The Story of Arcadia

[Americanicus I]

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they might have been. William Hazlitt.

It was about four o'clock on a bitterly cold December night when a door in the Infigo swung open to reveal a vast library, an assortment of more than three thousand books covering utterly diverse topics. The organization was not alphabetical or topical (indeed, it was almost random), and yet the Emperor seemed to know the exact location of each volume, either by experience or through sheer luck. He opened a book and sat down to read.

"Infigo" was a serious understatement in describing the huge mansion that had been contructed to house such abnormalities as twelve bedrooms coupled with fourteen baths, Velvet tapestries combining scenes of Napoleonic conquest and ancient Greek lore that adorned the walls and ceiling of the main foyer, and a three-room art gallery complete with a silver floor.

Imagine being unutterably and almost suicidally bored. The former Emperor, known officially and fonly to his supporters as Americanicus, was just that. Accustomed to the hard spring bed of his "containment center" in Dejmia, he found the deeply comforting cushions immensely aggravating; they made sleep impossible!

He had no reasonable grounds for complaint, however -- four years of confinement in the Imperial Dominion, the city-state founded to be his own miniature nation (administered by Dutch and UR politicians), would be enough for anyone, but not for him: he longed for the days even before Dejmia, when he could be called "Emperor" . . .

 

[Americanicus I]

It was six years ago, the Battle of Qaltan, at the southernmost edge of Lagostan, a fiercely hot desert country. An unusual location, so far away from the cultural and economic epicenter of the empire. Qaltan was a dismal place. Miles away from any native settlement, Arcadian forces were pitted against British and Dutch bombardiers and regulars.

Colonization of Qaltan was an important strategic breakthrough for the Arcadian Empire, since it opened a new gateway to the sea that gave it direct path to the East African Isles, a British colony that had been destroyed six years earlier in the Dutch-English War. Still fertile and populous, it would be a great asset to imperial Arcadia.

When Qaltan (a former Dutch territory) was annexed to Arcadia, it aroused further hostility between the two powers, a hostility that was not relieved by British efforts at reconciliation and alliance with the Dutch. For months, local, violent Dutch rebellions plagued the region, each one successfully put down by Imperial forces and each one exciting the Dutch Foreign Office.

Two years after Arcadia had brought to fruition its plan to control the East African Isles, Britain and Holland had been provoked to military action; the Russians joined their confederation due to territorial claims they had placed on the Qaltan Bay, the only obstacle between Qaltan and the Isles. Russian troops had begun an assault on Arcadian outposts in Stregovnia, a weak republic just west of the Russian border.

Violence erupts in the streets of northern Stregovnia, as Russians push Arcadians into the urban area. Arcadia soon went on the offensive, entering Russia and establishing forts outside Moscow, declaring the surrounding area an Arcadian territory.

 

[Americanicus I]

The brutal bloodbath was to be seen along the Russian border, with only slight skirmishes with the Dutch on the desert outskirts of Qaltan. Within a year, through masterful military coordination, Americanicus had pressed the Russians out of Stregovnia; what was even more important was that he had forced them to Moscow, where he decided to camp his troops and bombard the city. The Russian air force had been depleted, and so retaliating strikes were impossible. Russia was backed into a corner, yet would not sue for peace. As a result of their partial victory, Arcadian soldiers suffered in the cold.

Anxious to consolidate its claims in a very visible manner (and also to break the confederation), Americanicus called for the British to be expelled from the Isles. Since the outbreak of war, the European treaty that bound the three nations had given the Isles to Britain for protection, since Holland would need all its troops to drive the Arcadians out of Qaltan. A succession of bloodly battles ensued, but Americanicus was once againt victorious and had driven the British out of the Isles in the space of one year; they were forced to flee and regroup in Africa, but just because land conflicts had been settled didn't mean that the sea was free and clear. The Russian waterway had been taken, as had the former Dutch possession, but the British were able to launch several crippling attacks on Imperial troops.

Arcadians route the British from the East African Isles, with the greater part of them returning to Qaltan after the victory.

Just one month after routing the British, Americanicus suffered a horrible realization: Stregovnia and the entire Russian border was being policed by British soldiers. Hemmed in, he ordered his troops to retreat to Ukraine and set up command in war-torn Georgia. They were intercepted by the British and their commanders taken into custody after a violent clash. Americanicus had lost Russia.