If the Vulcans were the big brothers of the Alpha Quadrant that stayed in the light, certainly their brothers, the Romulans, would be the manipulators from the darkness. The genesis of the Romulans is the same as the Vulcans. Not surprising, since the Romulans come from the planet Vulcan, so there you go. If you haven't yet, you should definitely take a look at my two-part Vulcan episodes to get a better understanding of the background of the Vulcans and the Romulans, which, again, makes sense. The short answer is that the Romulans were possibly seated upon Vulcan by the Erasians. There's also been some talk that the ancestors of the Vulcans were seated on another planet and then traveled to Vulcan. Either way, an atomic war broke out on Vulcan between the factions that wanted to embrace logic and those that did not. Referring to themselves as those who marched under the Raptors' wings, the faction that denied logic ultimately lost the war and left the planet for parts unknown. This faction would break up into multiple groups and see multiple planets. Ultimately, what was left after many of their brethren split off settled upon Romulus and Remus. Now let's discuss the Raptor in the room. When did the Romulans gain warp dry? The fact is that continuity is all over the place on the subject. If you really want an M-depth study on this, I would encourage you to go to X-Astros-Scientia? Siancia? I don't completely agree with their conclusions, but they do a wonderful job of breaking down every piece of evidence available from the variety of sources and giving some solid ideas. For the purposes of this episode, though, I think you can somewhat reconcile all of this information. The original series and the episode Balance of Terror has the enterprise facing off against a ship with the cloaking ability. The Romulans were testing out their cloaking technology and their new weapon systems. It's quite clear that this ship only had impulse power. However, the discussions were specific to the Romulans ship in the episode. It is possible that perhaps warp drive had not been completely mastered and may have only been available to certain ships. Cloaking technology at this time was so expansive on systems that placing the warp drive on the ship, which used a singularity since we're talking about Romulans ships, was not feasible. That would mean that while this ship did not have warp drive, other Romulans ships may have. Additionally, and I think more logically, the mysterious nature of the Romulans coupled with their counterintelligence abilities would make knowing anything about them definitively at least. Pretty hard. Indeed, their very nature might explain why we see evidence of warp drive in the series Enterprise, but Scotty Kirk and even Jean-Luc Picard would give statements that seem to counter warp technology availability at that time. So while the continuity is most likely just mixed up due to bad writing, I think it's reasonable to believe that Romulans misinformation was the true cause of these issues in canon at least. The outward appearance of the Romulan government was one of internal affairs only, seemingly wanting to be isolationist. This would, of course, be the furthest from the truth. Ironically, the Romulans had known about the humans long before the humans were aware of the Romulan existence. The first ever contact, as far as I could find at least, occurred to the humans in 2152 when the NX01 Enterprise stumbled across a cloaked minefield, which honestly made no sense, unless the Romulans were in a war, why would you put a minefield that would cause problems for ships and then cloak that minefield? I mean, this has bad idea written all over it if you ask me. The next time we see the Romulans is in 2154 when the Romulans would attempt to subvert the Vulcan High Command and reunify the Vulcan and Romulan peoples. The actual designs of whether the Romulans truly wanted reunification or simply wanted to use Vulcan as a proxy to disableize other powers is still something hotly debated. However, we do know that this attempt failed and lost later the Vulcan High Command was deposed. The Romulans continued their attempts to destabilize the quadrant. They would use chameleon drones that could look like that of enemy ships to attack other Alpha Quadrant powers. They were successful in causing chaos between adversarial governments for quite a while. That was, until the United Earth and the NX01 Enterprise was not only able to identify that the Romulans were using drones, but brain Vulcans, andoreans, telewrites, and others together in order to defeat these drones. Ironically, while the Romulans were successful at destabilizing their enemies in the short term, their actions would lead to the coalition of planets, a precursor to the Federation. Fear of the Romulans would ultimately create what they attempted to stop. Unity. The largest interaction would come in the form of the Earth Romulan war. Not a lot is known about the war, but what we do know is that it was started in 2156. This, in large part, due to Earth's ability to bring Vulcan, andorea, telewrites, and others together into a coalition of planets. The United Earth brought stability to chaos, effectively ending the fighting and weakening of the other powers. The war would go back and forth between Earth and allies in the Romulans for some time. Curiously, there would be no visual ship to ship communications. The war itself was even described by a Vulcan named Spock as a war that used weapons that were generally atomic in nature and a fairly primitive affair. The Battle of Sheiran, or K-ron, I'm sure someone's about to completely say I'm wrong in the comments, would bring an end to the conflict when an allied task force containing ships of humans, andoreans, telewrites, and Vulcans were able to defeat Romulan forces. It was a major victory for the United Earth and resulted in a cessation of fighting in the creation of the Romulan Neutral Zone. While we wouldn't see the Romulans for a long, long time after the Earth Romulan War, I don't think that they would disappear into the ether. It's more likely that they would continue to have some semblance of watching and attempting to manipulate galactic affairs. Though this would be limited, it would still be something that would be very Romulan. The Romulans were deeply distrustful of other races, tending to want to conquer and enslave them rather than open up diplomatic ties. For those governments they couldn't, or those they didn't have the ability to conquer, they would begin diplomatic relations. We also know that some diplomatic relations occurred with the Cardassians as well, however the extent at which the diplomacy occurred is still somewhat a mystery, which ironically would come to be what I would describe the Romulans before the Federation. A complete mystery. Hey guys, thanks so much for watching. This channel stays afloat with content daily by the support of viewers like you, so please consider becoming a patron. At the very least, possibly a supporter on one of my livestreams. As always, the content will stay free, but it's just another way for us to interact. I want to thank everyone for being a part of this discussion and don't forget to rate, comment and subscribe. Guys, I'm going to see you on the next. Lore reloaded.