Landgraviate of Akenland

**Capital**
 **Foundation**
 **Ruling House**
 **Population**

The **Landgraviate of Akenland** (sometimes, although improperly, referred to also as the Landgraviate of Aaken) is a Koninklijk Staat in the Kingdom of New Tarajan. Its capital is Aaken.

## History

The Landgraviate was the second independent lordship created by the Antanaresian knights who conquered the lands formerly belonging to the Ajanic Shahdom in the XVI century. In the wake of the creation of the Grand Duchy of Bakran by Gustav Van der Grudeln in 1505, Sigismund Van Vinkel led two expeditions against the territory of the Beylik of Aken in 1507-1508 and 1511-1513 respectively. After conquering the city itself in 1512, Sigismund, who fictitiously acted under the patronage of the Shah of Astana, claimed the title of langrave for himself (claim which was promptly recognized by the Shah), though the final submission of the whole beylik took good part of the following year, officially ending only in 1513.

The new conquest soon proved to be hard to control however, especially due to continuous attempts by the Shahs of the north to reclaim the lost territory once they understood that the Landgraviate was, de facto, completely independent from their authority. This led to a further was between the Shahdom and the new lord of Aken in 1515 and, after a two-year truce, to another conflict in 1517-1519, at the end of which House Van Vinkel obtained to be released from any formal obligation toward the Shah, and to acquire the greatest part of the Beylik of Nuyern. As a result, in 1519 Sigismund II founded Merlberg, as a new, more secure and comfortable, seat for his House. Aken (now renamed as Aaken by the new lords) was kept as a possession of House Van Vinkel, but with a rather peripherical role. With the final demise of the Ajanic Shahdom in 1544, the Landgraviate also lost its principal role as a defense line and strategic node between the Ajanic and Antanaresian lands, and with the subsequent fights for supremacy revolving entirely around Merlberg and the southern territories, it fell almost completely out of the interests of its lords, who mainly considered it simply as a source of resources to be employed elsewhere.

Mostly untouched by the wars of the XVI and XVII centuries, the Landgraviate did not live either the period of cultural florishing of the Sigismundian and Heinrichian periods, though in the second half of the XVIII century its capital saw a general renovation and the construction of monumental and public buildings. The First Tarajani Revolution of 1789 also did not exercise much influence on Akenland: the territory declared its support for the Landsraad, before its defeat in 1790 at the Battle of Horatstadt, at the time of which it promptly accepted the authority of the Council of Citizens. During the XIX century, the Landgraviate kept its role as mostly an agrarian State, a role further confirmed after the revolution of 1914, when it became the granary of the whole Commonwealth, and many of its inhabitants moved to Eindhoven to work in its factories.

During the civil war, Aaken became the epicenter of fierce fights between the loyalist forces and the communist army. As a result, most of the city was destroyed between 1942 and 1943, when it finally fell to the royalist army. In 1944, Conrad III formally reinstated the Landgraviate, which was subject to a series of reconstrution policies aimed at the restoring its agrarian role and at giving a more prominent position to some manufacturing industries. The repeated attempts at stopping the endemic emigration toward the wealthier and more industrialized States of the Kingdom scored a first success only in the second half of the 1970's, when the buliding of two new highways connecting Astana, Aaken, and Eindhoven and Aaken with the eastern States, respectively, allowed the city to assume the role of transportation hub, further reinforced with after the construction of the new high-speed railway in 1995. As a result, nowadays the Landgraviate is enjoying a relative increase in its overall prosperity, further boosted by strong cultural policies aimed at valorizing the huge archaeological heritage of the State.