside the 493-hectare complex around it.
- One of the oldest military academies in the world, the present-day Commonwealth Military Academy Tondo was constructed, with assistance from the military shrines of the Marshite Church (most notably the Warrior and Combat Shrines), from 1245 to 1261 as the higher military institute of the Confederated Kingdom of Tondo, followed by nine others in the other vassal kingdoms of the Thalassocratic Confederacy. Since then the institute, and its sister campuses constructed in the same era, have expanded in scale and prestige, and have become the present-day campuses of the Commonwealth Military Academy system. Nowadays the Commonwealth Military Academy system is a nationwide institute, rivaling in prestige the likes of the US Military Academy in the United States and RMA Sandhurst in the United Kingdom.
- Military strategy, tactics, and technology
- The Thalassocracy formed the Confederate Standing Levy from the militaries of its constituent Confederated Kingdoms as a standing military, and was kept manned by a levy enacted by every confederated kingdom. Military doctrine and numerical organisation were standardised in part through a system of military academies and training camps that followed a curriculum which was taught in the military academies' respective confederated kingdoms' languages and in part through (necessarily meticulously detailed) military decrees from central command in present-day Aragon; on a related vein, equipment was standardised through the creation of standard schematics for various weapon types which were subsequently translated into the confederated kingdoms' respective languages. The modern-day Palmyrian Army and the Palmyrian Navy - and the Armed Forces of Palmyrion as a whole - trace its lineage to the Confederate Standing Levy, and Arnis, the national martial art and sport of the Royal Commonwealth, traces its formal roots to the Confederate Standing Levy's combat training programmes. Much of the road network existing in Palmyrion today traces its lineage to the extensive logistics network of roads built during the Thalassocratic Era.
- Infantry were divided into light infantry, which served as skirmishers, long-range reconnaissance units, and logistics and communications escorts and runners, and heavy infantry, which fought in close-knit formations similar to the Roman testudo. Light infantry were lightly armored, wearing only gambesons, hoods, and other clothing as necessary to protect them from the elements and provide minimal protection good only for defending the wearer against lighter weapons such as swords like the kampilan. Heavy infantry, on the other hand, wore lamellar armor with lamellae made from water buffalo horn (and, in later years, iron and steel) over a gambeson, sometimes with an optional chainmail layer in between (as was the case of the Makiling Royal Guard), which protected them from all but the most determined and anti-armor threats of the time. Light infantry usually carried bucklers and shortswords, while heavy infantry used heavier shields and light polearms such as spears, with shortswords as sidearms. As the Lardite threat evolved, so did the Confederate Standing Levy at the turn of the 15th Century. To this day scholars debate which of munition armor, gunpowder weapons, pike-and-shot tactics, and the implementation of a professionalized system of rank, pay, and professional specialty came first in Palmyrian medieval military history, but what is certain is that they all appeared starting in the 15th Century, signifying the beginning of early modern warfare in Palmyrian military history.
- The Confederate Navy was also formed at the dawn of the Thalassocratic Era as a branch and service separate from the Confederate Standing Levy, and at the beginning served primarily as logistics and communications runners with a secondary raiding role. Eventually these boats, to include the famous balangay and karakoa vessels, became larger, more heavily equipped, and more specialized, with boats being designed for combat being more heavily armed and armored than boats designed as logistics and communications runners. Gunpowder weaponry as used by the Confederate Navy would also see their evolution as the lantakas commonly used by the navy became larger in caliber and saw more widespread use aboard naval vessels.
- Public health, sanitation, and medicine
- The art of herbalism has been a long-standing tradition among Palmyrian kingdoms since before the birth of the Palmyrian civilization-state in 400CE, and had strong ties to pre-Marshite animist religious practices. These practices were eventually adopted by the Marshite Church in Palmyrion, laying the groundwork for what would become the practice of medicine in Palmyrion. Native babaylans also served as herbalists who healed afflictions using both shamanic rituals and the consumption of herbs, a practice soon adopted by the Marshite Church in its early days in Palmyrion with priests becoming healers themselves as well. The dawn of the Thalassocratic Era saw reforms to make the practice of medicine more standardized and accessible outside of clergy, in addition to the large-scale cultivation of medicinal plants making medicine of the time more accessible to the larger populace.
- It is also during the Thalassocratic Era that one of the most influential literary works in Palmyrian medical history was compiled and published: the Essays, Treatises, and Compendia of Healing Practices, an anthology of literary works written by Dayang Magayon and later compiled and published in separate volumes by her youngest daughter in her honor. The anthology comprises 14 volumes, and covers various topics in epidemiology, sanitation, anatomy, and pharmacology, followed up decades later with a "special" 15th volume written by the daughter herself as a comprehensive standardized pharmacopoeia of medical treatments for various ailments. The anthology is now standard reading not only in Palmyrian medical school, but also in other fields of study, primarily in engineering, pharmacy school, and the social sciences.
- 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 verdant steppes of Buendia, the floodplains of the Pampanga Valley and Cagayan Valley regions, and even on the harsh slopes and peaks of the Palmyrian Cordilleras and the Sierra Madre; 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.
- Arts, crafts, and culture
- Palmyrion flourished in the cultural and artistic front, while being dominated by the same Marshite Church that strictly controlled the creation of arts and crafts in Holy Marsh. Deposits of kaolinite, used mainly in porcelain, fed Palmyrion's porcelain boom, whilst quarries of limestone and marble, prized for their use in stonemasonry, were used as the building blocks of a rapidly-growing Palmyrion as entire cities and fortresses were built across Palmyrion. The manufacture of pigments using various raw materials was invented and refined during this era, and with it the visual arts had a major renaissance as frescoes, sculptures, paintings, and many other visual art forms were given life by colours made possible by the pigments. The nobility also helped fuel this renaissance in the arts by commissioning works of art for various purposes, famously as a means of winning the favour of other nobles or even the Marshite Church. Literature and performance art alike flourished in this era with works of poetry, prose, and dance being made during this era.
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 and inter-ethnic relations were friendly (if not cordial), inter-ethnic communication and interaction was still a primary concern in spite of the positive ethnic relations that had marked the Thalassocracy's existence: 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 honour 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, military intervention to pacify the warring sides.
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. From 1503 to 1509, disaster struck the Thalassocracy as the Great Plague engulfed the Thalassocracy, killing 50 million through a combination of plague (by an Palmyrion-endemic strain of Yersinia pestis), dengue (spread primarily by a Palmyrian subspecies of Aedes Aegypti), an early form of super gonorrhea, and an HIV-like virus, the former being the result of the Lardite cultists' use of plague-infected bodies as a form of biological warfare, the middle being a result of an uptick in mosquito populations caused by failing plumbing systems, and the latter two through Lardite use of rape as a weapon in a simmering socio-cultural religious war; the Great Plague marks the first and earliest AIDS-defining opportunistic infections in Palmyrion. The Thalassocracy, still reeling and recovering from the devastation caused by the Great Plague while being plagued itself by intensified civil conflict, soon waged the First Intercessor Crusade (1530s-1540s) to quell the religious conflict and, ultimately, wipe out the Lardite cult; the First 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 on top of the aftermath of the Great Death. The First Intercessor Crusade itself killed another 50 million; the Great Plague and the Intercessor Crusade combined halved the population of the Thalassocracy, with the population of mainland Palmyrion recovering to pre-Great Plague levels only by the 1850s.
By 1590, the Thalassocracy was a mere shadow of its former glory: its population mired in disease, hunger, and poverty, its military decimated and overstretched, its economic apparatus utterly destroyed - the Confederation was in its dying throes. 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. A poorly-supplied and overstretched military could not hope to resist the Spanish invaders, as the Confederacy's subordinate nations exchanged a dying Thalassocracy for Spanish rule. The Thalassocracy in its dying throes met its demise in the hands of the Spanish, and Palmyrion became a Spanish colony.
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's society and culture bear heavy influences from its former British and Spanish colonisers on top of its original pre-colonial sociocultural traits.
Spanish rule (1600-1764)
Initial Palmyrio-Spanish contact dates back to 1521 with Spanish explorer Miguel Reyes de la Cruz's expedition arriving to Palmyrion. He initially claimed Palmyrion for Spain, but was killed during the Battle of Mactan Bay; to this day, it is still debated on which side - the Confederate Kingdom of Cebu or the Lardite resurgency - was responsible for killing Miguel Reyes de la Cruz, but what is known is that only a single vessel of his original fleet returned to Spain. Colonisation of the Palmyrian mainland began with Juan Ignacio Alvarez's arrival from Mokastana, followed by the formation of the first Hispanic settlements in present-day Mactan City, Province of Cebu. From here, Hispanic settlers spread westward to colonise the entirety of the Visayan Island, starting with the present-day province of Hinigaran, followed by colonisation of present-day Panay province. This would be followed by the invasion of the Kingdom of Tondo, still locked in a bitter internal conflict between landlords and the over-stretched Thalassocratic military; the other confederated kingdoms of the Thalassocracy would follow a similar fate (save for the island of Sultan Osmalik, to which the Thalassocratic government fled), wracked by internal strife brought about by the aftermath of the Intercessor Crusade. By 1600, the colonisation of the Palmyrian mainland was complete, with the formation of the Spanish colonial government and the establishment of Aragon as the capital of the Spanish Palmerian Indies.
Meanwhile, the Thalassocratic government fled to Sultan Osmalik and formed a government-in-exile, and began executing shipping raids on Spanish merchant fleets. Both the government-in-exile and the Spanish colonial regime mustered their military forces in a siege of the island now known today as the Spanish-Thalassocratic War (1685-1764). Both sides used levies to bolster their militaries, but the Thalassocratic government was able to thwart one Spanish incursion after another despite having a smaller population and economic base to sustain their war efforts; fortifications built by the Thalassocratic government to defend the island stand to this day, with a few forts still operating as functional military installations of the Royal Commonwealth, and naval obstacles still posing hindrances to shipping and fishing around the area (especially at low tide).
British rule (1764-1820)
British forces occupied Aragon on 1760 in an extension of the Seven Years' War; within four years, the colony's provincial vassals soon capitulated and swore fealty to the British, and Palmyrion was ceded over to the British through the Treaty of Paris. British rule on mainland Palmyrion was administered directly from the British monarchy, and on 1776 was able to occupy the island of Sultan Osmalik, leading to the downfall of the Thalassocratic government-in-exile; the Thalassocratic royal family, meanwhile, fled to neighbouring Romandeos. It was during the British colonial regime in Palmyrion that Palmyrion had a second cultural renaissance, following the first one during the Thalassocratic era, largely initiated and catalysed by the introduction of Western literary and visual art styles through British colonial rule. During the British colonial regime, Palmyrion developed its national language and lingua franca as a predecessor to modern-day Palmyrian.
Britain introduced Palmyrion to the Industrial Age by the late 1760s, as new coal and iron mines opened up and existing ones expanded across Colonial Palmera, alongside adoption of industrial machines by the various workshops that dotted Palmyrion's haciendas (a vestige of Spanish colonial rule that the British, in spite of its Spanish origin, kept intact). Colonial industry at the time initially focused on the production of value added goods from raw agricultural produce, such as sugar from sugarcane, timber from Palmyrian trees, fabric from cotton, and hemp rope from locally-grown abaca (Musa textilis) - with export to Britain as its primary focus. The British colonial government started building transportation infrastructure such as roads and rail systems by the early 1770s, mainly focusing on the transport of goods and labour across the vast colony; this led to, and came alongside, the expansion of Palmyrion's agricultural and industrial bases, and with it the urbanisation of Palmyrion, as people flocked to cities to work in factories. By the dawn of the 1780s, the colony had a sizeable and growing industrial middle class as the farmer peasant class shrunk with the urbanisation of the colony.
Alongside the Industrial Revolution, the Age of Enlightenment was, perhaps, the most significant British colonial import into Palmyrion. Teachers and artists from mainland Britain went into and settled upon Palmyrion, and with them they brought Enlightenment literature and art styles. Academies rose as formal education institutions, and so did salons - gathering places where people conversed to engage in discourse - as the academies' informal counterparts; it was these salons that equalised poor and rich, merchant and labourer, and peasant and lord, at a time when economic inequality in Colonial Palmera was rife, and Palmyrion still maintains to this day the salon tradition.
Palmyrian Revolution (1790-1820)
The Palmyrian Revolutionary War is attributed by many modern-day historians to be a culmination of various long-suppressed rebellions starting from Spanish colonial rule of Palmyrion, alongside economic inequality during British colonial rule exacerbating the rebellions. The colonial government enacted an economic system focused on the extraction of resources from Palmyrion and producing value-added goods for export to, mainly, Britain, leaving no room for production of goods for domestic consumption; as a result, domestic prices of goods skyrocketed, exacerbating economic inequality even further. Exacerbating the situation further was the British government levying heavier taxes onto the colony, and regulating the colony's economic activities whilst denying the colony representation in the British Parliament.
Starting with the violently-repressed farmland strikes and urban riots of 1790, the Palmyrian populace rioted against both the colonial government and the British Empire for what they perceived as unfair and excessive taxation, on top of unethical and excessive exploitation of Palmyrion's resources and people. Riots and protests soon escalated, with the July 1791 Aragon Massacre and the 1792 Valentine's Day Affair, followed by the December 1792 Cavite Sugar Party. The Aragon Massacre was a confrontation between British colonial troops and rioters consisting of Palmyrian, British, and Hispanic citizens in modern-day Commonwealth Square, wherein British colonial troops responded to the riot with lethal force, resulting to heavy losses for both sides. The Valentine's Day Affair of 1792 was a takeover of the Colonial Citadel on Valentine's Day of 1792 by Palmyrian rebels, resulting into a siege lasting 14 days until the siege was broken by the British colonial military, albeit with heavy losses for the British.
In the wake of the 1792 Valentine's Day Affair, the KKK - Kataas-taasang, Kagalang-galang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Kalayaan (Supreme and Venerable Association of the Sons of Freedom; simply known as the Katipunan) - was formed on July 7 of the same year, and from then on became a significant force in colonial politics as a separatist faction; from its inception to its dissolution, the Katipunan received significant support from the exiled Thalassocratic royal family. The Colonial Parliament soon declared a vote of no confidence against the colonial governor on 1800, and alongside the Colonial Cabinet declared Palmyrian independence on July 1, 1800; when the colonial governor refused to step down, what resulted was the Siege of Aragon lasting from August 4 to December 1 of that year, as the colonial military fought with separatist forces; likewise, the Revolutionary Forces at Arms, the predecessor to the modern-day Armed Forces of Palmyrion, was formed as the armed wing of the Katipunan on August 24 at an event known as the Balintawak Declaration in modern-day Balintawak District, Caloocan City. Subsequent uprisings followed in the outlying provinces of Palmyrion, with provincial governors either being overthrown and replaced by those sympathetic to the independence cause, or outright declaring allegiance to the newborn Palmyrian Confederacy. The Colonial Parliament, having been replaced by a roster of legislators sympathetic to the independence movement, soon replaced the ousted colonial governor with Palmyrion's first prime minister, with Emilio Ylagan ascending to the position as Prime Minister of the Confederation; subsequently, the Colonial Parliament was changed to the Confederate Parliament.
Palmyrion fought the Wars of Independence from 1800 to 1820, as the newborn state sought to eliminate remaining loyalist military formations while repelling British (and, occasionally, Lardite) invasions and incursions into Palmyrian sovereign territory. On 1801, British forces occupied the city of Vigan, Northern Ilocos, for the duration of the Wars. Another British landing occurred at modern-day Pampanga, holding it from 1800 to 1810 it also allowed the British to block off the northern provinces from the south, while its natural harbor provided a major supply point for the British. Sensing the imminent danger this posed, the Revolutionaries focused on Pampanga during the first half of the war, and Pampanga soon saw the largest and bloodiest of the battles during the first half of the Wars; the northern provinces, having found it easy to flush colonial loyalist forces inland in various battles at the Cagayan Valley, the Ilocos Plateau, and the Cordilleras, were soon able to not only repel minor British incursions across the western coast, but were also able to concentrate fighting the British at Vigan and the province of Pampanga. The last of British forces were expelled from Pampanga at December 1810, while Vigan was secured by Revolutionary forces on 1820. Palmyrion signed a peace treaty (on the proviso that the British recognise Palmyrion as a sovereign, independent nation) with the British shortly thereafter, affirming the existence of Palmyrion.
After the war, the Thalassocracy-era monarchy was soon restored, with Hernando I crowned as monarch of the Royal Confederation of the Palmyrian Dominion. The Revolutionary Forces at Arms would soon be reorganised into the Confederate Royal Forces at Arms, having been descended from the RFA; at the time it consisted of the Army, the Navy, and the Constabulary, manned by conscript levies and volunteers from the Confederation's various provinces.
The Royal Confederate Era (1820-1935)
The nascent Confederation soon begun industrialising its economy, and started to expand public assets - facilities and services - as it grew; both were instrumental in alleviating much of the post-war poverty that was rampant in the former colony as a result of colonial economic policies and the results of the Wars of Independence. It established trade routes with various nations in its immediate vicinity - first, with time immemorial allies Romandeos and Holy Marsh, then with outlying nations such as the Solisian Union. Transportation infrastructure was expanded, allowing easier flow of goods and labour between settlements both rural and urban; many of these transportation routes still exist today, having undergone extensive modernisation since then.
Palmyrion's nascent military expanded its ranks and modernised its strategic and tactical doctrines and dispositions, which correlated strongly with the advent of modern military equipment. One of Palmyrion's firsts in military technological research and development came with De Leon Armoury's design for the 1830s tender for the new rifle of the Forces at Arms, the Fusil m.1834, replacing the Forces at Arms' aging stockpile of Brown Bess muskets; the m.1834 would serve as Palmyrion's service rifle until the introduction of the bolt-action Fusil m.1899 rifle on 1899, contending with contemporaries as the British Lee-Enfield, the German Mauser 98, and the American M1903 Springfield. Palmyrian artillery would also face milestones in this regard, with the development of the Cañon m.1836 mountain howitzer, a more mobile and powerful replacement for the FA's aging stock of older, less mobile 12-pounder guns. The Navy of Palmyrion would also see a similar expansion, starting with the launching of the 50-gun frigate Julian Vallejo from the shipyards of Galleno Shipwrights on 1831; later, larger ships-of-the-line followed, as the Navy expanded numerically, and adopted new technologies in navigation, armament, armour, and sustenance.
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As Palmyrion grew, so did its cultural and ethnographic outlook. Immigrants came to Palmyrion mainly looking for economic opportunities brought about by the coming of the Industrial Age in Palmyrion, and these immigrants brought with them various influences to Palmyrion; in particular, immigrants from Romandeos and Holy Marsh brought with them, in addition to military-industrial expertise and tactical prowess, the revival of the Marshite faith at a time when Palmyrion was largely divided between English Anglicanism (brought by the British) and Roman Catholicism (brought by the Spanish), while Solisian and Houdounese immigrants imparted their industrial and commercial expertise into the nascent nation-state's commercial goods market; other, albeit minor, immigrant populations included German, Italian, Dutch, and Chinese immigrants. Immigrant communities would soon integrate and form their own ethnic enclaves within cities, whilst remaining warm, intimate relations with the larger populace that they were a part of. Palmyrion's population went from 120 million by the end of the Wars of Independence, to 200 million by 1850; immigration alongside lowered infant deaths due to improved healthcare and nutrition (thus helping increase native growth rates) were major contributors to the large 66% increase in population over the span of 30 years.
The nascent Palmyrian Confederation engaged in wars as early as two decades into its existence, starting with assisting Mokan revolutionaries in the Mokan War of Independence (1839-1842), alongside its engagement alongside Marshite forces in the millennia-long Long War (100 BCE - 2000 CE) against Lardite cultists, notably with the Battle for the Mushroom Islands. It was in these wars that the nascent military's mettle would be tested and refined in a series of victories and losses in various battles and campaigns, such as the Battle of Point Aurora (pictured) during its participation in the Long War, and the Battle of TBA in the Mokan War of Independence. At the homefront, various Palmyrian companies stepped up to the fore to supply the Royal Confederation with armaments, munitions, and other supplies in its war efforts, leading to the rise of modern-day armaments conglomerates De Leon Armoury, Arsenal Tiglao, and Galleno Shipyards; likewise, the wartime efforts of Palmyrion have contributed to the rise of militarism in Palmyrian culture and society, a feature of Palmyrian ethnic, social, and cultural life - ethos, identity, and expression - that has remained to this day.
Palmyrian culture soon flourished and boomed twenty years into the life of the nascent nation. In addition to indigenously-developed styles of art, music, dance, cuisine, and fashion, immigrant populations also brought with them their own styles; cultural integration and interaction resulted into visible influences of foreign cuisine in modern-day Palmyrian culture, both intangible and tangible. While Palmyrion maintained the tradition of the salon, this came alongside the rise of the art of debate as an evolution of and a more-regimented counterpart to Palmyrion's salon tradition. The implementation and rise of the public education system (on top of private schools) on 1852, and with it the flourishing of higher education, in Palmyrion helped amplify and cement the fruit of these cultural interactions in Palmyrion's children, in addition to schools also facilitating salon-type intellectual discourse among its student populations. The exaltation of wartime heroes and the homefront production of firearms and supplies for the military also inculcated a sense of militarism among the populace, a feature that persists to this day.
In the latter half of the 1800s, Palmyrion laid the foundations of its public healthcare and education systems, starting with the Public Education Act 1852 mandating the construction of state schools and the implementation of a standardised curriculum and educational framework, and the Public Healthcare Act 1885, mandating the implementation of a Bismarck-type national healthcare insurance system and the implementation of a standardised healthcare framework; both acts have since then received a myriad of amendments, with the latest being a set of 2017 anti-discrimination amendments to both bills in light of a 2017 Supreme Court ruling on discrimination. The University of Palmyrion can trace its origin to 1860, making it the third-oldest university behind the Universidad de San Aquinas and the Aragon Marshite Academy; it has since then grown into 40 campuses across the modern-day Royal Commonwealth from its flagship campus in present-day Aragon, and is Palmyrion's premier higher education institute. Likewise, healthcare in the Royal Confederation before the 1885 act included mostly private hospitals providing healthcare in the absence of a national healthcare framework, the oldest one being the Aragon Sanitarium built on 1752; since the implementation of Public Healthcare Act 1885, the Confederation has guided the provision of healthcare by both public and private entities across the Royal Commonwealth, leading to the expansion of healthcare outside the capital and the nearby cities, and into the previously-neglected regions of the Royal Confederation.
The turn of the century
By the turn of the century, the Industrial Revolution had fundamentally changed Palmyrion. The Palmyrian industrial revolution was reaching its waning phase, after its zenith from the late 1850s to the early 1870s. After the industrialisation of the urban areas came with rural indigenous peoples adopting, though to a lesser extent, the innovations of the industrial era in their lifestyle; with the mechanisation of their agriculture, they evolved from subsistence farming to producing surplus that they would trade with other cities and indigenous tribes, eventually becoming a vital part of Palmyrion's food security; additionally their ancestral craftsmanship practices (such as pottery, weaving, toolmaking, etc.) eventually welcomed the Industrial Revolution into its fold, forming the basis of the indigent communities' present-day light industries. The Palmyrian military underwent a modernisation of its equipment and doctrines, with lessons learned from the Second Intercessor Crusade (1870-1875). In 1908, Palmyrion launched its first dreadnought, the Soberanya (English: Sovereign), constructed by Galleno Shipyards in Navotas City. She was commissioned two years after the British HMS Dreadnought, with a main battery of eight 12-inch guns alongside twenty-eight 3-inch guns as a secondary battery. While certainly not a regional first, Palmyrion quickly became a regional great power as it expanded the construction of dreadnought-type battleships for the Navy, while on land the Army adopted the use of newer equipment, in particular with the formation of the Aeronautical Regiment of 803 Reconnaissance Division, Buendia Corps as the first true precursor of the modern-day Palmyrian Air Force, and the adoption of tanks - formerly known as landships - in Palmyrion signalling the birth of mechanised warfare in Palmyrian military doctrine, with the first tank unit being the 107 Landship Company, 1st Cavalry Regiment (now Alpha Company, 101st Armour Battalion, 101st Cavalry Brigade).
Palmyrion's mettle would be tested by the Third Intercessor Crusade (1910-1917), as a Lardite rebellion spawned in and quickly swept through the northern provinces, with the fighting eventually spreading to the more urbanised southern regions by 1911. While the fighting in the urbanised south died down within a span of seven months, fighting in the north intensified as Palmyrion and Holy Marsh made pushes into the northern highlands, with fighting grinding down to a bloody stalemate of trench warfare by late 1912. What would break the stalemate of trench warfare, however, was Palmyro-Marshite research and development efforts in "landships" and armoured cars resulting into the Model I Landship. While the Model I broke down all too often in its first battle (the Battle of Bayombong) to make any appreciated advance, its viability was established in its nonetheless superb mobility and firepower when it worked well, and feedback on the tanks led to better, more reliable versions of the tanks which allowed the scales to be tipped in favour of the anti-Lardite forces. This came along with other advancements such as the invention of the submarine (which allowed the Navy to discreetly attack Lardite-affiliated supply vessels), and the powered aeroplane (which opened up the skies as another arena of battle), in addition to Palmyrion's first attempts at making automatic rifles and the widespread adoption of machine guns. The Third Intercessor Crusade ended on 1917, with the Lardite cult being declared "completely purged" by 1919.
Palmyrion was also struck with a nation-wide pandemic of Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever, one that spread from the countryside to the cities through rural flight spurred by urbanisation and the devastation of rural areas in the wake of the Third Intercessor Crusade, and with it immense strain to the urban areas' sanitation and waste disposal facilities, making Palmyrion's cities a breeding ground for the local Aedes aegypti population. The outbreak infected as many as 100 million, and killed 20 million. It also triggered, in the realm of public sanitation and healthcare, a comprehensive review and expansion of Palmyrion's healthcare and sanitation policies and systems. The succeeding decade faced smaller, more localised epidemics of dengue, with much less infected and fatalities. Palmyrion still faces a problem with dengue to this day, a problem that plagues the poorer parts of the country harder than it does the more developed regions, and one that will continuously test Palmyrion's public healthcare and biosecurity capabilities in the years to come.
The Palmyrian Roaring Twenties
The 1920s brought yet another cultural and economic renaissance for Palmyrion, analogous to the American Roaring Twenties. It brought about widespread sociocultural change and economic prosperity for the Royal Confederation, as new technologies, central among them being mass production, improved standards of living, and modernity seeped into Palmyrion.
Economy and technology
The 1920s introduced new products, technologies, and industries to the Palmyrian Confederation, as well as an infrastructure boom made possible and necessitated by these new products and technologies.
Before the 1920s, automobiles were a luxury good in Palmyrion, but mass production of automobiles allowed them to become more affordable to the wider populace and thus became more commonplace, with registrations of automobiles reaching 10 million by the turn of the 1930s. The invention of radio as the first mass broadcasting medium gave birth to mass communication in Palmyrion, and while expensive they revolutionalised mass communication, broadcasting, and entertainment. Cinema also rose during this era as film technology advanced and the film industry rose to prominence, and by the end of the decade cinema had gained competitiveness on par with theatre performances and effectively ended the vaudeville theatre genre. Aviation in Palmyrion also gained massive leaps and bounds with advances in aerospace and aeronautical engineering going hand-in-hand with advances in mass aircraft production, alongside milestones such as the establishment of trans-Palmyrion flights (the first being from modern-day Maguindanao International Airport to now PAF Vigan) and Palmyrion's first steps into jet engine technology. Advances in medicine came with the isolation of herbal medicines' active components and the subsequent upscaling of these isolation methods into mass production, alongside the importation and eventual production of penicillin by the end of the decade after Alexander Fleming first isolated penicillin on 1928.
Infrastructure would also see a boom during this era as greater mobility was enabled by newer automotive technology and automobile mass production. Advances in automotive technology and mass production also led to the rise of mass transit in Palmyrion, with bus and rail transit forming the bread and butter of Palmyrian mass transit. To cater to the widespread availability of cars, roads, bridges, and highways were constructed, alongside their regular maintenance. Palmyrion's electrical grid was born during this era with mass electrification of Palmyrion brought about by the construction of power plants and transmission lines. Telephone lines were also being strung across Palmyrion, setting the foundation for the telecommunications industry in Palmyrion. Indoor plumbing and modern sewer systems were installed in many Palmyrian homes and commercial establishments. Pursuant to Palmyrion's public healthcare and education policies, hospitals and schools were also constructed and expanded across the Royal Confederation.
Culture and Society
The 1920s was also a major era of sociocultural expansion and explosion as novelty and modernity went hand in hand with a break from tradition; the emergence of modern technology brought "modernity" to a large part of the population, aided by mass production techniques.
Women's suffrage was soon enacted all across Palmyrion as an amendment to the Parliamentary Election Protocol, removing gender restrictions on voting rights as part of a plan to enact universal suffrage across Palmyrion. Women's suffrage also opened up avenues for women to voice out on issues concerning women, with politicians starting to lend them ears. On the 1925 General Election - the first election that allowed women to vote - voter turnout for both sexes was practically the same in spite of heightened campaigns to discourage women from voting; women voted identically to men in the vast majority of issues, though favoured public healthcare and peace more. Women also gained access to the workforce starting on 1926 following a Supreme Court ruling.
From the ashes of the Third Intercessor Crusade rose a feeling of Palmyrian militaristic pride, shared by both menfolk and womenfolk alike. Fashion sense evolved around emulation of Palmyrian military practicality, with drab colors painted over breathable overcoats and jackets paired with pants of rugged fabrics such as denim. A work-life ethic centred around resourcefulness (as embodied in the concept of diskarte) and resilience evolved amongst the Palmyrian populace, complemented by rest and recreation as a means of reconnecting with one's self and one's circle of acquaintances. Military service soon became a great honour to Palmyrians, with death in battle being considered the highest sacrifice and wartime veterancy being a supreme badge of honour. Such Palmyrian militaristic pride and work-life ethic pervades Palmyrion to this day - and even it became a basis for, as well as being a subject of, Palmyrian social criticism.
Art Deco would predominate the 1920s as the dominant style of visual arts (coupled with Expressionism and Surrealism) and architecture. Rectilinear designs would predominate architecture during this period. It was essentially an amalgamated pastiche of modernist design styles from its neighbours, but Palmyrian Art Deco would soon begin to distinguish itself as Art Deco designs became even more geometric, eventually becoming essentially a modernised, highly-geometric version of Earthquake Baroque. Palmyrian visual arts took on an evolution as expressionism and surrealism took hold in Palmyrian visual arts. Palmyrian cinema would also take flight as filming technology advanced and became more affordable, largely replacing the vaudeville theatrical genre.
Music in Palmyrion would also experience a massive boom as Palmyrian pop and jazz were incubated, and subsequently born, in the 1920s. Dance clubs and music would also rise in the 1920s, and by the end of the decade dance music had come to dominate all forms of popular music. Dance clubs rose across Palmyrion, and with it formal competitions as dancers invented and experimented with new dance moves.
The Confederacy's Waning Days
On 1929, Palmyrion would face one of its largest economic downfalls as the Bonifacio Fort Street Crash of 1929 signaled the beginning of the Palmyrian Depression. One of the factors that led to the crash was agricultural overproduction: as rural flight spurred by the rapid urbanisation of the Roaring Twenties went on, Palmyrion's industrial capacity expanded, and agricultural overproduction led to financial instability in the agricultural sector. Speculation of stocks and land assets also led to the Fort Street Crash of 1929. This led to the Palmyrian Depression three years later.
On 1930, Palmyrian was declared as the national and primary official language of Palmyrion following the passage of the National Language Act 1930, based on the following factors:
- Buendian is widely spoken and is the most understood in all the Palmyrian confederate nations.
- It is not divided into smaller daughter languages.
- Its literary tradition is the richest and the most developed and extensive of all Palmyrian languages.
- Buendian has always been the language of Aragon, the capital of Palmyrion.
This came at a time when English and Spanish were the two primary institutionalised languages of Palmyrion. The adoption of the Palmyrian national language caused small but disproportionately loud and booming furor among the nation-states, despite the fact that they were allowed to keep and teach their native languages; indeed the National Language Act 1930 did have a provision for other languages to be freely used, including Spanish and, in the predominantly-Islamic nation-states, Arabic. This, however, caused a furor with citizens of European ethnic descent (mostly of migrant communities) that felt excluded in terms of ethnolinguistic diversity. The National Language Act 1930 also mandated for the use of English as a secondary official language alongside Palmyrian.
The pivotal moment leading to the Confederation's downfall was the 1932 Religious Riots in the lead-up to the 1932 General Elections, with the Christian, Muslim, and Marshite religious blocs crashing head-on to each other. The riots lasted five months and reached their peak during election week during the third month, with the Election Week Riots requiring violent military intervention by an already ailing state military reeling from a shortage of personnel and supplies as a result of the economic downturn. This led to the creation of the Ecumenical Crusade and the Salafist Ummah.
On April 13, 1935, revolutionaries under the banner of the Ecumenical Crusade seized the nation-states of Pampanga, Buendia, Bicol, and Visayas, and jihadists backed by the Salafist Ummah of Palmyrion seized the nation-states of Sultan Osmalik and Mindanao; they formed the Catholic Republic and the Islamic Caliphate, respectively. The loyalists fled to the nation-states of Cagayan, Ifugao, and Ilocos, where they set up a rump state with Vigan as the capital, taking with them various businessmen alienated by the relatively intolerant policies set up by both rebellious states. The Tripartition marked the end of the Confederation, and the beginning of the short but bloody Tripartition Era from 1935 to 1945.
Tripartition Era (1935-1945)
Pan-Palmyrian War (1938-1945)
Interregnum War (1949-1955)
People's Commonwealth (1955-1975)
Counter-Revolutionary War (1968-1975)
The Commonwealth Junta (1975-2000)
The newborn Commonwealth Junta, under the administration of Faustino V. Reyes, worked to restore public services and economic activity immediately after the 4th Civil War ended, wisely using the assistance provided to it by its long-time allies Holy Marsh and Romandeos. Many establishments were re-opened or built during the first eight years after the war, and public infrastructure projects were mainly focused on revitalizing public services and economic activity in the newborn nation-state, most notably the Economic Liberalisation and Revitalisation Initiative Act 1976, which legalised private business, enacted foreign and domestic equity rights and regulations, and put in place a modest tariff rate maintained until now. Almost ten years later, the Fifteen-Year Millennium Recovery Plan was inaugurated on 1985, which was by the standards and abilities of a socially and economically shattered nation an ambitious taxing feat, notwithstanding the uncertainty of the assistance provided by Romandeos and Holy Marsh.
The first phase of the Fifteen-Year MRP, enacted from 1986 to 1990, sought to reconstruct and revitalise the energy, agricultural, and mining sectors, alongside the reconstruction and expansion of Palmyrion's transportation network. An emphasis was placed on building a solid foundational and functional base upon which Palmyrion's economy would be rebuilt upon: revitalisation of the energy, agricultural, and mining sectors would provide energy, food, and mineral security for the years to come, while revitalisation of the transportation network would provide a robust logistics network for the economy. Over the years of the first phase, ease of business laws were enacted across Palmyrion by the Junta's constituent federal subjects, which allowed widespread entry into the market by both entrepreneurs and workers. Investment into the revitalisation of Palmyrion's universal healthcare and education systems helped establish a skilled and healthy populace as a pool for its labour force. Palmyrion's growth rate steadily rose from a low of 4% during 1985, to a high of 8% by 1990 - a feat that astonished many observers and advisers who oversaw Palmyrion's economic revitalisation programme.
The second phase, enacted from 1991 to 1995, focused on establishing heavy industry in Palmyrion by making Palmyrion a competitive player in the world market. The industry was based on the machinery, electronics, metallurgical, and petrochemical industries. The era saw the return of Palmyrion's old industrial giants (which migrated overseas starting on 1936) and the rise of new ones; Galleno Shipyards and Cherrytronic are two respective examples of such industrial giants who have made a name for themselves in their respective sectors. A major leap for Palmyrion came with the arrival of the internet on 1992, starting with a 64kbps link to Romandeos on 29 February, followed by three additional 64kbps links to Holy Marsh, the Solisian Union (via an undersea cable), and the Philotas Islands on 30 March, 20 September, and 29 December, respectively; the arrival of the internet was a watershed moment for the country's fledgeling but fast-growing information and communications technology (ICT) sector, and a major impetus for the electronics industry's growth. During this era, Palmyrion's growth rate shuffled between 7% and 9%.
The third phase lasted from 1996 to 2000, marked by the adoption of the Comprehensive Industrial Plan designated Palmyrion's 12 strategic economic fields: energy, agricultural, metallurgical (to include ferrous and non-ferrous metals), automobile, aerospace, shipbuilding, electronics, ICT, mining, petrochemical, construction, and logistics sectors. This was a major, watershed moment in Palmyrion's industrialisation plan, and perhaps the most ambitious phase of the Fifteen-Year MRP, primarily because the CIP had twelve focal points and required extensive private-public collaboration. While the era was correspondingly marred by corruption scandals, such corruption scandals were resolved immediately (albeit forcefully at times), and Palmyrion retained the growth rates it had in the previous phase.
After 25 years under a junta tasked with the heavy burden of rebuilding the nation's basic foundations, the Royal Commonwealth was born on 2000 with the inauguration of the 2000 Commonwealth Charter and the restoration of Palmyrion's monarchy, marking Palmyrion's transition from a military junta into a federal parliamentary monarchy.
The Royal Commonwealth (2000-present)
Palmyrion's Junta-era re-industrialization and revitalization efforts throughout the 1980s to the 1990s culminated into the economic boom of 2001-2010, with three phases each lasting three years. The first three years were marked by an increase in productivity and exports from the electronics, agriculture, petrochemical, and metallurgical industries. The second phase saw the highest growth rates Palmyrion has seen since the end of the 4th Civil War, and corresponded to substantial increases in productivity for the naval, aerospace, and automobile sectors. The third phase was the "waning phase" of the economic boom era, which saw full-spectrum automation and computerization of the already heavily mechanized agricultural and industrial sectors, and a substantial labor force shift to the service sector. However, rebellion was seeping in, culminating into the 2009 Cagayan Valley and 2010 Zamboanga Sieges by Communist and Islamist rebels, respectively.
The 2012 Palmyrian stock market crash occured, resulting into the economic boom being reversed practically overnight as GDP growth rates reached below zero levels by the end of 2013. The governmental budget was reshuffled to help mitigate the effects of the stock market crash. Long-suppressed Communist and Wahhabist rebel factions launched riots that resulted into administrative rebel takeover of various major settlements in the northern highlands and the islands of Sultan Osmalik and Mindanao, with the situation exacerbated by a military crippled from the budget reshuffling. By 2014, rebel forces effectively controlled the rural areas and were already besieging cities held by a crippled military; however the rebels' onslaught was contained, with the Communists' onslaught capped at the Vergara line, and Islamic rebel invasions of the island of Visayas were repulsed. By the time the battle lines were stabilised, the northern highlands and the islands of Sultan Osmalik and Mindanao were in Communist and Jihadist hands, respectively.
On January 2014, the Economic Stimulus and Reform Initiative was launched to help reverse the effects of the 2012 stock market crash, which resulted into growth rates being restored to positive levels by the beginning of 2015. Operation Consolidator (April 2014-May 2015) was also launched on April of the same year. Operation Consolidator aimed to break rebel encirclements long enough for besieged military units to withdraw to safer rally points, mainly in the island of Visayas in the southern archipelagic theatre, and in the west coast, the Cordilleras, the Vergara Line, and the Palmyro-Marshite border in the northern highland theatre. The operation was essentially a Pyrrhic victory at the cost of 100,000 Palmyrian military lives lost (mostly Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force) and hundreds of millions of dollars of military hardware destroyed or seized by rebel forces, the most dangerous being the 50 or so nuclear missile silos (which had been disabled by special forces and Air Force missile squadron personnel). By May 2015, Operation Consolidator was declared complete, but the Jihadists have secured the islands of Mindanao and Sultan Osmalik, and the Communists have secured the northern highlands, with both declaring independence shortly thereafter.
The Pan-Palmyrian Siege (June 2015-April 2016) saw consolidated Palmyrian forces being besieged by the unrecognized states; the Palmyrian People's Commonwealth, based in the northern highlands, primarily besieged the west coast and the Vergara Line, while Jihadist incursions were launched at Visayas from the south; nuclear war was imminent as reports of captured Air Force missile squadron personnel being pressed to repair and commandeer the missile silos alongside conscripts surfaced. The Royal Commonwealth launched the Reunion War (April 2016-May 2018) in response, and it would prove to be the largest war Palmyrion fought since the Counter-Revolutionary War. The war resulted into 200,000 deaths for the Palmyrian military, the capture and dissolution of the separatist states, and the subsequent imprisonment and execution of separatist executives by public firing squad in the Commonwealth Square.
At present, Palmyrion is currently trying to stabilize northern Palmyrion alongside Marshite and Romandean military forces. Reconstruction and revitalization efforts are underway, with Palmyrian, Marshite, and Romandean private and state-owned enterprises actively engaging in rehabilitation efforts; meanwhile, Palmyrian, Marshite, and Romandean military forces are conducting peacekeeping operations in the affected areas to protect the rehabilitation process against possible attacks from rebel remnants. In light of a need to keep civilian law enforcement and military internal security duties distinct, the Palmyrian Constabulary, then a branch of the Armed Forces of Palmyrion and the sole law enforcement unit of the Royal Commonwealth, was split into the Civil Defence Force, an internal security military police force under the command of the Armed Forces of Palmyrion, and the Palmyrian National Police (PNP), a law enforcement civilian police force under the command of the Department of the Interior and Local Government; both bodies still maintain close links with each other in terms of law enforcement (the PNP's specialty) and internal security (the Civil Defense Force's specialty).
On June 4, 2019, Palmyrion unveiled its ideological policy of "Sovereign Progressivism", a mixture of foreign and domestic policies "centred around rationalism, secularism, and humanism, with social market capitalism, militarism, and socio-cultural progressivism". That same month, 3 days later, on the domestic front, Palmyrion launched initiatives for economic development, restructuring, and reform in preparation for its "Inclusive Fourth Industrial Revolution" agenda; the agenda includes widespread automation of industry, with progressive socioeconomic policies aimed at mitigating the negative effects of automation (massive and sweeping job displacement) while promoting its positive effects (improvement of aggregate labor force productivity), alongside the implementation of cloud computing, cognitive computing, and cyber-physical systems in the industrial sector to improve aggregate worker productivity and consumer benefit. In light of such a program, the government has started bolstering its cyber-security policies, programs, protocols, and initiatives, with the Department of National Defence, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Directorate, and the Department of Information and Communications Technology spearheading the cybersecurity improvement program.
Lakán Alexander II's reign as monarch of the Royal Commonwealth would end on June 29, 2019, when he was assassinated during the 2019 Pride March on the same date. The 2019 Commonwealth Square Pride March Attack claimed a total of 1,287 lives with 9,295 injured, with 107 more dying in hospital confinement due to the effects of the attack; extremist Christian group Bagong Lipunan ng Palmyria (EN: New Society of Palmyria). In light of this, his widowed consort, Lakambini Elizabeth the Commoner, rose to the throne as its new monarch, and has vowed to avenge her husband and continue his inaugurated policies, primarily his foreign (Sovereign Progressivism) and socio-economic (Inclusive Fourth Industrial Revolution) policies.
The Roaring Twenty-Twenties
The turn of the decade marked Palmyrion's entry into the Roaring Twenty-Twenties, as did the region and the rest of the world. When China raised the alarm for a SARS-like viral outbreak (which has become the COVID-19 pandemic) on late January 2020, Palmyrion began mulling about the inauguration of long-forgotten biosecurity legislation, primarily centred around a bill that passed its first reading in the Assembly on 2016, to help Palmyrion effectively respond to such dangers. The confirmation of Palmyrion's index COVID-19 case on 31 January 2020 marked the disease's entry into Palmyrion - and with it an increased interest in biosecurity legislation. The Lakambini issued a Royal Prerogative that allowed federal subjects to enforce lockdowns and community quarantines as they saw fit, alongside the enactment of social distancing rules, contact tracing and case isolation efforts, and mask mandates. Such measures, in particular the lockdowns and community quarantines, resulted into a sudden and significant decrease in Palmyrion's economic productivity, as essential services and industries were kept running at reduced capacity in a compromise between stopping the contagion and retaining economic vitality, and non-essential ones suffering total enterprise shutdowns. As of 1 October 2020, COVID-19 has afflicted 5 million people in Palmyrion (1 million of which are still active cases), with over 50,000 to 15,000 deaths nationwide.
Despite Palmyrion's economic slowdown, it nevertheless declared war on the Galadon Theocracy (now New Sandau), citing large-scale slavery as its casus belli, on 6 May 2020. Galadon had been engaged in a campaign of genocidal invasions which resulted into the enthrallment of the nations it conquered. It produced slaves by removing their frontal cortex and replacing it with a probe that allowed them to work endlessly with no regard for pain and illness - a measure that backfired against it, for the slaves were technically dead. The war met a sudden turn when the Greater German Reich, disgusted by Galadon's practice of slavery, ousted and arrested the government and nobility of Galadon, and declared New Sandau in place of the old Theocracy. At present the coalition is fighting against a remnant of the Galadon regime: Programme 10, designed by the former regime as its military AI, which has since then absorbed many of Galadon's slaver AIs into its fold.
2020 was also a major year for Palmyrian firsts, including the commissioning of its first supercarrier, the PWS Aragon, and the election of its first non-Union ethnic and first transgender, Sakura Angel Takahashi, into a major governmental position as its House Speaker for the House of Representatives. On New Year's Eve 2020, conscription became official policy for the Royal Commonwealth's armed forces when the National Service Act Amendment 2020 lapsed into law, requiring 2 years of military service for all Palmyrians graduating from high school.
Politics
Governance
Palmyrion is essentially a federation governed by a semi-parliamentary monarchist government. The present-day constitution of the Royal Commonwealth is the 2000 Commonwealth Charter. According to the constitution, Palmyrion's head of state is the Monarch, who, according to the Article of Monarchy, has the title of Lakan if they are male, Lakambini if they are female, or according to 2017 amendments, Eminencia if they prefer a gender-neutral title; their respective manners of address are "His Majesty", "Her Majesty", and "Their Majesty", respectively. The three most visible powers of the Palmyrian monarch include: appointment of the prime minister; dissolution of Parliament; and issuance of Royal Prerogatives.
The following are the branches of the Royal Commonwealth's government:
- Executive - Palmyrion is a monarchy, and its head of state is the Monarch, whose seat of power is the Sampaguita Throne at the Royal Citadel (with a specific room wherein the monarch does their day-to-day business), and who gains power via absolute primogeniture; natural-born children have first order of precedence, followed by adopted children (with order of adoptions dictating position in the royal line). The head of government is the Chancellor, who is elected by popular vote alongside the legislative branch every five (5) years, and must maintain the confidence of the Assembly to remain in power, lest they be voted out of power by a no-confidence consensus from the Assembly. The Chancellor supervises the Commonwealth Council, a cabinet of Vice-Chancellors each leading a department or a cabinet-level agency.
- Legislative - The Commonwealth Assembly is the main legislative branch of Palmyrion, and consists of a lower house, the House of Representatives, and an upper house, the Chamber of Senators. Both the House of Representatives and the Chamber of Senators have 480 seats, divided into 40 groups of 12 (1 group of 12 for every province in the Royal Commonwealth).
- Judiciary - Palmyrion's highest court is the Supreme Court, with 40 Provincial Circuit Courts overseeing their respective provinces' Administrative Circuit Courts. It also has other adjoining courts, like the Court of Appeals, which cater to appeals, and the Sandiganbayan, a court specially for cases related to graft and corruption.
Foreign Relations
Palmyrion maintains its foreign relations with the rest of the world mostly via multilateral trade and sociocultural exchange. While its relations with prominently capitalist nations are warm, it views socialist countries with suspicion, taking care not to enter into military commitments or close, if not intimate, economic relations with such nations. As a signatory to the Amistad Declaration, it has also adopted a policy of bellum aeternum, or "eternal war", against states whose governments espouse slavery of any form, and provides military and law enforcement aid to countries who de jure have abolished and banned slavery but are otherwise facing problems in stamping out slavery.
Palmyrion is a member of, notably, the Western Pact (a pact for western Greater Dienstadi nations), the International Freedom Coalition, and the Capitalist Internationale; additionally, it is also a member of the Greater Prussian Alliance by virtue of its membership in the Capitalist Internationale. It is also a member-state of the Romani-Mar'si Union, a superstate consisting prominently of Holy Marsh, Romandeos, and Palmyrion. Strategic partners include Holy Marsh and Romandeos, while Allanea and fellow Northwest Mutual Assistance Agreement member-states Eitoan, Relica, and the Timocratic Republic are considered major (but not strategic) allies of the Royal Commonwealth. Its ties with other Greater Dienstadi nations and powers are relatively positive and normal, though its relations with the Ordenite Reich and the Ralkovian Empire are considered by many to be negative beyond normalisation at worst and totally nonexistent at best.
Military
The Armed Forces of Palmyrion (Pal. Sandatahang Lakas ng Palmyria) serves as the armed military force of the Royal Commonwealth, responsible for the armed defense of Palmyrian interests both domestic and foreign. It is composed of the following branches:
- Palmyrian Army - The Palmyrian Army (Pal. Hukbong Katihan ng Palmyria) is the land-based branch of the Armed Forces of Palmyrion, focusing on land-based missions alongside the other branches of the military. Its missions include conventional and asymmetric mechanized, airborne, and air assault warfare, and ground-based air and maritime defence roles.
- Palmyrian Navy - The Palmyrian Navy (Pal. Hukbong Pandagat ng Palmyria) is the maritime component of the Armed Forces of Palmyrion, focusing on maritime-based missions alongside the other branches of the military. Its missions include naval-based maritime warfare and air defence roles, and amphibious warfare through its sub-branch the Marine Corps (Pal. Hukbong Katihang Pandagat ng Palmyria).
- Palmyrian Aerospace Forces - The Palmyrian Aerospace Forces (Pal. Hukbong Himpapawid ng Palmyria) is the air and space component of the Armed Forces of Palmyrion, focusing on aerospace-based missions alongside other branches of the military. Its primary mission is to help obtain and secure aerospatial supremacy and security for Palmyrian forces and allies thereof.
- Palmyrian Civil Defence Force - The Palmyrian Civil Defence Force (Pal. Hukbong Pananggol-Bayan ng Palmyria) is one of the two national police forces, along with the Palmyrian National Police, and is a gendarmerie-type branch of the Armed Forces of Palmyrion. Formed on 2018 from the split of the Constabulary, it specializes on military internal security and coast guard duties, while filling a niche role in Palmyrian law enforcement. It can also be deployed overseas to support military units in internal security roles.
PWS Aragon sailing in the seas off Vigan City, Ilocos Norte
A Palmyrian Army CV.101 in Fort Vigan, Vigan City, Ilocos Norte
F.101 fighter of the 116th Fighter Squadron, 2nd Fighter Wing
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Palmyrian military doctrine is based largely on hybrid warfare. Its kinetic strategic and tactical doctrines are based on network-centric combined-arms manoeuvre warfare, with the ultimate goal of achieving full-spectrum supremacy over a military adversary. At the non-kinetic level, the military can coordinate with other departments in the Cabinet to execute, among others, psychological warfare (colloquially referred to as PSYOPS), political warfare, and economic warfare. Palmyrion emphasises the wise application of military force by the use of cunning.
The AFP maintains a two-year conscription policy. Upon exit from the Palmyrian basic education curriculum as high school graduates, conscripts are enlisted into basic training (which takes four months), followed by advanced individual training in their chosen military occupational specialty (which takes another four months); upon completion of both basic and advanced training, conscripts are to serve for two years in the branch of their own choosing. Once they complete their term of service, they are given a choice between joining the professional active force, relegation into the reserve force, or leaving the military altogether.
| Statistics, Armed Forces of Palmyrion (2018) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Branch | Active | Reserve | Total |
| Palmyrian Army | 1,200,000 | 400,000 | 1,200,000 |
| Palmyrian Navy | 1,600,000 | 800,000 | 2,100,000 |
| Palmyrian Marine Corps | 200,000 | 100,000 | 300,000 |
| Palmyrian Air Force | 1,200,000 | 400,000 | 1,200,000 |
| Palmyrian Civil Defence Force | 1,600,000 | 400,000 | 1,600,000 |
| GRAND TOTAL | 5,800,000 | 2,200,000 | 8,000,000 |
Administrative Divisions
Palmyrion is subdivided into ten federal subjects, each of which is further subdivided into provinces. Each province is further subdivided into counties, themselves containing cities, towns, and villages.