L'anthologie Dystopique des Héros

Skiednis

AU: Historical fiction with a dash of Fairy Tail.

Ishgar. A densely populated continent in the eastern half of the globe. It was composed of a variety of kingdoms that bordered one another and the seas surrounding the continent, for it was shaped like a peninsula, jutted out of an unexplored supercontinent. 

In ancient times, Ishgar was dominated by one civilization called the Roman Republic. It was founded when an angry mob of patricians overthrew the last king of Rome because, he allegedly raped a nobleman's daughter. Mortified, she committed suicide to regain her family's honor. You see to the nobility of ancient Rome, the family is the foundation of the self. If you did anything that dishonors yourself, you're dishonoring your entire family. 

After the king was toppled from power, the band of patricians formed a body that functioned as the country's leaders called the Senate, led by a consul and proconsul. Thereby, Rome as a kingdom fell, replaced by a republic. For centuries, they've flourished economically thanks to trade with foreign kingdoms. An economic boom has led to another boom, only demographically speaking. As Rome expanded throughout what is today Pergrande, foreign peoples were culturally integrated into the rising "empire". Politically, the government has maintained a positive relationship with primarily the patricians. But the common plebians were allienated, with almost no influence when a Senator or a general ran for consul.

Sin was the first neighboring country to fall under Pergrandean control without a fight, followed by the island of Enca. But the latter had to be won as it was controlled by a culturally Phoenician people called the Carthaginians. They were a mercantile empire that established trading outposts from their capital in the city of Carthage, located in the south of the relatively unexplored continent of Giltena. So three wars were fought for control called the Punic Wars. The Republic was almost destroyed by a general named Hannibal Barca, but he was defeated which was the wars' climax. From that point on, Rome defeated the Carthaginians time and time again until they built a navy then destroyed their capital in the aftermath of the last Punic War. So the Carthaginian Empire fell and the Romans dominated the seas used by Giltena, Ishgar, and Alakitasia. Enca was absorbed as a territory in the Republic, but it soon started to slowly crumble to pieces. A general named Julius Caesar took control of the capital, Rome in Pergrande and a series of civil wars were fought until his assassination by an angry mob of Senators. 

Then his great-grandnephew, Octavian reignited the civil war when he fought against Marc Anthony for power until the latter was defeated in the islands of Caelum. He and his lover, the Queen of the country, committed suicide and the country was absorbed into the newly founded Roman Empire.  With him at the helm as its first emperor Augustus, he established a family dynasty of emperors called the Julio-Claudians. For years, the emperors that succeeded him came from his family, but it went into extinction following the death of Nero, the last male descendant of Augustus. But the Empire continued to expand and flourish even with the change of imperial families in an era called the Pax Romana or Roman Peace. It should've fell in the X200s and it almost did, but a man named Diocletian became Emperor, thereby saving it from destruction during the Crisis of the Third Century. As the centuries passed, the Empire had reached its apex and stopped expanding, instead defended their conquered lands from hostile neighbors like the Germanic peoples beyond the eastern border of Ishgar with another continent as well as the Persian-speaking Alvarez Empire in the western continent, Alakitasia. 

They were the Romans' rival of the seas that the three continents shared, so they fought each other on occasion in a series of naval wars. But these wars weakened them both to hostile invasion by nomadic peoples. In the Romans perspective, it was the Germans that attacked during the lull in between wars against Alvarez. But in the latter's case, a series of raids and full-scale invasions were led by a tribe of pastoralists called the Hepthalites or the White Huns, previously unknown until the first raid. After centuries of fighting each other and the "barbarians", the Roman Empire broke into two empires while the Alvarez Empire was weakened significantly. The Eastern Romans of Byzantium or Constantinople continued to fight the Persians, while their western counterparts stagnated and crumbled away. Then in X476 the west finally collapsed, leaving the east as the sole successor state of the Roman Empire. For centuries, they continuously fought the Persians until the Alvarez Empire was conquered by another people called the Saracens. People there that used to practice Zoroastrianism were forced to either convert to Islam, or be put to the sword. Slowly it became an Islamic caliphate, when the Emperor supposedly converted and became the first caliph of the Alvarez Caliphate. From that moment on, they continued to expand further into Alakitasia, absorbing neighboring kingdoms and city-states then forcing them to convert to Islam. Meanwhile the Byzantines were conquered by the Ottomans, a Turkic tribe of Muslim nomads that migrated from a neighboring continent in X1453. They built an empire called the Pergrandean Empire, but it was officially known as the Ottoman Caliphate. 

They expanded their borders to absorb their neighbors one by one, until Fiore was absorbed. So now the caliphate dominated Ishgar and fought the Alvarez Caliphate for dominance of the seas for centuries, until X1920 when the last caliph was overthrown then executed. The Pergrandean Empire became known as the Pergrandean Kingdom, when the supposed killer of the dead caliph was crowned king. A constitution was drafted that limited his authority, unlike in the previous Ottoman Caliphate. And so peace returned to the world and a balance of power was created between the Pergrandean Kingdom and the Alvarez Caliphate that lasts to this day. They all lived happily ever after. Or didn't they?