Treaty of Cantonova
The Treaty of Cantonova, signed 1 September Y361, is the treaty that ended the War of Great Sorrow. It ushered in a nearly 750-year era of relative peace across Belcantas, lasting until the treaty's expiration and the Triple Defense of Cantonova on 1 September Y1111.
Document Structure
Clauses
Article 1 initiates an immediate and permanent ceasefire between the signatory nations, as well as all of their colonies, vassal states, and mercenary forces.
Article 2 compels signatory nations to sever their alliances with so-called "natural and inherent forces of destruction," including Erdelan's alliance with the chromatic dragons of Draxhaven and Scalados's alliance with the Howling Horde.
Article 3 cedes Cantonova to the Kingdom of Dreibach. It formally reincorporates County Haldara, which encompasses the Haldara Peninsula to the southern edge of the Gaeno Woods. Sub-clauses install João Cesar Almaviva as Count of the Kingdom of Dreibach under the jurisdiction of its Southern Duchy. Beyond nominal deference from the Count and his his future progeny to whom the title passes, the formally-established Free City of Cantonova is guaranteed self-determination for the next 750 years.
Articles 4 through 9 contain various other agreements between the signatories to cede or relinquish other occupied territories and vassal states, including the Valkyrennel Archipelago (ceded to Erdelan by Scalados), the Blue Mountains east of Caelestë-Materiae (ceded to Scalados by Erdelan), and the ancestral lands of the Tidewalkers (ceded by both Dreibach and Scalados as a buffer zone between the two nations).
Article 10 establishes the Tychean League, an intergovernmental association for the promotion of peace comprised of representatives from each major city in the signatory nations. Extensive plans were made for convention schedules and for the eventual allowance of cities from the Aquatic Kingdoms to petition to join. After the first handful of underwhelming meetings, representatives began cancelling without warning or asking for the meetings to be rescheduled. All Scaladosian representatives eventually stopped showing up to the ever-more-infrequent conferences, and the Tychean League officially disbanded before the end of the fifth century.
The treaty's postamble is an eloquent appeal to the warring nations to put aside any lingering grievances and focus on building a future governed by diplomacy and mutual understanding. It frames the treaty as the first step in a slow-yet-steady journey towards world peace.
"May it come to pass that the blood of these past dozen years—blood which ran down our mountains, fed our rivers, and overflowed upon our streets—leaves its substance in the sea to sink past memory; and that when it falls again, it falls as pure and peaceful rain."
—from the Postamble to the Treaty of Cantonova
Historical Details
Background
The War of Great Sorrow was the only large-scale multinational war of the first millennium of the Age of Complexity. By the signing of the treaty, the Kingdom of Erdelan, the Kingdom of Scalados, and the Kingdom of Dreibach (which ostensibly included Cantonova) had all suffered heavy losses. The Treaty of Cantonova marked the long-awaited end of the war.
History
The city of Cantonova, historically an independent city-state under the purview of the Fey since its founding in the late Age of Integrity, was thrown into chaos at the start of the Age of Complexity by the rampage of the Caorthannach in the Feywild. A Dreibach-backed coup in Y9 ended the rule of the Maevian Dynasty and turned the city into a vassal state of Dreibach.
Cantonova regained much of its independence during the Ferhauss Era, when conflict between the four ruling houses of Dreibach loosened the Kingdom's grip on the city. Its government and economy ran almost wholly separate from Dreibach's until King Felix I assumed the throne in Y339. Felix re-established strict sovereignty over Cantonova in the early Y340s during his push to reunite the kingdom, which led to resentment among the citizens.
Felix's wider reunification campaign expanded to a war against the Prairie Clans, in which he enlisted the help of King Arricard Stormborn of Erdelan. Confusion, miscommunication, and military overreach led to the near-destruction of the Eldorokhim on the border between Dreibach and Scalados. The Kingdom of Scalados retaliated against what they saw as a direct attack on their kin, kicking off a long and bloody war in which all sides brokered alliances with increasingly destructive powers, up to and including death knights and chromatic dragons.
Meanwhile, Cantonova was largely unaffected by violence in the war's first decade, but its citizens were increasingly subject to conscription, forced quartering of troops, and eventually widespread taxation and rationing. The citizens' lingering resentment of King Felix boiled over into the Uprising of Cantonova in Y358.
By Y361, the near-total destruction of Cantonova and most of Upper Scalados led Eldatar Tashiráca II to contact rebellion leader João Cesar Almaviva in the hopes that Dreibach and Erdelan would accept a joint declaration of surrender by both of them. Almaviva refused to give quarter or call for surrender, even as the walls of the city fell in the Virgoan Advance of 361. According to legend, the Dragon of Cantonova suddenly appeared in the moments before João's certain doom and drove back the invaders. The heavy losses Dreibach sustained in the battle, and the revelation of what was apparently a metallodraconic ally, led King Felix to call for a multilateral truce rather than press on in the hopes of an unconditional surrender.
Legacy
Despite its revered status as the founding document of the modern Free City of Cantonova, the particulars of several clauses of the treaty have raised legal questions over the years. The dissolution of the Tychean League at the dawn of the sixth century CPX spurred arguments in the nascent Council of Wargraves that the treaty was null and void. A declaration of non-compliance was supported by a vocal minority (including then-Countess Silvia Almaviva, the founder of the Council of Wargraves), but failed to pass among either the council or the Summer Court.
Each of the various subsequent shifts in power that occurred in territories outlined in Articles 4 through 7 (such as the Valkyrennel Wars of the late tenth century) sparked a wave of new protests from some contingent of wargraves and legal scholars arguing that Dreibach had no legal standing to stop Cantonova from fully seceding from the Kingdom. The majority of the Cantonovan public supported the Glorious Revolution of 1105, believing that the fall of the Kingdom would ensure Cantonovan independence in perpetuity. However, Count Geoffrey Almaviva's official position up to his March Y1111 death held that good-faith attempts to negotiate with the Republic (and later, the Empire) needed to be made, to ensure a peaceful separation before the city issued any official writ of independence.
Term
The so-called "associated independence" of the Free City of Cantonova was explicitly stated to last 750 years, with full reincorporation into the Kingdom of Dreibach occurring on 1 September, Y1111 barring future extensions.
In the leadup to the Y1111 expiration of Article 3 of the treaty, Emperor Amadeus of the Dreibach Empire stalled all attempts by the Council of Wargraves to extend the treaty. He threatened the Free City with joint invasion from the combined forces of Dreibach and its recent ally Scalados if they did not submit to full Dreibachan rule. The city refused to cede independence, and the Triple Defense of Cantonova took place on the day the treaty expired.
Type
Treaty, Diplomatic
Medium
Vellum / Skin
Ratification Date
1 September, Y361
Expiration Date
1 September, Y1111
Location
Authors
Signatories (Characters)
Signatories (Organizations)
Authorship
The treaty and its initial declaration of peace were written by Lieutenant Xersei Calliópa, a then-21-year-old Paladin of Bahamut and Almaviva's shieldmaiden during the bulk of the uprising. This choice by Almaviva sparked controversy; in particular, the pushback from King Sophus and Eldatar Tashiráca upon learning the author's identity caused a standstill at the negotiation table for several weeks. Almaviva refused to drop the matter, and Calliópa's treaty was approved in a matter of days after its first draft was presented. The postamble to the treaty is often called the first masterpiece of Calliópa, who is primarily remembered today as the greatest philosopher-poet of the early Age of Complexity."Please—allow my shieldmaiden to become my penmaiden, if you will. If the rulers of the Three Kingdoms are made to decipher my dragonscratch handwriting only to read my plodding prose, they'll hurl the declaration into the flames and continue this damnable war for another thirteen years." —João Cesar Almaviva
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