Antius

The city of Antius is the capital city of Kinilan, and has been the dominant city in the region as far back as the First Empire.  After the Fall, Governor Kinilus, ruler of the province of Antia, declared independence, and renamed the region Kinilia, which eventually became the modern country of Kinilan.

History

The Kinilan Revolution and the Great Burning

In the last few decades before the Revolution, many noble families moved to Antius to take part in the increasingly lavish and socially important events held by members of the Royal Court.  In noble society, anyone who had never been to court in the capital would often be dismissed as provincial, barely better than the commoners.  More importantly, they were shut out of the politics of the Kingdom, only having very limited opportunities to advance, or even defend themselves against political rivals.
Naturally, this made the city the focus of the revolution, though it was not the city itself where it originated.  The first signs of rebellion were out in farmlands, where mistreated peasants fought back against their lords.  Peasant uprisings were not uncommon, but usually they were a quick event - the peasants grab whatever weapons they can find, then are terrorized by their lord's personal guard until they give up and return to work.  But word had gotten around of a different strategy: if each farmer only produced enough crops to feed themselves, then the nobles and their armies would starve.
The backlash to this was harsh: livestock were seized, stores were confiscated, and lords in agricultural regions adopted a policy of supervised forced labour.  But by then the damage was done - an entire year's food supply went no further than the agricultural regions expected to produce them.  Workers in the vineyards were forced to live on the grapes they were supposed to be turning into wine, and cities, their reserves diminished by neglect and by the excesses of the nobility, starved. 
Before long, in Antius, there was daily rioting in the streets, as mobs searched the city for food.  In response, the nobles had what stockpiles remained removed from public granaries and warehouses into secure locations in their homes, and had the Kinilan Peace Brigade brought in to suppress the rioting.  Seeing the situation, well over half of the Brigade turned coat, joining with others in the community to fight with the peasants.  They brought word that there were food reserves in the noble quarter of the city, and this quickly turned the angry population from angry peasants begging for food to revolutionaries plotting to strike down the nobility.
Days later, the revolutionaries marched on the noble quarter. They stormed houses one by one, looting them of food and anything they considered to be of value, and set them aflame before moving on to the next one.  By evening, the entire noble quarter was ablaze, and most of the nobles who had not had the foresight to flee the city were killed.  The royal family had sealed the gates as soon as they'd gotten word of the attack, casting out all but their most loyal servants and guards, trusting the heavy stone walls of a palace built in much more dangerous times to protect them. 
There was great celebration in the city that evening - with food being distributed evenly, there would be enough for all to see them through the next year.  Meanwhile, the fires in the noble quarter grew, left unattended by the victorious revolutionaries.  It spread through the forested lands that surrounded the quarter, meant to protect the nobility from associating with common folk, and by the time the fire's spread was noticed, it had become a firestorm that consumed all in its path, driving itself forward with the winds it generated.  The fire swept through the city, destroying most of the buildings and leaving tens of thousands dead and many more severely burned.  All efforts to contain the fire failed for the first two days - it was only after a cadre of mages from a town reached the city that they managed to put out the flames - opening portals to elemental water in order to douse the inferno.
This disaster tempered the enthusiasm of the Revolution as a whole, turning a bloody day of victory into two months of civil war, before the King finally capitulated, agreeing to abdicate his throne to a new Royal Family that would be subject to new laws and oversight from the High Council of Kinilan.
Reconstruction of the city took decades - about three quarters of the city had burned, and with the new government busy with the trials and tribulations of forming a functional government, there was not much of a driving force from above to move things along.  However, the reconstruction was successful, and while Antius now lacks the lavish mansions that can be found in other cities in Kinilan, most Antians will say they are better off for it.

Type

Capital