Gildwall

The Kingdom of the Free Marches (commonly the Free Marches') is a sovereign state located off the European continent in the North Sea. The Free Marches is an island nation composed of about 170 islands, of which only about 35 are inhabited. With an estimated population of 43,000 in 2014, the Free Marches is the 47th largest nation in Europe by population, and the 215th largest in the world. The population, along with a combined land territory of only 947 square miles, makes the Free Marches one of the world's smallest nations.

The Free Marches is a unitary constitutional monarchy in which the Monarch holds the position of head of state whilst an elected Chanter serves as the head of government. The Chanter holds the power within the executive body known as the Chantry, a collection of Orders which are responsible for the administration of governance and services to the population. Along with their position over the Chantry, the Chanter is the head of the Congress, which, in respect to the Monarch, creates and amends enactments in order to suit the needs of the population. The Monarch holds the power to reorganize the Chantry with the approval of the Congress, dissolve the Congress with the approval of a direct public vote, give assent to enactments which have been passed by the Congress, and approve the appointments of the leaders of the Orders by the Chanter. This political system of democratic representation has existed only since 1932, but the Monarchy dates as far back as the 7th century.

The Free Marches were originally settled in the 13th century by the English-speaking followers of Samson the Holy, considered to be the descendant of the goddess Flemeth. In the middle of the 15th century, a split developed between the followers of the descendants of Samson, causing a large civil war which would last into the 17th century. After nearly 300 years of conflict, the two sides were unified under a single throne again by Carver the Great. Throughout the late 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, the Free Marches remained stalwart and independent to both British and Swedish influence, retaining its own sovereignty and preferring to remain isolated in foreign affairs. With its naval fleet made obsolete by the widespread use of steam power near the end of the 19th century, the Free Marches began to find itself in unrest as a major source of national pride was surpassed in technology by foreign navies. After a failed attempt to enter the world market during the early 20th century by Garreth IV, civil unrest resulted in the transition of powers from the Monarchy to the equally old Chantry. Global political tensions in the middle of the 20th century found the Free Marches beginning to enter a state of isolation for a second time, but the discovery of petroleum in Free Marcher waters in 1972 created new economic prosperity in the islands. Under the leadership of the democratic government, the Free Marches invested profits from the petroleum trade into the modernization of the islands and the creation of sustainable methods of energy, housing, and food production. As of 2014, the Free Marches is considered to be a developed country, and the nation consistently ranks high in international polls of civil freedoms and equality.

The economy of the Free Marches is largely made up of agriculture, fishing, and tourism, with the extraction of petroleum resources primarily being handled by the government in order to maintain a stable, sustainable economy after the currently explored petroleum reserves are depleted. Strong government intervention in the petroleum industry has allowed for the other facets of the economy to remain the strong in their practices. Considered to be a socialist state, the populace of the Free Marches retains strong ethical codes of communal labour, non-material motivation, and stalwart self reliance. As a result, industries which provide food for the nation are the largest as a percentage of the economy, with fishing and farming making up 38% of all jobs. The fertile soil of the Orklands and the large catches of the Shetlands produce two dissimilar economic zones throughout the nation as a whole, but codependent development has kept the nation's two main island chains unified economically. Renewable energy is also a prominent feature of the Free Marcher economy, an industry which has only just recently began development. Wind and tidal power provides the total usage needs of the population, with wind providing about 65% and tidal providing about 35%. Overall, the Free Marches holds a high standard of living, but the socialist structure of the government intervention in the economy means that most luxuries remain expensive in the nation.

On a standpoint of foreign relations, the Free Marches has remained very neutral in intentional throughout its history. Because of the imperial powers of Britain and Sweden, the Free Marches have only just recently began to play a role in the global economy, though many citizens do not wish to become reliant on the international market. With very isolationist economic policies in hand, the Free Marches is a member of the United Nations and an observer of the Council of Europe, and the nation refrains from activity in any other features of global politics.

Etymology
The English phrase Free Marches was developed by citizens of Britain who viewed the followers of Samson as people marching their way to a perceived freedom that would be found in the North. When Samson and his followers arrived at the present day nation, they took on the name Free Marchers and formally declared the two island chains to be the Free Marches, or, the place where they had marched to be free. The full name Kingdom of the Free Marches derives from the status of the monarchy over the Free Marches, and the term was officiated by the Constitutional enactments passed in 1932.

The March of the Free and the Settlement of the isles
Sometime during the 6th century, an Anglo-Saxon by the name of Wessar the Old was said to have been born to the dragon goddess Flemeth. Wessar is said to have been a chieftain of high repute in his local area around present day Sheffield, and he is believed to have conquered a large number of polities which had formed in the lands surrounding his. Wessar considered himself to be a god, like his supposed mother, and thus, a cult of worshipers emerged around his and his mother's image. Even though Wessar passed in the middle of the 7th century, and the last Pagan ruler in present day England died in 686, the cult that he had founded lived on with his descendants in secrecy. The creation of an organized religious structure in the middle of the 8th century known as the Chantry and the codification of the values of the religion led to the eventual discovery of the religion by the Christian rulers of England in the 9th century. The persecution of the practitioners of the religion led to an even deeper dive into secrecy, and it was not until the end of the 12th century did followers of the religion, at the time known as Draconism, begin to surface again. In this, the descendant of Wessar known as Samson led a group of about 4,560 followers North in what became known as the March of the Free. Along the way, Samson recruited even more followers, and some entire localities dispersed from their locations in order to follow Samson to freedom in the North.

By the time that the Free Marchers had reached the isles of the north, the group had grown to around 6,000 members. At first, the followers settled primarily in the fertile soiled Orklands, though eventually, larger numbers of people began to spread into the more northerly Shetlands. The settlers would displace the previous inhabitants of the islands, if any in their locale, and then would build small communities centered around temples known as abbeys. The small communities would become the backbone of Free Marcher society, and the development of two separate economies along with a diverging culture would also form a rift in the stability of the newly found society as a whole. The death of Samson in 1216 saw the beginning of a demise which would eventually split the nation into a violent and bloody civil war.

Civil war
The year 1463 saw the death of Alafer II, and the heirless king caused a dispute in who should succeed on the throne. The citizens of the Shetlands found that the young Garreth I was a direct descendant of Samson as a cousin of Alafer, and thus Garreth held the claim to the throne. However, the citizens of the Orklands supported Willard, an older cousin of Alafer who held a much less distinct lineage to Samson. The dispute would culminate in the Free Marcher Civil War, a violent conflict that would last over 300 years into the late 18th century. The first stages of the war were based upon assaults of the main cities on each of the archipelagos, but eventually, after the continuous destruction of those cities and their fortifications, fighting became entirely rural. At several times, the English attempted to intervene in the war in support of the Orklands, but each time they were not permitted to by the islanders themselves, as they retained a strong sense of independence which contributes to the typical values of a contemporary Free Marcher Finally, in 1784, after over 300 years of back and forth fighting, Carver I, a descendant of the Shetland-supported Garreth I, made a decisive victory against his Orkland counterpart, and secured the entirety of the Orklands for the Shetland claim. Carver was hailed as a hero in the Shetlands, bringing an end to the centuries old conflict that had plagued the nation, but he was met with much less joy in the Orklands.

Foreign trade and isolation
In 1788, after he had secured several loans from the British and Swedish governments, Carver I began a plan to reconstruct the nation into a state which would allow for it to remain independent of foreign control. To appease the citizens in the south, Carver moved the capital to Kirkwall, where he put much of the finances he had acquired into rebuilding large portions of the city and the acquisition of a large merchant fleet. The North Trading Company was established as a vessel of trade between the Scandinavian countries and the New World, resulting in large profits for the Monarchy as its company became the sole middleman of Scandinavian colonial trade. The loans from the British and Swedish governments were paid off in full in 1856, and the continued transactions with the North Trading Company brought a large amount of wealth to the Free Marches, much of which was put into the development of the islands as a whole. However, the end of the 1870s saw the rapid acceleration in the use of steam technologies within ocean-going vessels, and competition from private, domestic Scandinavian companies found the North Trading Companies eventual decline. By 1895, the North Trading Company was put out of business, a move by the government which worried many people in the Free Marches as they wished to remain economically independent of foreign intervention.

In 1904, the government decided to launch a policy of economic and political isolation in order to secure sovereignty in the face of British power. While not entirely popular, the policy did work to some degree, and a level of economic independence was retained. However, the sale of luxuries in urban areas and the growing standard of exotic products found a great deal of divide between the wishes of the public and those of the monarchy. After the disastrous economic consequences of World War I in Europe, the government attempted to reform the North Trading Company as a method of redevelopment. The attempt resulted in failure by 1930 as world trade slowed due to massive economic depression in both Europe and the Americas, and many citizens became angry with how the government had handled the situation.

Governmental reformation and Contemporary age
In the hopes of avoiding a second civil conflict, Garreth IV decided to succumb to the popular demands of government reformation with the Transition of Power Act, 1932. The enactment handed a large amount of executive political power to the Chantry and created the Congress in order to better represent the wishes of the populace within the government. The new administration was fairly effective at salvaging the remains of the attempted-reformed North Trading Company, striking a deal with a private Danish firm that would refund around 80% of the monarch's investment into the reformation venture. With the new funds, the administration further built upon the local economy by creating stronger investments into fishing and agriculture. World War II and the subsequent Cold War created further calls from the public to draw into greater political seclusion. In 1964, the discovery of major petroleum fields within the North Sea brought international interest to the Free Marches, but the hands-on economic stance of the nonpartisan government kept foreign intervention out of the local economy and Free Marcher maritime claims on the North Sea. In 1972, a large deposit of petroleum was discovered by a government-backed venture, and a large portion of the income was put into the modernization of the nation itself. Better infrastructure and public facilities were created, along with long-term investments into local industries. The result was the heightening of the typical standard of living at the cost of an entirely free economy, a sacrifice which the vast majority of citizens decided to make.

In 1996, the government began to make large investments in renewable energy, phasing out dated coal-based facilities with wind and tidal power stations by 2008. That same year, a global economic crisis brought some domestic disorder with the fears of the populace at a destabilized world market. Despite these fears, the Free Marches retained little to no economic damage from the crisis.