This is a joint claim between me and Ark.
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Nation Name (long): The Kingdom of Sprevania (Sprevanian: Spréjva království)
Nation Name (short): Sprevania (Sprevanian: Spréjvo)
Motto: “Ever More Illustrious” (Sprevanian: Věčně proslulý)
National Animal: Novaran beaver (American beaver)
National Flower/Plant: Sprevanian grape (Oregon grape)
National Anthem: “We bear the grail of light.” (Sprevanian: “Neseme grál světla”)
Capitol: Břelov
Largest City: Gůg
Demonym: Sprevanian
Language: Sprevanian (Czech)
Species: 78% human, 15% dwarf, 6% lupine, 1% other
Population: ~12,920,000 (2023 census)
Government type: Federal parliamentary crowned republic
Leader(s):
- Prime Minister: Věra Hanáková (Progressive Coalition)
- King: Aleš z Lesníhrad
Legislature: Parliament of the Kingdom of Sprevania (Sprevanian: Sněm Spréjva království)
Formation: 1822
Total GDP: 542,640,000,000
GDP per capita: $42,000
Currency: Sprevanian crest (Sprevanian: Spréjvý erb) (SPE / €)
Calling Code:
ISO 3166 code: SP, SPR
Internet TLD: .sp
Historical Summary:
Early Sevranic Tribes (~500-709 CE)
The Sevrani, a loose group of human tribes and clans, settle in the foothills of the Nalpian Range in Central Novaris, integrating themselves into the preexisting local dwarven clans and settlements. The earliest Sevranic civilizations were heavily fortified city-states that exercised a loose control over the surrounding countryside, many of which remain as modern-day Sprevania’s largest population centers. Small scale inter-tribal conflicts are fairly common up until the early 600s, when the expansion of the Celanoran Empire forced the Etravic tribes formerly dwelling in the western Nalpian foothills to migrate northward. Settling alongside the Sevranics, the Etravii brought with them Celanoran language and writing alongside their own traditions, though the Norvian alphabet did not come to the fore in Sprevania for another hundred years or more.
Border States Period (709-1078)
Celanora absorbed modern-day Transnalpia over the course of the 7th century and came to border Sprevania by 709. Transnalpia’s status as a geographical bottleneck made it well suited as a frontier, and expansion further north proved difficult for the Empire. In 716, the Celanora launched a military expedition into Sprevania that ended in failure due to the army being repeatedly ambushed and defeated in detail. Subsequent expeditions failed in similar fashion, leading to the Empire never expanding north of the modern boundaries of Transnalpia.
In the 10th century, Celanora entered a series of conflicts with the Ietracian League, forcing the Empire to draw enough of its resources that Sprevanian raids occasionally breached the Celanor limes. These raids accelerated the spread of Celanor culture into Sprevania that was already occurring from trade. It was also in this century from this extended contact that Lucerism began to appear in significant amounts of the population.
First Kingdom of Sprevania (1078-1256)
In 1078, the lord of Břelov converted to Lucerism at the behest of a Celanor missionary, which was followed by a wave of conversions that accelerated the spread of Lucerism in Sprevania. Over the 12th century, most of Sprevania was predominantly Lucerist, save for Strarec, which clung to its old rites for a while longer.
In 1146, the various lordships in Sprevania were united under Břelov, whose lord named himself the King of Sprevania. However, this unification was short-lived, as after his death in 1162, his lands were partitioned into five duchies among his heirs.
Late Medieval Sprevania (1256-1440)
In 1256, Tretrid was unified by Ælfric I, who forced the Celanor frontier east of the Nalpians to fall back to a more defensible position at the conclusion of the First Tretridio-Celanor War. As Celanora worked to readjust its military disposition on its frontiers, a wave of relatively small-scale raids on the border between Sprevania and Celanora occurred as petty lords took the opportunity to jockey for power and influence. This soon died down as the new status quo emerged. While Sprevania had never been fully under the control of Celano, its lords now acted largely independently of the Empire even as they paid homage to it.
At the start of the 15th century, amidst a broader conflict within the Luceric Church between the Emperor and the Ecclesiarch, a movement began to gain traction that denounced what it perceived to be the worst excesses of the church. Despite disapproval from Celano and attempts to suppress this movement, it continued to grow and steadily became more radical.
This occurred amidst a larger fragmentation of power within the Empire. Not only was the Emperor’s spiritual authority under threat, so was his temporal authority due to regional nobles acting increasingly independently as a result of multiple factors, including the death of one Emperor in battle against Tretrid in 1397. As imperial power found itself increasingly ineffective even within the Empire itself, the lords of Sprevania gradually stopped even maintaining a fiction of Sprevanian allegiance to Celanora.
It was in this period in the early 15th century that Břelov began to emerge as the center of learning and development in Sprevania. The great castle Zubhrad was built outside Ogarsko at this time too.
Sprevanian Unification (1440-1610)
The Duchy of Břelov ultimately managed to unify Sprevania under Žavoslid rule in 1440 by entering a personal union with Lesníhrad, bringing about a brief peace that ended when a large contingent of clergy, by now filled with reformers, seceded from the Imperial Church in 1451 and formed the Sprevanian Church. In response, Celanora launched a crusade and invaded Sprevania in 1454 in an attempt to reassert both religious and political authority. Seeing an opportunity to further weaken Celanora, Tretrid joined the war on Sprevania’s side and attacked Celanora through Westmark. At the conclusion of the war, the Sprevanian Church was recognized as independent. Břelov would sign a treaty in 1600 formally establishing an alliance with Tretrid, which has held in various forms ever since.
While Sprevania was largely united under the Žavoslids, it was only through the personal union between the duchies. That would change in 1610 with the official restoration of the Kingdom of Sprevania.
Anarchy and Parliamentarianism (1610-1860)
The onset of the War of the Tretridian Succession in 1650 broke Tretridian hegemony in West Novaris and immediately led to the onset of armed conflict as Celanora took the opportunity to invade Westmark. Sprevania took up arms in defense of Westmark, but ultimately Celanora managed to reconquer most of the protectorate with the rest being annexed by Tretrid after the war. The Tretridian Anarchy saw the construction of a number of star forts along the border between Sprevania and Celanora as a response to the significantly greater threat Celanora posed to it, though the gradual recovery of Tretridian military strength eventually saw a partial return to the status quo. The Tretridio-Sprevanian alliance continued to hold throughout the 18th century in regards to West Novaran affairs, though, save for mercenary forces, Sprevania stayed out of the Ulvriktruar Wars of Religion that Tretrid increasingly drew itself into in the later parts of the century.
In 1799, the second son of King Václav IV., Karel, married Crown Princess Eadgyð of Tretrid, reaffirming the alliance between Tretrid and Sprevania. The alliance was put to the test not long after Eadgyð II’s ascension to the Tretridian throne, where, due to a number of factors including lasting territorial disputes and the adoption of a constitution in Tretrid, a coalition led by Celanora and Lapinumbia invaded Tretrid. In response, Sprevania declared war on Celanora in what would become known as the Charter War. With the end of the war in 1809, Sprevanian soldiers returned with novel, even radical ideas about government. Many of these soldiers formed political societies with the often explicit aim of reforming Sprevania to fit with this new liberalism. These political movements applied enough pressure to get the monarchy to adopt a constitution in 1822, which created a parliament, the Sněm, and largely adopted the Tretridian model regarding the authority of king and parliament. Another effect of the ideas brought home by these soldiers returning from the Charter War, inspired by the embryonic nationalism sparked in Tretrid by the conflict, was the need to unite behind a singular Sprevanian national identity. Sprevania for its part was essentially a nation-state, unifying all the Sprevanian people under it, except for two notable exceptions: the north of modern Transnalpia and Gůg. Sprevanian nationalists pushed for the absorption of both territories. Modern-day Transnalpia was under the direct control of Celanora, which made coming to control it very difficult, but Gůg was an independent city-state which was well within Sprevania’s means to annex. The matter of Gůg’s status became such a regularly recurring topic of political debate that it would become known as the “Gůg Question.” However, even as political will to annex Gůg mounted, Celanora declared that it would be guaranteeing Gůg’s sovereignty, ensuring it would stay independent. Sprevania got close to being able to annex both territories in the 1840s, due to the Volscine-Celanoran War, but its ambitions on that front were curtailed this time by Tretrid, which took Transnalpia for itself and wanted to keep Gůg independent as a neutral buffer between Sprevania and Celanora. Sprevania ultimately had to settle for creating a customs union with Gůg.
Karel II. inherited the throne from his father in 1824 as a result of his older brother’s unexpected death from typhoid fever in 1817. Since his son Édmund was both the heir apparent to Sprevania and the crown prince of Tretrid, Sprevania was headed towards a personal union with Tretrid. Édmund pushed the government to adopt measures that would allow for the integration of Sprevania and Tretrid once the time came, and his efforts intensified after inheriting the throne in 1844 as Édmund I.
Tretrido-Sprevanian Union (1860-1922)
Upon the death of Queen Eadgyð II of Tretrid, Édmund I. ascended the throne as King of Tretrid as Eadmund IV, bringing Tretrid and Sprevania into personal union. This happened while Tretrid was fighting the Secceran Crown War against Volscina in an attempt to maintain Cenhelming rule in Seccera. This caused major delays in plans to bring Tretrid and Sprevania together in a real union, especially in regards to military and foreign affairs until the end of the war. The end of the war paved the way for the formation of a common foreign and defense policy between the two kingdoms, coordinated by a government that oversaw military and foreign affairs, as well as customs and trade policy above the individual Tretridian and Sprevanian governments. Transnalpia was made into a condominium between Tretrid and Sprevania some years after due to pressure from the Sprevanian government due to the Sprevanian population in the territory. This brought about the structure of what is commonly known as Tretrid-Sprevania for the next 50 years. Gůg remained independent from Tretrid-Sprevania, but maintained its custom union with what was now the union. It was under this union that contingents of Sprevanian soldiers fought in the Tretridio-Lapinumbian War.
In 1907, West Novaris was drawn into war between primarily the Volscine-Cryrian personal union under Queen Katharine and Celanora and Tretrid-Sprevania opposing it. The resulting ten-year conflict became the bloodiest conflict in Sprevanian history and stirred up major political discontent. After the war, both Tretrid and Sprevania became wracked with political instability due to the damage the war had done to the monarchy’s credibility. In 1922, amidst the background of increasing political deadlock in Tretrid between King Alfric I. (Ælfric II) and the Tretridian Witenagemot, a group of soldiers with the backing of the Sprevanian parliament stormed Břelov Castle and declared Jan z Lesníhrad King Jan IV., upon which the Sněm declared the deposition of Alfric I. and the dissolution of the Tretridian union. So ended 482 years of Žavoslid rule in Sprevania.
Modern Sprevania (1922-2024)
Jan IV.’s accession to the throne was confirmed by the Sněm after he granted a series of concessions that largely did away with the monarchy’s actual political power. In a rare show of unity from the Tretridian government in the 1920s, both the monarchy and the Witenagemot opposed this turn of events, leading Tretrid to threaten war to restore Cenhelming-Žavoslid rule. War was averted in an agreement between the Tretridian government and Sprevania in late 1923 where Sprevania relinquished its shared control of Transnalpia and reaffirmed its alliance while Tretrid agreed not to invade. This was met with mixed reception in Tretrid itself but ultimately only became yet another issue in the spiraling governmental crisis in Cynebury. The Gůg question was ultimately resolved in 1928 after a series of yearslong intensive talks between Sprevania and Gůg. Gůg agreed to join Sprevania under the condition that it would retain a significant degree of autonomy in its domestic and economic affairs.
The following onset of the Novaran Cold War dominated Sprevanian foreign policy for much of the rest of the 20th century, with Sprevania throwing its lot in with its ally Tretrid. With Transnalpia becoming independent in 1927 and said independence becoming politically feasible to recognize in 1933 with the signature of the Basic Treaty between Tretrid and Transnalpia, Sprevania also sought close relations with its new southern neighbor. Transnalpia, for its part, accepted this with somewhat less reservations that it did with Tretrid, though it still sought to act independently of the two countries and to remain neutral in the Novaran Cold War.
With the end of the Novaran Cold War at the start of the 2000s, Sprevania diverted a significant amount of its defense budget into other initiatives. However, as a result of the Correvan crisis and the downturn of relations between Tretrid and Volscina, Sprevania reaffirmed its alliance with Tretrid and has begun reprioritizing defense.
