Avalonia

**Avalonia**, officially the **Federal Republic of Avalonia** (Scandinavian: **Forbundsrepublikken Avalonia**), is a federation of republican states situated in the Scandinavian region of northern Europe, bordering with the Russian Federation to the east and Dunsteen to the south. Formerly governed over by monarchs until the Nordic Revolution of 2005 when Queen Victoria and Prince Cai were brutally overthrown by supporters of the democratic movement within the nation, a rebellion caused by the decades of monarchist puppet rule over the nation, with the theoretically constitutional monarchy exerting extraordinary power over the Prime Ministers of the nation. Established formally on September 27th, 2005, the Federal Republic devolved power from the federal government down to the 22 states, each represented by a ring on the Avalonian flag.

Avalonia is a federal republic and a parliamentary democracy, with legislative power vested in the 349-member unicameral Riksdag. It is a unitary state, currently divided into 22 states and 290 municipalities. Avalonia maintains a social welfare system that provides universal health care, universal income and tertiary education for its citizens. It has the world's eleventh-highest per capita income and ranks very highly in quality of life, health, education, protection of civil liberties, economic competitiveness, income equality, gender equality, prosperity and human development. Avalonia joined the European Union on January 1, 1995, but has rejected NATO membership, as well as Eurozone membership following a referendum. It is also a member of the United Nations, the Shanghai Pact, the N20, the Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), having previously been a member of the Tri-Nation pact between 2026 and 2043.

## Etymology

### Flag

 Main article: List of Avalonian Flags
    Commissioned with the formation of the Federal Republic of Avalonia in 2005, the flag of Avalonia depicts two blue and one white bars on a horizontal flag, representing the sea-faring nature of the nation and the frequent sub-zero temperatures of the nation, whilst the gold ring symbolises the unity of the region. Orbited by 22 rings, each representing one of the states of Avalonia, the ring has a horse from Norse mythology at it's centre, showing the unity of the nation and it's newfound republican status, with the horse replacing the Avalonian royal crest in 2005 following the Nordic Revolution.

## History

The Scandinavian nations start of as entirely separate before being united and put under the rule of one king (perhaps a relative of the early kings in the Dunsteen region) and the nation is led solely by the king and his advisers until there’s a Romanov style assassination in which the family is all brutally murdered in a cellar however one daughter does escape this time and with the eradication of the monarchy a dictatorship arises before eventually it becomes a democracy and this continues for years until the lost daughter of the old monarch line steps forward and takes her right to the throne although in a manner that takes a back seat to the democracy of the nation and then slowly the throne builds up more and more power again until it swings into a democracy with a democratically elected prime minister however the monarchy is really pulling the strings behind the scenes and then this eventually leads into the current day where Elsie (let’s say the royal name is Johansen) is the last in line to the throne however she is not as morally corrupt as her parents and makes public what has been happening and the fact that the “democracy” has really been puppeteer by the monarchy and she sides with rebels to have her parents executed at a young age before the new government is built on true democracy with the eradication of the monarchy’s power and eventually it reaches Ada Nilsen who is democratically elected as Prime Minister and she has risen out of poverty to reach the power and she then then meets Elsie who has been working in the engineering industry and has taken part in the design of highly valuable technology that has furthered the nation as a technological superpower after renouncing her title and then they fall in love.
### Republicanism

#### A New Regime

Having overthrown the reign of the Johansen family and Queen Victoria in January 2005, the Coalition for Progress installed Princess Elsie to the throne as queen until the declaration of the Federal Republic of Avalonia on February 1, 2005. With the monarchy gone, the new republic set out it's new agenda for governance under the leadership of Väldeminister Jennifer Friedrickson, the former Prime Minister whose January 2005 speech on the corruption of government directly inspired the revolution of the same month. Establishing the office of Väldeminister as an equivalent to the office of a President to take the role of head of state, the Federal Republic designed a new temporary constitution in the 5 day reign of Queen Elsie, before introducing a complete constitution after the election of Friedrickson to office (which up until the election has only been on a temporary basis). Meanwhile, the office of Prime Minister was retained but reformed, with the PM being elected indirectly by the population, with the party leader with the most seats in parliament becoming Prime Minister and the Väldeminister would be selected by a popular vote nationwide.

#### Two Party System

Following the 2009 Väldeminister election in which inaugural holder Jennifer Friedrickson declined to stand in, instead opting to take over leadership of the Liberal Socialist Party in Parliament, Prime Minister Owen Peters took the reins of the nation as the second Väldeminister, presiding over an LSP majority in parliament and began to implement a series of liberal policies as a part of the new agenda, working with PM Fridrickson to introduce a raise to minimum wage payments nationwide, introducing safeguards on policies implemented by his predecessor like same-sex marriage and state endorsed abortion, whilst experimenting with economic politics like abandoning the gold standard in the wake of the 2008 banking crisis and a National Living Wage to be paid in monthly instalments to all citizens to either top-up their wages or to ensure that everyone could afford housing and food to live a comfortable standard of living. At the same time, a two party system came to emerge, with Labour and the Liberal Socialist parties becoming the two major institutions in the nation, making it one of a rare handful of nations where the two main political parties are on the same side of the political spectrum (both parties are Left-wing).

#### Stability and Prosperity

Defeating the incumbent Väldeminister Owen Peters in the 2013 Väldeminister election, Labour party candidate Maeve Anderson stormed to power on the back of a generation who desired a return of Avalonia to the world stage after decades of isolationism. Unable to carry parliament with her electoral victory, Anderson became close allies with Prime Minister Jennifer Friedrickson, with the pair only coming to friction over more contentious issues like the 2014 Eurozone Referendum and the revoking of the National Living Wage in 2016. Setting a precedent for bipartisan collaboration, the premiership of Väldeminister Maeve Anderson managed to inspire a generation of free thinkers and liberals during her 8 year premiership, and remained at the forefront of the national zeitgeist for a decade after she left office. Retaining the Labour party nomination into the 2017 Väldeminister election, Anderson also managed to overturn the Liberal Socialist majority in Parliament, placing Matti Vanhanen as Prime Minister. With a Labour party member in both major offices of state, Anderson was able to pass through a bulk of legislation, entering the N20 in 2018 and passing through flagship polices to decrease the size of the Avalonian Mercantile Navy by 10% between 2019 and 2021.

#### Moderation in a waring world

Declining to run for a third term, Väldeminister Maeve Anderson was replaced in 2021 by former secretary of the interior Marcus Jørgensen after the 2021 Väldeminister election, carrying parliament too under the leadership of Tuula Haatainen who took over from Matti Vanhanen in late 2021. Operating on much the same platform as his predecessor, the premiership of Marcus Jørgensen was a largely stagnant regime which produced no major policies of its own, rather claiming success for strategies implemented in the past decade under Väldeministers Maeve Anderson and Owen Peters. Despite this, the Jørgensen government did have several foreign policy successes, sending former PM Vanhanen as an envoy to the Union of Aligned Nations during the Libirachi Civil War and supporting Loxenian democrats during the Loxenian Civil War. Operating on a platform of interventionalist resurgence, Jørgensen was ultimately unsuccessful in his re-election attempts in 2025, when after 12 years of Labour rule, the Liberal Socialists re-took power in the 2025 Väldeminister election.

#### 21st Century Leadership

Winning the 2025 Väldeminister election in a landslide, political activist Ada Nilsen seized the office of Väldeminister of Avalonia on the back of a manifesto of liberal policies and the platform of the Liberal Socialist Party, becoming the first openly gay leader of any European nation with her inauguration on September 27, 2025. Touted as a sign of the nations reunification, the marriage of Ada Nilsen to former Queen Elsie in early 2025 just months prior to the election was marred with a great sense of optimism for the future of the nation. Implementing policies to reinvigorate the Avalonian Mercantile Navy with new vessels and an influx of crew, whilst continuing a history of internationalist interventions, working with the new Librachi empress Penny Fox, with whom Nielsen formed a deep personal friendship, to help finance and run the Libirachi Mars 2030 Project whilst extending the vast oil and rare metal reserves of the nation to help run other competing space programmes, although with a clear bias to the Libirachi Empire, a factor many social historians place down to the close personal bonds between the two leaders. Carrying parliament in the election too, Väldeminister Nilsen brought back Jennifer Friedrickson to serve as her prime minister, showing a clear distain for the constitutional parameters set out in the original constitution, leading to the 2027 revision of the Avalonian constitution which did away with the requirement for the Prime Minister to be the leader of the largest party, instead changing the law to mean that the Väldeminister has the constitutional right to appoint whomever they please to the office, separating government from parliament and reducing scrutiny that is normally upheld to government officials. Despite this, the government still has to seek parliamentary approval to pass legislation, thereby meaning that it is still of paramount importance for a political party to win control of parliament as well as the head of state office. Passing key sets of law through parliament that abolished the use of nuclear and fossil fuel in exchange for green renewable energy resources which benefit the environment of the Avalonian (Scandinavian) Peninsula. The abundance of clean green energy in Avalonia allowed the Nielsen Administration to begin a mass export of the unused deposits of non-renewable energy to other nations, financing an economic re-birth as a global leader whilst also beginning a period of dependency on Avalonian fuel as the world began to run out of coal and oil by the end of the 2020s.

#### Continuity Politics

    Having won the 2041 Väldeminister election by a significant margin, Liberal Socialist party leader Nina Auber was sworn into office as the 6th Väldeminister of Avalonia on September 27, 2041, appointing Wren Lindquist as her prime minister the same day. Billed as a continuity candidate, Väldeminister Auber continued much of the same Nilsen Doctrine which had been Avalonian policy for the prior 16 years, but also slowly began to present her package of general electoral reform to the public, instructing Prime Minister Wren Lindquist to secure parliamentary consent for a referendum to be held on the package in April 2042. With a package of reforms devised over a 3 year period designed to drastically reshape the role of Väldeminister and scrap the post of Prime Minister, Väldeminister Nina Auber promised a referendum as part of her election campaign in 2041, and thus in April 2042 she went to the nation with the question of reform being put to vote in a referendum, securing parliamentary approval to hold the vote in February 2042. In order to try to prevent a political fall-out in the aftermath of the election, Auber prohibited her cabinet from campaigning on either side of the debate, although this had the un-intended effect of placing the referendum as a vote of confidence in Auber's administration. Over the course of a 4 week campaign period beginning on March 3, 2042, the *Vote YES* and *NO to Reform* campaigns spent lengthy periods of time attempting to convince the electorate of their causes, with Väldeminister Nina Auber taking time to hold numerous interviews and debates to try to promote the Vote YES campaign. Following the announcement of the results on April 17th 2042, Auber announced her intention to resign from her role as head of the Liberal Socialist party, and then, following the election of a successor, the office of Väldeminister too. This move became the subject of much controversy, with pressure group Demokrati Nu (Democracy Now) taking the issue to the supreme courts in order to determine the legality of such a move, but ultimately this was rejected by the courts. In the 2042 Liberal Socialist Party leadership election, Prime Minister Wren Lindquist secured leadership of the party and took over as Väldeminister on May 1, 2042, with Auber being appointed as her successor's prime minister on the same day.

#### Rebirth and Authoritarian Decent

Having won the leadership of the Liberal Socialist Party, Wren Lindquist was sworn into office as the 7th Väldeminister of Avalonia on May 1, 2041, becoming the second youngest holder of the office after Ada Nilsen. Assembling her own cabinet to take over from her predecessor, Lindquist appointed Nina Auber as Prime Minister although the package of constitutional reform was swiftly dropped from the nation's legislative agenda, instead focusing on Avalonia's international ties with neighbouring countries. Implementing a revitalisation of the Avalonian Mercantile Navy and establishing the Avalonian Naval Commission as a branch of the ministry of defence, Väldeminister Lindquist began a massive build-up of Avalonian military power and actively began competing with regional rivals for military and economic dominance in western Europe as part of the Avalonian Dream policy, which aimed to lower living costs, expand military forces and massively grow the Avalonian economy through the technology sector, whilst also investing huge levels of taxpayer money back into a new Sundhedsvæsen social and healthcare programme in order to keep the population healthy and with high living standards. As part of a new international foreign policy, Wren Lindquist formally allied Avalonia with the Shanghai Pact with the Stockholm Declaration in 2044 and began to withdraw from other foreign commitments, such as the withdrawal from the Tri-Nation pact in 2043; now firmly committed to the Sino sphere of influence with the Libirachi Empire as an equal partner in many trade agreements, Lindquist also began to import similar stances of authoritarianism and instigated a crackdown against opposing political parties between 2042 and 2044, banning the Labour Party of Avalonia and detaining it's leader Annegret Karbauer in order to secure her dominance over the political spectrum, resulting in Avalonia's decent into effectively being a de-facto one party state by the time of the 2045 Väldeminister election, with the Liberal Socialist Party having complete dominance over the Riksdag and the offices of Väldeminister and Prime Minister. Despite this, Lindquist remained broadly popular with the wider public, framing the banning of opposition as a necessary precaution in the aftermath of the Malmo Corruption Scandal, whilst also covering up the true extent of the political purges with an economic boom caused by state investment into key sectors and with increased trade with the Libirachi Empire, as well as a resurgence in the Avalonian shipping industry thanks to reforms implemented to the Avalonian Mercantile Navy.

## Geography

The largest peninsula in Europe, the Avalonian (Scandinavian) Peninsula is approximately 1,850 kilometres (1,150 mi) long with a width varying approximately from 370 to 805 km (230 to 500 mi). The peninsula is bordered by several bodies of water including:

* the Barents Sea to the north
* the Norwegian Sea to the west
* the North Sea to the southwest
* Russia, the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia to the east.
* Dunsteen to the south

Its highest elevation was Glittertinden at 2,470 m (8,104 ft) above sea level, but since the glacier at its summit partially melted, the highest elevation is at 2,469 m (8,100 ft) at Galdhøpiggen. These mountains also have the largest glacier on the mainland of Europe, Jostedalsbreen. About one quarter of the Scandinavian Peninsula lies north of the Arctic Circle, its northernmost point being at Cape Nordkyn.

The climate across Scandinavia varies from tundra (Köppen: ET) and subarctic (Dfc) in the north, with cool marine west coast climate (Cfc) in northwestern coastal areas reaching just north of Lofoten, to humid continental (Dfb) in the central portion and marine west coast (Cfb) in the south and southwest. The region is rich in timber, iron and copper with the best farmland in the nation, whilst large petroleum and natural-gas deposits have been found off Avalonia's coast in the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, leading to the start of a giant exporting programme of fuels, whilst the natural environment of the peninsula allows the nation to produce renewable energy at low cost. Much of the population of the Scandinavian Peninsula is naturally concentrated in its southern part, which is also its agricultural region. The largest cities of the peninsula are Stockholm, Oslo, Gothenburg, Malmö and Bergen in that order.

## Head of State

### President (1832 - 1908)

 2
 3
 Presidency abolished in 1908; Kingdom of Avalonia re-founded

## Society

### Political System

 Väldeminister**Wren Lindquist**
2042 - *Incumbent*

As a unicameral parliamentary system, the politics of Avalonia revolves around two concurrent elections for Väldeminister and for members of the Riksdag, with the leader of the largest party in parliament in practice becoming PM, although following the 2027 Avalonian Constitutional Revision this is only a precedent rather than a constitutional requirement, thanks to laws introduced by the government of Väldeminister Ada Nilsen in 2027. Elections are held every four years, and citizens vote on two separate ballots which are counted separately, with the Väldeminister often being declared after most MP seats are called. There have been two constitutions of Avalonia, one in 2005 and one in 2027, with the 2027 one as the latest revision in service; in 2042, Väldeminister Nina Auber attempted to introduce further reforms with the 2042 Avalonian Constitutional Referendum but ultimately this was rejected and Auber resigned from office.

The referendum incident also allowed the supreme court and the Riksdag to put in place a precedent that in the event of a Väldeminister resigning, the political party elected to the office must have a leadership election to put forward a replacement to the office, leaving it up to the discretion of the Väldeminister on whether they immediately leave office and appoint the Prime Minister as an interim leader for the duration of the leadership election, or to remain in office until a successor is elected.

Following the banning of the Labour Party of Avalonia in 2044, the Federal Republic of Avalonia effectively became an one-party state with only the Liberal Socialist Party able to contest major elections such as that for Väldeminister; despite this, Väldeminister Wren Lindquist remained careful to keep power over the state firmly concentrated with government organs rather than that of the party, meaning that the offices of Väldeminister and Prime Minister retained their power in full whilst the role of leader of the Liberal Socialist Party remained a reasonably minor title.

### Equality

Ranked as the number one nation in the world for gender equality, Avalonia remains the leading country for gender equality both in politics and in the wider economy, with the highest portion of elected heads of state and government out of any other place in the world; influential feminists like Jennifer Friedrickson, Maeve Anderson and Ada Nilsen all enjoyed long stretches of power during the first few decades of the nation's history, whilst after their tenures in office, a new generation of leaders led by Wren Lindquist and Nina Auber continued to further the cause of gender equality within politics, with 47% of the MPs in the Riksdag being female by the time of the 2042 general election. In regards to ethnic equality, the broad reaching Equality Act of 2005, as well as supplementary acts in 2013, 2025 and 2030, guaranteed the rights of all citizens of the nation, regardless of ethnicity, sex or class, allowing for the Scandinavian peninsula to prosper socially