» Sat May 28, 2011 10:21 am High Rock: the Kingdom of Splinters
An exploration of the troubled province of the Bretons, as written by Voltaire du Guesclin
High Rock has for long been known for its many independent lands, each willing to fight for its freedom nearly to the death. The Warp of the West solved this, apparently; however, upon closer look we will see that nothing had changed, and even the intervention of the Divines has done little to stop the squabbling between the many rulers. It took the genius of Elysana to create the exterior of a united kingdom controlling High Rock, but it remains only that ? an exterior, something made painfully obvious by the recent events in the province of the Bretons, namely the break-off of Daggerfall, Jehanna and Farrun, leaving Wayrest for the Dominion and the Nordic Confederation respectively.
It has come to my attention, however, that many of my colleagues just tend to take this state of High Rock as a given, and do not seem interested in exploring why is life so in the Bretic homeland. I too, perhaps, would've left this matter and instead continued to write articles about individual lands and cities; however one thing attracted my attention, making a deeper exploration of High Rock's interior urgently required in my eyes ? the forming of the Nordic Confederation.
How is it that the Nords, known for their city-states perhaps as well as the Bretons, managed to form into a single state, at very least as stable as the Aldmeri Dominion? Skyrim has proved itself capable of launching invasions at little cost of internal stability or safety, while Lord Woodborne's recent expedition into the homeland of the Nords and the following outbreak of rebellions in High Rock has shown that Wayrest is far from being capable to carry wars into other provinces, although acting quite well when on the defence.
This work of mine I have broken down into two parts. The first part will compare the Nordic Confederation and the Kingdom of Wayrest, attempting to find out why Nordic unity has been achieved when Bretic unity is still but a speck in the horizon. The second part will discuss what has caused this state of affairs in High Rock.
Without a further ado, then, I present to you the first part, of chapter if my reader would wish to call it so, of my work:
The Kingdom of Wayrest and the Nordic Confederation: similarity, or rather the lack of thereof
Skyrim and High Rock have quite a lot in common from the first glance. Both are, while not enormously large, large enough to find quite a lot of cultural differences going from the east to the west of the province. Both have gone through a period of great internal unrest, when the province could only be represented as a single body on maps portraying the demography of races. Both have undergone great difficulty while uniting.
However, if one cares to look deeper, then it can be easily noticed that the two provinces, in fact, are very different. One thing High Rock never had which Skyrim was able to enjoy was an inter-provincial, united empire whose centre was Skyrim, an empire where power was held by a native, nationalistic government. Unlike the Bretons, the Nords had something to look back to when Skyrim was re-emerging from the 'dark age' of warring city-states; they had a glorious past, in which they could claim to be combatants against Elven abuse and tyranny towards the Mannish races. The emergence of the Aldmeri Dominion as a new 'Elven threat' has, no doubt, given Nordic efforts towards unity a spur, especially in the face of the decline of the Empire and thus the lack of a strong Mannish champion to stand up to the Dominion.
This mentality of acting as the protector of Mannish races against the Elves is, no doubt, one of the most important factors in Skyrim's uniting. The Bretons, on the other hand, have no such factor; their people cannot boast any great feats as a completely united entity. While different parts of High Rock have performed all sorts of deeds, this has only increased the division of the province, as these individual deeds only created a feeling in the lands that performed those deeds that they should be the rightful rulers of High Rock, not a sense of strength in unity as with the Nords.
One more major difference between Skyrim and High Rock is that the division in Skyrim does not go as deep as with the Bretons. In Skyrim, only the largest cities formed a sense of identity; the smaller cities, towns and villages never had enough power to think about becoming independent. This could be explained by the nature of Skyrim's unevenly spread population ? due to the harshness of the land, most of the Nords settled around major cities, ports in particular, where the chances of survival are higher than further off. The cities are major trading centres, and thus there is rarely a shortage of food there; people living around the cities hope for support in harsher winters, and thus become dependent from the cities, preventing the forming of their own identity.
In High Rock, however, the land is far from being as harsh as in Skyrim. Although geography impacts High Rock also, it does so in a negative way when speaking about unity. Averagely, the soil in High Rock is far more fertile than in Skyrim; people can settle in far more places than in Skyrim, and usually even the villages are self-sustaining, allowing them to think about independence from the major cities as their survival does not depend from the wishes of the kings and lords as much as in Skyrim. Such obstacles as thick forests, high mountains and vast distances shield the minor settlements at least somewhat from the wrath of their supposed sovereigns, furthering the forming of separate identities even in pitifully small towns.
Thus, one could conclude that the lack of unity in Skyrim can be found only amongst the highest ranks of the nobility, where it is tempered by the strong sense of their place in history and the fact that at least some independence is possible for the most influential nobility with the country still remaining functional; on the other hand, in High Rock it goes all the way down to petty barons, with nothing to compensate for the want of independence; unlike in Skyrim, the past only serves to drive the Bretons further away from each other. While in Skyrim, the upper part of the feudal triangle is only split in several ways, the Bretic triangle is split in as many ways as there are nobles.
A reader may now, after this look at the Bretic society, ask the obvious question: why is High Rock so? This is a question that not many have really asked and I shall attempt to answer it in the next part of my work:
High Rock: the Problem and its causes
The answer to the question of High Rock has two parts. I chose to start with geography, which is quite varied in High Rock, starting with rather rocky beaches of the western-most shore and ending with wide open plains and coniferous woods in the east.
High Rock's landscape is not the best for travelling ? in the east, if one wishes to enter High Rock, the traveller has to find a way through the forests that lead out of Skyrim, covering even the beginning of the long Jerall mountain range that extends almost without interruption from north-eastern Cyrodiil where it connects with the Velothi Mountains to south-eastern Hammerfall and High Rock, where there is a gap between it and the Wrothgarian and Dragontail mountain ranges. The mountains aren't as closely bunched together as in, for example, Cyrodiil, and the further south you would travel, the sparser they become, eventually turning into the rolling hills of eastern High Rock.
Here, connection is also not the best ? there is a vast steppe-like plain from Evermore, where the Wrothgarians start, to nearly Farrun, interrupted only by the afore-mentioned sparse mountains that still count as belonging to the Jerall range. For a small party of men travelling at an average speed, it takes approximately a week to cover the whole plain and an army would take longer, possibly much more so, taking into account the bad shape of roads in High Rock on the average for some time now, due to the unwillingness or inability of the local rulers to maintain them everywhere. This also prevents the relative unity found in Cyrodiil, where even greater distances are compensated for by excellent roads.
The Wrothgarian Mountains separate the east from the west, marking also the place where culture splits. This mountain range also inconveniences anyone who would wish to pass from the east to the west, and as a result the messengers from, say, Farrun are not very common in a western city like Wayrest. Already a reader can begin to see where I am going with this ? the east, being unable to reach Wayrest for support that would come within a reasonable amount of time, becomes far more independent from it. At a higher level division already surfaces due to natural obstacles. However, the landscape of High Rock I believe creates even greater division than this generalized 'east and west' example.
Further west, the forests again thicken, although this time instead of coniferous ones, we find leafy woods. This forest creates a similar effect to the plain of eastern High Rock ? whereas there, communication between cities takes a long time due to long distances, forcing them to become self-sustaining since help from their sovereigns is unlikely to reach them in time, the forests of the west hinder travel perhaps even more so, making travel for small groups difficult and for large armies ? living hell. Another feature of these lush forests is that they give outlaws a good place to hide in, making travel even more unappealing and prompting the forming of local militias to protect against attacks of more courageous and numerous bandits.
A fine example of the effect of the western forest is Dwynnen. Many consider the realm to be very backward and old fashioned; it is almost completely absent not only from Tamrielic politics, something usual for a Bretic duchy of a smaller calibre, but even from High Rock's own politics; and all of that could be blamed upon the realm's position nearly in the heart of the enormous western forest.
Geography is not the only obstacle for Bretic unity, but it is the foundation for another part of the problem. Given the geography, the settlements of High Rock are independent enough for the larger ones to start thinking about bigger things than matters of local importance. When they see the major cities' dealings, their rulers, quite naturally upon noticing the good that these dealings with the outside give, wish to be able to make such dealings themselves. A struggle begins for importance and power.
Daggerfall, Wayrest and to a lesser extent Jehanna are quite active members of Tamrielic politics. As a result, they enjoy increased trade and the help of allies in times of war ? only one side of the coin, true, but the only one that the lesser lords of High Rock can see, as they can't know what diplomatic wars are fought outside their province, or what efforts have to be put into maintaining major, inter-provincial alliances. Many of them start envying the King of Daggerfall, the Queen of Wayrest or the Grand Duke of Jehanna depending on the place they inhabit in High Rock; the rather childish principle of 'If they can do it, why can't I?' is called upon, and the struggle for access to the outside world begins, since it is a matter where the three aforementioned cities have a monopoly, in particular Wayrest.
Once again I could compare the situation of High Rock to that of Skyrim, where no such craving for power can be found; mostly because the Nords, with their lesser division, can afford to let each city have a say in larger matters. This removes the element of envy. However, this would not be very practical in High Rock; due to the many conflicting interests of all the different dukes, barons and lords, next to nothing could be decided if Elysana's successors wished to turn Wayrest into a constitutional monarchy.
Although I would not call it a different part of the problem altogether, another branch of this element of the problem is the envy of the northern-more cities, particularly those in land, of the rich trade of the Iliac Bay. Most of the cities along the Bay, even the smallest ports, receive a similar amount of trade to the greatest trading centres of northern High Rock; this can be explained by the fact that most if not all trade goes into High Rock through the Iliac, not the north where only Nordic merchants are ensured visitors, and even they can sometimes choose to travel into the Bay.
With the amount of trade going into the Iliac, the settlements not positioned along the Bay become spiteful; while the rulers of these settlements will not always admit it, they wish for such a position of luxury as well, creating even more intensive brushes between the inland or northern coast and Iliac cities.
This, then, paints (or so I hope) a rather accurate view of High Rock's interior and the problems anyone intending to unite the province should face. Hopefully, this will not be my final work on the subject, and even if it should be so, I hope to have succeeded in rousing the interest of my colleagues and spark a debate or two.
-Voltaire du Guesclin
