The Summer Promises, 991 Elections & Zeitenwende Plan

The Falcorian Queendom is hundreds of years old, the first Falcorian states and statelets were older yet. Even older are the Falcorians themselves, but the Falcorian nation is young; the first thoughts of a Falcorian Nation were heard in the late 930’s, sprouting in the emerging industrial centers, advanced by liberal thinkers and spread by merchants into the countryside.

But in the still mostly feudal, rural, and agricultural country it took much longer for nationalism to take hold than in other, more industrialized, parts of Griffonia; although there was a certain sense of shared identity among the Falcorians, in most of Falcor it was much weaker than other national identities. This was compounded by the peace and unity of pre-972 Griffonia. There simply weren’t any groups of others or enemies that made sense to be excluded and no reason for a carpenter from Sudfolc to fraternize with a peasant from the Beccono Plains but not a merchant from Karthin or an officer from Francistria.

The Falcorian nation only truly developed in the aftermath of the imperial collapse, especially during the Wingbard War. Suddenly, Falcor found itself in a situation where it needed to defend itself, where they now were separated from Wingbardians, Francistrians and Sicameonese by borders and their national identities.

In this new situation Falcor needed unity, which it found in being Falcorian, no longer just an ethnicity, but a nationality. Once Wingbardy started exerting influence and pressure on Falcor, the Falcorians also found a new old enemy; up until then the famous Falcorian-Wingbardian rivalry had barely existed outside the otherwise empty heads of nobles, but nationalists soon found the rivalry and a general dislike of Wingbardians to be the best rallying-call there was.

The Wingbard War itself only escalated this rivalry/hatred while otherwise accelerating the nation-building process; the shared experience of the war against the common enemy and stories of great heroism and sacrifice against said enemy inspiring nationalism in all.

Furthermore, the war had completely reshaped the political scene; the Queen’s authority had greatly diminished over the course of the war in favor of the military while the nobility found their stranglehold over court-politics largely meaningless in a world where public opinion was the defining factor shaping the political landscape – a public opinion already molded by free-thinkers, economic and social conditions, and politicians and demagogues in the years and decades prior.

Already during the War had liberal politicians been part of the government; following the summer promises, the queen shuffled her cabinet around to include the major reformist parties. After the Queen came down with an illness in late 989 from which she wouldn’t recover for over a year, the queen even went so far as to appoint a member of the PMF as prime minister, further strengthening politicians at the cost of the nobility.

Lastly, the Wingbard War brought a great deal of destruction and misery to Falcor; 150.000 Falcorians had died as a direct consequence of the war and another 50.000 deaths could also be attributed to the conflict, large swathes of land in the south of Falcor were devastated by the Wingbard War, some poisoned so thoroughly by poison gas and heavy metals from artillery shelling that it would not recover for several centuries, over 50.000 homes – 7% of all homes in Falcor – had been destroyed or heavily damaged, and the economy was in shambles.

All these and more had almost led to a revolution in 987, but promises of democracy and freedom had calmed things sufficiently for Falcor to win the war, but importantly hadn’t solved the underlying problems. By the end of the Jojo-War these problems had, if anything, gotten worse and Falcor again was two missteps away from revolution.

The 991 Constitution

Wanting to keep her head connected to the rest of her body – and quite sick of ruling Falcor after having led her through her darkest times, Queen Maximilliana assembled the leaders of the three major non-revolutionary political parties and tasked them with drafting a constitution. So as to test the waters, the first draft was outrageously progressive: abolishing feudalism and the nobility, declaring all griffons equal, and turning Falcor into a republic on all but name. Surprisingly, this draft wasn’t shot down by the queen immediately, but faced no resistance from her; that role would be fulfilled by others. Had the draft actually passed Falcor would have had one of if not the most progressive constitution in the world, but although the Queen technically was the absolute ruler of Falcor, reality told a different tale.

Falcor’s nobles however weren’t happy with this constitution and did everything possible to stop the constitution from being enacted, chiefly complaining at the Imperial court in Griffonstone. The Imperial court was at the time under the control of ardent reactionaries after reformists in Griffonstone had mismanaged their own liberalization program so spectacularly it almost ended in another revolution. Fearing that giving too many concessions to the Falcorian people would lead to mob rule and Falcor turning into a republic, the imperial court put heavy pressure on the queen to make changes to the constitution, going so far as to threaten withholding aid from Falcor entirely. Under both internal and external pressure, the Queen caved in and heavily toned down the democratic reforms in the constitution, leaving much power with the monarchy and nobility.

Similarly, the army also had a few suggestions to improve the future constitution, chiefly there being less governmental and parliamentary oversight over the military. During the war the army had become by far the most important institution in the nation; at times the general staff went so far as to overrule the queen herself, something the queen let pass as they at the time were indispensable to the nation. Now at peace they were indispensable no longer, not that everygriff had gotten the memo. In an act of genius politicking the ‘old guard’ of the military, a group of especially reactionary generals of noble birth with a median age older than that of Celestia, threatened resignation if the military were made to bow to simple peasants.

Naturally the Queen didn’t comply, after which more than half of Falcor’s general staff and tens of officers resigned, among them the disgraced Field Marshall Neighgue. While the army purging itself of its own free volition was certainly welcome, it still left Falcor without much of a military staff. Luckily this wasn’t a pressing matter, the nation was at peace after all, but it also left a soon-to-be marshal Feveros as the griffon effectively in command of the military. While not nearly as reactionary as the old guard she also didn’t want civilian oversight over the army, and unlike the old guard she had political skills exceeding those of a bunch of dimwitted donkeys*1. Using her connections in the Reichsarmee and thus the imperial court, she not only managed to make Griffonstone interfere with the Falcorian constitution a second time but got herself promoted to the newly created rank of ‘Marshal of Falcor’: the new highest rank in the military answering only to the Queen herself as well as the Reichskriegsamt (Imperial War Ministry).

A few much smaller changes later, the Summer Promises were finally turned into reality. Previous noble councils were abolished and consolidated into an elected national parliament that held the power to make laws and whose consent was needed to pass a budget. Furthermore, the constitution granted every citizen a few basic rights, among them the right to free speech, the right to protest, the right to choose one's work, the right to freely form organizations, including unions and political parties, and the right to receive a fair trial. Last but not least, feudalism as an institution was also abolished in all but name.

However, the nobility also retained much power as a quarter of the seats in the parliament were hereditary seats given out to important nobles, and local governments weren't reformed at all. Just as much if not more power stayed with the Queen who was still the highest arbiter of the law, who was still the only authority that could appoint judges, who was still the one in charge of appointing the prime minister, whose signature was still needed to pass any any bill into law, and who could still freely dismiss both government and parliament if she saw the need.

Queen Maximilliana however barely made any use of her powers, primarily because she did not wish to destabilize the nation but also because she was still quite sick of governing. The only few times she did make use of her powers were times where she saw it as necessary for the good of Falcor.

The 991 Elections

As First-Past-the-Post elections favor larger parties and suppress political diversity, only three political parties made it into parliament in notable numbers. These were the conservative to reactionary Il Partito Monarchico di Falcor, or for short the PMF, which consisted mostly of the nobles in the parliament, the center-left to left-wing social democratic Partito Socialdemocratico di Falcor, or for short the PSDF, and finally the liberal to centrist Partito Liberale di Falcor, or for short the PLF.

Of the three large parties, the PLF was the oldest, having emerged from the various Falcorian secret societies of the late 930's, all of whom had been inspired by the Carbonari Society. Having been a wide coalition of everything from constitutional democrats to pre-marksist socialists for the first few years of its existence the PLF had managed to do naught but agree on their goals: the establishment of a fully independent Falcorian Republic.

Naturally this had alienated the party's reformist wing, who went on to form their own party, the PMF. In the meantime, and indeed for the next four decades, the PLF fought for influence over Falcor against its worst enemy: the NRP and its predecessors; slowly winning said conflict as Falcorian nationalism further entrenched itself in the minds of the nation's liberal youth.

Although the PLF wouldn't officially drop its revolutionary character until the Summer Promises were made, the lack of any concrete plans towards revolution meant that after 950 it had stopped being a revolutionary organization. It was this which allowed the NRP to remain a politically relevant force in Falcor up until 978, although the Falcorian NRP had been somewhat separate from the NRP-proper, often aligning itself with the Pan-Griffonian Progress Party – a federalist sister-party/branch/faction/split-off of the NRP that generally held as much if not more power than the NRP-proper outside of the Herzlands.

Another blow to the PLF had come in 951, when much of the party's left wing had split off to form the Falcorian Workers Party (which later reorganized into the Falcorian branch of the GSAP), leaving the PLF with only its core membership.

The party wouldn't recover until 972 as economic turmoil radicalized the masses and the collapse of the empire emboldened revolutionaries across the continent. In the next decade-and-a-half the PLF had flourished as all its rival parties were failing left-right-and-center. During the Wingbard War the PLF had openly supported the monarchy even before, but especially after the Summer Promises, and finally dropped its revolutionary mantle.

After having come into existence in 942 the PMF had attempted to achieve constitutional reform by encouraging members to befriend nobles so they could see the superiority of a constitutional monarchy. At first they had been somewhat successful, managing to convince the Duke of Sudfolc to push for a constitution at the Queen's court as well as turning the Duchy of Sudfolc into a semi-democratic, semi-independent constitutional monarchy.

The Queen had not reacted well to Sudfolc's sudden rebelliousness; having the duke imprisoned, his like-minded heir-apparent assassinated and putting the much more conservative niece of the old duke on the throne who then had her uncle's policies reverted.

In the decades after Sudfolc the PMF had continued their policy of making contact with the nobility, but never attempted anything more than complaining at court again. In this time the goals of the PMF, which hadn't ever been that ambitious in the first place, had gotten even less ambitious as the party sold itself out to any noble willing to lend them an ear. This went so far that by 972 the party no longer was in favor of general suffrage, instead advocating votes be restricted to the middle and upper classes.

The PSDF was one of the youngest Falcorian political parties – only having come into existence in 975 after splitting from the GSAP as the united Griffonian socialist movement collapsed alongside the empire it sought to overthrow. At first, the PSDF had still been a revolutionary socialist party, but when the Wingbard War started the party was swept by the same nationalist fervor as the rest of the nation and elected to support the war effort – preferring oppression by domestic monarchs over that of Wingbardian imperialists. This choice hadn't been uncontroversial by any means; it had laid the groundwork for a split between reformers and revolutionaries, nationalists and internationalists, and libertarian and authoritarian socialists.

The final straw came in June of 987, which had heralded a wave of desertions, demonstrations, strikes and street battles. Falcor was, as far as the socialists were concerned, on the verge of revolution; even the reformists in the PSDF were agreeing that revolution was necessary. Yet when the Queen gave her Summer Promises, the social democrats betrayed the revolution; not only had they abandoned their plans of (hopefully peaceful) revolution, but a small group of higher-ups in the party even went so far as to rat revolutionary leaders out to the state.

Naturally this betrayal had caused the now greatly weakened socialists to split from the party, forming the Socialist Party of Falcor (SPF), but it also cemented the PSDF as a social democratic party and greatly endeared the PSDF to the political establishment; no longer were they seen as socialist scum who could not be trusted under any circumstances, but as level-headed reasonable politicians who wanted nothing more than what would be best for Falcor.

In the elections, the PSDF ran on a basis of promising social welfare, an expansion of political rights, and downsizing the still large military. Their campaign worked very well as most urban centers of Falcor voted social democrat, giving them 51 of the parliament's 200 seats.

The PMF ran their campaign mostly on patriotism and classism, which was unsuccessful as most of their potential conservative voters lived in the countryside, but they still held some popularity in the wealthier districts of the urban centers, thus earning them 19 elected seats, but thanks to their connections with the nobility they still became a major faction in parliament; seats ranging from 63 to 32 depending on how many nobles actually showed up to parliament and their respective mood.

Lastly, the PLF ran on promises of economic reform, some welfare policies and promises of restoring the Falcorian economy, which on its own wasn’t all to successful, but thanks to the absolute failure of the PMF’s campaign the PLF won most of the countryside and the small towns, giving them 75 seats in parliament.

Besides the three large parties, the SPF, the Partido Marksista-Fireangelista Rivoluzionari d’Falcoriano – the successor to the GSAP which had been banned in 985 –, and the Pan-Griffonian Progress Party – the spiritual successor to the Falcorian NRP which had been outlawed & destroyed in 978 – also made it into parliament, gaining 5 seats in total.

After a short round of negotiations, the PSDF and PLF formed a coalition government, the government of national reconstruction, and shortly after the leader of the PLF, Enrico Fanti, was made prime minister by the Queen.

The Zeitenwende Plan

In the time between the end of the Wingbard-War and the 991 formation of the government of national reconstruction the last royal government was by no means inactive.

Of all the problems the nation faced, the terrific state of the economy was by far the most pressing. With the nation demobilizing almost 400.000 soldiers returned to their civilian lives where they rarely found employment. This, together with much of Falcor's heavy industry shutting down now that demand for military equipment was down, saw unemployment rise to 27%, though in the cities it often exceeded 50%.

To further add to the disaster, the economy had yet to recover to its pre-972 level; the nation's GDP had shrunk by 30% since 972 while the GDP/Capita had halved since. Any ongoing modernization and industrialization had also been halted as investment from the Herzlands and Wingbardy stopped and capital once abundant disappeared.

The empire proper was plagued by much the same problems, and starting in 989 the imperial court developed the Zeitenwende Plan, an all-imperial economic modernization / industrialization program that sought to quickly industrialize the empire while rebuilding the economy on the way, closely cooperating with the governments of the imperial subject states in the process.

At the core of the program lay a series of massive public works to improve the empire's abysmal infrastructure. Of these, Falcor would profit especially strongly as the plan foresaw Falcor becoming the "Gate to Griffonstone". Through a series of canals the Falcor River would be connected to the Folino River and its subsidiaries, which would in turn be connected to Lake Rumare. Additionally, the port-towns of Birdisi and Sudfolc would have their harbors massively expanded while the entire nation would be connected by railway, prioritizing the cities that lay along the 'Griffonstone–Sea' corridor.

When it came to industrializing, the Zeitenwende Plan focused first on further industrializing areas that had already proven to be good locations for industry, which in Falcor meant prioritizing the area around Matton, Talont and Alba Torre as they had extensive iron and coal deposits very close to the surface. Add to that large bauxite deposits, the emerging imperial aeroplane industry, and a location right at the center of what was to be the Falcorian rail-network and you got the recipe for an economic boom.

The Zeitenwende Plan planned for most of the actual industrializing to be done by a few already large conglomerates, the Reichsgroßkonzerne. The exception was Falcor since it lacked monopolistic corporations; instead large industrial firms were to be combined into a single state owned conglomerate which would compete against the other Reichsgroßkonzerne in a free market economy.*2

The plan further encompassed the mechanization of agriculture up to the most modern standards possible, fully funded by the state – more specifically by the Imperial court. This was of course not done for the good of their heart, but because fewer peasants being needed in the fields meant more could pull 14 hour shifts in factories. As a side effect of this and the unequal investments across the nation, Falcor would experience a massive urbanization into a few very large cities and metropolitan areas.

Last but not least, the plan foresaw the electrification of all major cities (meaning any town whose population exceeded 20.000), the modernization and renovation of over 300.000 homes, the construction of another 50.000 dwellings for those displaced by the war, and the construction of any housing the population needed, because even the Imperial court, the epiphany of reaction, could recognise that a society needs affordable housing in the places where people want to live to function properly, and that housing isn't a commodity but a necessity.

The Zeitenwende Plan’s implementation began in early March of 990 in Griffonstone and the empire-proper, and a month later in Falcor and wouldn’t be complete until late 1002, although the exact date of when it was completed is fuzzy since certain policies of the Plan are, at least in theory, permanent.

The Government of National Reconstruction

Although the Zeitenwende Plan wasn't made by the government of national reconstruction, it significantly modified its implementation in Falcor. Since an economy controlled by large industrial conglomerates closely cooperating with the state fundamentally clashed with the PLF's idea of a market economy and the PSDF's idea of a 'social economy', the government of national reconstruction dropped the plans in place to cartelize the Falcorian economy and even went a step further by levying a special tax on any company whose value exceeded a threshold of 150 million Imperial Idols (roughly 540.000 Bits).

Instead, the government chose to subsidize smaller and medium sized businesses as well as granting cheap loans to entrepreneurs to substitute for the lack of a large capitalist class. Upon much pestering from the left-PSDF these subsidies were further extended to workers' cooperatives in the industrial and transportation sectors, insofar as they followed a strict set of guidelines given by the state including but not limited to: having a minimum work-week of 45 hours, reinvesting at least 50% of any profits into the business, and a maximum loan of thrice the newly introduced minimum wage.

Although the government stopped the cartelization of the economy, it still monopolized certain sectors, chief amongst them the railway and public transportation sectors which were consolidated into the Royal Falcorian Transportation Company. Said company was a shared venture between Imperial state railway company, the Reichsbahn, and the Falcorian government, each of whom owned 50% of the RFTC.

Although the Zeitenwende Plan was bound to bring prosperity eventually, and indeed large public works greatly helped with unemployment immediately, in the now and then the population was still poor and consequently discontent. Democratization had greatly reduced the risk of revolution but socialism was still spreading among the poor urban working class.

So as to fight this spread, the government of national reconstruction set out to use the revolution’s worst enemy: social democracy. Implementing social reform after social reform, Fanti’s government laid the foundations for a welfare state; unemployment benefits, minimum wages, a ten hour work day, a six day work-week and a somewhat functional healthcare system all were introduced to stem the rise of communism.

Once again, social democracy proved its worth as a tool of the counterrevolution and slowly non-reformist socialism and communism lost ground to the social democrats, most crucially when the largest union in Falcor, the Falcorian Metalworkers Union, voted out their PMFF-aligned leaders and replaced them with social democrats.

Other reforms passed not to fight communism but purely because they would benefit the nation included banning child labor, making basic and secondary educations free and mandatory, and making higher education completely free of charge.

Lastly, as part of the Summer Promises, introduced generous pensions to veterans unable to work due to injuries suffered in the war (4500 Idols per month) as well as compensation for any injuries that impaired one's ability to work (although those were much less generous, being capped at 500 Idols per month). Last but not least the families of those who died because of the war were compensated with 6000 Idols per month, the monthly income of the average worker at the time.

The establishment of a welfare state necessitated a massive expansion of the bureaucracy and the hitherto tiny Falcorian state grew from having less than 60.000 employees (not counting military personnel) in 991 to over 400.000 employees of the state in 1000. The amount of information the state collected on the average citizen also grew massively; where previously the state only knew the name, age and parentage of any given citizen the state now kept records of every citizen's current place of living, employment, health condition, income and anything else relevant to the welfare state and beyond.

All this came at an immense cost to the Falcorian treasury, and although Griffonstone was content paying for parts of the Zeitenwende Plan the new welfare state was just as, if not more, expensive to maintain – especially in the early years before the bureaucracy had caught up to the demands of the welfare state. However the government didn’t wish to increase taxation and in fact cut back taxes on small businesses, instead financing its endeavors by taking out a massive loan of 2.5 billion Bits, then half of Falcor's GDP, from the Bank of Prance to finance their endeavors, banking on growing Falcor’s economy so fast that paying off this loan would be trivial issue.

Thanks to the Zeitenwende Plan and constant prudent changes to the nation's economic policy, Falcor experienced what could only be described as an economic wonder. The economy nearly doubled in size between 990 and 995, the median yearly income grew from 115 Bits to 280 Bits and unemployment was neigh zero, but even then the greatest economic growth was yet to come.

As a result of growing prosperity and an ever improving health care system, chick death rates plummeted from 63% to 23% in only five years, leading to a population boom in the major cities. At the same time, the east and west of Falcor were greatly depopulated as the promise of a better life in the center or south convinced even many living in the small towns to leave for the urban centers. All this resulted in Falcor's urbanization rate going up from 30% in 980, to 70% in 995 and 80% in 1000, about half of her entire population living in just the five largest cities. Said urbanization required the cities to grow at an incredible pace. Wanting to avoid large parts of the population having to live in slums, between 990 and 1000 the state constructed 650.000 dwellings.

Regarding the new territories the government of national reconstruction was the one to finally determine their status; until late 992 there had been more important issues the state had to deal with and so the temporary solution of military occupation had stayed in place for far longer than originally planned. The territories acquired from Wingbardy were divided between Clawmpania and two newly formed provinces: Birdisi and Asbolus. The Wingbardians living in these territories meanwhile were given a choice: leave, or renounce their Wingbardian citizenship and become A Falcorian citizen instead. Unsurprisingly, almost all stayed. In the elections however, Asbolus – home to the majority of Falcors new Wingbardian minority – was excluded from national elections so as to limit the number of non-Falcorian voters. Birdisi, being majority Falcorian, was allowed to participate.

The Sicameonese territories were treated similarly; Keowen and Arahno were made into provinces and excluded from national elections. As the provincial governments weren’t elected but appointed by parliament, this effectively lost the Sicameonese all their rights to self-determination, and put them back approximately 400 years. To the Keowenese, who already had suffered three years of military occupation, who had suffered the humiliation of defeat, who lived in a city that lost 30% of its housing in the war and still had to quarter enemy soldiers, this was the last straw.

On the 9th of November, workers in Keowen rose up and occupied the local army headquarters, starting a week of riots and violent protests in the city. These were ultimately crushed by the army – after which the city’s occupation force was quintupled in size to 20.000 –, but not before the government made several concessions: Keowen and the other Sicameonese provinces had their local governments democratized and Keowen would be allowed to participate in the national elections, but their representatives wouldn’t actually be allowed to vote. Lastly, the government also announced a reconstruction and aid package for Keowen that would rebuild Keowen to her former glory.

While these concessions weren’t perfect, or even enough by any means, the economic aid especially served to greatly alleviate the woes of the Sicameonse minority. The affair as a whole also started a rift within the PLF, between a small but vocal faction of social liberals and the wider party which was more on the socially conservative side. As a whole, the affair was a stain on what otherwise presented itself, and in many ways was, as one of the most progressive governments in the world at the time.

The last and arguably most important of the many reforms enacted by the government of national reconstruction, the Democratization of Local Governments Law, was passed only two months before the next elections, mostly because it had taken a very long time to work out the details and push over the queen’s table: the complete restructuring of the Falcorian bureaucracy and the democratization of local governments.

The provinces that made up Falcor were redrawn along new, more sensible lines and completely restructured. Whereas beforehand the provinces had been an abhorrent mess of counties, baronies, cities, townships and free villages – all with separate, mostly unelected governments, now provinces were only made up of counties and cities. The former covered rural areas while the latter was only reserved for major cities and the province’s respective capital. Finally, all the governing positions in counties, cities and provinces were all made elected, finally bringing democracy to the local level.

Although the nobility lost almost all their legal and administrative powers on the sub-national level, they still retained all their estates and wealth, and with them a considerable amount of indirect power over local politics.

During its time as a mere bill, the Democratization of Local Governments Law was under a constant assault from the nobility: who tried to rally a coalition in parliament to stop the bill, which failed, after which they appealed to the Queen's Court, which almost worked – but still failed in the end, and lastly begged their allies and sympathizers in the imperial court to do something, which failed miserably. By then the imperial court was under control of a duumvirate of Großmarschall Stoiber and King Guto VII, who ended up actually supporting the bill and exerting pressure on Queen Maximilliana to let the bill pass – not out of any ideological alignment but because a more efficient Falcorian state would help the empire in the long run, not to mention it weakening their political rivals.

In an effort to appease the ever growing demands for independence, or at least equal voting rights, and wipe the stain that were the 992 Keowen Riots coming from Keowen, the law was originally supposed to grant additional autonomy to Keowen; in effect Keowen would have been an autonomous region akin to Severyana in Equestria. The imperial court however had made it clear from the beginning that an autonomous Keowen, or any other changes to polity which devolved power from the central government would not be tolerated, and thus had the regional autonomy of Keowen scrapped from the bill.

The government quickly backed down and to some extent even welcomed the court’s interventions; the autonomy was only excluded because the left-PSDF and social liberals had insisted on it, while the rest of the PLF, Fanti especially, were rather critical of the autonomy and only included it under the pressure of their coalition partners.

Throughout their entire term, the government of national reconstruction had to deal with a constant stream of Wingbardian and Sicameonese refugees into the country. For most of this time, these had been completely ignored by the government. At first this was because there had been more pressing matters to deal with, but later on the issue was willfully ignored due to political differences in the coalition; the left-PSDF and parts of the PLF wanted to integrate and aid the impoverished refugees whereas other parts of the PLF and Fanti blocked any attempts at integration hoping the problem would just go away on its own.

Yet shortly before the 995 elections, when the PLF was soaring in polls and Fanti was more popular than ever, as a PLF majority in parliament seemed certain, a scandal rocked the PLF it was uncovered that Fanti had, in secret, struck a deal with the Cyanolisian government to deport and reroute refugees there. As it was found out, somewhere between 5.000-150.000 refugees, primarily Wingbardians, had been deported to Cyanolisia in this manner – without any kind of parliamentary approval or knowledge of the action. As it turned out, the government hadn’t idly sat by.

This was a step too far; parliament was supposed to be included in any major executive decisions and Fanti acting without parliament's approval scandalized much of the PSDF who felt betrayed by their PLF coalition partners. The PLF meanwhile wasn’t too happy either. Outraged by Fanti’s discriminatory politics the social liberals forced a vote to kick Fanti out of the party. Fanti however preempted this by resigning as leader of the party and having a close ally, Mario Burgherzhio, elected into the position, who then blocked the vote. This further enraged the social liberals, who in turn left the party in droves to found their own party.

Army Stuff

As Marshal of Falcor, Erika von Feveros had to command and sustain an army in a pacifist nation completely unwilling to spend a single bit more on the army than absolutely necessary. After the war's end the army immediately had its budget cut by 90%, followed by another 90% cut in 991. Conscription was ended not much later, leaving Feveros with even fewer resources. So few resources that Falcor would only be able to maintain an army of 25.000 active soldiers. There also was the problem of equipment and ammunition storage; by the end of the war Falcor had over 2.000 pieces of artillery, almost 500 tanks & other armored vehicles, five million artillery shells, a third of them poison gas, and an uncountable stock of small arms, machine guns and ordnance for them. Maintaining this massive stockpile would come at the measly price of thrice the army's budget – before the 991 cut.

Simply scuttling so much equipment would not only be a waste, but also be expensive in its own right; poison gas grenades can't simply be thrown into the recycling-bin, unfortunately. Similarly, just letting all this equipment rot away would be just as much a safety hazard. Lastly selling the stockpiles, while not a bad idea in its own right, had the problem of there not being many buyers in the world that had both the wherewithal and need for military equipment worth millions of bits that also weren't long term strategic enemies sworn to destroy the empire (looking at you, Macawia). The only two countries that even came into consideration were Cyanolisia and Colthage, the former still fighting wars like the existence of their state depended on it and the latter building a modern military. But even their combined demand only accounted for a quarter of the Falcorian stockpile, and only Colthage actually went through with buying anything at all.

This only really left one option: transferring the stockpile to the Reichsarmee in exchange for them covering some of the Falcorian army's expenses. Marshal von Feveros still planned to maintain the Falcorian army at 120.000 strong, and in exchange for the stockpiles and some minor concessions like adapting the Reichsarmee command-structure the empire provided the resources.

The 995 Elections

In 995, the social liberals who previously had been part of the PLF formed their own party, the Partito Socialriformista, or PSR for short, running on promises of social reform and expanding the right to vote alongside continuing the current economic course. Overall, their positions were almost identical to those of the PSDF, except for being slightly more progressive when it came to racial and ethnic equality, while being slightly less progressive when it came to labor rights. Overall their campaign was relatively successful with many in the middle class voting for them, however the first-past-the-post voting system meant that their 13% of the populous vote manifested in just 8 seats in parliament.

The PSDF ran a campaign pretty much identical to the one of the PSR, but due to them having been a much better established party they gained a total of 80 seats. The PMF, having learned from their last campaign, focused less on classist rhetoric and instead more on blaming the Wingbardian refugees on the countrysides’ problems. Their campaign worked well and the PMF won 21 seats, in addition to their 47 permanent seats, giving them 68 seats in total. Meanwhile the PLF ran their campaign on taking credit for the economic boom of the country, which worked very well, as they gained over 40% of the popular vote. However their voters were greatly divided among different voting districts so they received only 34 seats in parliament. Again, the PGPP, PMFRF and SPF managed to make their way into parliament, earning a total of 7 seats between them.

Fanti’s controversial actions had gone a long way in endearing the PLF to the PMF. While the PSDF and PSR were unwilling to coalize with the PLF without heavy concessions, the PMF demanded almost nothing of the PLF but for it to continue on the course it was on. Naturally the PLF took up their offer and the two parties formed the next government.

The 2nd Fanti Cabinet

Almost immediately after forming his second cabinet, Fanti noticed the grave mistake that was coalizing with nobles; being unelected they had no accountability: not to the people, not to their coalition partners, not even to the party they claimed to adhere to. Without any mechanic to enforce their adherence to the PMF party line or the coalition treaty they were very inconsistent, not only in their attendance but also their political stances and loyalties; the Duke of Sudfolc might one day vote alongside the PMF, then not attend parliament for half-a-year as he befriends a group of pony and hippogriff immigrants living in his domain who convince him of the value of friendship and harmonism, only to abruptly show up one day to vote against the PMF and single-clawedly sway the vote.

One of the first orders of business still was tackling the refugee crisis, and as much as the PMF wanted to continue Fanti’s program, the Duke of Sudfolc disagreed, and so they were unable to resume the deportations. Fanti’s actions had however mostly stopped the flow of refugees into Falcor, and the hostility of the government towards the refugees, a lack of economic opportunities, terrible living conditions, and continued Cyanolisian attempts at attracting immigration led to most refugees leaving on their own, while those who didn’t slowly integrated into Falcorian society.

The 2nd Fanti cabinet also attempted to roll back the subsidies to workers coops given by the prior government, but faced strong resistance from unions and the Falcorian left in general and ultimately failed at cutting subsidies on them completely, but was still able to tighten regulations on them in the hopes it would slowly drive them out of business.

Besides the reactionary politics, the new government did not have to deal with much, simply continuing the prior government’s policies. In this electoral term, the Zeitenwende Plan started truly paying off for the average citizen: the median income grew by 300% during the term, the number of those in poverty sank by over 90% and the number of griffons living in extreme poverty fell to almost zero.

The southern Ports of Sudfolc and Birdisi grew very rapidly into industrial transport hubs that together moved more cargo than Rottendedam. Prosperous new cities along the 'Griffonstone–Sea' corridor were founded, while those that already existed exploded in population and wealth. The Matton–Talont region, being located on top of some of the largest coal and iron reserves in the empire, experienced an industrial boom that saw it become an industrial center which put the likes of Griffenheim and Aquila to shame. Naturally, of all of Falcor the capital prospered most as it became a center of service industries, the financial sector especially, and advanced manufacturing.

Similarly, the welfare state also only fully came online during the Fanti's second term as the ever growing bureaucracy allowed for the regulations put into place by the last government to actually be enforced while cutting overall spending somewhat as it also made lying to receive benefits harder; in 994 the state had paid pensions to over half a million supposed veterans, in 999 it was 257.000.

The Rise of Harmonism

The reforms to education brought on by the government of national construction, although only truly paying off in the the following decade, greatly increased the total number of university attendees from just below 30.000 and about 6.000 graduating in 990, to over 120.000 total students with more than 30.000 graduating in 995; put simply, the government of national reconstruction had opened the doors of higher education to the middle – and through generous scholarships even parts of the lower – class, and now they were flocking to them in droves.

Of course, quintupling the number of students required an expansion of the universities as a whole, but luckily the universities had a solution: humongously large budgets provided by the state. Between 990 and 1000 all public universities in Falcor had a combined budget of 650 million bits (for comparison: the funding of all Equestrian universities in the timeframe was 1475 million bits). Besides expanding campus facilities, the universities also needed professors to actually teach the students. These were sourced from a variety of sources, but most were either imperial exiles, Equestrians/New Marelanders, or Wingbardian emigres.

The resulting variety of opinions, races and ethnicities only served to make the universities – already hotspots for progressive thought – even more progressive. Additionally, the Equestrians and New-Marelanders had also brought with them their own harmonist ideals and harmonist political theory. Having grown up during the Wingbard War and time of recovery thereafter, many students had open ears for the harmonic promises of peace, prosperity and individual freedom. Thus, harmonist ideals and harmonism as an ideology found a paw in Falcor.

Yet harmonism wouldn’t be more than an idle dream in the heads of a few hundred students until 997, not least because equestrian harmonism is as close as one can come to an apolitical ideology; “be nice, have friends” is barely a statement at all, much less a political rallying cry*. In March of 997, the expulsion of a progressive professor under dubious accusations at Falcors largest and most prestigious university, the Ducal University of Sudfolc, catalyzed the Falcorian harmonic movement. The sacking was quickly found out to have been politically motivated, after which the students of the university rallied to protest the expulsion.

Said protests were organized and attended by students following a huge variety of progressive ideologies. By virtue of being one movement organized by people following many different ideologies this protest movement caused a huge exchange of ideas among the student body, and as part of this harmonism was spread and popularized, albeit in greatly modified versions.

The most notable member of the movement was one crown-princess Maximilliana. Who at that time was a student at the Ducal University of Sudfolc. Motivated by basic griffon empathy, an education which lacked the bias needed to overcome said empathy, and generally progressive attitudes brought on by the aforementioned empathy and lack of indoctrination, the princess became one of the most vocal advocates of the movement.

The protest movement reached their goals after only two-and-a-half weeks, not least because the princess supported them. But yet more important were the connections made during those two weeks; many of the progressive politicians that arose in the next few years had been organizers of the movement, thereby creating a not-quite-shadowy cabal of progressives who would go on to greatly alter the course of Falcor’s history: the ‘Sudfolc Seven’.

One of these un-tenebrous progressives was none other than princess Maximilliana, who, after finishing her masters-degree in political science, went on to devote her time to understanding harmonism and how it influenced societal development, later publishing her findings in a series of essays that collectively called for the adoption of harmonic principles in the governance of the nation and an adoption of a “harmonic monarchy with socialist tendencies”, or in other words a constitutional monarchy with a strong welfare state and an economy primarily organized via worker cooperatives. (This particular branch of harmism later became known as Falcorian harmonism)

These essays, and the fact she was the princess, made her a household name in the emerging harmonic movement, while the clout that came with being the princess brought a great deal of attention to harmonism as a whole. This in turn saw her become even more central in the harmonic movement, so much so that when she joined the PSR in 998 to advance the harmonist cause, much of the movement followed.

While initially dumbfounded by the crown-princess herself trying to join their party, the PSR leadership quickly welcomed the princess into the party, not failing to see the excellent opportunity for propaganda. During the next year the PSR leadership essentially made the princess the public face of the party: parading her around at every possible opportunity and showcasing her progressive views. This worked very well as the PSR not only won large parts of the royalist vote, but the increased coverage by the media allowed them to eclipse the PSDF as the largest progressive party.

Although the Princess was officially part of the party's leadership and unofficially the leader of the growing harmonic wing of the party, her word held little weight behind closed doors; the Princess was, as far as the rest of the party's leadership was concerned, little more than an unpaid parade animal.

Outside the boring world of party-politics, the harmonic movement was growing to be very vocal; starting with the ‘Democracy for All’ campaign the harmonists allied with Wingbardian and Sicameonese enfranchisement groups to protest their exclusion from national elections, which saw the issue of voting rights become the political issue in Falcor.

The 999 Elections

Although the 2nd Fanti Cabinet had been very successful in restoring and growing Falcor’s economy, it had also failed to address the nation’s social problems, because as far as it was concerned there was no problem, and even if they had wanted to do anything they certainly wouldn't have been able to; the nobles – with the exception of the esteemed Duke of Sudfolc – would never vote for anything more progressive than throwing rocks at Wingbardians. This allowed the PSDF to capitalize on the discontent of industrial workers; promising better working conditions and improving the welfare state that had been neglected over the last four years.

Similarly, the PSR campaign focused on expanding the rights of the immigrant community and expanding the welfare state; of course not failing to also showcase the fact that the princess supported them. Their promises of equality and integration earned them the votes of the south, especially the multicultural centers of trade of Birdisi and Sudfolc, while the fact that the Princess supported them won them the largely monarchist countryside

Like in the previous election, the PLF mostly ran on continuing their economic policies, and like in the previous elections the PLF voters were divided among many voting districts. Only in the nation's capital where the educated middle class and small business owners, their base, made up the majority of the population did the PLF win many voting districts. In almost all other voting districts, the PLF came in second place, but almost winning didn’t get them any spoils.

Meanwhile the PMF completely failed to attract any votes at all. Their base had been the peasants of rural Falcor, but after years of rapid industrialization the peasants stopped being the largest voting block in the nation, now only making up ~15% of the population. Furthermore, after the PMF had heavily favored the cities during their four years in power, the remaining peasants were more than unwilling to give them their vote. The peasants who migrated to the city meanwhile were unwilling to vote PMF because of the PMF’s staunch opposition to any labor reform. Worse yet, the monarchists were all voting for the PLF since the princess supported them, hence no major group was voting for the PMF anymore.

Overall, with 41% of the vote and 76 seats, the PSR became the biggest party in parliament. The PLF came in a close second with 35% of the vote but only 43 seats. Third place was the PSDF, with 20% of the popular vote and 29 seats. The PMF meanwhile failed to get any elected seats – unlike the much smaller PMFF and SPF who were still represented.

While there was no question that the PSDF and PSR would form the next government, who would become PM was still undetermined. While the PSR was the bigger party and their candidate would ideally be made prime minister, the party was split between the leadership that wished for Luigi Mambretto, the leader of the party, to become PM, and the party’s large harmonist faction that supported Princess Maximilliana. As the PSR stood at an impasse, the PSDF’s proposed candidate Gianna Ramorino was appointed PM by the Queen, in great part due to her not wanting to take any chances of her daughter becoming PM.

Without any chance of having any actual influence on the country’s politics for the next few years, many nobles simply stopped attending parliament; after all, why spend all your time sitting in parliament and voting “no” to anything the government proposes only for it to pass anyways, when you could also be having fun partying in your mansion? This also turned the relatively slim 106–of–200 majority into a much less nerve-wracking 106–of–154 majority.

The Ramorino Government & Rose Revolution

Both the PSR and PSDF had ambitious goals for the Ramorino Cabinet; both parties had the goal of banishing the monarchy from politics and completing the democratization of Falcor. These goals were of course far from being realized since only the Queen had the right to change the constitution and the government and parliament could both easily be dismissed by the Queen. Bound by the ever looming threat of royal intervention, the Ramorino Cabinet started its term only advancing the more immediately achievable goals.

Building upon the laws passed during ‘93 & ‘94, labor rights were greatly expanded with the Gigola Law, which among other things increased the minimum wage from 4 talons to one idol and four talons, a 125% increase, introduced a five day work week and greatly increased safety standards. Next, the government made naturalization significantly easier, mainly by lowering the timeframe one needed to have lived in Falcor from one’s entire life to two years. Over the next three years, healthcare costs were sunk significantly through mandatory health insurance and a nationwide pension fund was introduced, which together with many other laws and policy changes completed Falcor’s welfare state – at great cost to the treasury.

At the turn of the millennium Falcor was among the most prosperous nations on the continent, overshadowed only by New Mareland and possibly Skyfall. Better yet, this trend was set to continue on for a while longer with a service-sector boom in the south. Industrial output was at an all time high: the collieries and mines of Matton and Talont pumping out enormous volumes of iron and coal, the steelworks of Pawlermo and Alba Torre producing more steel every year, the factories of Falcor and Greybill producing more, more advanced, machinery by the year, all together making Falcor one of the most prosperous nations on the planet.

Overall however the economic boom had slowed down significantly; while the south’s economy kept growing industrial output began to stagnate due to a plethora of factors: from the collapse of the River Coalition, to higher wages decreasing competitivity, to extremely cheap Colthaginian steel (courtesy of slave labor) undercutting Falcorian steel, to the government decreasing subsidies and increasing taxes to more sustainable levels. Fertility rates had also dropped over the course of the 90’s from 8,3 chicks per griffoness in 991 to 5,3 in 1000, which together with chick death rates having risen again to 35% since 995 due to bad air & water quality in the industrial heartland meant an end to the population boom.

By far the greatest success of the Ramorino Government was shifting the Overton Window a good chunk to the left, though one should not understate the contribution of harmonists and Wingbardian and Sicameonese enfranchisement advocates who did much of the heavy lifting in shifting the Window. The discussion around Wingbardians and if they have a right to exist in Falcor shifted especially much, from one where it was completely acceptable to call for the deportation of all Wingbardians to one that largely accepted Wingbardians as creatures that deserved the same respect as any other griff.

As part of this shift, harmonism went from being a small but influential stream in the left to becoming part of mainstream Falcorian politics. Continuing the divide between the progressive centers of Birdisi–Sudfolc and Matton–Talont, in the former Falcorian harmonism continued to reign supreme whilst in the latter harmonic socialism became a strong contender to Falcorian harmonism.

Harmonic socialism's rise in popularity saw them finally becoming important enough to actually be catered towards by the major parties. The PSDF's goals already aligned heavily with their goals, but the party's leadership was hesitant to act on the opportunity, fearing it might alienate their base; the word "socialism" sounded very scary to the average social democrat. Similarly, the PSR failed to capitalize on the PSDF's abstinence for mostly similar reasons. Although the princess was willing to use the word socialism here and there she wasn't the sole voice in the party and often found herself overruled by the progressive majority – a fate the harmonic socialists rather wanted to avoid.

This left the harmonic socialists with only two options: forming their own party or joining the Socialist Party of Falcor, an umbrella party containing all streams of thought to the left of Falcorian harmonism. Since forming a party of your own was hard most harmonic socialists chose the latter and indeed no harmonist party would be founded until laze 1001. The SPF gladly accepted them and their support, growing the party tenfold in less than a year and changing the party from one dominated by marksists and radical socialists to one dominated by democratic and harmonic socialists. Frustrated by this much of the original party membership split off and formed the Socialist Party of Falcor / Marksist-Stallionist.

Yet the area that saw the strongest political shift was Falcor City, long a bastion of the PLF and market liberalism. Harmonism grew very strong in Falcor City within only three years, forcing the PLF to adapt their political positions if they wanted to have any chance of keeping relevancy. There was a large group of conservative, mildly Wingbardophobic, deeply religious griffons in Falcor who had until then voted for the PMF and other small right-wing parties. In order to harness their vote the PLF shifted their politics towards the right. The strategy worked in securing the PLF’s political relevance, but came at the cost of alienating centrists and even allowed the PSR to establish a foothold in Falcor City.

After initially being included in the Zeitenwende Plan, the countryside hadn’t been paid much attention since 992. Following a decade of neglect, the countryside’s problems were manifold: bad to terrible infrastructure, most young griffons migrating away to the cities, bad living conditions, widespread poverty and the sequela of centuries of feudalism. While serfdom was abolished in the 991 constitution, the nobility had retained ownership of the land so the peasants effectively only went from being serfs to being serfs with wages and the right to leave for cities where there were all sorts of nice things like decently paying jobs and plumbing.

By far the worst problem plaguing the countryside, and the first one the Ramorino Government would attempt to tackle, was the rampant landlordism of the nobility. There had been two failed attempts at land reform before this: one part of the initial draft of the constitution and one made in 993 that failed to elicit enough support to pass through parliament. This attempt however had an actual chance of succeeding with all three major parties backing the proposal.

The amount of farmland one individual could own was limited to 1500 hectares, minimum wages for farm-workers were increased to three idols and rents on farmland were limited to 10% of the value of the yields. Last but not least, the government forced the landowners to sell any land that exceeded the 1500 legal hectares to the government at a measly 50 idols per hectare, land it would then give to the farmers directly.

Had it not been for the PLF also supporting the land reform, the queen probably wouldn’t have tolerated it, but all three parties supporting it signaled that almost all of Falcor was behind the bill, and the queen dared not go against the will of (all of) the people.

In 1001, a budget crisis almost shattered the Ramorino Government. In prior years Falcor had always covered budgetary gaps by taking out loans from Equestrian and imperial bankers. This wasn’t a problem since the Zeitenwende Plan and subsequent economic boom had seen so much economic growth that the debt to gdp ratio had barely gone up in this time. However both parties were in agreement that Falcor should build her economy on foreign money if it could be avoided, seeing as 40% of the state’s annual income was already being spent on paying back loans (although this was mostly the case due to very low tax rates resulting in the state barely having an income; taking loans doesn't count as income).

The aforementioned holes in the budget had three primary sources: a massive construction project to improve, expand and modernize public transport in the Matton-Talont region, the renovation of Matton’s historical core and a project aimed at modernizing the mining sector. The PSDF wanted to finance these projects by raising taxes in the wealthier south and increasing tariffs on luxury goods, a proposal also supported by the harmonists in the PSR. The rest of the PSR meanwhile wanted to equally raise taxes across the entire nation, accepting the fact that the wealthy south should help pay for the north’s continued modernization, but also acknowledging that the north would profit not only from their infrastructure being improved but also from the government buying local machinery and industrial goods to build said infrastructure.

After this had gone on for an entire three months the Queen finally started applying pressure to Parliament, going so far as to threaten dismissing parliament if they didn’t pass a budget before the end of the month. The Queen's efforts were very successful, and only five days after her first threat, parliament had passed a budget. The Queen had also been incredibly successful in reminding the Ramorino Government of their goal: turning Falcor into a true Democracy.

The fight for democracy needed unity, and if the budget crisis had proven anything than that there was little unity between the different parts of the left. Luckily this was relatively easy to remedy; harmonists, social democrats and progressives all shared a rough idea of what the nation’s polity should be, and what differences there were, were all easily reconcilable if not supplementary.

In Falcor there long existed a precedent that if the monarch was incapable of ruling their duties would temporarily be fulfilled by the heir-apparent. The only problem was that only the Queen herself could declare herself incapable of ruling, and the Queen would never willingly give up her power. Yet the Ramorino government found a clever way to work around this: sneaking a bill past the Queen that indirectly gave them said power. On October 28th, the inconspicuous Civil Service Reform Law passed over the Queen’s desk.

Most of the law was just bombastically boring bureaucratic buffoonery concerning the legal positions of bureaucrats and their pay, but a single paragraph stated that, “Any official, should they show themselves incapable of fulfilling their responsibilities, may be dismissed by a commission of medical experts appointed by the prime minister. Anyone holding a political office may be temporarily suspended from their position by the aforementioned commission of medical experts should they prove themselves incapable of fulfilling their function; the suspension may only be as long as strictly necessary for the recovery of the suspended.”

The term “political office” was a barely defined legal gibberish for “whatever we want it to mean” and as such could include the monarch depending on the interpretation. Here, the lack of separation of powers actually played into the government’s claws. In the 991 constitution the Queen remained the highest judge in Falcor, so after declaring the Queen incapable of ruling they could then have the princess declare their acts to be completely legal; it was a foolproof plan. Mostly.

The November Crisis

On November the 2nd, 1002 the Falcorian Parliament passed the Law for the Separation of Powers, a law that decreed that Parliament was from thereon the only legislative authority in Falcor. Naturally the Queen refused to sign this bill into law, not long after which a commission of very politically biased medical experts declared the Queen unfit of ruling due to “bouts of madness”. Still on the same day Princess Maximilliana was declared acting monarch by parliament and the prime minister and immediately after called an election to a new constitutional assembly. The Queen was less than pleased about being dismissed by peasant rabble, in such a demeaning way no less and dismissed Ramorino, her government and parliament right back.

Naturally, Parliament and the government didn’t listen to her, and neither did much of the bureaucracy. In fact the Ramorino Government was surprised at how little opposition they were facing from the state itself; the bureaucracy was working just fine, nogriff of importance had come out to actively support the queen and the imperial court seemed content just watching the crisis play out.

In fact the greatest uproar came from the people themselves. Queen Maximilliana, no matter how much progressives disliked her role in politics, was still a symbol of national unity and – more recently – prosperity. It had been her that visited maimed soldiers in field hospitals; it had been her that refused to leave Falcor City even as Wingbardian artillery was falling all around her; it had been her that led Falcor through the Wingbard War, not Princess Maximiliana, nor Ramorino, nor her clique of intellectual elites. Her being declared mad was met by tens of thousands of veterans and royalists demonstrating all across the country.

Here the Ramorino Government found support among the nation's youth. After an initial backlash the royalist demonstrations were drowned out by counter protests, attended primarily by students and the new middle class. The average Falcorian meanwhile was tentatively supportive of the Queen, but not enough to actually do anything, and only because so far, she had been the one doing fewer semi-constitutional shenanigans.

As it turned out the lack of reaction from the bureaucracy was little more than the calm before the storm. Queen Maximilliana did still enjoy widespread support in the bureaucracy, especially among the police. Since this was clearly a coup attempt her best course of action was a countercoup, using civilian means of course, else she risk making an unnecessary enemy out of moderates.

On November 13th the Queen again dismissed Parliament and the Government, this time with an ultimatum set to noon the next day. Again she was ignored, but this time she had the means to enforce her will. When the ultimatum passed policegriffs stormed parliament and arrested 66 MPs for trespassing. Attempts to arrest Ramorino or her ministers failed as they had gotten wind of the Queen’s plans and fled to the liberal bastion that was Sudfolc the previous day. There they not only enjoyed protection from their supporters in the bureaucracy who helped hide them away from the Queen's loyalists in the city, but also from the Duke of Sudfolc who gave them asylum in his mansion. Importantly the Duke also had a 500 harpies strong personal guard, the guardia azzurra*4, who outnumbered the Sudfolc Police and kept the government safe even after their location was revealed to the Queen.

News of the crisis escalating spread almost instantaneously and with them chaos, panic and confusion. At almost the same time both the Queen and Ramorino declared a state of emergency. Here the first signs showed that the queen had misstepped as all provincial governors listened to Ramorino’s orders and most elected officials continued backing the prime minister.

The next sign came over the course of the 13th and 14th as the government called a general strike that union after union followed by more unions voted to join and protests many tens of thousands strong sprung up across the nation, signaling an end to a constitutional crisis and the beginning of a (mostly peaceful) revolution.

The Rose Revolution

By the 16th it had become apparent to everyone that the queen had gravely miscalculated. An estimated million griffons were on strike and hundreds of thousands marching in the streets.

Ramorino and her government may only have had an approval rating of 59% in comparison to the queen’s 92%, but that was to be expected. Ramorino was an elected official afterall, controversial in every sense of the word while the queen was supposed to be mostly apolitical. Consequently after such a bold move as arresting 66 MPs she found that she only had approval as a constitutional monarch (overpaid parade animal), and when arresting a bunch of parliamentarians what matters is the approval of the institution, not that of the current majority.

Now the Queen was in a precarious situation, caught between the receiving end of the largest protests the empire had seen since 978 and an imperial court that demanded the crisis be resolved as quickly as possible, or more specifically in less than a month; the empire only had food reserves for about a month and was reliant upon imports going through Falcor without which Griffonstone would starve. Worse still her supporters among the nobility and bureaucracy were rather fervent monarchists, many of whom wanted a restoration of the pre-991 political system. Even worse still the army’s position was very unclear, but if their close ties to the Reichsarmee were any indication they weren’t too fond of the general concept of protestors.

So as to diffuse the situation Queen Maximilliana ordered the MPs released, hoping that it would calm the moderates and possibly get them to support her again, but much to her dismay the gesture wasn’t enough; after such a blatant misuse of her powers even the moderates wanted reassurances in the form of constitutional amendments, not just a mere promise that the queen wouldn’t arrest parliamentarians anymore.

With a general strike ongoing and wrecking the economy by the hour it didn’t take much longer before the Queen got to the negotiating table and offered reinstating parliament & Ramorino and verbally promising that she wouldn’t dismiss any more governments and parliaments if the government recognised her as not having bouts of madness. Ramorino and her government declined, their reasons twofold. Firstly the queen’s offer simply wasn’t enticing enough, and secondly the decision wasn’t really up to them anymore; it was the Falcorian people protesting and striking and if the queen wanted them to stop she would have to listen to them, not Ramorino and her clique of intellectual elites.

All the while the queen was trying to appease moderates and her rival government without getting couped by her supporters the revolution was in full swing. Across the nation a plethora of parties and groups and hundreds of thousands of griffons were marching for democracy. But demands differed depending from region to region, from protest to protest, from individual to individual. Yet all marchers found themselves united not only by their (sometimes contradictory) demands for reform, but also behind a single griffoness.

Princess Maximilliana had by then been at the center of Falcorian politics for years, and more recently was at the center of the coup. With the charisma of someone groomed to navigate the imperial court, connections to many of the organizers of the protests going back to a certain, much smaller protest movement in 997, and the prestige of being the crown-princess, she managed to end up in the center of attention again. Through toning her demands down while still alluding to her more radical positions she did the impossible: getting self proclaimed leftists to cooperate with liberals, and becoming the face of the revolution in the process.

At every event the princess attended her attire was always rose (the color*5), earning her the nickname ‘Rose Princess’ and the united front their name: Rose Front, which itself informed the name of the entire revolution. Notably, rose was the color used by harmonists, especially those in the SPF, to represent their ideology, while PSR’s party color was ochre – signaling a clear split with the rest of the party. Said split wasn’t just symbolic as the harmonist faction and Princess largely stopped coordinating with the Ramorino Government in favor of activist groups and unions, further consolidating the harmonists’ leading role in the protests.

On the 25th the Queen was back to the negotiating table, this time including union representatives and activists alongside Ramorino. At first the talks made some headway, the Queen agreeing to completely reinstate Ramorino and ending the state of emergency in exchange for the Sudfolc Dockworkers Union and Falcorian Railway Workers Union ending their strike. But once talks made it into the territory of constitutional reform the talks got stale. The Rose Front’s demands were clear: proceeding with the elections to a constitutional assembly that would draft a new constitution, which the Queen would promptly sign. To the Queen this was a completely bonkers demand, nevermind the political impossibility of this proposal, she wasn’t about to put herself at the behest of peasants like that; if the Rose Front wanted a new constitution it would have to be on her terms. After many more long hours of tedious talking the negotiations ended without any further progress made.

As it turned out, the little common ground that had been found was but quicksand; the Queen had been under the impression that Ramorino & her government would stop undermining her authority but as it became apparent that they wouldn’t the Queen again dismissed them. Not that it mattered, as by then the bureaucracy had neatly stopped functioning as the question of who was in charge haunted bureaucrats, elected officials and the common griffon alike.

In tandem with the Rose Revolution a Sicameonese reunification movement arose in the eastern provinces, centered in Keowen where about half of the Sicameonese minority lived, making up a plurality of the population. While initial protests in the city had been more concerned with gaining an equal status to the rest of Falcor, they were quickly subsumed and overshadowed by ones demanding autonomy and even reunification with the rest of Sicameon.

Seeking to harvest their support the princess (and Rose Front by proxy) promised to hold a referendum on the future status of the region. While successful at convincing the more moderate Sicameonese, many more were distrustful of the princess, she was after all still a (future) monarch.

The Rose Revolution itself had an immediate effect on not only Falcor’s but the entire empire’s economy. Falcor was the gate to the empire proper; 80% of all imports and 60% of exports went through Sudfolc and Birdisi. Consequently when news hit that these ports would be closed for an indeterminate amount of time panic broke out among capitalists and economists who feared an imminent collapse of the economy. This sent ripples through the stock market as investors, fearing economic collapse, rushed to liquidate whatever stocks they had and capitalists tried to adjust their businesses to ensure their continued profitability.

Luckily, the current administration had a very adept economic minister who had managed to stave off a similar run on the banks which occurred in 1001 following the death of Grover V. Unluckily, said minister was exiled in Sudfolc and unable to pull the levers needed to avoid an economic crash. This left the economy in a freefall for three days before the imperial court and Reichsgroßkonzerne intervened; shutting down the Falcor stock exchange for the time being, covering emergency debts and buying up nearly bankrupt businesses. Their interventions were successful in stopping the crisis from billowing out of control, but also greatly increased the empire’s economic influence over Falcor. In only a few weeks the share of Falcorians employed by the Reichsgroßkonzerne went from 10% to just under 35% and the percentage of the economy owned by the Reichsgroßkonzerne doubled from 10% to 20% (going by the ratio between the gross income of the Reichsgroßkonzerne generated in Falcor and the Falcorian GDP) .

As pressure on the Queen grew to resolve the crisis through military force, the Queen made one last attempt at negotiation. This time the Queen was much more willing to compromise – seeing as the alternative would be street battles and a potential repeat of 978. In turn Ramorino and the Rose Front had also warmed up to the idea of compromising a little – courtesy the looming threat of tanks – a general protest fatigue setting in and the economic damage the strikes were causing.

On the 28th the Queen, Ramorino and the Rose Front finally reached a tentative compromise, agreeing that a referendum would take place on the 14th of the next month to determine whether the people wanted the 991 constitution to be revised. Should the referendum pass there would be democratic elections to a constitutional assembly which would draft the new constitution with oversight from the queen, while in the meantime a transitional government led by Ramorino would continue to rule the country – although parliament wouldn’t be able to pass new laws in said period. Should the referendum fail the queen would merely call for re-elections. Like any true compromise this one left every side unhappy – each for obvious reasons – but as the alternative was even worse it held up in the following weeks.

Like the Queen had predicted the nobles were less than happy at the compromise, but she had also greatly overestimated their power. The nobility of 1001 was no longer the great aristocracy of centuries prior, but a divided, bickering lot desperately trying to hold on to what little power they still had; where once they held the vast majority of wealth and influence in Falcor their power had been thoroughly eroded over the last decade, to the point where they simply weren’t a relevant political faction anymore.

Yet not all nobles merely sat the compromise out. Led by Armando Albia, Baron of Decoppin, hero of Meranclawo and second in command of the army, a group of noble officers launched a coup on December 1st, counting on Feveros to order the rest of the army to stand by. A reasonable assumption considering her knowing of the coup in advance and her having given vague statements of support, but one that proved wrong nevertheless.

Marshall von Feveros had been in close contact with Griffonstone and the Queen throughout the crisis and between whom a consensus existed that the crisis had to be resolved as peacefully as possible, shooting the nation’s brightest simply wouldn’t do. Once the crisis started in earnest on the 13th the nobles in the military had immediately started scheming, planning to use the crisis to win back their lost powers. When the crisis still wasn’t over after 20 days and the Queen had made almost no headway, Gen. Albia had begun organizing a crackdown on his own, only for the Queen to compromise six days later, forcing him to adjust his plans from a crackdown to a coup. Such a coup would need much more widespread support to succeed, so Gen. Albia invited von Feveros into his conspiracy. Sensing an opportunity to further tighten her grip on the military she silently supported the putschists while also putting measures into place to ensure the coup’s failure.

Thus once the coup started it was stopped within hours and the putschists arrested not much later. Naturally von Feveros used this as justification to not only sack the putschists themselves – many of whom were her own allies – but also any and all threats to her authority within the army. Her involvement in the coup however also backfired as in the next months her involvement became public knowledge, which blew up into a scandal that shifted public perception of her from that of a war hero and one of the most competent military commanders in recent history to that of a power-hungry schemer willing to sacrifice anyone-and-thing to achieve her ends and generally reminded the Falcorians that the army existed and had absolutely no oversight barring the queen appointing the ‘Marshall of Falcor’.

The referendum on the 12th was a resounding but expected success for reform; 87% voting in favor with almost 80% voter turnout, after which elections to the constitutional assembly were scheduled for the 23th of January.

The December Elections, Constitutional Assembly & Transitional Government

The harmonists’ acting completely independent of the PSR, while giving many headaches to Ramorino and the mainstream PSR, had gained them immense popularity, since they, not the PSR or PSDF, had been the leaders of the protests. At the same time it had also greatly strengthened the princess’ position within the party. She and the harmonist faction in general had long been dissatisfied with the party’s policies, but had so far put their differences aside for the common cause, which was especially easy since their biggest disagreements were those concerning polity and hence easily ignored when not discussing constitutional change. Now that these were no longer of concern, the harmonists openly challenged the PSR leadership: forcing through party-internal reelections and vocally speaking out against the party platform.

The PSR had since its foundation been very claws-off in its enforcement of party unity and allowed individual members and factions to stray far from the party’s line – that had been the main reason why the harmonists ended up part of the PSR in the first place – but starting a power struggle in the middle of what would probably be the most important elections in the history of the nation was simply unacceptable. The harmonists narrowly lost the party elections to the traditional center-left party base, and the party leadership was suddenly a lot more keen on enforcing the party line. Choosing to be lenient still and wanting to avoid a split in the party in the middle of the election the leadership put all the blame on the princess and expelled her, while giving others who had participated in the power struggle an easy out: putting all the blame on the princess and promising to from now on adhere to the party line. The hope was this would take care of the biggest troublemakers, while signaling to the rest of the party that elections weren’t the time for power struggles. It failed; the princess’ influence and popularity were greater than they had thought, leading to the PSR dropping by 15%pt in polls and escalating the rift within the party into a full-on split.

In the days after her expulsion most high ranking harmonists in the PSR resigned from their positions in protest while the princess scrambled to put a party together in the three weeks that still remained before election day. In great part due to the connections she made during the Rose Revolution, but also being able to reuse the party platform, candidate lists and party constitution the harmonists had prepared to use for the PSR after they would inevitably gain a supermajority in the party elections, the harmonists managed to build a party and organize an election campaign in only five days. Yet the suddenness of the split also caused lots of confusion as it wasn’t a clean cut between harmonists and non harmonists; many of the less radical harmonists remained in the PSR which led to the new Harmonist Party (HP) putting forth candidates who weren’t in their party.

In the meantime the other parties weren’t idle by any means; the right-wing parties were going through transformations of their own and the SPF was pondering why it still existed in its current state now that there was an openly harmonist party. Only the PSDF wasn’t undergoing a major shift; merely running a very successful election campaign – although cynics would attribute the campaign’s success to the failures of the PSR and PLF.

Seeing that their selling themselves out to the nobility for political influence had failed what remained of the PMF reorganized into the Partito della Prosperità Nazionale (national prosperity party; PPN for short), dropping all their anti-democratic positions and their classism in general, not only from their campaign but general ideology, and embraced the reforms of the last decade in an attempt to win back political relevance. Importantly the party hadn’t stopped selling itself out to the powerful, it had merely switched from old power to new wealth; the PPN was very pro-business but unlike the PLF, which was very supportive of smaller and middle sized businesses, had no problem with the Reichsgroßkonzerne since most of their campaign money came from the Reichsgroßkonzerne.

Just a week before election day, the PLF was rocked by a corruption scandal as it was exposed that Fanti and several of his ministers had accepted bribes (taking the form of campaign donations to the 999 campaign) from Horst-Maschinenmanufaktur – a subsidiary of the ginormous HoGry-Süd; a Reichsgroßkonzern – in exchange for the state taking on the majority of the construction-costs for several modern factories. To further sweeten the deal the construction-materials of the factories were exclusively bought from other HoGry-Süd subsidiaries even when local Falcorian companies offered cheaper goods of a higher quality.

Almost immediately, Fanti and the other accused resigned from their positions, but that did not save the party as a whole which still dropped 7%pt in polls. It did however open much of the party’s leadership positions to younger, less socially conservative members of the party and cleared the way for the party to adapt socially liberal politics again.

After performing very well in polls for the first few weeks, when the HP came onto the stage the SPF dropped off significantly; their harmonic supporters now shared with the HP which would later on lead to another split in the party, but that occurred after the elections so let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Alongside these five larger parties, many smaller parties also participated in the elections, among them several Wingbardian and Sicameonese nationalist parties since the elections to the assembly were held in all provinces.

The first truly ‘national’ elections of Falcor heralded one clear winner: the PSDF, who alone earned 28% of the national vote – and since the elections to the assembly were representative – 112 of the 400 seats. Coming in second was the PLF who got 17% of the vote and 67 seats. Next was the HP, for whom 15% of the population voted, earning them 60 seats; followed by the PSR who got 10% of the vote and 42 seats and the PPN who got 10% of the vote and 39 seats. Both gaining just above 4% of the vote and 16 seats each, the SPF and PGPP shared the 6th place, barely below the Wingbardian center-left SPAWR-party who got 4.3% of the popular vote and 17 seats. The two major Sicameonese nationalist parties together gained a total of 7.1% of the vote and 28 seats; specifically the deeply religious cult-like los verdaderos creyentes got 13 seats while the PIS got 15 seats. Last but not least, the PMFRF and SPF/MS, who pooled together their vote to amplify their voice, got 3 seats and 0.6% of the vote.

Unlike a government for which it is completely acceptable to have an approval-rating described by the third derivative of a quadratic function, a constitution requires an approval rating more akin to the integral of the function f(x)=⅛e^(-4x) where c is a real number greater than 85, for values x approaching infinity. As such it was decided that a simple 50% majority in the assembly simply wouldn’t cut it; instead a constitution would need at least 75% approval from the assembly to be passed, or if that should not work out then a constitution could also be passed via a referendum which would also require 75% yes-votes.

Luckily, the PSDF, PLF and PSR all already mostly agreed Falcor should be a unitary parliamentary democratic monarchy, that the monarchy should lose all its remaining sway, and that nobles were a product of bygone times. Although there of course were differences in the details they were nothing that couldn’t be compromised upon.

The harmonists naturally wanted to build a ‘harmonic state’, but since they lacked a supermajority in the assembly their plans were cut short. However they could still have an impact on the constitution; by forming a block with the PIS, SPF and SPAWR-party, the ‘left block’ was able to push for a very extensive catalog of citizen’s, creature’s and civil rights as well as for regions with large minorities to be granted more autonomy.

The PPN meanwhile also tried to compromise with and even join the ‘main block’ as their vision of the state’s organization mostly aligned. Yet their stance on the non-Falcorians and their rights was too regressive for them to comfortably join the ‘main block’.

The parties on the extreme ends of the political spectrum, or rather those seen as ‘too radical’ by the mainstream, the VC, PGPP and PMFRF-SPF/MS, were all very consciously excluded by the mainstream for their radicalism (real or imagined) so as to not ruin a perfectly fine constitution with their republican nonsense.

One issue all the parties agreed on was that of the military. The attempted coup had drawn the attention of politicians and the public alike towards the military, whose subordination to the Reichskriegsamt and independence of the Falcorian government was finally noticed. Naturally this arrangement was unacceptable as it put the Falcorian government at the mercy of the Imperial court.

Yet although the assembly had the legal authority to draft a new Falcorian constitution, seizing the army back from Griffonstone without prior consultation was bound to bring forth another crisis – especially since it challenged the authority of an imperial court controlled by Archon Eros, who coup-d’état-ed vassal-states which dared challenge the court’s authority.

Thus, the assembly opened negotiations with the court, concerning the army specifically as well as what shape the future-relationship between the empire and Falcor would take. Skipping ahead two months of insipid, dull negotiating, the two parties came to the compromise that the government would get oversight over the military in exchange of raising military-spending twenty-five-fold, from 0.2% of the GDP to 5%, while the Reichskriegsamt would still have some influence over the Falcorian army.

Apropos the relations between Falcor and the empire, it was agreed that Falcor would stay part of the empire, naturally, but in all but name Falcor declared independence. The Imperial court conceded its authority to make laws in Falcor, acknowledged the Royal Falcorian Court as the highest legal authority of the nation, and gave up the few executive powers it still had in Falcor, traded for Falcor entering what was effectively a mutual defensive alliance with the empire, Falcor perpetually staying part of the common imperial market, and a slurry of other minor concessions that merely formalized the status-quo.

By the end of march and the fifth major redraft, the constitution had been finished and passed through the constitutional assembly with 349 votes in favor, 17 votes against, and 34 absentees. Like the original draft of the 991 constitution, it was very progressive – turning Falcor into a republic in all but name –, yet unlike it, it ended up more than the failed dream of overambitious politicians.

The queen’s non-ceremonial powers were abolished and divided between parliament and the branches of the state; parliament could now make laws independently of the queen, elect and dismiss the PM, make amendments to the constitution, and appoint and indict judges to the Royal Falcorian Court. As a substitute for head-of-state having no powers at all a new position was made that was a head-of-state in all but name, the: “highest lord/lady in Falcor, protector of the rights of the Falcorians and elect of the people, the esteemed lord/lady-chancellor of the provinces of Matton, Talont,…, Clawmpania, and Greybill and the great City of Falcor”; more commonly just called the chancellor of Falcor. The chancellor themself would also be elected by parliament, but could not freely be dismissed by parliament; only the Royal Court could remove him directly via indictment.

The new constitution made parliament very strong, hence making it extra-disastrous if no majority could be found in parliament. To avoid a repeat of the 2nd Fanti-Cabinet which never had a real majority in parliament, parliament could dissolve itself whenever it wanted with a 66% vote in favor, or if that failed could be dismissed if the chancellor, the PM, and the president of parliament all called for it. If parliament dissolved, the chancellor and PM would have to resign alongside it.

Parliament itself was doubled in size and had the nobles’ seats abolished. Furthermore the elections to parliament were also changed: every citizen received two votes, one for a candidate from his local voting district and one for a party. Of the 400 seats in parliament, 300 were proportionally distributed to the parties, while the remaining 100 were given to the winners of the local voting districts. Additionally, all term lengths were extended to five years.

As mentioned before, the provinces of Keowen, Arahno and Asbolus were turned into ‘autonomous regions’; allowing them to largely dictate policy shaping local everyday-life and make their own laws, insofar as they didn’t clash with the new constitution nor any treaties Falcor had signed. Importantly these ‘autonomous regions’ could still be overruled by parliament whenever, for whatever reason, and without anyone able to stop them; the granted autonomy was more of a gesture of goodwill than a measure that meaningfully protected the Wingbardian and Sicameonese minorities from the Falcorian state.

What did however protect citizens, especially those of non-Falcorian origin and ethnicity, from the state was the aforementioned catalog of rights. The catalog included much of the same rights from the 991 constitution, but also added many more such as: the right to peace, which banned conscription, the right of refuge, which granted asylum to anyone fleeing war, oppression and persecution, and the right to food, clothing, housing, work and all the other basic necessities needed to live. In their wording, these ‘rights to livelihood’ wrote the welfare state into Falcor’s constitution since it put the responsibility of ensuring everyone’s needs were met on the state.

The catalog was further given much more power within the constitution itself; the ability to suspend these rights was removed and, inspired by the Sicameonse constitution, had a perpetuity clause added to them so they could only be expanded upon but not retracted – at least not in any constitutional manner.

In the months during which the new constitution was written, the political shift to the left started in 999, the ‘harmonic shift’, was completed as the Harmonic Party united with many of the harmonists of the SPF to form the Falcorian Harmonic Workers Party. The FHWP itself had two major factions: the Falcorian harmonists – led by the princess – and the harmonic socialists – led by Griffeldo Gigola. These two factions often clashed over how the economy should be communalized; the Falcorian harmonists wanting to prop up and subsidize workers collectives while heavily taxing corporations and large businesses, whereas the harmonic socialists wanted to take the more proactive approach of forcefully buying up corporations and private businesses to then distribute them amongst the workers.This petty squabbling continued until a compromise was found: the FHWP would simply do both; they weren't mutually exclusive, just expensive.

While the Princess and the harmonists now had their own party, and indeed one of the larger ones, it had come at the cost of many a burned bridge. The Princess’ central role in the Rose Revolution had come at the cost of her losing the favor of the monarchists and royalists who had, in the 999 elections, largely voted for whatever she told them to vote for. The FHWP’s strong socialist tendencies meanwhile made cooperating with the centrists and liberals hard if not impossible. Additionally the party’s anti-absolutism and favoring of a ceremonial monarchy made it an outlier in the wider imperial harmonist movement that was gaining steam at the moment; be it the Gildaites in Griffonstone or the New Constitutionalists in Cloudbury, in the rest of the empire harmonists and progressives still generally favored systems with relatively strong if not absolute monarchs.

Meanwhile the rest of the SPF reunited itself with the SPF/MS and PMFRF and reorganized itself into an anti-sectarian socialist party, the United Socialist Front, pooling their resources and choosing to descend into political irrelevance together as revolutionary socialism lost the last bits of appeal it had had.

As a consequence of the Rose Revolution’s success, Fanti’s disgracement and the PPN’s foundation, the PLF increasingly lost in relevancy. It had only managed to hold on during the constitutional elections because the alternatives were messing up just as badly, but as the PPN and PSR got their acts together the PLF faded further and further into (relative) irrelevancy.

The PSDF also lost some popularity as the other parties got their act together, but unlike the PLF wasn’t being rocked by a massive corruption scandal and still had appeal, thus staying one of the largest parties.

The PSR meanwhile lost much of its progressive character; with most of the social reforms achieved that the PSR had initially split off from the PLF for, and the harmonists no longer putting pressure upon the party to adopt more progressive positions, the socially liberal core of the party no longer found itself on the progressive side of the political divide: by moving the political spectrum to the left, the PSR became centrist. This however also saw them rise in popularity: much of the PLF’s base started voting for the PSR instead, and a large part of the countryside hadn’t forgotten the Land Reform bill, which was largely credited to the PSR.

Once election day rolled around in may and the votes were counted and seats tallied, the results were as follows:

The great success of the PSR and PSDF, together with ongoing shenanigans on the left, meant that there only was one possible coalition: a PSR–PSDF–PLF coalition. Thus, on the 27th of March, this great coalition of the center formed the new government with Ramorino serving a second term as prime minister while Luigi Mambretto, one of the PSR’s higher-ups, was elected chancellor.

The 2nd Ramorino government

In the last few months of her 1st term, Ramorino and her government had attempted to reverse, or at the very least halt, the growing influence of the Reichsgroßkonzerne. At that, they had been somewhat successful as the percentage of the economy owned by the Reichsgroßkonzerne stayed nearly stagnant between January and May and the share of Falcorians employed by them only grew by marginal numbers. Yet, because the government had been unable to pass new laws and only barely gotten a budget through parliament, courtesy of the PSR’s infighting, and the Reichsgroßkonzerne tampering with the government's efforts at every possible opportunity, the government had merely been able to stun the Reichsgroßkonzerne, and at a great cost to the treasury too.

Consequently, the 2nd Ramorino government would spend most of its time and resources on reversing the economic influence of the Reichsgroßkonzerne whilst also trying to get spending under control, or at least for the growth of the government’s debt to match that of the economy.

So as to balance the budget, the government raised taxes across the board and introduced many more: a general sales tax at 7,5% the value of the sold goods & services was introduced, income taxes were increased three- to fifteen-fold, depending on one's income, a personal wealth cap was introduced at 10.000.000 Idols (~350.000 Bits), a property tax at 5% of one's wealth annually for anyone whose personal wealth exceeded 1.400.000 Idols (~50.000 Bits) and rising with increasing wealth, and a plethora of other taxes.

All these went a long way in balancing the budget, generating some additional 85 billion Idols a year and doubling the state’s income, but at the same time the government had a hard time cutting back on any expenses and in fact increased overall expenditure by 102 billion Idols. This was in part due to military spending, which in accordance with the imperial compromise was raised from just above 1 billion Idols to just over 30 billion Idols. The lion’s share however came from buying back the economy from the Reichsgroßkonzerne and propping up businesses to stop them from falling into the claws of the Reichsgroßkonzerne, on which the state spent 62 billion Idols more than in the previous year.

As part of their trying to balance the budget, the government shifted social spending around. The national health insurance fund and national pensions funds both were only pseudo-funds as the actual payments into them were very low; the average Falcorian paid no more that 63 Idols per month for the health insurance fund and 156 Idols for the pensions fund, while costing the health insurance fund an average of 252 Idols a month and being able to expect a minimum of 16000 Idols per month as pensions. The consequential 10 Billion Idols strong deficit had so far been covered by the state. In order to change this the government tripled the amount employees had to pay into the funds, while requiring the employer to match their employees’ payments. Additionally, the veterans’ pensions were moved from the national pensions fund to the military budget, accounting for 83% of the military’s spending in the 1002/1003 fiscal year. In total, this freed up some 35 Billion Idols the government could then use to limit the influence of the Reichsgroßkonzerne.

Through the aforementioned buybacks of the Falcorian economy, the state found itself in control of a large number of businesses and assets, especially in the advanced manufacturing sector and the aviation industry where the government's buyback efforts had been centered. These, it was decided, would be combined into a single state-owned conglomerate, the Conglomerata Falcoriana Consolidata Industriale, which would then aid the state in buying back the economy from the Reichsgroßkonzerne. The irony of creating a monopolistic conglomerate to aid in ridding the economy of monopolistic conglomerates wasn’t lost on the government, but the alternatives of selling these assets at a loss or giving them away to their previous owners for free weren’t much better and couldn’t be justified considering the huge costs of the buyback.

In the next five years, the Conglomerata Falcoriana Consolidata Industriale would greatly expand by buying unprofitable businesses owned by the Reichsgroßkonzerne. By 1007 the CFCI employed more than 600.000 Falcorians, about 13% of the Falcorian workforce, and accounted for approximately 10% of Falcors GDP. In turn, this saw the number of Falcorians employed by the other Reichsgroßkonzerne decrease from 1,3 million Falcorians at their peak to just over 600.000, and the percentage of the economy owned by them dropped back below 10%.

In the meantime, the CMCI allowed the state to significantly cut back on its spending on the economy, which in turn allowed subsequent budgets to not only not run a deficit, but actually have a positive balance (for example, the 1003/1004 fiscal year budget had a surplus of 15 billion Idols).

Yet the CMCI also had many contractors and was subject of widespread criticism from all sides of the aisle: market liberals hated it for being a monopolistic state owned corporation, conservatives hated it for being to socialist, centrists hated it for focusing more on fighting other companies than economic development, and socialists and harmonists hated it for its profit oriented running, relatively bad treatment of workers, and the fact CMCI had been built with public money and as such should, as they saw it, be owned directly by the public.

As a whole, economic growth slowed down significantly in the years 1004 and 1005. During the Wingbard-War birth-rates had been very low due to most young adults being on the frontlines fighting the war. Now, almost two decades later, the chicks who weren’t born back then weren’t joining the workforce, causing Falcor’s workforce to shrink between 1004 and 1006. The effects of this were twofold: first, even as overall productivity grew by 10%, the nation’s GDP only grew by 5%, and second wages rose significantly, especially for jobs requiring fewer qualifications.

Besides battling the Reichsgroßkonzerne over the economy, the 2nd Ramorino government passed three small but important laws: first, it made vaccinations against a slurry of diseases necessary for one to receive healthcare benefits and made others yet mandatory. Given, vaccination rates had been steadily rising over the last decade and at the time the law was passed (late 1002) at over 70% for chicks, but thanks to this policy vaccination rates for common chickhood diseases climbed up to 98,3% by 1007. Thanks to this policy, the previous governments’ environmental regulations and a general improvement of urban living conditions, chick death rates not only stopped rising, but took a drastic fall from a local peak in 999 at 37% down to 11% in 1006.

Secondly, the government made access to higher education even easier for the working class. University attendance was at an all-time high; of the class of ‘01 16,8% were attending college, six times the attendance of the class of ‘90. Due to her easy access to higher education Falcor was quickly becoming one of the most educated nations on the continent; her engineers and physicians were sought across the continent, Falcorians made up half of the imperial scientific community, and the younger generations were better educated than their Equestrian counterparts.

Yet for all her advantages, the Falcorian system of higher education was also highly flawed and unequal. Though university attendance was free, one still had to cover one’s own cost of living. For most griffons living near a university this wasn’t a problem, but unfortunately most of Falcor’s universities were concentrated in just three cities: Falcor City, Birdisi, and Sudfolc – which incidentally also had the highest, second highest, and third highest cost of living respectively. In comparison, the Matton–Talont Metropolitan Region, home to a third of Falcor’s population, only had a single civilian institution of higher learning, with a capacity of just over 4.000 students. Hence, higher education was still unavailable for most of the working class.

Seeking to remedy this, the government passed the Support for Higher Education Act and the Equal Access to Education Act. The former had the state cover the cost of living for students of higher learning, while the latter sought to make the former as unnecessary as possible by establishing places of higher learning all over Falcor (relatively) proportional to population.

The latter naturally took time to implement, and by 1007 was still far from finished, but still had come a large way. In 1003 when the Act was passed, 88% of students studied in the aforementioned three cities, by 1007 it was down to 73%. In the meantime, the Support for Higher Education Act raised university attendance even further so that 23,0% of the class of ‘06 attended university.

Going back to party-politics, the SPAWR-party and PIS gave up what little demands for independence they still had, and after recognising they had basically the same goals anyways, combined to form the ‘minority-block’.

In November of 1005, Gianna Ramorino declared her intention to resign from politics after completing her 2nd term as PM. This came as shocking news to much of the PSDF; Ramorino had been among the founding members of the PSDF; Ramonino had been part of the party’s leadership since 974; Ramorino had been the one to expel the revolutionaries from the party; Ramorino had been the one to avoid getting banned by the government; Ramorino had been the party’s elected leader five times in a row; Ramorino had been the one to represent the PSDF in the negotiations for two different constitutions; Ramorino had played a vital role in the Rose Revolution; Ramorino had played a major or leading role in three of the last five governments; Ramorino was, as far as many were concerned, the PSDF, and as such her resignation greatly up shook the party and its status quo.

Ramorino’s resignation was to be a gradual one, starting with her resigning from most of her positions within the party in March of 1006, followed by her resigning as leader in July, and finally completed with the election of the next PM. This was so that the party had time to prepare for her resignation; if she were to resign overnight it was bound to cause chaos. Ramorino also encouraged other long-serving members of the PSDF-leadership, specifically those from within her clique of ancient social democrats.

Thus 1006 was a year of party-internal elections for the PSDF. In these elections, the left-PSDF performed significantly better than in previous elections, leading to a leftward shift of the party, especially in regards to civil rights. Thanks to this, the PSDF elected their first unity-candidate as party-leader since the election of Mario Tagliatelle in 975 and member of the Sudfolc Seven, Amalia von Mulderhausen.

As Falcor and her people were continuously busying themselves with political squabbling and the economy, the same way they had since 991, Falcorian politics and society stayed largely oblivious to the resurgence of Falcor and the empire’s enemies abroad, and when they didn’t, resisted any attempts at remilitarization; when tensions between the republic and empire escalated into a weeks-long shelling campaign across the Angriver, Falcor slept through the entire thing; when a revolution broke out in Prywhen and the empire intervened, Falcorians protested some of their military’s engineers being drafted into the expeditionary force; when Sicameon, Asterion and Macawia made an alliance with the express purpose of fighting the empire and imperial influence in the region, the Falcorian people finally acted – and demonstrated against their government’s decision to begin remilitarizing until the remilitarization-program was hollowed out so thoroughly it might as well have been another cut of the military’s budget.

Falcor’s civil society and her political and economic institutions not only withstood the imperial collapse better than any other griffon state, but through hard work, good decision-making on all levels of governance and a willingness to adapt when necessary grew their economy, modernized their state and advanced their nation in a time when most other griffonian states were fighting for their very existence; where once Falcor was the backwater that divided Wingbardy from the more advanced nations on the continent by 1007 Falcor was the only truly modern griffonian nation.

Yet Falcor is a nation of contradictions: a monarchy with a republican constitution; a democracy, at times teetering on the edge of socialism, which forms the backbone of the reaction; a nation dependent on her allies for protection yet unwilling to protect her allies; a pacifist nation awoken during a war. Should Falcor fail to resolve these it may very well cost her the freedoms she gained in the last years or isolate her from her allies. However, resolving these will take time and attention, of which the nation is running short: the victory won in the fields of Clawmpania has long withered away and nations once brought to their heels are again standing proud, eying their lost territories and waiting only for the opportunity to strike.

The future of the Falcorian Queendom is far from certain; whether she will continue to prosper and evolve to brave yet more challenges or fall into the trap of complacency and stagnate while the rest of the world marches on remains to be seen.

Author's Note

Hello there!

If you notice any spelling and/or grammar mistakes feel free to point them out; my German flank is unable to spot things like comma-splices or incorrect capitalization.

We have a few maps and statistics concerning Falcor that go along with this chapter. They're not needed to understand anything but add some context and extra information not easily communicated via text.

Thanks for reading,

\Moon.

*1Offense very much intended, there’s a reason the donkeys’ civilization’s zenith was 2500 years ago, but I digress

*2These conglomerates of course were closely connected to the imperial court and/or their respective government and dividing the economy amongst them further strengthened the ruling class, but they're not technically part of the state so it's still a free market economy and if you disagree you will be hanged for treason against the Kaiser.

*3the slogan “friendship is magic” wouldn’t be popularized until the publication of the friendship journal.

*4Private guards were abolished in 993 with the Militia-Abolition-Law, with exceptions to a few prestige-guards that were seen as having cultural significance, among them the guardia azzurra who go back to an alliance between the harpy state of Ornithia and the duchy of Sudfolc which lasted 150 years from the late 4th up until the early sixth century ALB, more specifically the 455 siege of Sudfolc, which was reinforced by a harpy contingent 500 strong that had slipped past the Wingbardian blockade and saved the city – and the entire duchy by proxy – from conquest.

*5The exact color would be Rose Pink (#FF66CC), although Brilliant Rose (#F653A6) was at times also used.

*6The reason for the fifth major rewrite can be found in the catalog of rights which was found out to have been partially plagiarized from Caramel Marks.