Records: the Irish Royal Unification

## **The Emerald Consolidation**

There were three effective social factions operating in Ireland at the time: the English colonists, the Hiberno-Norman lords, and the celtic tribes. The relationship there was complicated.

The English had pushed to colonize, then felt marginalized and endangered when their lifeline and support, the Irish parliament, was essentially overruled when their own Statutes of Kilkenny (1367) were selectively rescinded. That forsaken feeling didn't last long, though, because they were also the conduit to the English magic, starting with the *Glow Stones* and growing from there. By 1380, the English were virtual rock stars.

The Hiberno-Norman Lords, who were becoming more Irish than the natives, were stuck between the rock and the hard place. They were the carriers of the Lordship of Ireland, and given the Plantagenet's own Norman roots, were strong (but very human) allies.

The Gaelic lords like to fancy tracing themselves back to the High Kings of Ireland, but given the Viking influence from the founding of key cities to the raiding of all the others, native Irish society carried with it the plague of endemic warfare. This largely kept the countryside poor and in some cases diseased, at times seeming simply to spite the "weakness" of peace.

### **The Nature of the Trinity**

The three factors slamming Irish decision-making were the shifting politics of England, starting with *the Princes*, that had done a riverdance on the Statutes of Kilkenny. This took away a great deal of the ostensible ill will of the Irish, though the Plantagenets had been doing that to *everybody,*starting in England itself when they stuck it to the baronage to outlaw sefdom, high rents, torture and so on.

The second and third were divine and arcane magic, respectively, but each had both positive and negative reinforcement. The positive were healing and things like *Glow Stone*, respectively. The negative was self-doubt over religious differences (given the healing) and magically-enhanced cannons (again, respectively).

If the Crown had stabilized Irish opinion against the English by taking away protections, it reversed the flow with the magic – where the Irish were now fighting tooth and nail to learn English. The irony being that French was spoken by the Crown and London more than English was. Not that it mattered, as *Books of Learning* made it exceptionally easy for the English colonists to learn fluent Irish. Maddeningly, this quickly made the Pale the highest concentration of Irish-language literacy in Ireland.

Add the magic, be it divine or arcane, and it was all over. The Irish wanted to buy what the English were selling.

## **The Dialogue**

England had roped in it's own baronage of sketchy allegiance, and done so with light and sword of justice in the Audit and Rectification. They'd just accomplished the same with Scotland, which over the last century or so, had also gone out of its way to impose its will on the Irish.

The new Royal Arms had already proven its dominance. There were fighters in Ireland, and pride and ego – but they were not *suicidal*. Going against the Regiments was suicide – and going underground wasn't an option. The Sergeants-at-Arms had rooted out the would-be guerillas of England, Aquitaine, France, through the Western Empire, Scotland... There was a legend that King Edward had proclaimed *"You can run, but you can't hide."*

That left a fairly clear path if the Irish wanted to maintain any semblance of independence. They had to unify into an authority that would guarantee the components would follow the rule of law. That king had to pledge allegiance to the King of England... or possibly the rumored rewrite of the Magna Carta they'd promised.

First things first, though, they had to unite Ireland in a way that they could live with. That alone would take a miracle, but given healing the lepers and the plagued, *anything was possible*.

The Irish rolled up their sleeves and started the hardest fight they'd ever faced: themselves.