North Sea Company: Tax those Seaways
The merging of state and corporation is inevitability in Lamara.
If you make a super successful, powerful, even threatening business, some noble running the area you operate in is gonna either threaten you into handing over ownership of the business or agreeing to some kinda marriage deal which means you both have the same grandkids or whatever and that the noble family - also your family - gets the business upon you death.
And at the same time, nobles have the most obvious wealth from taxing their citizens and commerce with which to start up powerful businesses, preferably operating mostly in their own territory where they can choose to ignore their own breakages of the law. Such businesses are usually handled by "branches" of noble families, being given to children who don't stand to inherit in place of land, or those children are just given massive amounts of money and if they fail they fail.
The North Sea company is a case of both of these happening.
Public Agenda
Money.
Assets
Fleets of ships, being able to casually put up a vassal-state flag at any time, literal taxpayers money, tonnes of money they make on their own, armies of normal soldiers who don't even count as mercenaries it's just a normal standing army funded by the local state that will help this company if it has a problem.
History
The company was founded by Lord Nin's second daughter, Nina, as a shipping company delivering goods and people along Lamara's coast, but after the noble family running the area was replaced by a higher-up overlord for helping a peasant uprising Nina's grandson, Noffo, then running the company, took his distant relatives as guests and employees in the company and at the fort that the company had built.
Noffo's great granddaughter, Hingess, married the heir to the new noble family running the area, causing their eldest child to inherit both the company and rulership of the region... a perfect combo.
This could never go wrong...
Anyway they hiked up taxes so much that it strangled all the competition that needed to pass through the strait they owned and gained monopoly power over a large area's trade. The price of boats in the area was massively devalued and they snatched them up to add to their trade and patrol fleets easily.
"Pay up or die" became an ironic motto because the family knew they'd set the prices so high nobody could pay up at all if they sailed on their waters.
The nobles of the area varied between not caring about building up their territory cos all their money was coming from the company and building up the area in often useless ways to flex how much money this company was making them. They weren't even meant to be at any significant level within the nobility but they could talk like equals in negotiations with those who ruled over far vaster areas of land.
Destroyed because of Sarah Bailey / "Seh-uh Belly" revealing that they were buying weapons from Lamaran smiths and selling them to enemies of Lamara while Lamara was at war with said enemies. Caused an attempted uprising by the North Sea Company using tonnes of mercenaries and bribed allies but their entire army broke upon seeing the army that the Monarch of Lamara showed up with.
The possibility of continuing the existence of the company under ownership of the Monarchy was considered but whether or not to do this was put on hold for too long, allowing other, fairer/not as ruthlessly owned by nobles companies to form and break the monopoly power, at which point the Monarchy decided that due to that it wouldn't be worthwhile.
"Pay up or die."
96 years before Sarah's appearance. - 5 years after Sarah's appearance... yeah she was pretty involved.
Alternative Names
Trade stranglers, Scum etc.
Parent Organization
Neighboring Nations
Related Ethnicities
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Public agenda: Money. I mean, what else do you need :D
Cheese.