The Confederation

The Confederation was a short lived entity that existed for 31 years, between 928 and 959 IY, when four of the ten regions of The Empire of Belyos broke away in the The Great Schism to form their own state. Mistrust between the members, along with no clear unifying purpose other than to leave the Empire, meant that it never truly attained unity, and its collapse was inevitable.
Its only lasting legacy was that the framework in which its armed forces were supposed to function became the template for a future joint effort to expel the Sakamohr from Imperial lands, over six hundred years later.

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Structure

Unlike the Empire from which it broke away, the Confederation was never supposed to have a single person ruling it. The five Imperial Houses  that led the secession, now renamed Noble Houses, were each part of a Ruling Council, who would meet every year to decide on the long term policies of the Confederation and decide on matters of foreign policy. Each Noble House retained autonomy in everything but external matters, and was entitled to keep as large an army as they saw fit. The only laws that overruled each House's own was a limit on trade tariffs between member states.
An individual called the Despot would be appointed by the Ruling Council in times where a unified military response was required. The Despot would have two years in which they would have the authority to call upon a Noble House's armed forces to command as their own. At the end of the two years, the Ruling Council would be needed to re-appoint the Despot.
The Confederation had no capital, instead the Ruling Council would rotate its meetings between each member state, ensuring that no member received favourable treatment. Confederation bureaucracy, as it was needed, would be split between member states as well.

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Disbandment

The first signs that the Confederation was not as unified as it could be was the failure of the Ruling Council to appoint the first Despot to deal with the continuing pressure from the Empire. All of the Noble Houses wished for one of their own to be the Despot, not trusting members of other Houses to work in the best interests of the Confederation as a whole. 
The Empire, due to a combination of political infighting between military leaders and a severe depletion of military effectiveness since the Schism, was not able to take advantage of this lack of unified leadership, which further boosted individual Noble House's attitude that a Despot should come from their obviously superior ranks.
As well as this, whilst the Ruling Council was supposed to rotate its meetings between member states, the historical enmity between the Houses meant that there was suspicion entering the fortified residences of another, with no one willing to allow armed forces of another in their own. This meant that the Ruling Council only met four times in the first ten years of the Confederation's existence, and each meeting was filled with argument and complaints that other Houses were not pulling their weight.
Eventually, the Ruling Council ceased meeting entirely, and the issue of a Despot was never resolved. Internal squabbles turned into violent conflicts, and soon the various Noble Houses were fighting each other as much as the Empire. The Confederation was formally dissolved in 959, when the first of the Noble Houses left, and the other four followed within weeks.

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Territories

The Confederation

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DISBANDED/DISSOLVED

928 - 959

Type

Geopolitical, State

Government System

Oligarchy

Power Structure

Confederation

Related Ethnicities

• Imperial