The Complete History of Sapphory - TrinianGames/Sapphory GitHub Wiki
This article is incomplete. It will be expanded in the future.
Discovery
The Sapphorian Archipelago was formed by a massive volcanic upheaval, which displaced millions of tonnes of magma and earth in the central Pacific Ocean. This should have been easily picked up by the geological monitoring equipment of the various nearby nations, and at an earlier point in history would have been, but tensions between the United States and China, and their various respective allies had been rising for decades prior to the event and the Pacific had become something of a neutral zone, with satellites unable to fly overhead without being shot down by a rival for fear that they contained spying equipment or weapons. Trade had also slowed to a trickle.
When a massive stormfront formed in the Pacific, an international science team set out to monitor its progress, in an attempt to predict its path for humanitarian purposes without the aid of satellite equipment. This team was comprised of five female scientists and their crew which, by a quirk of history, was also entirely female. They had to sail dangerously close to the storm to get accurate readings, and when the wind unexpectedly changed, they found their ship swallowed up in it. Fortunately for them, the ship had been designed for exactly this eventuality and easily survived the onslaught of the storm. However, it was blown off course, and when the weather cleared, they were amazed to see land. At first, they believed they had been blown all the way to Hawaii, but when radio contact with the mainland could not be established, they went ashore at what is now called Discovery Point to investigate.
They found a virgin island paradise, teeming with plants and animals and untouched by humans. Later circumnavigation in their ship gave them a clue as to the immense size of the island - not, as they initially believed, a small tropical island, but a significant land mass, roughly the size of the British Isles, or the US States of Wyoming or Oregon.
Early Settlement
The team realised quickly that they were stood on an island that officially did not exist and decided that it must be claimed not for any of their home nations, but for women. There existed no precedent for this in Maritime law, and prior to revealing the existence of the island to the world, they put many pieces in place, including legal representation, weapons procurement for defence and secretly recruited hundreds of women from around the world to begin early colonisation efforts. It was several months before they went public with their declaration of nationhood, by which time the cities of Sapphory City, Fiviviana and Silka were already founded.
The Sapphorian government's earliest known incarnation was a "Citizen's Council" headed up by the founding mothers themselves. Members were elected to the council (with each of the mothers commanding huge support among the Sapphorian public,) and decisions taken collectively.
International incident
Upon the Sapphorians' petition for recognition at the United Nations, an uproar ensued. Seven Pacific powers immediately lodged their own claims as did all of the founding mothers' home countries. Ironically, this scrum aided the Sapphorian cause, as their fledgling volunteer security force would have stood no chance of defending the island if any of these countries had invaded. In the event, they all stopped one another from doing so, each fearing that to allow another to land on the island would weaken their own claim. With American, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Korean, and British warships all circling the island, each ready to prevent the others from approaching, this circular firing squad allowed the Sapphorians to advance their own colonisation effort.
The United Nations was called upon to be arbiter in this ongoing dispute. One of its early rulings was that migrants should continue to be allowed to safely approach Sapphory in order to settle there, as long as they pledged allegiance to Sapphory. While there were a number of incidents and altercations, immigration to Sapphory was allowed to proceed more or less smoothly while the international wrangling continued.
Eventually, as tensions between the nations of the outside world escalated, the ships blockading Sapphory were largely called away and the first Sapphorian warships began entering service, initially bought from other countries, but later manufactured at home, and secured a naval perimeter that has lasted ever since.
The Rise of the Royals
Internally, the high levels of immigration caused their own problems. Women from many different nations and backgrounds, some of them hostile to one another, had settled on the island and failed to live entirely peacefully side-by-side. Founding Mother Aurora delivered a series of impassioned speeches urging unity. These placated the restless populace to some extent, but could do little to assuage these centuries-old animosities. Arguments over the composition of the council and representation for all groups in Sapphory became commonplace, and in the recently-established city of Okonrin, in Eastern Sapphory, things were about to get much worse.
The Okonrin area had been settled by other newcomers before the government had fully exerted its will over the whole island. While they recognised the Sapphorian Government, their leaders were uneasy about the level of control it exerted, believing that Sapphory should be a federation of autonomous provinces, rather than a single nation. These grumbles quickly became demands, with the leaders of Okonrin's City Council threatening secession from Sapphory if their demands were not taken seriously.
It was at around this time that the first deposits of precious materials were being discovered in the ground beneath Sapphory, and the international efforts by various nations to claim the land were renewed. Again, this external threat proved to be the salvation of Sapphory, but also helped turn it from the founding mothers' utopia into what it is today.
Several large families of early settlers had managed to muscle their way into owning most of the land on which the mining operations were focused. They had been quick to establish business links with the outside world and become fabulously wealthy almost overnight. Now, with internal and external problems threatening their interests, they formed a council of their own, and set about infiltrating the Sapphorian Government in order to steer its policies and maintain their own positions. The Council was uneasy about the influence they came to exert, but the Sapphorian Government was in its infancy and the checks and balances needed to control them did not exist yet.
As hearings at the United Nations continued, pressure was brought by the outside world to recognise Okonrin Province's independence. Several of the more underhanded diplomats plying the courts on their nations' behalf had recognised that a strategy of divide and conquer might allow them to claim the island piece by piece. This played directly into the hands of the more strident Nationalist elements within the Sapphorian government, who saw this as an intolerable intrusion into the nation's internal affairs. However, the Citizen's Council continued to maintain a dialogue with the separatists, which only inflamed tensions further.
Long before the collapse of the Citizen's Council, arguments were heard about why the Sapphorian Government needed to change and become stronger. By this point, the families had invested considerable time and resources into trying to direct policy, and eventually concluded that it would be easier, more cost-effective and more sustainable to simply take control of the government themselves. With the press almost entirely in their hands, and Sapphory's internet infrastructure all owned by companies they controlled, they were able to quickly turn public opinion against the Council, but cannily recognised that reverence for the Founding Mothers was such that they would need them on-side.
The media turned the founding mothers into celebrities and created a narrative that their vision was being betrayed by a dithering and corrupt council, ironically citing corruption that the families themselves were responsible for, though deflecting the blame for it onto other shady interests, both real and imagined. With the media under the control of the families, the Mothers had little choice but to go along with this in order to continue keeping things going the way they wanted it to. Finally, after a vote of no confidence, the council was dissolved in disarray and the families' plan neared completion.
The controlled media excoriated the collapsed council for its dithering as the future of Sapphory hung in the balance, and outsiders tried to prise away part of the country's territory. A new narrative was constructed that only a strong leader could bring Sapphory through this time of crisis. The families had agreed all of this ahead of time between themselves, and lined up Isabella Schiede, the matriarch of the largest of the families as their candidate of choice. The first idea was to create a presidential-style system, but the constitution, drawn up by the Founding Mothers, and thus beyond question, prevented the creation of an office of President, Prime Minister, Supreme Leader or similar in an attempt to dilute power such that a dictatorship could never form. However, in a startling oversight, they had said nothing about the appointment of a Queen.
When the families realised this, they swiftly moved to popularise the notion that a "constitutional monarchy" had worked well in other countries, notably Great Britain, Japan and many other advanced nations. Even if the monarch's powers were initially limited, they surmised, that problem could be overcome in the future. A year later, in SY 24, (Sapphorian Year - years since the discovery of the island), Isabella became the first Queen of Sapphory.
With the band-aid ripped off, the Sapphorian citizenry quickly fell in behind their new ruler. Propaganda of the time depicted Isabella standing alone, shielding Sapphory against the fury of the world of men, urging all loyal Sapphorians to support her. The overwhelming majority did. As per the agreement they'd made in secret, the other families were all given noble status, and allowed to administer their various territories as non-sovereign duchies under the rule of the Queen.
The First Era
With the Queen crowned, what has come to be known as the first era of Sapphory began. The whole island had now been claimed and the major cities were growing quickly. Although some women who had moved to Sapphory early on had now begun to leave, (either through disenchantment with the end of democracy, the realisation among many straight women that they could not live without men or simply because they'd tried it and decided it wasn't for them,) net immigration nonetheless remained very high, and the new Government now moved to begin instituting waiting lists, more stringent criteria, and a host of other measures consistent with realpolitik. It was not long before the waiting time for consideration exceeded two years, but illegal migration was almost impossible due to the island's position and natural defences, as well as the geopolitical situation.
The population stood at around 15,000,000 by the twenty fifth anniversary of the island's discovery, when the Queen and Founding Mothers led a week-long celebration. It was also at around this time that Founding Mother Kusankhana unveiled Female Asexual Reproduction - an amazing new technology that completely obviated the need for male genetic material. Up until this point, the Sapphorians had imported sperm from the outside world in order to conceive children, the technology to control the sex of the fetus having already existed for some time.
These triumphs, together with the relentless propaganda urging Sapphorian Unity had managed to paper over the problems in Okonrin for some time, but those resentments continued to bubble away under the surface, and the new Queen and her courtiers began to work out what should be done about it. However, the next major event in the country's history was the unexpected death of Founding Mother Mara, and Sapphory entered a period of mourning while the Royals, the Okonrin separatists and Sapphory's enemies in the outside world all plotted their next moves.
Kusankhana and Female Asexual Reproduction
As the island switched from sperm importation to Female Asexual Reproduction, a variety of legal skirmishes were fought over bodily autonomy. These were to lay the groundwork for everything that was to follow. The health authorities (under the direct control of the government,) began to mandate invasive medical checks on women using the new technology. A number of challenges in the courts were made, with some being upheld, even by the Palace-appointed justices, on the basis that they violated international laws on human rights. When Founding Mother Kusankhana came down on the side of choice, the health authorities backed off, knowing that to challenge her would be unwise.
The first lines in what would become the Sapphorian Government's war on human rights and liberty had been drawn. The Government was patient, and allowed these challenges to stand, beginning a low-key media narrative that the international treaties that the previous administration had signed were the work of men and served male interests. (This was a difficult circle to square, given that many of them were, in fact, created to protect women and children from men.) However, a stalemate had settled in. The Government could not go against Kusankhana, given that they had put considerable effort into making her a heroine, and she in turn could not go against them, as they were all-powerful and she largely owed her high standing to them.