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Historical Brief

Àlmosi Kingdoms

At various times, as many as two dozen nations have occupied present-day Hàromszék.   Migrations and conquests have swept across the territory, leaving bunches and pockets of related and unrelated peoples.   The Àlmosi have been here for well over a millenium; the Niveskian forbears of the Mongral tribe, for as much as 540 years.   Loirisians started showing up on Hàromszéki shores in the early 1200's.   Intermarriage has diluted some of the ethnic distinctions, while religion or language has sharpened differences.


Hàromszék, the name itself, is Àlmosi.  Roughly translated to Ingallish it would mean "three chairs", or "three seats" (as in seats of power), or in some dialects "three saddles".  Today's distinct Àlmosi tongues would spell those terms differently, or include different diacritics, but all currently accept "Hàromszék" as the proper spelling for the national name.

modern 3-chairs device --those are chairs or thrones, not the much more common Loirisian fleur-de-lis heraldic device
archaic use of 3-chairs device on county coat of arms

"Three chairs" has been taken to refer to a tripartite ruling arrangement common in early Àlmosi clans.   A later implication of the "three seats" meaning would be the six or seven Àlmosi realms that were ruled from sets of three cities -- confederations in three cases, city-hopping rulers in the other four.   "Three saddles" is an emblem seen on some old Àlmosi crests of the 500's - 700's, probably referencing mounted fighters defending the city / county / realm.   A literary "saddles" reference fits modern Hàromszék's love for horses, referring to three occupations underpinning Hàromszéki society -- mounted warrior, mounted traveler, and mounted farmer.


The first formation of an Hàromszéki nation as such was the confederation of tribes 120 years ago.  Each held a specific territory, yet some were not even a majority in their own domain.  All the groups had plenty of members scattered through the whole six-tribe confederate territory.  One area was held in common, in recognition of its common importance - The River Territory, along the upper reaches of the Dolni Jakobrieka.  From this nucleus of central federal authority, attempts were made to unify the whole of Hàromszék.

old tribal confederation of Hàromszék

Flag of the Six-Tribe Confederation, circa 1430: 

The attempts failed to keep anybody happy.  Everybody wanted to be the boss of something, yet all the disparate groups were intermingled. Outright civil war never broke out, unless you count the ferocious disputes in the Federation Parliment and Supreme Council.  While the tribes all had relationships of some kind with each other, their differences were too deep and too dearly held to allow any kind of real unification.

tiny old flag of Hàromszék

Elvis Unis Plurbum, a brilliant statesman or a demented crackpot depending on who you asked, suggested the layered system we enjoy now.   His concept was "Fine - let every group run the whole thing!"  Coming after the fifteenth straight day of fourteen-hour days of acrimonious debate, this suggestion generated a parlimentary chamber full of dumbfounded looks, speechless politicians, and a dawning realization that it just might work.  Certainly most other forms of power sharing had been tried and found lacking.

founding father Elvis

E. Unis Plurbum, Father of the Hàromszéki Confederation 

The confederation of tribes had at least generated a kind of shared identity.   Fractious though they were, the tribes and clans tended to stick together under outside pressure.   "We may practice with weapons on each other, yet at one poke from outside, all lances point outwards."   Reinforcing this tenuous identity remains the fact that at some level practically all in Hàromszék are cousins.   Genealogy here is not reserved for little old ladies, it is a national blood sport.

Shared ownership has become deeply entrenched in Hz society.    Everybody gets some of the perks of ownership, and some of the responsibility.     

We have a shared history.   Sure, the Mongrals lorded it over the Àlmosi back in the 1100's.  No big deal.   Both our tribes had to put up with the Alpàrd trade hegemony a hundred years later.   And even they wound up joining the rest of us when the Zîrkænnan Zealotic Church tried to take a slice out of our territory.   The Yom have wandered all over Niveria.   We say they're more mongrel than the Mongral are -- Yom count Kanjiri blood, Niveskan ties, Ingallish trader kin, Nordic genes.   Some swear there's Emirate Mounist forebears too -- they sure can horse-trade with the best of the Saphirian or Fixatian Sheiks.

We have individual histories too.  If there were a "typical" Hàromszéki history curriculum, it would include Scandian history, Hz Confederation history, and then history of a specific tribe and its republic.  Then there would be the differences inherent in covering the nuances of history from the viewpoints of the multitudes of languages represented within each tribal republic.   Then of course the poor student would have to cover material from his or her own province, and own county and city.  The advent of ScandiaNet -- distance learning and on-line publishing -- has been a boon for students and publishers alike.  History texts used to be all short-run, limited edition books which would be so expensive they would be kept a long time.   Too long.  Now History can run right up to the present.

Internal Relations

Two main groups of Loirisians live in Hàromszék.   Both are part of the Loirisian language republic, though their cultures and dialects have differences.   The larger group, the "native" Loirisians (immigrants, just from longer ago in history) is strongest in the coastal areas where the original Loirisian traders and immigrants settled.

The smaller group, perhaps 30% of the whole, originally settled in the areas that were until a few years ago Tãeroçese enclaves on the Zîrkæ coast (Now once again the Unified Kingdom of Rajanan).   At one point, some hundred and ten years ago, The Tãeroçese governors of those areas ran them out.   No formal expulsion was pursued, it was just made Highly Desirable To Leave.   To keep their language and culture, most Loirisian speakers there decided to emigrate.   Most came to Hàromszék, some went to other Loirisian communities worldwide.   These new "Tãeroçese Loirisians" had picked up cultural elements of both the Tãeroçese society (rulers of those enclaves for at least 70 years before this exodus) and of the native Zîrkæn and Rajanani folk there.   Their Loirisian is intelligible to the other Hz Loirisian speakers, but barely.   Their music, food, dress, and occupational choices all differ from the "Loirisian majority".   ("Majority" is relative - remember the whole Alpàrd tribe, mostly primary-Loirisian speakers, totals just 8% of Hàromszék ).   This smaller group is dispersed pretty widely throughout Hz, in their own little communities among other the other folk.

Tãeroç enclaves south of Hz - now Rajanan

Complicating matters is the fact that Loirisian is the most common "second tongue" for Hàromszéki.   And Àlmosi who learn Loirisian from "Tãeroçese Loirisians" (commonly termed 'roç-eurs and 'roç-ettes) stray further from "standard Loirisian" than do, say, Yom who learn it in Alpàrd schools.   This dichotomy is representative of the differences among citizens of a given layer-republic.   In some foreign nations, citizens united by geography may be divided by language.   In Hàromszék, citizens tend to be united (if still not unified) by language, with tensions among the group driven by other concerns, like location or occupational differences.   Cross-republic alliances show up, with representatives from mountain provinces in, say the Magor Republic siding with reps from mountain provinces in Yom or Mongral legislatures rather than their linguistic compatriots from the coast or tribal peers from the plains.

Hàromszék has developed more political parties per capita than any nation on Scandia, save perhaps Andrea (where some claim each citizen constitutes a party of one).   Paradoxically, we have less strife than most.   Large factors in this peacableness are the typical requirement that government action requires a super-majority (some 64%, some 76%) in parliment (or city council, or county board), and that major questions on a ballot have to have "none of the above" as an alternative.   When "Mr. None" wins an election or a supermajority fails, the office goes vacant, or the action doesn't happen, or the regulation is set aside.   This results in less government, not more, despite the multitude of governing bodies.   Hàromszék does quite well with frequent doses of government inaction or absence.   People "rule themselves" well overall.   We were brought up that way: an Auntie Zuzka saying, common to all the Hàromszéki peoples, is "Boy, you behave yourself, or I'll be behavin' you!"

External Relations

We are quite aware that this system looks like way too much freedom, interspersed with periods of anarchy.   Our government (and occasional lack of it) particularly irks neighboring Zîrkæ, who have a much more tightly run society.   They occasionally accuse us of degenerating into total anarchy (no offense meant to the Andreans - this is an offhanded Zîrkæn comment).   Having this said about us doesn't bother us a bit.   In fact, most of what folks abroad say about us doesn't bother us, even when they travel to visit us.   Comme-ci, comme-ça.

In keeping with a liberal attitude about international commentary on Hàromszék, Hàromszék officially keeps our mouth shut about other folks' affairs.   We pay attention, since our business relationships are affected by political shenanigans, but we seldom do anything provocative abroad.   There really is a Department of Deploring to limit outgoing inflammatory rhetoric.   There's no equivalent for incoming, though it's rumored we also have a Department of Ignoring.   We don't, we just act like we do.

The historical application of these national characteristics is that we run our own course. We maintain political neutrality.   We trade with differing degrees of openness with others, as befits the distinction between friends and acquaintances.   We have lived like this since even before the first Six-Tribe Hàromszéki Confederation began.   A simplistic explanation is that we have always had plenty of internal politics to occupy our attention, so we haven't had to become involved in other nations'.

 

 

 

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