A History of Lithaea

Lithaea before the Khanate

Before the arrival of Khanish armies, Lithaea was an elven-led country governed through a Senate. Its cities, river communities, farms, roads, and old noble houses were already established. The later official history attacks this democracy as weak and corrupt, but even that hostile account admits the existence of organized government, substantial wealth, great cities, slavery, and an inherited civic tradition.

Power was not necessarily equal merely because it was distributed through a Senate. Khanish historians accused the old order of oligarchy, decadence, and abuse of slaves. Those claims may preserve real grievances, but they were also used to justify the new regime's own killings, dispossession, and enslavement. Pre-conquest Lithaea was a complex society, not the caricature required by imperial propaganda.

The Khanish conquest

Khanish forces reached Lithaea under General Oösmaron after earlier victories had expanded the Great Khan's power far from the Gorathic Steppe. Oösmaron defeated or bypassed the old national defenses and took the local title of Sultan. The conquest did not affect every place in the same way. Kavronis negotiated a peaceful submission that preserved the city and its industry; other communities faced direct violence.

The new government expelled many elves from Lithaeabhat, confiscated elven property, killed or enslaved resistance, and redistributed wealth toward those loyal to the regime. A people who had formed the country's ruling class were driven into peasantry, ghettos, exile, and slavery. The central institutions of modern Lithaea began in this transformation.

The assassination of Oösmaron

Oösmaron was assassinated six years into his reign. Later official accounts attribute the killing to an elven wielder of dark arts, but the assassin’s identity and later fate were never established.

The Sultan's death opened a year of civil war. Human military commanders, politicians, and merchants competed for the throne while elven groups pursued liberation, revenge, survival, or local power. Official histories remember mass killing by elven rebels, but their partisan voice gives no trustworthy full accounting of violence committed by the regime or rival human forces.

The civil war and Malasdier

Malasdier emerged with the loyalty of the remaining human military and took the throne. He offered a general pardon to people who publicly declared loyalty, human and elf alike. Thousands accepted. Others remained in remote forests and mountains, continued partisan resistance, or left the country.

His long reign shifted the conquest government toward a durable state. Roads, administration, military command, courts, and institutions developed under him. He died in his sleep at the age of seventy-three, leaving a centralized realm to his eldest son.

Malasdier II

Malasdier II had been raised in the human military tradition and educated at court. Renewed attacks on government institutions followed his accession. His response was a severe crackdown on anyone suspected of aiding rebellion.

During his ten-year reign, anti-elven prejudice again became openly normalized. Civilians were stigmatized by ancestry and confined to segregated neighborhoods. Malasdier II died in his sleep amid rumors of poison, but the cause was never established.

Jarazied and reform

Malasdier II's brother Jarazied secured the throne through court maneuvering, support from palace guards, and popular desire for change. Rival hereditary claims remained a source of court tension during his reign.

Jarazied pursued reconciliation between human and elven communities. Elves who swore loyalty had held office under Malasdier, but Jarazied extended public recognition to half-elves and opened government service to them. He also heard complaints against officials, used the Scholai to investigate abuses, paid reparations, and dismissed or prosecuted those found to have misused power.

The Twins’ Betrayal

A court faction cultivated a network of soldiers who opposed Jarazied and supported rival hereditary claims. The force grew as it crossed the country, drawing hard-line humans who opposed his reforms.

Refugees and loyalists crowded into the capital. Jarazied closed the gates and armed residents of all ancestries. When negotiations failed and the rebel army attacked, the defense broke the assault, though Jarazied was wounded and surviving rebels fled.

Jamerishon and Zyrigsmé

Prince Jamerishon first ensured that his wounded father reached the palace healers, then helped command the defense and pursuit while other forces repaired damage and aided the wounded.

A southern rebel force moved toward Zyrigsmé. The delta port's defenses had been reduced under Oösmaron and only partly restored under Jarazied. By the time Jamerishon's army arrived, the attackers were striking the walls, burning outlying homes, and killing civilians.

Jamerishon struck the besieging army from behind and broke it. Captured soldiers faced a military tribunal in Zyrigsmé. Some were executed; others were sentenced to years or life in state slavery, including service as janissaries.

The accession of Jamerishon

Jarazied's health failed after the poisoned wound he received during the assault, and he abdicated later that year. Jamerishon was crowned at the winter solstice. The following spring he married Lady Juvilia, an elf descended from the family that had ruled before the Khanish conquest.

The marriage united human and elven claims to legitimacy in the future royal line. Jamerishon then decreed formal equality for humans, elves, and half-elves who remained loyal to the Sultan and Great Khan. He later ordered the Scholai to purge the human-supremacist Kharuuluud from government. Nearly half the Exkoubitos were removed, and vacancies were filled with preference toward elven candidates.

These reforms changed law and access to office. They did not erase segregation, private discrimination, slavery, supremacist movements, or the imperial structure of the state. Jamerishon's reign is therefore remembered both as a genuine reform era and as an attempt to stabilize a dynasty born from conquest.

Chronology at a glance