Rise and Fall of Foere

Political event

The Kingdom of Foere, based in the Isle of Princes, arrives and takes over the Borderlands easily. Due to internal problems back on the Isle though, their grip eventually weakens and begins to fracture.

The initial arrival of the authority of the Kingdoms of Foere, from its heartland in the Isle of Princes, in the Borderlands brought a new degree of prosperity to the region, making trade and travel safer, and lessening the tyranny and over-taxation imposed by petty feudal lords that had arisen in the aftermath of the Infestation. The advance of Foerdewaith domination was extremely rapid according to the historical annals of Foere, but considerably slower in actual reality. Provinces were declared before actually being conquered (as in the case of Eastreach Province), and provinces that were recorded as being fully incorporated into the Kingdoms were often controlled only in the largest towns, with Foerdewaith culture still a very long way from reaching the peasantry. All this being said, the scattered rural populace of the Borderlands was desperate for order and peace; the laws and soldiery of Foere offered precisely this boon.   Upon the death of Overking Oessum VIII in the Fourth Great Crusade and the loss of the Army of Light in the Forest of Hope, the centuries of benefits brought by the Kingdoms of Foere began a slow process of collapse. For the most part, the initial stages of decline stemmed from distant events in the heart of Foere, rather than in the provinces themselves. The Foerdewaith Wars of Sucession most certainly laid the groundwork for the falling of the first domino outside the heartlands of Foere, the seccession of Ramthion Island in 3213. From this point onward, all the small cracks in the foundation of Foere’s rule in the provinces began to widen. Issues that remained minor during times of prosperity, such as the inherent corruption in Eastreach Province’s patchwork feudal system, and the treatment of provincial nobles as a lesser class by Foerdewaith nobility, flared into much larger problems when Foere’s grip loosened, even so slightly. War and rebellion surged across the Isle of Princes. Eventually, the contagion of unrest filtered eastward, and the nobility of Suilley made their bid to be treated on an equal footing with the heartland kingdoms of Foere. The Overking’s fateful, arrogant response to Suilley’s gesture of crowning a new king toppled the most significant domino in the collapse of his provincial empire.