History
Early History - 1204-1521
Artist's Impression of the Decapolitan Declaration of Independence Little is known of the history of what would become Tytor before the arrival of Ardian explorers, and so the nation can ultimately trace its origins to the twin colonies of Ravensfort and Decapolis, established by the Ardian Empire in 1204 and 1223, respectively. Ravensfort lasted until 1467, when tribal raiders from the north and east sacked and razed the already dwindling military outpost, slaughtering its remaining inhabitants. Decapolis flourished as an Imperial Ardian colony until 1472, when disaffected colonists declared independence, taking advantage of a political crisis back on the Ardian mainland. After a brief civil war between revolutionaries and loyalists, the Most Serene Republic of Decapolis was formed, with the city of Aquilae, founded in 1278, as its capital. Decapolis, a mildly authoritarian state despite its generally republican outlook, experienced a rather uneventful first five decades, with little of note recorded of the period.
Eight Principalities - 1521-1585
Portrait of Edward I Early in the year 1521, a group of Decapolitan aristocrats got into a dispute with the government of Chancellor Louis Dampier over a recent legislative vote. The government prevailed, forcing the dissenters into exile in what is now the Crownlands. There, they founded the Eight Principalities of Tytor: Williamshaven, Tarrenburg, Falconrest, Rosemark, Westmark, Eastmark, Highmark, and Tsargrad. The Principalities were at least nominally allied with one another until 1538, when the murder of the Prince of Tarrenburg at a Eastmarkian banquet sparked the Oath Wars, which lasted for most of the next decade, ending in 1547. A period of relative peace followed, lasting until 1569, when the Principalities were forced to band together once more in order to repulse a Decapolitan invasion, which ended with the bloody Battle of Rosewood. With the invasion defeated and the peace broken, the Principalities quickly fell into petty squabbles, which ultimately blossomed into a full-scale war.
Prince Edward of Tsargrad published his intent to unite the warring states into a single realm in 1572, purposely timing his declaration to coincide with the centennial of the independence of Decapolis. Edward made good his promise, defeating Prince Alexander of Highmark in 1579. Prince Alexander fled with what was left of his army and swore fealty to Prince James II of Williamshaven. He served under Prince James until 1581, when he launched a revolt and installed himself as ruler of Williamshaven, gaining the epithet "the Usurper" in the process. All the while, the Prince of Tsargrad continued his war of unification, though Highmark was his only conquest until Prince Michael of Tarrenburg, apparently deciding that further resistance would merely delay the inevitable, surrendered his lands and castle in 1582 with the understanding that he would given a position of authority in a united Tytor. However, he was killed by a bandit soon after his surrender, and thus was unable to claim his reward.
Prince Alexander was not idle either. Hoping above everything else to regain his family's seat in Highmark, the Usurper of Williamshaven solidified his position before marching on and sacking Rosemark in 1583. He then proceeded to forge an alliance with the Princes of Eastmark and Westmark and a combined army marched on Tsargrad in 1584. The Triple Alliance met the forces of Prince Edward in what was at that point the largest battle in Tytorian history, and Edward's forces won the day. Both the Usurper and Prince Malcolm of Eastmark were killed in the fighting, and Prince Owen of Westmark, the last of the original exiles, surrendered what was left of the combined force to his adversary. Prince Edward then marched to Falconrest, where he spent the better part of a year in negotiations with the prince there. Falconrest finally agreed to submit, and Edward was crowned King of Tytor in the cathedral at Tsargrad in 1585. He would become known as Edward the Unifier.
House de Roy - 1585-1717
Portrait of Edward VII With the crowning of Prince Edward of Tsargrad as the one and only Tytorian ruler, Tytor entered a golden age of peace and prosperity that lasted through the rest of Edward's reign until 1627, when King Edward IV launched an unprovoked invasion of Decapolis, which fell after a six-year-long war that devastated both countries and led indirectly to the incredibly short, but otherwise un-notable, reign of King Edward V, also known as Edward the Uncrowned. The ensuing period of reconstruction was followed by another period of expansion, the beginning of which was marked by the first in a series of conflicts with the Ardian Empire. In 1666, while in Astros, the Ardian capital, to sign a peace treaty, King Edward VII was seized by a mob and burned alive after refusing to renounce his Christian faith. He would thereafter be known as Edward the Martyr.
Edward VII's murder led directly to another war with Imperial Ardia, though it would prove to be the last. After the war ended, Tytor resumed its expansion. King Richard I would oversee the establishment of the city of Vigil on Tytor's southern frontier in 1677, shortly before his death. However, despite the fact that the Unifier's direct line had brought Tytor to its greatest level of power yet, it was not to last. Richard I had no children, and so he left the throne to his nephew, who became William II. William had no sons, and so upon his death in 1695, the throne passed to each of his daughters in turn. The elder ruled for four years as Jane II, while the younger, Rachel, who was next in line, ruled until 1717. Her death brought about the extinction of House de Roy, as she too was without issue. Thus, the throne passed to a cousin, William de Tarrenburg, direct ancestor of the royal house today. However, as the Tarrenburgs had married into House de Roy three generations back, the line of the Unifier continued to hold the crown.
House de Tarrenburg - 1717-1873
Portrait of William IV The accession of William III marked the end of an era. At the time, the Tarrenburgs were much more popular than the Roys, due to a perception that they were closer to the people. However, they were not immune to disaster. In 1729, Floodwater was subjugated, and Ravensfort was resettled in order to secure the northern border eleven years later, but peace held only until 1785, when an army revolt turned into a full-scale civil war. The war, in which the Tytorian tricolor was first raised, raged for three years before the rebels took Tsargrad. King Edward IX was forced to abdicate and, after a show trial, was executed by decapitation on the steps of his palace, beginning the Interregnum, a period of instability and continued warfare which would last for fourteen months. In 1789, Benjamin de Tarrenburg, eldest surviving son of the late King Edward, defeated the rebels and had himself crowned in Tsargrad Cathedral.
In order to prevent such a revolt from happening again, King Benjamin instituted Tytor's first-ever parliament, relinquishing some of the crown's power and granting ordinary citizens certain rights. These rights, along with several more, were guaranteed in law during the reign of King Richard II with the signing of the Bill of Rights in 1815. General unrest in 1848 forced the abdication of King William IV in favor of his more liberal son, Christian I, who immediately pressed for a series of social reforms, though they did little to improve the monarchy's slipping image. However, it was not until Christian's son became King William V, often referred to as William the Unfortunate, that the crown's troubles really got out of control. William V was considerably more conservative than his father, and many saw him as a repeat of his unpopular grandfather. Most of his policies were blocked by an increasingly belligerent Parliament, and, in 1873, he finally attempted to dismiss the legislative body altogether. This proved to be a mistake. Parliament revolted, and the king ended up deposed. He spent the rest of his life in exile.
Republic, Restoration, and Revolution - 1873-1922
Photograph of Richard III 1873 was a momentous year. Supported by republican army officers, Parliament seized control of the country and established the First Tytorian Federal Republic. By year's end, the Tarrenburgs, once lauded as advocates for the common man, were in exile in the Ardian Empire. There was a new order in power, one which was almost violently opposed to all facets of the old. Yet, despite outward appearances, the First Republic turned out to be no more democratic than the monarchy it had replaced; if anything, it was less so. Only a month after Parliament's assumption of power, it experienced an internal power play. The House of Nobles forcibly disbanded the House of Commons, making itself a unicameral legislature and appointing Richard Howe, one of its number, Lord Protector. The already elderly Howe ruled as king in all but name for two years, before resigning due to poor health.
Before retiring, Howe appointed his successor, setting a precedent that the Republic followed for the rest of its existence. Though seats in the House of Nobles were technically not hereditary, its members commonly appointed their eldest sons to succeed them as legislators, whether said sons were qualified or not. The Lord Protector, however, did not do the same; instead, he would name one of the other members of Parliament as his successor upon his retirement. However, when Lord Protector Franklin R. Peabody died in office in 1909, he had not named a successor. Thus, Parliament was forced to hold an emergency session to elect a replacement. That replacement, Roger Underwood, was a weak-willed man. Monarchists in the army sensed this, and a military coup the next year destroyed Parliament's power. Richard de Tarrenburg, grandson of William V, was invited back to Tytor to be crowned king.
When Richard III became king, he quickly solidified an alliance with the Ardian Empire, the country where he and his family had lived so long in exile. Four years later, however, the Empire became involved in what would become known as the First World War. Tytor was dragged into the conflict, but ultimately dropped out early in 1917 after the military forced Richard III to abdicate in favor of his eldest son, who became King Christian II. Christian II was unprepared for the sudden responsibility of running a war-weary country, and it showed. His first reign lasted only five years before Lieutenant Colonel Josiah Granger, who had been the driving force behind Richard III's abdication, launched yet another coup. This time, Granger declared that the monarchy's time had passed. In its place, he established the short-lived Second Tytorian Federal Republic.
Communist Period - 1922-1946
Photograph of Josiah Granger A staunch republican at this point, Granger was determined to avoid the mistakes of the First Republic. Once the Tarrenburgs were safely in exile again in Dartfordia, he held the first direct election in Tytorian history. He won election as Premier by a comfortable margin, but he only managed a single two-year term. In 1924, the communist People's Revolutionary Party used intimidation and vote fraud to unseat Granger, a radical centrist. Suspecting nothing, Granger retired from politics and returned to the army with a general's commission. He realized his mistake when, four years later, Oliver Wallis announced the formation of the Tytorian People's Republic. Despite merely being a puppet of Party Chairman Tobias Smith, Wallis remained in office for seventeen years, while Granger bided his time, patiently waiting for an opportunity to strike.
In 1940, the Tytorian People's Republic entered World War II, deploying troops and ships to locations around the globe. However, in 1941, Wallis had a public falling out with Smith, and an aging Smith seized direct control of the People's Republic, forcing the popular Wallis into an early retirement. After Smith's coup, a wave of anti-war demonstrations began. The demonstrations gave way to civil disobedience, protesting the repressive nature of Smith's regime. In 1942, Granger decided that the time had come. He conducted a march on Tsargrad which, while not successful in capturing the city, brought down the People's Republic. Setting up shop in Williamshaven, Granger declared the establishment of the Third Tytorian Federal Republic, and the Second Tytorian Civil War began in earnest, forcing Tytor out of World War II.
For three years, Granger fought a communist insurgency. Tsargrad was fully taken after intense street-to-street fighting in the middle of 1944, but it changed hands twice more before the war ended. In 1945, however, the grizzled veteran of three wars and a revolution suffered a fatal heart attack after surviving a botched assassination attempt. The Federalist cause took a huge hit to morale after Granger's death, but his successor, a Royalist exile by the name of Thomas Warwick, quickly rallied Federalist and Royalist alike. Warwick was a pragmatist above all else, despite his Royalist leanings, and he realized that bringing the royal family back too soon would alienate his Federalist support base. For that reason, he spent several months quietly utilizing propaganda in an attempt to warm Federalists up to the idea of a second Restoration. Finally, in the summer of 1946, he stepped aside as Chief of State, appointing the exiled former monarch as his successor. King Christian II landed at Williamshaven within a fortnight, holding an official re-coronation three months later.
Modern State - 1946-present
Photograph of Christian II The Second Tytorian Civil War technically didn't end until the year after Christian II's restoration, but it had been reduced to little more than a clean-up operation by the time the Tarrenburgs returned from Dartfordia. Warwick had quite efficiently broken the fighting spirit of the far left, and he ended up appointed provisional prime minister of the newly reestablished Kingdom of Tytor. Over the next few years, Tytor engaged in reconstruction. Much of the country had been ravaged by war, and repairing the damage was the provisional government's first priority. However, when the provisional government reached the middle of its eighth year in office, unrest began showing. The king ordered Prime Minister Warwick to organize a constitutional convention, and in 1956, following several months of debate, Tytor officially became a constitutional monarchy.
Prime Minister Warwick, by that time an earl, declared his intention to lead his reactionary Royalist Front into the very next general elections, the first since the dissolution of the Second Republic. Unfortunately for both him and his party, he was assassinated while on the campaign trail, and the Royalist Front splintered. The Front's near-death experience lost it the elections to a dead-center coalition between the Christian Democratic, Social Democratic, and National Parties. The governing coalition proved unstable, however, and it broke up prematurely after only a few weeks. Over the next several election cycles, the major parties coalesced into the political alliances that dominate Tytorian politics today.
The rest of Christian II's reign was peaceful. Easily the most popular Tytorian monarch in history by the time of his death, he was succeeded by each of his three sons in turn, the last of which, William VI, was followed by his own son, who reigned as Richard IV. Richard IV died of natural causes in 1998, to be succeeded by his son Michael, who reigned only a single year as king before calling for a second constitutional convention, the results of which remain in force today. It was at this time that succession was changed from male-preference to absolute primogeniture. King Michael's reign has not been as serene as he might have hoped, however. Since his ascension, international politics have been flaring up, and, in 2013, the centuries-old city of Aquilae was nearly completely destroyed when both a munitions factory and the Royal Army's largest arsenal blew up, instantly leveling the city center and sparking a blaze that quickly engulfed the entire rest of the city. Despite these and other issues, including a corporate coup attempt, views on King Michael's reign remain positive, and the country looks hopefully to the future.
Spoiler: List of Tytorian Heads of State, 1585-Present show Kingdom of Tytor under House de Roy (1585-1717)
1585-1589 - King Edward I "the Unifier"
1589-1598 - King Edward II
1598-1615 - Queen Jane I
1615-1626 - King Edward III
1626-1634 - King Edward IV
1634-1635 - King Edward V "the Uncrowned"
1635-1641 - King William I
1641-1656 - King Edward VI
1656-1666 - King Edward VII "the Martyr"
1666-1677 - King Richard I
1677-1695 - King William II
1695-1699 - Queen Jane II
1699-1717 - Queen Rachel
Kingdom of Tytor under House de Tarrenburg (1717-1788)
1717-1739 - King William III
1739-1751 - King Edward VIII
1751-1788 - King Edward IX
Interregnum (1788-1789)
1788-1789 - Prince Regent Edmund Dampier
Kingdom of Tytor (1789-1873)
1789-1801 - King Benjamin
1801-1829 - King Richard II
1829-1848 - King William IV
1848-1860 - King Christian I
1860-1873 - King William V "the Unfortunate"
First Tytorian Federal Republic (1873-1910)
1873-1875 - Lord Protector Richard Howe
1875-1880 - Lord Protector William Thompson
1880-1909 - Lord Protector Franklin R. Peabody
1909-1910 - Lord Protector Roger Underwood
Kingdom of Tytor (1910-1922)
1910-1917 - King Richard III
1917-1922 - King Christian II
Second Tytorian Federal Republic (1922-1928)
1922-1924 - Premier Josiah Granger
1924-1928 - Premier Oliver Wallis
Tytorian People's Republic (1928-1942)
1928-1941 - Premier Oliver Wallis
1941-1942 - Premier Tobias Smith
Third Tytorian Federal Republic (1942-1946)
1942-1945 - Chief of State Josiah Granger
1945-1946 - Chief of State Thomas Warwick
1946 - Chief of State Christian de Tarrenburg (titular)
Kingdom of Tytor (1946-Present)
1946-1959 - King Christian II
1959-1961 - King Christian III
1961-1979 - King George I
1979-1982 - King William VI
1982-1998 - King Richard IV
1998-Present - King Michael I
Spoiler: List of Tytorian Heads of Government, 1789-Present show Kingdom of Tytor (1789-1873)
1789-1808 - Prime Minister Lord Edward Wellesley, 3rd Duke of Pembroke
1808-1813 - Prime Minister Sir Charles Turner
1813-1822 - Prime Minister Sir Josiah North
1822 - Prime Minister Henry Markingham
1822-1829 - Prime Minister George Walton
1829-1830 - Prime Minister Sir Aaron Rich
1830-1843 - Prime Minister Arthur Gladstone
1843-1844 - Prime Minister Rutherford Johnson
1844 - Prime Minister Walter T. Humphries
1844-1848 - Prime Minister Benjamin Lewis
1848 - Prime Minister Rutherford Johnson (second time)
1848-1849 - Prime Minister Benjamin Lewis (second time)
1849-1854 - Prime Minister Rutherford Johnson (third time)
1854-1858 - Prime Minister Marriner H. Merrill
1858-1873 - Prime Minister Sir Hamilton G. Smith
First Tytorian Federal Republic (1873-1910)
1873-1875 - Lord Protector Richard Howe
1875-1880 - Lord Protector William Thompson
1880-1909 - Lord Protector Franklin R. Peabody
1909-1910 - Lord Protector Roger Underwood
Kingdom of Tytor (1910-1922)
1910-1914 - Prime Minister Gregory Alan Walton
1914 - Prime Minister Franklin Usher
1914-1922 - Prime Minister Sylvester A. Cox
Second Tytorian Federal Republic (1922-1928)
1922-1924 - Premier Josiah Granger
1924-1928 - Premier Oliver Wallis
Tytorian People's Republic (1928-1942)
1928-1941 General Secretary Tobias Smith
1941-1942 General Secretary Preston B. Fleming
Third Tytorian Federal Republic (1942-1946)
1942-1945 - Chief of State Josiah Granger
1945-1946 - Chief of State Thomas Warwick
1946 - Chief of State Christian de Tarrenburg (titular)
Kingdom of Tytor (1946-Present)
1946-1957 - Prime Minister Lord Thomas Warwick, 1st Earl Warwick
1957 - Prime Minister David C. Young
1957 - Prime Minister M. Victor Birch
1957-1958 - Prime Minister Armand G. Forrest
1958-1960 - Prime Minister Sir Benjamin Pulham
1960-1961 - Prime Minister Lord William Dawes, 7th Earl of Burlingham
1961-1966 - Prime Minister Sir Albert J. Buckley
1966-1969 - Prime Minister Sam Brown, Sr.
1969-1974 - Prime Minister Augustine R. Morris
1974-1983 - Prime Minister Sir Oliver James
1983-1985 - Prime Minister Ronald E. Darlington
1985-1992 - Prime Minister Sir Oliver James (second time)
1992 - Prime Minister Harold Farthingham
1992-1998 - Prime Minister Samuel Gordon Brown, Jr.
1998-2011 - Prime Minister Reginald St. George
2011-2015 - Prime Minister Lord Joseph Cornwallis, 1st Baronet Cornwallis
2015 - Prime Minister John H. Goodfellow
2015-Present - Prime Minister Madeline Thatcher