Worldbuilders’ Logbook

Entoulian History 101

Hello all,

I’ve been doing some worldbuilding on the history of Entoulie, and I’d like to share what I’ve created. If anyone has any feedback, I’d love to hear it.

(Just a note: I know a lot of you are Americans/living in America, so before anyone gets confused, when I say republicans and democrats, this is entirely unrelated to the American political parties.)

The kingdom of Entoulie was first founded in the 900s, but it only started to become recognisable to Entoulie in the story by the early 1500s, when a new monarchy rose to power- the House of Leroy. The members of this family had one thing in common- purple coloured eyes. This rare genetic mutation was a dominant trait, meaning al most everyone in the family with ‘Leroy blood’ had purple eyes. They claimed their eyes had been made such by the guardian spirits of Entoulie, and that they had a divine right to the throne. Nobody dared challenge them for nearly 200 years.

During the later years of Leroy rule, in the mid 1600s, the countries around Entoulie were experiencing rapid advances in magic, culture, and philosophy. Despite this, Entoulie remained unchanged and ‘backwards’, since the King at the time, King Etienne VIII, didn’t view these improvements as important, and, if anything, detrimental to his rule. He didn’t care much about the average person in his country, and encouraged feudalism and serfdom amongst the nobles of the country. As well as this, he placed high taxes on the peasant population to fund his own partying, and abused his power in many ways. The peasants of Entoulie became impoverished and upset with current rule.

After King Etienne VIII died in 1679, his son, Etienne IX, was nothing like his father, and wanted to be a good king. His first actions were getting rid of the feudalist system and investing large amounts of money in ‘bringing Entoulie up to date’ with its neighbouring countries. However, as a result of his lack of knowledge and corrupt officials embezzling the funds, Entoulie’s debts grew larger, and the citizens of the country had to pay more tax. By 1684, the peasant class was changing, becoming better educated- they started learning the philosophies of influential democrats from other countries, and saw how other countries with less social divide and more open politics were prospering. Amongst people in both higher and lower social classes, there was growing unrest and a shared desire for some form of self-rule. Etienne tried to do this, by appointing a prime minister, elected by the parliament, who would share power with the king. This did not satisfy most people, who believed that Etienne was weighing down the prime minister. Soon there was a movement to get rid of the monarchy’s power altogether, and make them figureheads, or that the monarchy should be removed altogether. This group was know as the republicans.

One leading family in the republican movement were the Desrosiers family, who’d started out as poor merchants, but became rich after trading with foreign powers. The head of the Desrosiers, Florian Desrosiers, had learnt many things during his time living abroad and wanted to share them with his native country. He rallied people around the cause of revolution by comparing the lives of those in other countries with the lives of Entoulians, and would talk about ways peasants and serfs had been abused by King Etienne VIII and the nobility at the time. The unrest continued to grow throughout the country, until in 1700, the royal château was stormed and King Etienne IX was forced to abdicate and give all power to the prime minister.

But the next year, King Etienne IX died, and his son, Louis III, wanted to take power again. He thought that the people had been quick to judge and that his father had been an incompetent old man, and that the people would realise he was a good ruler and give him power again. However, this plan backfired, civil war broke out in Entoulie, and Louis III was forced to go into hiding. The republicans declared themselves the victors, made a new constitution stating that Entoulie would have presidents, elected by the people, and that an election would take place every five years. The royal château was renamed the Le Château Présidentiel, and would be the house of the president.