User blog comment:Doctor Ibrahim/Ask the Doc and his Family!/@comment-30014014-20161217054210/@comment-28358106-20161218023406

"Oh, my." Adelaide's expression becomes somewhat melancholy.

"An involved question indeed. I will have to truncate my answer."

She folds her hands. "Nearly seventy-five years ago, I was still a member of the Demon Lord's court. I am the second cousin to the Fourteenth Lilim of the Maou.  It was my job as a member of the Radical Faction to chronicle and categorize the various swathes of land, and judge their susceptibility to invasion by the Faction by political boundary rather than physical.  That was when I noticed this peninsula.  It went by a different name back then, and was nothing like it is today.  The Elves to the north feuded with the Dwarves of the northeast mountain ranges, and the two nations to the north of them, Etrugia and Nilhasse, began a war of ascension brought on by the King of Etrugia failing to produce an heir.  This was due to the King taking Mamono mistresses, and it devolved into a war brokered by the Order bolstering Nilhasse with their Inquisition."

She stands and walks to the window, looking out with her hands behind her back. "The Prime Minister of this city, Lord Marmaral, began suing for peace by using mercenaries to round up conscripts for the northern war. That was supposed to buy them out of the conflict, but it could not last."

She pauses. "I watched it all happen. I watched it unfold from the Demon Lord's court, and something came over me.  I knew that as soon as Marmaral had bled the countryside dry with innocents, Etrugia amd Nilhasse would turn their sights south, and they would annihilate everything that was in their path.  Here, where one of the last Old Growth forests existed, still full of Elves, as it had been for thousands of years.  The Fatherhalls, the last of the great Dwarven Holds.  The Ranges here, where the Centaurs still roamed free.  I refused to sit idly by and watch them be destroyed.  I knew they had to be united."

She turns. "I approached one of the last of the great Dukes of the city, Duke Richter Ferdinand Grey. He still had the support of most of the free Barons and their small armies, and had been struggling against corruption of the Prime Minister's rule, because they relied on the citizenry for their crops to feed the armies they still had.  I approached Duke Grey and convinced him that the Minister had to be overthrown and the provinces united to stave off the impending invasion from the north.  He took a great risk in trusting me."

She turns and places a hand on a shelf. "Once he had, I used that proof of action to convince the Elves and Dwarves to cease their petty fighting long enough to unite. The proviso was that I allow the Dwarves to build underneath the very city we had conquered, to make their great kingdom, and have the benefit of our protection from above---with the added benefit of the vrich veins beneath, which do not exist in such abundance anywhere else in the Peninsula.  Once they did, the Elves were convinced that the Dwarves were no longer interested in fighting them, and they too joined.  The Centaurs, seeing our growing strength, pledged their lives in servitude to the Capitol, simply because their noble natures drive them to just causes.  And finally, being traditional allies of the Elves, the Harpies from the west kingdom of Iveria joined as well."

She returns and sits back down. "The provinces thus allied signed the declaration of our mutual alliance, the Free States Charter. Other provinces exist within the realm that did not sign the charter, such as Frossenbjan, but we left them as independent kingdoms, free to do as they chose.  When the Charter was signed and the new realm named as Whitemarch, I married the Duke and remained its ruler, and have been since the days of my stewardship of those darker times."

She gestures. "There are other, more complicated facets to the story, but that is it, in the whole." She smiles.