Tulip War

The Tulip War was a one-year historical civil war in the Kingdom of Hain waged between the Hainish monarchs and rebellious nobility. The rebellious nobility won and forced the monarchs to end the wartime powers they had assumed during the Fifth Scouring war.
The Tulip War is the beginning of modern Hainish Politics. With the fall of the hereditary monarchy, the kingdom lost its centralized authority and direction. The Hainish Crown Diet and Hainish Elector Council took over government and often allowed various noble families to run wild over both Hain and its various subject kingdoms.

Historical Summary

Here is a brief summary of the war, as detailed in Hainish Politics:
For a century prior to the current regime, House DevHauzen ruled Hain as a hereditary monarchy. This began with King Volstr DevHauzen, who assumed emergency royal powers in 1724 after his mother, the elected Queen, was slain in battle. King Volstr's rule was ratified by the Electors in 1750, 25 years into his rule - and he had grown very accustomed to the idea that his own son would inherit the throne. Volstr spent the decades after his victory against the Kivish rebuilding and hoarding political influence. In 1781, the aging Volstr wanted to retire, and he officially enacted what he had been building to for a decade: he dissolved the Elector Council and Crown Diet and declared his son heir to the throne of Hain. Not long after this, King Sandor DevHauzen ascended to the throne.
King Sandor DevHauzen was a disciplined and pious man with an eye for numbers and a head full of ambition. He was also, unfortunately, terribly unpersuasive to his fellow nobles. King Sandor had come to believe that all politics was intrigue - that nobles could only be moved by threats or bribes, and that only those held by blackmail could be relied upon. He hardly bothered justifying his plans to centralize Hain through an expanding military bureaucracy; he left that to his Archdruid, who he greatly empowered. The sudden shift of power to the priests, the poor communication, and the incredibly difficulty Sandor had in making his bureaucracy all made the regime vulnerable. And yet, thanks to his father's legacy, his competency with numbers and intrigue, and his brilliant ally Archdruid Ginshka Dezuren, he held onto the throne for nearly twenty years. But, in 1797, Archdruid Ginshka died and was replaced by a slightly more skeptical archdruid (Archdruid Gollara Hugelma) that was not willing to support Sandor's vision uncritically. And then, a year later, the King's own blackmailed allies were able to get blackmail on him - and when the King refused to budge on giving them power, they released knowledge of his mistresses and his dishonors to the court. Humiliated, politically bludgeoned, miserable, and convinced he was unfit to rule, King Sandor decided to abdicate and hand the throne to his own son, Floriv.
As Sandor prepared the government for his son to assume the throne, his nobles began to act against him. The Elector Princess of House Halar, Tonma Halar, became a symbol of rebellion after she made a show of humiliating Prince Floriv in a duel (and one theoretically stacked in his favor) - challenging his readiness to assume the throne. Elector Halar rallied the princes and lower nobility against the king, and held an election for the new monarch against his will. The election, unsurprisingly, chose Tonma as the new Queen. Queen Tonma rode against Sandor and Floriv with an army of rebel nobles, and waged a brief but blood war. Sandor was killed in battle, and Floriv was left hiding in the capital while the countryside was consolidated against him. In 1801, Floriv accepted exile, and Tonma became Queen of Hain. This conflict between the line of Volstr and the Elector-rebels became known as the Tulip War - for the rebels each picked a tulip from the garden of where the election of Tonma was held to symbolize the beauty of a restored chivalrous age. Monarchs after this conflict became known as the Tulip Monarchs.
This is a historical stub

Conflict Type

Civil War

Battlefield Type

Land

Start Date

1800

Ending Date

1801

Location

The Hainish Heartlands