Burjion is an incredibly old nation, and an even older ethnic and cultural group, so it’s going to be a bit tough for me to pin down when to start their history because they did a LOT of really important things throughout ancient and early medieval history, and I would love to cover all of that, but in all honesty I would have to provide a significant amount of context which would take at least one history series to cover on its own. So for the sake of my limited sanity at the present moment I will be starting at the tail end of Burjion’s days as an Empire.
So let's start with the basics.
Even today, The Kingdom of Burjion is the largest nation on Galindia by landmass, and it once held the vast majority of the continent under its thumb, something which no other modern nation on Galindia has accomplished (So far.) Its landscape is dominated by vast fertile grasslands which stretch hundreds of miles in every direction in some places, as well as the largest river on the continent, the Majestic Sicara River which is in some places as large as 5 kilometers wide, and runs from the northern border of Burjion all the way to the southern coast of Soeria.
Burjion as a single entity produces the largest amount of food in the world and from the earliest days of its time as an Empire in the 600’s CE Gregorian Calendar to this day in the 1880’s CE the number of its citizens working in agriculture has never dropped below 60%. Keep in mind when Burjion raises its military to full strength calling upon volunteers and conscripts those enrolled in service are still considered working whatever job they had before the call to arms, so there have been times when not that much of the population has been actively working the fields.
What’s more amazing and somewhat sad from an outside perspective is that the Burjionese have not employed modern farming machinery in anything other than State mega farms. This is often blamed on Burjionese superstition but it is more likely that the majority of the people of Burjion don’t know these things exist, and even if they do they probably do not have the funds to pay for them.
The Burjionese are of shorter height than most in Galindia usually being between 165cm-172cm on average for men(Exception are the those of the northern mountain regions, who are part of an old ethnic minority who have been known to reach 220cm tall) Northern Burjionese have light pale skin and those in the south are slightly darker in complexion. The most common hair colours are black or brown and the most common eye colours are green and brown.
Most of the people of Burjion are a simple, peaceful, and conservative (As well as deeply religious) folk, who put total faith in their leaders, most Burjionese peasants will never travel any farther than ten kilometers from where they were born. The faith of the people of Burjion also makes them incredibly dangerous, as they will do
anything to fight off a perceived threat.
Most people live a relatively comfortable life as far as they’re concerned (though a bit primitively by Eclenian or Strennoran standards), and they have developed a wide array of delicious cuisine which while beginning at the family tables in the countryside has in recent years led some more ambitious young ones to refine their craft building some of the first restaurants in the world in the few cities of Burjion, most importantly the Auskelist capital, where the need to feed religious pilgrims provided the perfect demand for well cooked meals. Today some very forward thinking people have even taken their successes out of Burjion to the incredibly rich lands of Eclenia and Strennora to name a couple.
Now I shall finally get to some history, the iteration of Burjion we will be focusing on for most of the series will be its current form which is known as the Kingdom of Burjion. Something to point out however is that the only nation that acknowledges the legitimacy of the Kingdom of Burjion is the Kingdom of Burjion , while we will get more to that later to give you a brief summary. The Kingdom of Burjion as we know it today is really little more than a name that symbolizes the fact that they still keep a national unity. In reality however modern Burjion has two completely separate ruling bodies of government, two militaries, two systems of law, two capital cities and a number of other things in pairs which I could go on for hours about. So you’re probably wondering “why isn’t it two separate countries then?” Well that’s because one of those entities is the Auskelist Seric acting over Seric holdings ‘given’ to them by the Kingdom of Burjion during their Revolutionary War. The other half of the country, the so-called ‘Kingdom’ has no connections to the actual royal family of Burjion which was wiped out in the previously mentioned Revolution.
The current Royal family are the descendants of the Burjionese Revolutionary, Mikkel Salome, you may remember him from the brief Burjionese sidetrack in the History of Eclenia.
But we’ll get to that. So how did this new near failed state come to be?
While there are many factors which contributed to the downfall of the original Kingdom of Burjion, it is relatively well agreed upon that it began with the Empire of Burjion in the 15th century. But to understand that we must consider where Burjion came from, the Burjionese Empire was actually a rather miraculous nation. The original Kingdom was one of the larger domains in central Galindia during the Warring States Period and when the Jeddites invaded southern Galindia in the 400’s CE the Burjionese were some of the first to really steel themselves to the challenge with the kings at the time negotiating sense into their neighbors, or beating it into them that they needed to unite or be conquered by the invaders from the south.
This rallying cry worked very well, and when the Jeddites began a push north from Soeria in the 560’s, they were met by a strong united front of the allied Burjionese.
The Jeddites were soundly beaten and sent packing back to their southern domains and with their retreat, central Galindia had given birth to a new power. In truth the Burjionese hadn’t expected to win against the powerful Jeddite Army already outnumbering them on top of the Jeddite Dragon-Riders and Magic users, but the ragtag alliance had, and not only had they won, but they’d gained total victory. It was about this time that the new united Burjion realized just how powerful they were. Over the course of the next hundred and fifty years they swept across the rest of the warring states in what is modern day Burjion and conquered them all.
Then after they finished annexing all of their ethnic brethren, they went on a crusade to reconquer Soeria, and although it was messy and cost some compromises, they did it.
After that they began pushing east, first taking Antilonica and Mercia, however it was then the unbeatable Burjionese Empire ran into a brick wall in the form of the Kingdoms of Eclenia, and Haragladia. The former was one of the best geographically protected nations in the world, and the latter while but a shadow of its days of Imperial splendor was one of the oldest powers on the continent and still had one of the strongest militaries in Galindia.
Both first attempts proved failures, with the Haragladians smashing Burjionese forces in a humiliating defeat, and the Eclenians while nearly losing managed to eventually shove the Burjionese out.
These first defeats for the Empire were both infuriating and somewhat of a saving grace. The Burjionese economy (outside of their base of farming which was more profitable for individual nobles than the state) was by the 1100’s almost purely geared for war and conquest. The issue was, most of Burjion’s major production centers were in what was now the southern half of their empire and it was becoming harder to expand further north without running dangerously long supply lines. So to keep the cogs of the empire running smoothly along with their slow expansion northward, they continued to prepare and launch invasions of Eclenia and Haragladia.
By the turn of the 15th Century, the Burjionese had invaded Haragladia and Eclenia three times each all ending in failures, but they had pushed their influence as far north as what is today central Strennora in the middle of the Aleman cultural region.
It was then that the Burjionese made one fatal mistake that would break them. Thanks to a mix up in orders, the Burjionese set the stage for the ascension of the young bastard son of Eclenia’s former king.
You understood me clearly folks, it was by a mistake in orders that Marius Aspada came to the throne of Eclenia.
Those of you who have followed the histories since Eclenia may remember that the only reason Marius came to the Eclenian throne was because of the assassination of his uncle and cousins.
Something that is not well known is that the Burjionese troops who killed the Eclenian royal envoy were actually supposed to assassinate their own envoy and then blame it on the Eclenians. The point of which being to give Burjion a righteous casus belli to invade Eclenia once again. As we know this didn’t go to plan.
This one mistake put one tiny yet fatal crack into the Burjionese Empire that would bring them to their knees.
During the time Marius was on the throne of Eclenia he crushed Burjion’s empire first swiping Mercia and Antilonica from them, and then aiding the Soerians and Roncaleans gain independence. But even more important than the loss of lands, Marius took the vast majority of Burjion’s pride and prestige from them. In effect this young Emperor managed to kneecap and neuter this once seemingly mighty empire now proven to be built from glass.
The King and Queen of Burjion at the time couldn’t take the shame of it, and took their own lives, but to the amazement of the Burjionese, Emperor Marius came to their funeral to pay his respects to his fallen former adversaries. This act of respect made a strong impression on the new King of Burjion who even went so far as to send his daughter to study under him as an apprentice forming a new friendship between the two nations.
This would mark the end of the Empire of Burjion, and mark the beginning of the new Kingdom Period.
This new era is unfortunately well known as the dark days in Burjion. Much of the nobility which had flocked to the cities of Burjion to own enterprises for war production during the days of the Empire crawled back to their farm holdings which they had allowed to act relatively independently during the Imperial days, and then proceeded to continue living as if they were still making money from those now nonexistent enterprises, but I’ll get back to that in a little bit.
Aside from the Nobility returning to the countryside in droves, Burjion found itself a fat sheep in the midst of a pack of wolves as every group that didn’t consider themselves Burjionese within the borders of the former empire now began to rip themselves free. Any time these attempts turned violent the Burjionese military acted halfheartedly at best, and downright insubordinate at worst. Some foreign nations even managed to take chunks out of Burjion when Eclenia wasn’t watching, like the Soerians in 1469, or Kanbi in 1533, or Krasimir 3 or 4 times over the course of a few centuries.
In fact if it wasn’t for the friendship Burjion had with Eclenia, the nation would have likely been ripped to shreds by its neighbors.
Getting back to the Nobles, by the beginning of the 17th century the vast majority of the Burjionese nobility were thanks to their overly lavish lifestyles in a hole of debt I doubt even a dragon could dig itself out of. Their solution? Use their farms to pay off their debt.
This, went horribly wrong.
The nation of Burjion for the first and last time
EVER had a
FOOD SHORTAGE. How in the name of God and all his Attendants did this happen you might ask? Well the Burjionese Nobles in a move of such blatant greed and disregard for the lives of their people sold off in some places 90% of their crops in trade in exchange for gold, thus not only paying off the Nobles debt, but also making them rich off of the starvation of their own people. And they got away with this for
ONE HUNDRED YEARS. It still boggles this historian’s mind how this was able to go on for an entire century without revolt, but it really goes to show just how much trust the people of Burjion had in their leaders and how long it took for that trust to shatter.
Now one might ask what did the Royals do to stop this madness? Well just about nothing because there really wasn’t anything they could do. By the time this crisis occurred the friendship Burjion once had with Eclenia was dead thanks to the incidents between the Emperor Nikaros and the Felbrist Clergy of Eclenia, and the overwhelming majority of Burjion’s military was at that time controlled by the nobility.
So after a century of being pushed to starvation, the people of Burjion finally cracked. In 1759 sparked by the spread of information by a number of revolutionaries and military officers The Burjionese Revolutionary War began. These revolutionaries were a pretty mixed bag, many of them were born peasant farmers who moved to the cities for whatever reason and through whatever means became educated thus discovering the truth behind the horribly dark times the people had gone through over the past hundred years.
The target of the revolution was the greedy nobility who more than deserved to be brought down, as well as the Royal family who were powerless and after a while remained that way for a cut of the gold made from the suffering of their people.
However while the intentions of the revolution were just, the violence that it caused in its execution I can say with confidence was significantly more brutal than it needed to be.
Over the course of the next 6 years thanks to a power vacuum caused by the complete annihilation of the ruling bodies of Burjion, the nation was plunged face first into bloody chaos as the many revolutionary factions fought for dominance.
In response to this anarchy, the Auskelist Seric under the leadership of the Incarnate of Raguel led military forces to restore order, something which many of the deeply religious people of Burjion accepted with open arms.
At the end of the political infighting the Royalist Party of Burjion under the leadership of the former Burjionese army officer, Mikkel Salome, came out on top of the violence securing all of the territory not taken by the Serics. In the end the Auskelist Seric didn’t trust Mikkel enough to hand over the lands they had taken control of and so after more than a year of heated negotiation, a compromise was made. In effect they would form two separate states with their own laws and systems of governing, but they would remain a single state, thus allowing full freedom of movement for any Burjionese citizen within the borders of the nation, the people could decide where they lived and which government they liked better, not that the average Burjionese villager was going to give much of a damn as long they weren’t giving up almost all of their food anymore.
Thus began a new era for Burjion, a time of two governments, and a time of retaking Burjion’s pride and honour through the blood of her young men.
I hope you’ve all enjoyed the first part of the History of Burjion, I know I breezed through so much stuff it’s damn near criminal but I needed to get to the modern iteration of Burjion as quickly as possible, but I swear I will go back at some point and give you a more substantial look at the eras summarized in this post.
If you liked it please feel free to leave a like on this post, and if you have any thoughts, feedback etc. Please don't be afraid to give me a reply I love feedback as it really helps me improve my universe.
Thank you for reading I hope you all have an awesome day
