Ottonian Empire
Empire of the Allamunnics & Eonese Allamunnicum sive Eoneum imperium | |||||||||||||
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| 777–1159 | |||||||||||||
| Capital | Onneria (777-812) Rone (812-842) Ottonia(842-1159) | ||||||||||||
| Religion | Sarpeticism, Honorian Rite | ||||||||||||
| Government | Monarchy | ||||||||||||
| Emperor of the Allamunnae, Eonese, and Corvaeans | |||||||||||||
• 777 - 831 | Otto I the Invincible | ||||||||||||
| Historical era | Middle Ages | ||||||||||||
• Coronation of Otto I as King of Lower Eona | 777 | ||||||||||||
• Death of Theodurik III | 1159 | ||||||||||||
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The Ottonian Empire was an Allamunnic-dominated empire in Northwest Belisaria during the early to high middle ages. It was established by the conquests of Otto I the Invincible after he was crowned King of Lower Eona in 777, waged well into the early 800's, incorporating almost all of modern-day Ottonia, Draakur, Sudemark, and points east, although exactly how far it expanded is a matter of some historical controversy. Although the empire contracted in the decades following Otto I's death, it would retain authority in almost all of modern Ottonia until 1159, when the death of Otto's descendent, Theodurik III without issue would result in the ultimate political fragmentation of the realm.
The core and political center of gravity of the Empire lay in what is now Onneria, Staalmark, Tyrrslynd, and Draakur, and Meuse, as well as the foothills and southern reaches of the Bluwald Mountains. While Otto's conquests brought the whole of modern North Ottonia into the realm, imperial control ran lighter in the more northerly regions, especially later in the imperial period, and Otto's mission of conversion of the populace to Sarpeticism notably was less-successful in those regions. Notably, following the death of Otto's grandson, Karolus I, the empire began to lose much of its centralization, existing as a feudal confederation of smaller fiefs and states ruled in practice by numerous cadet branches of Otto's own house, and other houses of the predominantly-Allamunnic aristocracy.
When Theodurik III died without an heir, the region fragment into the kingdoms of Onneria, Staalmark, Tyrrslynd, Innia, and Ostmark, although separatist challenges also immediately arose in the city-state of Dunnmaar and challenges arose from Nordish incursions in the north.
Legacy
Despite its relatively-brief existence as a major power (and longer existence as a confederal empire-in-name-only), Otto's conquests and the subsequent rule of his Empire would have a profound and lasting effect on the area, perhaps most-embodied by the fact that over the ensuing centuries the area would increasingly come to bear his name; even after the empire collapsed, its successors were often referred to as "the Ottonian kingdoms" or "the Ottonian states", with a great deal of ceremonial importance attached to the city, founded by his son, Theodurik I in Otto's name. In addition, most of the ruling houses of the area, royal or aristocratic, increasingly were either offshoots of Otto's own lineage, or that of the largely Allamunnic nobility that assisted him in his conquests. Moreover, Otto's mission of Sarpeticization, and its half-complete status in the north, would come to define the religious life of the region, as well as its future sectarian conflicts.
In the late 1700's, that legacy would be invoked when several of the northern and central states created the Pan-Ottonian Alliance to fend off the predations of the larger kingdoms in the area, an institution that would provide the framework for the creation in 1856, after a series of wars, of the Ottonian Federation.