Rebellions of the Second Empire

Preface

The transition from the First Empire to the Second Empire is a point of considerable contention for historians today. One school of thought argues that the death of Empress Michelle the Great marked decisively the creation of a new state ruled by a series of matriarchs by way of marriage to the ailing Emperor Constantine. A second school has argued that the Age of Queens was an extension of the Monarchy inherent in the First Empire, and that the Second Empire was a short-lived age of tyranny under the ruthlessly power-hungry Empress Fire. Regardless which definition one uses, the Second Empire collapsed in small part to a series of failed revolutionary movements that destabilized the state amidst the greater challenge of collective action to stabilize the faltering economy.

These successive series of revolutions, termed by some as the Age of Defiance, were significantly larger in scale and intensity than the Elven Rebellion of the Aelyrian Kingdom, which had the unintended effect of rallying a nation to unity and created the Aelyrian Empire. While the Elven Rebellion was a racial uprising by the elves, led by an unlikely coalition between a dethroned elfish Prince from Medonia and a confused Aelyrian princess, the Rebellions of the Second Empire were largely unpopular movements led by demagogues and overly ambitious individuals who, through a combination of political and economic shrewdness, created a conflict that destabilized the political situation. Though ultimately, all the rebellions of the Second Empire were crushed, their relative succession to one another weakened the collection of taxes and the execution of an Imperial monetary policy. When asked why he failed to initiate an Economic Taxation Reform along with the other Edicta he had passed, Emperor Constantine responded to a troubadour from The Herald newspaper, “One can hardly reform what has not been collected for ages.”