History of Bretonia

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Exodus and Founding

Amid the chaos of the exodus, as the Bretonia broke past the Coalition blockade, her starboard engine array was destroyed by enemy fire. As a result, the Bretonia had to limp the rest of the way to Sirius, slowly falling further and further behind the other 4 sleeper ships. By the time the Bretonia finally arrived in the Sirius sector almost 20 years had past since the arrival of the Liberty, Rheinland and the Kusari, all of whom had already well begun setting up their new civilisations. Kusari and Rheinland had claimed the 2 most resource-rich areas, whilst the Liberty had settled near the most lush region at the sector's core. Bretonia was therefore forced to select a less than ideal site near the Barrier, where they established the colony of New London, on one of the few habitable planets in the area. Isolated by the Barrier from the other houses and years behind, Bretonia began an accelerated program of rebuilding their industrial civilization.

Rule of the Princes

For the first year the colony was administered by the same senior Alliance military commanders who had been in command at the time of the exodus, as they put the population to work and began the hasty development of infrastructure. After a year, however, when moves began to put in place a civilian administration with permanent constitution, Prince Harry IX - great-great grandson of Queen Elizabeth III, last of the ruling monarchs of the UK - managed to stage a coup with the support of several key military officers and industrial heads. Declaring himself Sovereign of the Principality of New Britain, later renamed to Bretonia, he established a bureaucratic autocracy in which the new colony was under his direct personal rule.

The early decades were hard ones for the sleeper ship survivors...

Pressure on the Heirs

It became a custom of the Principality, that the Crown be held by whomever had been willing to murder their siblings, and likely their own father. These weren't estranged or distance siblings, in most cases, but adolescents who'd grown up together, under the tutlage of their parents, who would judge one another, and find themselves wanting, or simply not quite impozing enugh. It isn't inherently suprising that the princes of Bretonia, who forcibly moved millions to Leeds, and who established the foundation of the early BMM had ruthless survival as their bread and butter, but it is important to note that the period carried with it an intense competition with the three houses, with Rhienland's huge stocks of minerals, with Kusari's fuel, and with Liberty's Ageria Jumptech. The crown struggled, isolated by the barrier, to forge a balance between the pressures of each other house, to blend Kusari fuel and Rhienlandish industry into competition with Liberty's Commerce.

Tyrany on the Families

Though the Princes of Bretonia were typically tyranical and brutal, they were almost never poor stewards of the then Principality of Bretonia. In the interest of Bretonia, these princes encouraged large families in a generations long program of cultural manipulation. Familes in popular media were generaly larger than the average family, as well as extensive subsidies oriented toward larger additional children. Currently, the average family tended to grow through until the reign of Harry the Thirteenth, up from the considered all time low of around .9 children per family during the Coalition-Alliance war, Pre Sleep, to above five children a family by 126 AS.

Civil War and Commonwealth

This Principality was overthrown during the Bretonian Civil War of 317-319 A.S. due to the oppression of Prince Harry XXI in his state controlled development of Planet Leeds. Following a brief interregnum during which a Commonwealth was declared, a new constitution was drawn up under which the reigning family returned to rule as constitutional monarchs constrained by parliament. Thus the modern Kingdom of Bretonia was founded.

Early Kingdom

Throughout the late 5th and early 6th centuries, Bretonia was plagued by uncontrollable levels of space piracy, due to a group known as the Bretonian Buccaneers.

Buccaneer War

Following the assassination of King William I by these Buccaneers in 565 A.S., his daughter Queen Eleanor I led a great campaign against them which finally resulted in the destruction of all Buccaneer bases and the cleansing of all organised crime for Bretonia, a situation which was to result in remarkably low crime levels in the House for the next 100 years, a period later known as the Bretonian Golden Age, often measured as 589 - 674 A.S.

Golden Age

This period was characterised by a remarkable level of economic expansion, bringing Bretonia up to comparable economic levels with the other Houses for the first time in its history, whilst on the political front King William III, often labelled William the Great, laid claim to a vast Empire in Tau and Omega 3 during a time when the attentions of the other Houses were focused on the terrible 80 Years War in Sigma.

Following William's death in 674 A.S., however, Bretonia gradually sank into a period of troubles, ironically triggered by a series of great exploration expeditions funded on the back of recent economic successes. The discovery of Edinburgh and with it Planet Gaia in 685 A.S. was to eventually lead to the rise of the Green Front and later the Gaian terrorist movement, which would in turn eventually spawn numerous fringe pirate groups, the first major source of space piracy since the disappearance of the Bretonian Buccaneers. The greatest of these exploration expeditions, however, were those undertaken between 743 and 745 A.S. which, among other things, led to the discovery of gold in Dublin and triggered the great Dublin Gold Rush that would end so tragically with the Founder's Day Revolt and the beginning of the war of independence by the Mollies in 752 A.S.

Decline

Following William's death in 674 A.S., however, Bretonia gradually sank into a period of troubles, ironically triggered by a series of great exploration expeditions funded on the back of recent economic successes. The discovery of Edinburgh and with it Planet Gaia in 685 A.S. was to eventually lead to the rise of the Green Front and later the Gaian terrorist movement, which would in turn eventually spawn numerous fringe pirate groups, the first major source of space piracy since the disappearance of the Bretonian Buccaneers. The greatest of these exploration expeditions, however, were those undertaken between 743 and 745 A.S. which, among other things, led to the discovery of gold in Dublin and triggered the great Dublin Gold Rush that would end so tragically with the Founder's Day Revolt and the beginning of the war of independence by the Mollies in 752 A.S.

By 760 A.S. crime levels were rising sharply across Bretonia, as Gaians, Mollies and the arrival of outcasts and corsairs from the edge worlds began to take its toll on the law enforcement capabilities of the Bretonian Police Authority and Bretonian Armed Forces. The situation was so bad that Prime Minister Lord Walter Brinkley was forced to invite the Bounty Hunters Guild into Bretonia, granting them Sheffield Station from the BPA and ordering the construction of Newgate Prison.

Nomad War

By the arrival of the 9th Century the situation had stabilised somewhat, with the eastern Dublin system secured by a new Fleet under the HMS-Essex and the Gaians prevented from gaining a foothold in Leeds. Being the least affected of all the Houses by the turmoil caused by the 800-801 Nomad War, Bretonia's position relative to the other three Houses was restored somewhat from its decline over the previous 100 years.

Present Day

Queen Carina felt confident enough in 809 to order a renewed expansion by BMM into Tau 23, with an ambitious lane and gate construction project designed to assure Bretonia's economic prosperity for years to come. A brief legal crisis involving the Independent Miners Guild in 810, however, was to prove a trigger for renewed conflict over centuries old claims to the riches of the Tau region between Bretonia and the Empire of Kusari, and by 813 A.S. the two Houses were mobilising for war. Bretonia now faces what many consider the greatest threat to its existence in its 800 year history.