Stories of The North Pacific feature: Isle of Avalon
For the first volume of Stories of The North Pacific, the Executive Staff of the Ministry of Culture has chosen to feature Isle of Avalon. Congratulations to its author, Lennart!
The factbook will remain pinned in the WFE and linked in the News Box until July 26th. It is also reproduced below for your convenience.
You can nominate factbooks to be featured in Stories of The North Pacific here. And you can join the team selecting the features by applying for the Executive Staff here.
Isle of Avalon
The Isle of Avalon (Welsh: Ynys Afallon, Avalonian: Awesöme Island), also known as the Kingdom of Avalon, is a Mythical Monarchy in The North Pacific. The capital and seat of government is The Citadel, being also the most populated city.Avalon has a free-market economy with relatively low corporate taxes compared to other NS countries, while maintaining a well founded welfare system that provides universal health care and tertiary education for its citizens. Recently, it was ranked in the 5% most developed country in the world by the World Assembly's Human Development Index and stays amongst the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita. The country is also highly ranked for press, economic and political freedom. Avalon is a member of the Regional Assembly (RA) of The North Pacific and pursues a policy of neutrality through non-alignment and is consequently not a member of any military, raiding or defending organization.
Etymology
Geoffrey of Monmouth called it in Latin Insula Avallonis in the Historia Regum Britanniae ("The History of the Kings of Britain"), and was also, more oftenly, refered in Latin as Insula Avalonia. For instance, the leaden cross in King Arthur's tomb which reads:
Hic jacet sepultus inclitus rex Arthurus in insula Avalonia.
("Here lies renowned King Arthur in the island of Avalon").
In the later Vita Merlini he called it Insula Pomorum the "isle of apples". The name is generally considered to be of Welsh origin (though an Old Cornish or Old Breton origin is also possible), derived from Old Welsh abal, "apple", or aball, "apple tree" (in later Middle Welsh spelled aval, avall; now Modern Welsh afal, afall). In Breton, apple is spelled "aval"/ "avaloù" in plural. It is also possible that the tradition of an "apple" island among the British was influenced by Irish legends concerning the otherworld island home of Manannán mac Lir and Lugh, Emain Ablach (also the Old Irish poetic name for the Isle of Man), where Ablach means "Having Apple Trees" – derived from Old Irish aball ("apple")—and is similar to the Middle Welsh name Afallach, which was used to replace the name Avalon in medieval Welsh translations of French and Latin Arthurian tales). All are etymologically related to the Gaulish root aballo- (as found in the place name Aballo/Aballone, now Avallon in Burgundy or in the Italian surname Avallone) and are derived from a Common Celtic abal- "apple", which is related at the Proto-Indo-European level to English apple, Russian ?????? (jabloko), Latvian abele, et al.
History
The existence of Avalon itself has been questioned through time and many true and false stories have been written; most of them made up by lame fantasy writers who just wanted to avoid the whole world creation phase. Nowadays, no one has the time nor patience Tolkien had anymore and I won't even talk about the half assed anime "homages" either (LOL didn't know I could write "ass" in a factbook).
The true history of the mysty isle of Avalon is that of a lonely island in the middle of nowhere, that was firstly inhabited by druids and settled by celt tribes circa 50 AD. as their refuge from Roman invasions. Those inhabitants established a kingdom that lasted until the early 6th century. They spent their days jumping and singing while naked and were also good blacksmiths. But they thought they could use swords to fish so the lakes and rivers ended up filled with lots of swords, the Lady of the Lake was annoyed and told them to go f*ck themselves (Ok the F word can't go unnoticed I guess. But I had to try).
But the life of former Avalonians was not only fun, doing stuff while naked and throwing magical swords in lakes. The last years of their ruling were shrouded in decay, as the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Danes inflicted several defeats on Avalonian Army, until the last of their chiefs swore allegiance to King Arthur of Britain who was in turn called Lord of Avalon. He moved here, drank lots of cider and invented apple pie. Then died.
Avalon shone under Merlin's magic and Arthur's power, but rapidly became an orphaned land again after their demise. Our old gods departed and the whole land of Avalon sank like Atlantis. The rest of the world forgot about us until fantasy novels became a profitable business.
The days of Lennart
No one but Lennart expected Avalon to emerge again and take its place in the world map. Well maybe a couple of other people did, so I wish the best of lucks to you guys who tried to refound this and failed, but still tried to log in after I took control over it. It was fun.
Anyway, the thing is Lennart claimed his right to rule over the re-discovered isle, and the only other inhabitant left alive was the Lady of the Lake (She lived in the bottom of a lake, no wonder why she survived the sinking). The Lady gave Excalibur to him: no stone, no anvil; Lennart took the sword out of a butter block which had been kept in the fridge for days. She instantly recognised the hero who was destined to make her a sammich.
The rest of the population came in dinghies and they keep coming as of today, like 5-8 million people every day, or so it seems by watching the NS population growth rate.
Governance
Lennart established the Kingdom of Avalon and named his friends knights. He took back the round table and called himself primus inter pares, which sounds a lot more honorable than it really is. In fact Lennart does as he pleases and his knights look aside, drink cider and sing while naked. So everyone's happy, the Moon beneath the castle walls, as the nightingale sings... And Magic rules again
