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+====== Of the Empire, most Holy and Roman ======
+And so it came to pass, after the joining of the Two Worlds into the One World, that the Holy Roman Empire did pass from its patron Saint, and then immortal Saint-Emperor, Gavin I to Hector Mallory who was at that time King of Sicily. This was a time of great peace, and seemingly boundless growth. Hector's assumption to the Imperial Throne brought in the Kingdom of Sicily to the Empire; across the sea the sacrifices of territory to the Sultan Salah al-Din Yusuf Ibn Ayyub bound the ties of the once competing empires in ever closer union. Further, the Empire and Britain did in pair rejoice upon the marriage of Joan of Brittany to the Emperor. Thus did, within years, the Empire touch through conquest or alliance all soil from the bluster of the Orkney Isles, where King Andrew now reigned, to the heartland of France, through the Italian Peninsula, down to the rich deserts of the Ayyubid domain.
+===== A Law For All Things =====
+The last act of Saint Gavin of Revesby was to work with the Demiurges to be, Stanley the Abiding and Thomas Feyborn, as well as the Guardian of the Seelie, Samuel Attaway to codify a binding corpus of laws regulating the use of magic in the domains of the Empire. It was hoped that never again may the atrocities of Aelindis Kingslayer be repeated. The Principle of Reversibility introduced by Emperor Gavin enshrined a belief in personal responsibility: that one must not make changes that they cannot in principle undo. While this was originally intended to only apply to the use of magic, over time this principle came to be held at the heart of Imperial Law, and has informed much of the interpretation of crimes such as assault and murder. Of course there continued to be those individuals who flaunted their magic in defiance to it, but the regulation is often credited with preventing another Massacre of the Fifty Thousand.
+===== A Border For Each Point on the Compass =====
+As the years passed the good Imperial family aged and, yielding to the urges of time, Hector abdicated the throne: leaving it to his eldest daughter, Elayne. With her siblings, Katrina and Richard, she set out to rule the Empire in a way that would live up to the memory of her father. The alliances that had grown strong in and following the Crisis of the Joined Worlds had begun to fray. As they had before, and would many times again, the states in Northern Italy had begun to talk of secession, and were actively involved with border struggles against the Ayyubid held lands to the East. To the East rumblings arose from the Slavic states, looking to exploit what they saw as an increasingly South facing Empire, and Iberia continued to struggle against the economic dominance of the Empire.
+Where the Ayyubids struggled against the Italian states ran a third border, that of Bavaria, the realm run by Ludovic of Langley, and the right hand man of Empress's father. Tirelessly he held the borders as the squabbles between Italians and Ayyubids grew in strength and fatality: intervening when either side pushed too far, regardless of which side it was. This was the Empire, and it was //his// part of the Empire, that he was going to protect. Eventually, with the intervention of an ageing Hector, and Gavin himself, the two warring states were brought into line: through a marriage between Hector's children and they Ayyubid line.
+The Slavs to the East never truly saw themselves as the same sort of folk as their neighbours to the West, and so when an opportunity arose for them to take vengeance for a trick played on them many years before by Frederick Barbarossa, and Eckehart of Carinthia, they leaped on it. This was the first true test for the Empress Elayne, who had a winding extensive border in the East to protect. At first she lost, as the armies of the Slavs pushed forward with steel and sorcery, and lost again. But, with the help of Saladin's child, Al-Aziz, she was able to push back the Slavs and dominate much of the land that was the West of the Slavic nations. Meanwhile, in Iberia, Katrina and Richard were able to placate the nations of Aragon and Navarre, bringing them into the economic web helmed by Venice and Constantinople.
+The Mongols who - even more than the rogue Emperor and Demiurge, Etzen - came within inches of shattering the Empire forever waxed and waned with their Ysbathedeni allies over the years, but never grew to the strength that they achieved under Temujin. Once a generation, creating a challenge that would be the true test of mettle for each successive Empress, the great castles of the Ysbathedeni would walk abroad: bearing little heed for the petty borders drawn on a map by humanity.
+===== A Web Tied With Money =====
+The Empire's ties with Constantinople and Venice proved to be the mortar to support the cathedral that was Imperial domains; their close ties to the mercantile guild allowing them to move gold and resources throughout the Empire. As successors to the thalassocratic cities of old - Carthage decked in the finery of empire - ships sailed forth under the protection of Lord Shipwright carrying food from Sicily; spices and fabrics from Egypt; gold and iron from Britain; and many others besides. Though never truly swallowed by the Empire these grew rich understanding the value of the nations of millions that surrounded them. And as the Empire grew, so too did the trade routes and fleets that supplied it. It is known that before too long the most favoured of the Lord Shipwright could sail back a ship full of silks from far Cathay to Venice in a matter of days.
+====== ======
+\\
+In the end, the Empire was born and forged in fire. This fire which sought to spread and cover the world was taken in and crafted into something stronger by the early Imperials and, though they nearly broke in the process, they made something which stills stands to this day.

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