March 2018 Challenge: The Bitter Winter (or, Calanthavian Election of 1579 VCE)

[Diamond]

Um... and when are you planning to write this novel? Soon, I hope?

[AzureWings]

Sounds like you've got a pretty decent plan for this one, AW. Such great and detailed lore there too. Looking forwards to seeing what you do with the pie-chart-y indicators!

Thanks! You'll get to see those now, actually!

A very promising start to this, AW. I'm a bit of a sucker for complex political stories, so I'm liking the direction this is heading already.

Thanks!

Um... and when are you planning to write this novel? Soon, I hope?

Hahaha - I'm flattered, I think. I do try to dabble in writing prose from time to time, but always find myself too distracted by more worldbuilding to get through building a good character-driven narrative or writing dialogue or that sort of thing. Maybe this is another opportunity - there are some relatively pivotal characters I've already got in mind for the political milieu of Calanthavia surrounding the Bitter Winter (and for all its issues for considering real history, the Great Person model of history can be convenient for fictional worldbuilding - though I like to think I tend to put some thought into more societal-scale economic and demographic factors as well).


Anyways, here's the Calanthavian Election of 1579 with the regional seat distribution displayed for the National Assembly. The name fonts and locations (though not the names) and capital city location are temporary and just there now to add some extra context. I'll have an on-map key for reading the labels and province colors later, but the numbers in each province or aquatic zone state the number of regional seats allocated to that province, while the piechart around the edge of the circle lays out proportionally how many of those seats were won for candidates from each political party. You may notice that in some cases the province color differs from the largest slice of the piechart; that's because the province colors note which party won a plurality (fainter color) or majority (stronger color) of the party vote for that province (as opposed to the regional seats), which affects on the national level the number of proportional seats allocated to each party.

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BitterWinter2.jpg

The number of regional seats given to each province is based on its population, according to the last National Census*, so it can be seen that the population of Calanthavia is definitely not uniformly distributed! The ongoing process of urbanization has led to a centralization towards the more-industrialized cities concentrated in the west, leaving the more agrarian regions in the east, especially southeast, (not coincidentally also the regions largely still under traditional aristocratic holdings) a bit sparser in population.

*You may recall mention of de facto disenfranchisement of the seafolk. Part of this is that, as current technology does not really support cheap, disposable writing for underwater use, seafolk need to come to shore to be counted in the Census (or vote, for that matter). Although seafolk are capable of breathing out of water, they don't have legs, and while they just need to come to shore for registration it can be enough of an out-of-the-way effort that it inhibits their participation in the electoral process. Further measures could be taken address this as things currently stand, but prejudice/ethnocentrism in Calanthavia exists sufficiently that the issue is not seen as a major priority by many factions. This substantially contributes to the low apportionment of Assembly seats to aquatic zones; if the Census were as generally accurate on sea as on land Ilanta (as an example) would have at least twice its current number.

For further context, the seven major political parties (some of which are still relatively 'fringe') active at this time in Calanthavia:

Trade & Goods Party (Pro-Republic; Capitalist/Pro-Free-Trade): The most prominent and powerful of the pro-republic/anti-aristocracy parties. Probably not coincidentally, it is also where most of the post-monarchial 'new money' is, and many of its leading voices are those of Calanthavia's fledgling captains of industry. While not necessarily radically opposed to all of the traditional institutions of Calanthavia, Trade & Goods is generally happy to discard many of them where they should inhibit laissez-faire economic policy. Until the prelude to this election they were fairly staunch opposition to both the Conservative Party and the Estates Party, finding some common cause with the Union Party; in the Bitter Winter's immediate aftermath Trade & Goods formed a coalition government with the Conservatives, a large part of what eventually prodded the old aristocracy into the Gold Coup. The Trade & Goods Party has also historically been in opposition with the Free Worker's Party (natch) as well as the Maritime and Ilåveth Liberation Parties; the use/abuse in industry, especially shipping, of seafolk as cheap marine labor has been a sticking point with the latter two groups. Trade & Goods is strongest in the northwest, a region integrated into Calanthavia not long before the overthrow of the monarchy; said region has had less historical attachment to old and preexisting Calanthavian institutions and so has been less attracted to the typical rhetoric of the Estates and Conservatives. The current party head is Syrene Almolat, a shrewd and calculating businesswoman.

Conservative Party (Recently pro-Republic; Conservative): Historically a more commoner-facing front group for the Estates Party and the traditional aristocracy, heavily featuring rhetoric tying the preservation of old values and institutions of Calanthavia to said hereditary nobility, the Conservative Party reinvented itself in the time to the Bitter Winter, driven by some more volatile new blood. By the time of the election this included new party leader Cyric Sagarin, a fiery younger speaker and common-born scholar promoting a reintegration of traditional institutions - marrying these to new ideas and developments, rather than throwing them out wholesale, but - key to the political platform he promoted in the party - those new developments including a strict separation from the hereditary aristocracy and promoting measures to curtail application by said aristocracy of 'soft' power to circumvent those limitations. This marked a shift in the overall party policy forming a sharp divide from the Estates Party, one of the most significant changes leading to the Bitter Winter and what laid beyond the fateful election. Popular Calanthavian history in later generations often laid the cause of the Second Civil War at Sagarin's feet, though more rigorous scholarship tended to find Sagarin's leadership of the Conservatives was likely more a symptomatic turning point of preexisting currents than the source of the shift in and of itself. As of the Bitter Winter, the Conservatives proved to gain significant support, particularly in those of the populated, more urban regions where the aristocracy had remained well established until now. In many of the eastern agrarian regions as well, while much of the populace still tended to elect regional representatives from the Estates Party, the Conservatives had a surge in popularity in the party vote. People who had some attraction to the republican spirit but still saw the particular nobility they and their ancestors had been familiar with as the natural choice in leaders (hence their continued popularity in regional candidacy) had options for a difference ideological tack that still offered the preservation of a more familiar Calanthavia, which divorced from particular candidates in the context of the party vote proved more popular.

Estates Party (Traditional/Reactionary; Aristocratic): The banner under which the (substantial) remaining aristocracy of Calanthavia gathered after the First Civil War (known as simply 'the Revolution' in this time period), largely aimed at preservation of their own power bases (but also, in somewhat better faith, at preservation of existing and familiar Calanthavian institutions and traditions and advocating caution against making possibly catastrophic societal changes). For a period they weathered the removal of their formal hereditary political power quite well, with significant resources and residual influence among the common person of Calathavia, but urbanization and drift towards the developing industrial centers in the west (where comparatively more of the nobility had been ousted in the Revolution) was slowly eroding this power base. Often nicknamed the 'Gold Party' due to its worthies owning the lion's share of interest in Calanthavia's mines and bullion (or, more darkly, in reference to buying political influence - not that other parties doing this to varying extents was at all unlikely in this period). Strongest in the more agrarian eastern regions where the by-far largest landowners and employers were the nobility. In the election of 1579, the party leader was Ludic Thiramovis, a Tarvilan count who was an excellent administrator but only middling speaker.

Union Party (Militaristic; Revolutionary; Nationalist): Many of the more radical of the anti-monarchist revolutionaries, post-First Civil War - the ones, it might be said, that were willing to put ideology before even reasonably practical concerns - formed their own bloc in the postwar republic. The most fiery among them even advocated a course of pursuing the overthrow of neighboring monarchies, and the eradication of the remnants of Calanthavia's, including mass seizure of land and wealth. As time went on the party's overall identity coalesced into a strongly anti-monarchist, almost jingoistically pro-Calanthavia platform promoting the formation of new institutions of governance and infrastructure out of whole cloth, for the 'loyal and true common man of Calanthavia' as opposed to the old, depicted solely as means of aristocratic control. Their eager support of urbanization has been a periodic source of common ground with Trade & Goods, though the coalition government following the Bitter Winter drove something of a wedge between them as Union was rather opposed even to the new Conservatives. The Union Party was smaller than the 'big three' above at the time of the Bitter Winter, but had two major poles of support - the west-central urban and urbanizing regions surrounding Milban, and the northeastern border, where moderate coastal urban development brought new ways and border tensions with neighboring Volgarlind promoted nationalism. The Union Party, though at this time of one face, was already beginning to differ a bit between the western and northeastern regions where it had a presence; the western became progressively more and more fanatical about their model of a new Calanthavia and the reinvention of its infrastructure, government and even culture, while the northeastern (partly due to the ongoing border tensions) developed a more strongly ethnocentric and humanocentric bent (though both had at least some of the latter; the Union Party could never get along with Maritime or Ilåveth). Neither would really take center stage in Calanthavian politics until some time after the Second Civil War. In the election of 1579, the party head was Darios Myrland, an intimidating man who had played a major role as a military commander in the Revolution.

Free Worker's Party (Proto-Communist; Revolutionary): A fledgling offshoot of a stronger movement imported from neighboring (and more industrialized) Allatia, the Free Worker's Party advocated the equal and free redistribution of power and wealth, frequently deriding the industrial bourgeoisie as the 'new aristocracy'. At this time period it remained mostly a fringe movement, though it was able to secure seven regional Assembly seats and fifteen total seats in the Bitter Winter; it only really had a presence in regions experiencing stronger degrees of industrialization. It also had notable support from some seafolk, though it did not take any aquatic regional seats in this election; issues of worker's treatment and rights echoed strongly with some commercial practices regarding employment of the seafolk as cheap unskilled maritime labor. This was the first election in which the Free Worker's Party was really organized enough that members of the 'big three' could even reliably name its party leader, Cygnir Balenkir, a former Landow factory worker and amateur writer who was somewhat poorly educated but remarkably charismatic.

Maritime Party (Land/Sea Integration; Pro-Seafolk): A party formed around a platform of pursuing substantial integration of seafolk and land-based society, and championing the rights of seafolk and the need for Calanthavia as a whole to take more steps to accommodate the challenges of interaction between land and sea. Although relatively moderate on the broader republic/aristocratic conflict that defined the Bitter Winter most strongly, it was still of significant importance, and notably, more willing to find common cause with the Estates than with Trade & Goods in light of industrial exploitation of seafolk labor (despite not being very fond of the traditional land aristocracy either). While the majority of its adherents are seafolk - as one of two pro-seafolk parties and the one more likely to apply to seafolk readily able to vote in elections, it enjoys a dominant position in the seafolk voting demographic - there are land-dwelling members of the Maritime Party, particularly in coastal areas, though they are often a minority among their peers. The current party head is Sîlmalví Iklåferma, an Ilanta-native seafolk woman known for presenting a remarkably amiable front to both allies and enemies.

Ilåveth Liberation Party (Seafolk Separatist, Pro-Seafolk): A more radical stance on seafolk issues, this party supports independence for the seafolk under the name of the ancient seafolk nation of Ilåveth (the more accurate seafolk name of the region vesthiricized to 'Ilanta' in Calanthavian official nomenclature). Essentially only supported by seafolk, its popular base is much larger than the election results in this and earlier elections make it seem, as seafolk supporting the ILP make up an especially large proportion of those less likely to be counted in the Census or able/available to vote in Calanthavian elections (particularly open-ocean/deep-water-dwelling seafolk, such as much of the population of Orantalis). Their more vocal and present speakers nonetheless receive enough support to occupy a few regional seats in this and previous elections. Among these is the current party head, Kedråneid Kîlkorae, though her poor ability to disguise her contempt for most land-dwellers does her party a disservice in the broader political arenas, as much as it attracts some demographics of seafolk supporters.