Imperial Identity

**Imperial Identity** is a complex collective geopolitical identity built on cultural, legal and political foundations. Whilst often conflated with Inecurian identity in modern times, the two terms are not synonymous, and Inecurian identity is generally a solely geographic identification. The concept of Imperial identity evolved out of older understandings of identity in Inecuria - particularly in Nesaria, the founding nation of the Nesarian Empire.

Imperial identity was first described in the 2nd century AD by Consort-Emperor Eron, the husband and co-ruler of Empress Rixa I, in one of his many writings concerning practical ways for the Empire to maintain control over its fundamentally uncontrollable territory. He made the distinction between Imperial citizens, Imperial subjects and "men of the Empire", noting the first two as legal classifications but the latter as "an intangible feeling which eludes definition". It has become a recurring joke in circles of historians that Eron's words were eerily prescient, as historians have spent the subsequent two millennia arguing over what precisely defines Imperial identity.

## Background

Along with the Empire, Imperial identity originated in Nesaria, and has its roots in Nesarian history and philosophy.

Pre-unification Nesarians were a greatly divided and fragmented people; the Elvic and native peoples defined themselves against the other and in most circumstances thought of each other as being completely incompatible; Elvics sought to "educate" and "civilise" the natives by turning them into fellow Elvics, whereas the natives sought to retain and reclaim their native ways - with extreme violence, if necessary. The only real exception to this trend was the Kingdom of Arthoryk under the reign of Arthsen the Bear, which made a deliberate effort to syncretise the native and Elvic traditions.

Layered atop this country-wide division was the fragmentation into specific states and polities, which for most Nesarians were more important than their identity as native or Elvic; especially in the Upperlands, many native realms were willing to ally with Elvics to destroy their native rivals; it was precisely this strategy which enabled the Kingdom of Ascaria to completely dominate the region. After the Ascarians won the Mortian War and re-organised the country, this fragmentation took on a regional rather than political character, with Nesarians tending to identify themselves by their region (e.g. Ascarian, Cafanian, Merilian) rather than their local polity or state (since the local state *everywhere* was now Ascaria). However, the late Mortian War and its aftermath was when the Elvic Nesarians began to form a cohesive Nesarian identity and truly recognised each other as countrymen, which was what eventually led the Republic that succeeded the failed monarchy of Ascaria to name itself the Republic of *Nesaria* and not Ascaria.

Nesarian identity was radically transformed by Emperor Mathados IV, during the Republican War and Mathados's subsequent reign, in a clear example of a top-down cultural shift. During the Republican period, the Elvic Nesarians increasingly united together under a common Nesarian identity and continued the practice of attempting to convert non-Elvic peoples to their ways, sometimes through force. Native Humans and Mortani Orcs were excluded from Nesarian identity under this system, but Mathados openly recognised them as equals and, upon becoming Emperor, granted them citizenship - along with every other inhabitant of Nesaria. This not only resulted in the natives and Orcs becoming Mathados's most loyal supporters - though it was the latter group that truly mattered, as by this time natives were effectively extinct outside of a few small enclaves in poorly developed lands - but it also led to a general reconsideration of what constituted Nesarian identity, and it began the ideological shift of the Empire away from Elvic supremacy and towards multicultural unity.