Arkyne Civil War

The Arkyne Civil War was a civil war fought in Westreach between SA 175 and 182 between the faction of Emperor Mathieu I and a coalition of colacrats and their Maxagmanist allies. The war divided the Westreachian Staffhalders; the Staffhalders of the Rhuge, the Rottfold, Chambrante and the Langcaste supported Emperor Mathieu I while the Staffhalders of Kirkland and Trafehaken swore allegiance to the colacrats. The war began in SA 175 when the colacrat .. seized power in Harerok and forced Mathieu to flee; within months, however, Emperor Mathieu I's cause had recovered and by the end of the year Harerok had been retaken and the rebellion was seemingly crushed. The war resumed in SA 178, however, with Kinnofoldian intervention, and the theatre of war shifted north, to the Rottfold. The war was attritional, with new staged battles and many sieges. Fighting largely subsided after three years of relentless, exhausting campaigning in the Rottfold valley, and the war was formally ended by the Treaty of Gernard.

The war

Background
The Arkyne Empire's political system was decidedly unclear at the time of Emperor Sirius I's death in SA 75.

The political status of the Arkyne Empire was unclear on the death of Emperor Sirius the Great on March 15th, SA 75. The governmental institutions established by Sirius had been improvised according to whenever they were necessary, and overall they had little cohesion, even contradicting each other in certain instances.

The individual powers of each earl were prescribed, and thus directly controlled, by the imperial government. Accordingly, the earls functioned more as local governors then as feudal vassals, enforcing the Emperor's decrees rather then issuing their own. In stark contrast to this seemingly stable system of governance, the Staffhalders ruled the bulk of the Empire. The Staffhalders were vassals of the Emperor, the native Westreachian aristocracy, and operated with near-full autonomy.

the Royal tenier, the Staffhalders, and the Council of Lords, which was composed of the colacracy. The

The Imperial Court represented the Emperor himself and was under his direct control, while the Staffhalders were the clients of the Emperor, the native Westreachian aristocracy. Their status at this point was disputed, with some believing were to be incorporated into the Empire as provinces and others contending that they were simply external vassals. The role of the colacracy, the Argonotic Kinnofoldian magnates in the Imperial government was even more unclear. While the Council of Lords had been established to better facilitate governmental functions while balancing the power of the Emperor, it had been intended as a temporary institution to be disbanded upon the completion of the Empire's conquests. However, this internal reform never came, and by SA 70 the Council exercised an arbitrary range of functions, many of which were contested by the Imperial Court. To make matters more complicated, the colacracs, as marshals the Argonotic Order of the Sword, had control over the backbone of the Imperial army.