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+===== The World of Manana (Atlas) : The Commonwealth of Virginia =====
+Controlling much of the Mid-Atlantic coast of North America up into the eastern Appalacian mountains, Virginia is one of the oldest continuous nations in the Americas and the largest surviving Dominion of the English crown. Politically a Dominion, Virginia retains a long history of de facto soverignty and self-reliance. Culturally and ethnically, Virginia is an Anglo-Powhatan creole nation with a unique language and customs. Economically it is a neo-industrial nation just emerging into a regional economic and industrial powerhouse. Fiercely independent and proud, Virginia has a long history of expansionist conflict with its neighbors.
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+=== Quick Statistics ===
+__Capital__: Roanoketown (pop. xxxxx) [OTL Roanoke Island, Croatan Sound and Mann's Harbor area]\\
+__Total Area__: xxxxx [Roughly the eastern 2/3 of North Carolina, Virginia/West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, most of Maryland, and all of Delaware plus parts of northeastern South Carolina]\\
+__Population__: xxxxx\\
+__Government__: British Dominion; Constitutional Monarchy with post-feudal tribal/clan influenced regional governments\\
+__Economy__: Free Market Capitalism, but with severe nepotism/croneyism and petty corruption, usually rooted in clan politics\\
+__Demographics__: "Powhatt" Anglo-Amerind Creole (55%), other Amerind/Creole (13%), Irish (12%), African Creole((Often culturally/ethnically mixed and hard to distinguish from the prevailing Powhatt population)) (12%), British (8%), Latino/Hispanic (7%), Other (3%)\\
+__Religion__: Anglican (75%), Other Protestant (10%), Catholic (8%), Nativist/Syncretic((Includes Crypto-Nativists who are often also practicing Anglicans or other Christians)) (5%), Other (2%)
+\\
+===== History =====
+**Early History and the Founding of the Commonwealth**
+Virginia's history begins in ancient times when the first Amerind hunter-gatherer tribes arrived sometime in antiquity...and changed little from then. The cultures and political borders shifted, the hunter-gatherers supplemented their traditional fare with small agriculture, first of sumpweed, goosefoot, and little barley and then later with the Three Sisters. Eventually, a mix of various Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Siouan cultures were established among the twisting waterways, rolling hills, and tangled woodlands of the region. Technologically, the region remained stone age and only the contradictory, myth-filled oral histories of the original Amerind tribes documents this time.
+Virginia's official history begins in 1585 when Queen Elizabeth I of England granted Sir Walter Raleigh the official charter for the Virginia Colony in North America. After numerous failed attempts to establish a colony at Roanoke Island (modern-day Roanoketown), a permanent colony was established by 1587. Relations to the local Amerind groups were mostly amicable, particularly with the nearby Croatan tribe, but life remained difficult for the small number of settlers. Sporadic contact with England followed over the next few years with resupply visits by English ships keeping the fledgling colony afloat((Butterfly: the changed international situation has delayed the Anglo-Spanish war, including the Spanish Armada, which in this timeline has allowed periodic resupply visits to the colony by English ships, keeping it alive)). Used primarily as an outpost for Sir Walter Raleigh's privateering raids on Spanish shipping, the population of the colony remained small, only to be bolstered when Effingham's and Drake's fleet arrived in June of 1591 with the intention of using the colony as a base for attacking and destroying the Spanish Caribbean fleet. Over the following months the colony bloomed into a sizable New World port with noteworthy naval facilities and warehouses loaded with stores and weapons for the inevitable clash ahead. After the fleet's untimely demise at the hands of the "Breath of God" hurricane that September off of Puerto Rico, the shattered remnants of the fleet limped back to Roanoketown to weather the coming Spanish assault.
+With a poor harvest thanks to the dry summer and fears of an imminent Spanish counterattack, the now badly-overpopulated colony turned all of its efforts into surviving the winter. Sailors and marines became hunters and farmers. Warships were salvaged and remade into small coastal trade vessels. Weapons became trade items. And Roanoke Island and the Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds were substantially fortified((It is theorised it was the formidability of these in-depth defenses that prevented a major Spanish assault to clear out this potenial "nest of vipers")). Only sporadic contact continued with the Home Islands as Spanish vessels and privateers, and more mundane pirates, made any trans-Atlantic crossings very perilous. By 1697 Drake, freshly returned from the latest trans-Oceanic voyage under a North French false flag, decided to survey the Spanish positions. His small fleet of six ships went south towards Cuba on a reconaissance in force mission only to be destroyed in a clash with the Spanish off the coast of Florida. With Drake dead and the Spanish Armada in control of the Atlantic, Sir Walter Raleigh declared himself Her Majesty's Governor of the Colony of Virginia and organized the remote colony into a self-sustaining city-state. Raleigh's overt plans to reestablish contact with England and renew the fight against the Spanish were perpetually placed on hold as the immediate survival needs of the overpopulated colony took precedence.
+Governor Raleigh, de facto soverign of the isolated English outpost, led the colony on a long policy of fortification, internal improvements, exploration and trade missions along the many nearby waterwaysm and a sustained policy of trade and diplomacy with the friendly Croatan tribe and its confederates. Seeing good relations with the "Indians" as the colony's best hope for survival, Governor Raleigh turned down a bretrothal to "First Virginian" Virginia Dare in favor of a Croatan "Indian Princess" Christened Elizabeth Raleigh. The political marriage helped cement the growing Anglo-Croatan alliance and though it alienated some of the more traditional (and racist) elements of the colony it paid huge dividends with the local natives and gained the blessing of the former sailors and marines of the Lost Fleet, many of who had taken native brides (potential English brides being rare). The marriage of Sir Walter also set a precident for political intermarriage with the natives-a precident to be followed by many generations of Virginia Gentry as the isolated colony expanded.
+While Governor Raleigh admonished his "citizens" to avoid conflict with native nations (an act born more from self-preservation and strategic realism than pacifism), conflicts happened, including a short series of skirmishes and trade clashes with the natives of the burgeoning Powhattan Confederacy, a conflict later labeled as the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1611). Another, more bloody conflict arose with the Powhattan two years later as the Virginians attempted to establish a fort and trade post at Elizabethtown at the mouth of the Elizabeth River and Chesepiook Bay((OTL Norfolk, VA, the James River, and the Chesapeake Bay)). This Second Anglo-Powhattan War ended in a draw and as part of the peace treaty Weroance ("Chief") Wahunsenacawh of Powhattan((OTL known as Chief Powhattan)) recognized Virginian claims on Elizabethtown Harbor in return for generous trade deals, including weapons and iron tools. The deal was settled with a betrothal between Powhattan's eldest daughter Matoaka((OTL knows her as Poccahantes, a nickname of hers meaning "naughty, troublemaking little girl")), Christened "Mary Elizabeth", and Sir Walter's eldest son Walter, Junior. This marriage would prove the foundation for the Virginia Commonwealth's longest and most powerful dynasty, the Raleigh or Raleigh-Powhattan family.
+As Sir Walter and Elizabeth's eldest son, Walter, junior, would grow up in two worlds: an English one and an Indian one, becoming an excellent seaman, a deadly shot with bow or musket, and an able tracker and hunter. A warrior by temperment, when Walter II suceeded his father as Governor in 1625 he quickly began a series of expansions up and down the Virginia coast. Using the Virginian's numerical and technological advantages (disease had decimated the local Amerind populations by this time) he expanded the Roanoke colony's influence, driving out or making tributaries of the surrounding nations. First declaring himself inheritor of the Croatan "Kingdom", he quickly manuvered to establish his ultimate tributary control over all the tribes in the Virginia-Croatan confederation by force of will, and over rival tribes by force of arms. Walter II set another precident when he declared allied and later tributary chiefs "Lords of Virginia and Knights of England", much to the chagrin of the older generation of "Old World born" Virginians. Meanwhile, with the aid of Virginia weapons Wahunsenacawh cemented his tributary control over most of the surrounding Amerind tribes of the north, consolidating them into a strong confederacy with himself as paramount Weroance, suceeded upon his death first by his brother Weroance Opitchipam, and then by Weroance Opechancanough.  With control of the southern tribes cemented, Walter II declared his newborn son Walter III the inheritor of both the Virginian and Powhattan kingdoms and initiated the third and final Anglo-Powhattan War (1625-1629). A long and bloody affair marked by sporadic periods of savage guerilla war and relative peace, the war ended in Virginian favor in 1629 when the Weroance of the Mataponi, the last holdout, came to the peace table. Generous in victory, the tributary Weroances of the Powhattan confederacy gained "Lord" status over their tribes, "Weroance" becoming synonymous with "Lord". Opechancanough remained Weroance of Powhattan, agreeing that Walter III would succeed him in the position. Walter III, who would inherit the Weroancy upon Opechancanough's death in 1632 and the Governorship upon his father's death in 1652, would go on to formally proclaim the Commonwealth of Virginia, a syncretic progressively Anglo-Amerind creole state. This state, which placed an English Parliamentarian overlay on the existant Amerind paramount chiefdom system, would evolve into a system of tightly-federated neofeudal "Duchies" that would characterize the emerging socio-political system of the Virginia Commonwealth. In this way Walter III, of Anglo-Croatan-Powhattan blood, would become the founding father of the modern Virginia state.
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+**The Growth of the Virginia Commonwealth**
+With the rise of the Raleigh Dynasty the Commonwealth of Virginia would begin a long period of expansion and consolidation. New tribal nations were conquered through superiority of numbers and arms and then incorporated through a semifeudal tributary system wherein the defeated "lord" would retain their local sovereignty in exchange for allegiance to the Crown and yearly tribute in food, furs, and occasional corvée labor. As corvées were often educated in modern farming and technical trades during their term, bringing back knowledge of value to the "Weroancy", the system eventually came to be accepted or even appreciated by the tributary Weroancies and became an important part of the burgeoning Virginian identity. Not all subject tribes acquiesced to Virginian rule, however, and violent uprisings were common at first and brutally supressed in what Governor James I would call a "Roman peace".
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+===== Government =====
+Virginia is a de jura British Dominion under the rule of the British King, though has long exercised de facto independence. While Virginians will officially recongnize the King and display his picture on official documents, money, and stamps, attempts in the past to enforce crown sovereignty over the former colony have proven diffucult. Virginia's internal government is a bicameral parliamentary system with an upper "Council of Weroances" (House of Lords) and a lower "Council of Commons" offset by a strong Governor appointed for life by the Council of Weroances and almost always a powerful Weroance (Lord) or war hero. While officially all citizens have full and equal rights as under British law, the remnants of the old clan/tribal/feudal system remains a powerful social and political force. Regional County governments are run by a local constabulary which in most cases is made up of the region's clan or tribal elders and the local Mayor is, more often than not, also the local Weroance.
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+==== Military ====
+The army of the Commonwealth of Virginia consists of a small standing regular army supplemented by a very large number of local militia (a very large percentage of the adult male populace). The militia, with its roots in the old tribal/clan hunter-warriors, is predominantly an irregular guerilla force adept at fighting in the rough wooded terrain of Virginia but unlikely to go toe-to-toe with a regular army for very long. With it's long naval history, Virginia maintains a sizeable fleet of navy vessels nominally tied into the British Royal Navy and a large merchant marine force with a long history of privateering. As part of their Dominion obligations Virginia is required to provide military assistance to the crown, an obligation they may or may not adhere to if called upon. In the past, forces like His Majesty's Virginia Rifles or similar groups have participated in global conflicts and the Virginia Navy almost always backs up the Royal Navy in times of need.
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