Kingdom of Vichin

## Vichin

A monarchy in Central Magnia, situated in the Kestrel basin, between the Wrynova River in the west, the Kotlov mountains to the east and south, and the Brest and Vislink rivers in the north, Vichin is ruled by the 10-year-old King Vladislav V Martel and his Lord Regent John Cleight of Stokengrad, acting in the King's stead until he comes of age. The Vichin coat of arms is a crowned black bull’s head on a chequy field.

Vichin was founded by extensively diverse cultures and tribes settling in the vast plains of the Kestrel Basin where an early kingdom was established in 966 and later as a Kingdom of the Faith in 1025. The Vichinians have experienced a devastating interregnum, several large-scale civil wars, and suffered heavily as the main target of the Corvian Invasion in 1241, but still remains one of the most influential countries in Magnia.

## Economy

Vichin's main exports are grain, linen, beer, tallow, and lumber. As the main land route connecting Metina, the Westerlands, Chorene, and the rest of Central Magnia, they are an important trade power on the continent.

## History

### Early History

In the 10th century, tribes of various cultures had settled in flatlands around several emerging strongholds. From a very small area around modern Thusham, they conquered and merged with other tribes. The tribal leader Siemon I converted to the Menkhu Faith on 14th of April 966 after he married the daughter of his Maegar ally, Stefan I, an event considered to be the founding the Vichin state and the Ostrow Dynasty. Siemon fought several wars against Queen Oda I of Metina in 963 and 972, allowing Siemon to extend his possessions and by 990, he had transformed Vichin into one of the strongest powers in Magnia.

When Siemon died in 992, he was succeeded by his son, Eslaw I the Brave, who had to fight is widowed stepmother Oda, his father’s second wife, and her minor sons in order to ascend the throne, and throughout his reign, proved himself to be a man of high ambition and strong personality, although his expansionist policies were costly and not always successful. From 1025, his son Siemon II Lambert tried to continue the same expansionist policy, which only served to reinforce resentment and hostility with his neighbours, and his two brothers, Vezprym and Otto, took advantage of this by arranging for invasions from Carinthia and Metina. Siemon II was defeated and forced to leave Vichin, but Vezprym was murdered in 1032, and Otto died in 1033, permitting Siemon to partially recover his authority.

With his death in 1034, his monarchy collapsed. Deprived of a government, Vichin was ravaged by an anti-feudal and pagan rebellion, and in 1039, there was an invasion by the forces of Jaromir I of Metina. The country suffered heavy territorial losses and the pontiff was killed, only adding to the dissolution of the monarchy.

### Unification

Vichin made a recovery under Siemon’s son, Casmer I, known as the Restorer, who returned to the country in 1039. Casmer rebuilt the monarchy through several military campaigns, for example in 1047, when he took Kurnow back from a nobleman who had tried to claim the region. He was aided by former adversaries of Vichin, the Maegar, under King Andrew I, who disliked the chaos in Vichin after its dissolution. Casmer introduced a mature form of feudalism and relieved the burden of financing large army units from the treasuries of the duke’s by settling his warriors on their feudal estates.

The son of Casmer, Eslaw II the Generous, developed military strength and waged several foreign campaigns between 1058 and 1077. In 1079, there was an anti-Eslaw conspiracy involving the Bishop of Kurnow, so Eslaw had the bishop executed. Subsequently, Eslaw was forced to abdicate due to the pressure of from the church and Bishop Stan Carta became a martyr and the patron saint of Vichin.

### Fragmentation of the Realm

After Eslaw II’s exile, the country found itself under the unstable rule of his younger brother, Vladislav I, who was strongly dependant on his advisors, acting as the power behind the throne. He soon lost two-thirds of his kingdom to his two sons, Sobinov and Eslaw. After their father’s death, the two brothers fought a war over the remaining royal domain between 1102 to 1107 and eventually, Eslaw III became King of all of Vichin after defeating his half-brother in 1107, forcing Sobinov to leave the country. Eslaw III defeated Sobinov once more, when he returned in 1109 with Corvian support, and Sobinov died in 1113.

Before his death in 1140, Eslaw III divided the country among his four sons and made complex arrangements intended to prevent fratricidal warfare. He created five principalities: Bracklaw, Greater Vichin, Masuria, Zymir, and Kurnow. The first four principalities were given to his four sons, who became independent rulers. The fifth, the seniorate of Kurnow, was to be added to the eldest prince who would become the Grand Prince of Kurnow and representative of the whole of Vichin, and thereby hold more authority than the rest.

These arrangements broke down already within the generation of Eslaw III’s sons, Vladislav II the Exile, Eslaw IV the Curly, Siemon III the Old, and Casmer II the Just, who began to fight for power and territory and in particular over the throne of Kurnow, and a period of fragmentation was ushered in that would span the next two centuries.

### Age of Fragmentation

The 13th century saw fundamental changes to the structure of Vichin society and political system because of constant internal conflicts. The Ostrows were unable to stabilize their borders and in the second half of the 12th century, the Kingdom of Magiore broke its political ties with Vichin to focus on the remaining Westerlands. Civil strife and foreign invasions, such as the Corvian invasion in 1241, and subsequent invasions of the Golden Horde in 1259 and 1287, weakened and depopulated many of the Vichin principalities.

The depopulation and increasing demand for labour caused a massive immigration of mostly northern peasant settlers from Thyssen and Carinthia. In 1256, Prince Konrad I of Masuria invited the Golden Horde to help him fight the Carinthians, who lived in a territory adjacent to his lands, and engaging in substantial border warfare with Konrad. The Golden Horde almost immediately overstepped their agreements with Konrad to conquer and establish their own lands in Masuria, Konrad’s domain, and in Greater Vichin.

In 1295, Premislav of Greater Vichin became the first Prince crowned as King of Vichin since Eslaw II, but he ruled only over a small part of Vichin and was assassinated not long after his coronation. A more extensive unification was accomplished by a foreign ruler, Vyachlaw II of Carinthia, who married Premislav’s daughter and became king in 1300, but his heavy-handed policies lost him all support and he died in 1305.

#### The Reign of Vladislav IV

An important factor of the unification process was the Vichin church, which remained a single body throughout the fragmentation period, but marked a clear off-branch from the Northern Pantheon, which came to be known as the Cister Cartian church. The bishop ardently supported the idea of a unified Vichin and aided nearly all attempts at unification.

Supported by the church and Charles I of Magiore, King Vladislav IV of Metina pursued a lifelong struggle with powerful adversaries, first challenging Vyachlaw III and terminating the Carinthian-Premislav Dynasty in the period 1304-1306. He asked for help from the Golden Horde to take Masuria, but they instead chose take it for themselves. In 1313, Vladislav conquered Greater Vichin and in 1320, he became the first king crowned in the new Cister Cartian cathedral in Kurnow, despite King John of Carinthia having also claimed the crown. The remainder of Vladislav’s reign was spent fighting John, who undertook several expeditions, usually supported by the Horde, between 1327 and until Vladislav’s death in 1333.

#### The Reign of Casmer the Great

After the death of Vladislav IV, his 23-year-old son was crowned King. Unlike his father, Casmer showed no attraction for warfare. From the very start, he acted prudently against his many contemporaries who would not give him a chance to overcome the difficulties facing his country. In 1335, he purchased the claims of King John to the Vichin throne and in 1343, he settled several disputes with the Golden Horde through a territorial compromise in the Treaty of Kalizsa. Allied with Thyssen, Casmer was able to impose correction to the northern border in 1365, regaining the parts of Greater Vichin and Masuria which the Golden Horde had annexed during the fragmentation.

Casmer III greatly solidified the country’s position in both foreign and domestic affairs. He integrated and centralized the Vichin state, establishing a powerful state treasury, and internationally, the King was an active diplomat, cultivating close contacts with the other Magnian rulers. In 1364, he sponsored the Congress of Kurnow, in which a number of monarchs participated to promote peaceful cooperation and political balance.

### The Martel Dynasty

Immediately after Casmer III’s death in 1370, the heirless king’s nephew, Louis of House Martel, King of Magiore, assumed the Vichin throne, marking the end of the Ostrow Dynasty. His succession seemed problematic from the beginning as Casmer III had adopted his grandson, Casmer of Kurnow, before his death, but Louis had engaged in succession negations with Vichin knights and nobility already from 1351.

After his coronation, King Louis returned to Magiore and left is mother, Elizabeth, Casmer III’s sister, as regent. During his reign, he managed to establish an unprecedented Vichin-Maegar union, which lasted for twelve years, but nevertheless ended in war.

### The Vichin Civil War

After Louis died in 1382 with no male heir, began an interregnum in Vichin. Although in the pact of 1374, the Vichin nobility had been granted excessive allowances for agreeing to extend succession of the crown to Louis’ daughters, Louis’ choice of his daughter Mary proved controversial as her husband, Sigurd I of Thyssen, was not popular in Vichin. As Masuria and Greater Vichin supported Sigurd, Zymir favoured their own duke, and the duchy of Volynia supported the exiled Prince Eslaw Wrymouth.

As the factions clashed in a bloody civil war which ended several noble houses, those in Kurnow succeeded in gathering support for a different solution. In 1384, Louis’ 10-year-old daughter, Hedwig, was crowned Queen of Vichin, upon the condition that the Vichin-Maegar union was dissolved. The Kurnow faction also succeeded in marrying Hedwig to Florence II Barcley de Tolly of Carinthia, who had just emerged victorious from a war in the West. Their marriage marked the end of most civil war hostilities, as remaining factions battled each other into oblivion, and a Vichin-Carinthian union was established.

### Reign of Florence II

The early reign of King Florence was a time of maximum power and prosperity for Vichin. The Golden War of 1409-1421, marked the fall of the Golden Horde who had dominated the Westerlands for nearly 200 years, allowing Vichin to annex all of the Westerlands as protectorates while Thyssen, who had been allies of the Horde, ceded their autonomy and became a principality under the Vichin state.

Many thought this would be the start of a golden age for Vichin, until the The Western War of 1428, when the strength and ingenuity of King Louis XIV of Corveaux and King Florence’s overreliance on the Cister Cartian church, resulted in the total loss of their provinces and later Florence’s execution by the Pontiff, after he attempted to intervene in the arrest of Sultana Elyria of Chorene. The Western War ended in a bloody stalemate between the Vichin and Corvian forces at the Battle of Bull's Run, whereafter a frail ceasefire was struck. It had also served to ignite both the Thyssen War of Succession and the Dissolution War in Chorene.

Over twenty new kings emerged from the Vichin provinces and protectorates, and John Cleight, Duke of Volynia, chose to abandon the West and returned to Kurnow to depose the Pontiff of the Cister Cartian church, who had executed King Florence for heresy and was acting as regent for his 7-year-old son, Vladislav, the son of Florence and the late Queen Hedwig Martel. Cleight imprisoned the pontiff and was chosen by the other dukes of the realm as Lord Regent. In an attempt to regain control of the church, he appointed a member of the Priesthood of All Believers to the position of Pontiff.

## Administrative Divisions

The Kingdom of Vichin is divided into five duchies, roughly corresponding to the principalities drawn up by Eslaw III:

* The Duchy of Kurnow, ruled by King Vladislav V.
* The Duchy of Greater Vichin, ruled by Duke Mikolaj Bogory.
* The Duchy of Masuria, ruled by Duchess Maya Saburov.
* The Duchy of Volynia, ruled by Duke John Cleight.
* The Duchy of Zymir, ruled by Duke Andrei Stoya.

The duchies are further divided into a number of baronies, each ruled by a baron. In the south, the baronies tend to be smaller and more compact, while in the north, baronies can span much greater distances, due to the difference in geography.