//------------------------------//
// November 20th, 2014 
// Story: Sovereign Objection 
// by hahatimeforponies 
//------------------------------//


"You clean up well, Luna. You're up early."


"Hark, the vagrant doth become a debutant. Be quiet, Celestia, it was your idea to have me represent the crown at the parliamentary banquet this evening."


"A breakfast of champions."


Luna stuck out her tongue. "But since we have a little time to kill beforehand, I did have… a couple of questions."


"Oh no, not questions."


"I was boning up on my parliamentary history ahead of the banquet so as not to look an ignorant fool - just going over the boring details, who was Prime Minister when, and so on. But I noticed a curious detail. There were no elections at all between 1931 and 1946, and the period is described as the National Executive."


Celestia froze, mid-sip.


"This is one of those stories, isn't it?"


"How much time do you have?"


"Nominally an hour, but I wouldn't mind being late to drinks, chinwagging with politicians sounds dreadful."


"I think you'd get along famously with Gingko, but very well. The story from the beginning."


Luna arched a brow.


"To explain the National Executive, we need to talk about the Fortune Islands, and to talk about that, we need to go back to the 15th century."


"Should I pour myself some coffee?"


"You will remember the accession of the Shetland Islands into Equestria?"


"Yes, they exchanged provincehood for the absolution of debts?"


"And we gained control over their fleet."


"Yes. I imagine if islands are involved in this story, that boats are likely also involved."


"With the existing fleet and nautical infrastructure of Trottingham, and the coffers of Equestria, it created the opportunity for a wave of exploration - and as it happens, the motivation was there as well. Are you much familiar with zebra history?"


"Heavens, one thing at a time, Celestia."


"I'll take that as a no. We'd first had contact with zebra kingdoms in the early feudal period. Our westward explorers in the mountains encountered their traders in the Yak city of Tartarkand, discovering the Spice Road, an enormous trade route that stretched from Angora all the way to Manalzard, bringing tea, coffee, silks and spices, and trading them for Capran metalworks. They also didn't have much interest in anything we had to trade, so these goods were very expensive."


Luna held aloft her mug. "And desirable."


"Hence, the desire to find other sources of these goods."


"Which brings us to the fleet."


"With the acquisition of the Shetland fleet, explorers could sail for the first time beyond the pirate coasts of Tambelon, and across the northeast passage to the Dragon Lands. In particular, Captain Bellwether's voyage circumnavigated the globe for the first time, sailing southwest along the Viridian coast, to what is now the south of Kwadube, north along the Cerulean coast to Kirea, and back to Equestria across the northeast passage. And with that voyage, we first encountered the heterogeneity of zebra cultures."


"I see."


"The Spice Road made Manalzard, in the desert north of the region, very wealthy. While we were in the decline of early feudalism, they were experiencing a golden age of learning, with foundations in medicine, mathematics and astronomy that we still use today. In fact Manalzard star charts were necessary for the circumnavigation in the first place!"


"I feel like this story is circumnavigating the globe."


"They also had fire rubies, which gave them some of the first cannons, so military intervention was… not advisable."


"Heaven forbid."


"The south was less developed, though - they were Manalzard's colonial periphery. Isolated tribes that spoke different languages to the north, worked in their fields and mines, and paid their tithes. But their distance from the centre of power, and the lack of a navy in Manalzard, let explorers set up a trading post in the south."


"Just a trading post?"


"This was actually the beginning of modern Equestrian foreign policy doctrine."


"It just skipped a generation in Sylvania."


"Well. Regrettable as the Great Everfree War was, the horror in its wake was instrumental in the pivot."


"We are a very long way from the National Executive by now."


"Right, yes, I'm getting there, I'm just establishing context, otherwise you'll be getting the same story in reverse."


"Go on, just watch the time."


"Where was I… Port Friendship! That's it."


"That was the name of the trading post?"


"Correct. You'll be pleased to know that it blossomed into a city in its own right, and was handed back to Kwadube in 1999 and its name changed to Bandari Salamu, the-"


"1999?"


Celestia chuckled. "Do you want this story in order or not?"


Luna sighed. "Fine."


"Anyway. Port Friendship was our window to the west. It was the beginning of a long, cold conflict with Manalzard. Waging direct warfare was too difficult, but what we could do was bypass them in trade by hitching our wagon to the southern tribes and trying to move the centre of power in the region southwards."


"A sponsored revolution."


"At the same time we were pillaging Sylvania, the irony is not lost on me."


"So I gather this effort stretched into the early liberal period?"


"Oh, yes. It was a generational project. It took on a new dimension in the 17th century when liberal thinkers began to write about the kingdoms they'd encountered around the world, turning the mission to erode Manalzard's power from a business proposition to a moral duty to bring harmony to a land under a tyrannical regime."


"And were they tyrannical?"


"Well, they were still a feudal empire. By then that looked positively backwards."


"Compared to the capitalist empire Equestria was building."


Celestia scrunched her nose a little. "Well. I will not claim that the enterprise was entirely clean, especially whenever the South Seas Company was involved…"


"South Seas Company?"


"The Equestrian South Seas Company was the body that administered Port Friendship and the Fortune Islands by appointment of the crown in the 17th century. They had a high degree of autonomy, which led to… some undesirable outcomes. Let's just say they're an entity the Daybreak Party is quite interested in laundering the reputation of."


Luna paused. "No, let's not 'just say'. What did they do?"


Celestia sighed. To add insult to injury, her tea had gotten cold. "The Fortune Islands are a group of relatively large islands off the southwest coast of Kwadube. When Captain Bellwether discovered them in 1556, it was inhabited by tribes of okapi, whom anthropologists today believe preceded zebra dominance of the southwest corner. Unlike the zebra on the mainland, who were ostensibly under the protection of a military power, the okapi of the Fortune Islands were utterly unprepared to defend themselves from Equestrian settlement. Under the administration of the South Seas Company, the okapi had their land stolen, their language forbidden, and their culture suppressed. Many were brought to Port Friendship as indentured labour." Celestia laid her hooves out. "Satisifed?"


Luna watched pensively as a servant delivered fresh tea. "Continue."


"Fortune Islands… Port Friendship… ah. So two things changed the situation dramatically in the 18th century. One was the Great Everfree War - as I mentioned, it catalysed a change in the balance of forces. The Cavaliers - the unified army that was raised after the revolution - was disbanded not long after the victory, at my request. Their butchery could not continue. The South Seas Company met the same fate."


"Good."


"This and the increasing shift away from our immediate borders and towards Levantine politics spurred the creation of the Navigators, bringing most Equestrian vessels under the direct command of the crown. Coastguard, merchant, passenger, military."


"Leading you to take direct control of the situation in the region."


"The other thing that changed the game was industrialisation. The steam engine was invented towards the end of the century, and the need to power it made Equestria fuel-hungry - and before the discovery of tellurite in Equestria, one of the early fuels was fire rubies."


"So my blossoming cynic guesses that outright war with Manalzard was on the cards, but you have been emphasising a shift in doctrine, so I'm ready to be surprised."


"Indeed. You see, Manalzard was already in decline at this point - centuries of meddling had disrupted the trade monopoly that made them wealthy, so rather than conquer them, we simply supplied the south with the means to outcompete them. Fire rubies were already mainly mined in the south, and we had the engines, so Port Friendship became an industrial hub for a new Zebraland."


"Zebraland? Really?"


"That was the name of the protectorate. Though, it wasn't a very long-lived state. It only lasted until the 1880s before the protectorate rebelled and became independent. Like in Sylvania, it was the spectre of provincehood that lit the fuse, and being an industrialised power with an organised labour movement just as incensed by the sinking of the Rapport as Equestria's, their revolution was swift and decisive."


"But Port Friendship didn't come along for the ride."


"Port Friendship was where the Navigators were stationed, and the only part of the protectorate that resisted the revolution. It was relinquished to Equestria by treaty to prevent ugliness. Union with Manalzard as the Federation of Kwadube followed before the end of the century."


"So where does that bring us to? The 1880s?"


"1882."


"Oh good, some people in the period I asked about have been born now. So what do the Fortune Islands have to do with this?"


"The Fortune Islands had tellurite, guano and pearls, and as industrialisation went on, all kinds of mineral wealth was discovered up and down the islands. They were named centuries beforehand, speculatively, but by the early 20th century this was unquestionably true. By the time the Navigators took over administration of the islands, pony and zebra settlers almost outnumbered native okapi, and when the 1878 constitution came into force, the question of provincehood was perennial - but so was the question of independence."


Luna rubbed her chin.


"The thing is that the Fortune Islands are a deeply unequal place, even today. The distance between the descendants of the wealthiest colonists that owned mines, and of the okapi and immigrants that worked in them, is staggering. But because the mineral industry made a few ponies very rich, what they wanted for the islands was difficult to go against." Celestia touched her nose. "I need to make one last tangent before this gets to the Executive."


"Well we can at least see the light at the end of the tunnel now, so go on." Luna checked the clock.


"The 20th century saw the dawn of powered flight, and it wasn't long before it became faster and able to carry more than a pegasus. Within ten years of its invention, Her Majesty's Aviators was founded."


"That's what they're called?"


"It's the formal title for all of the services. Her Majesty's Cavaliers, Her Majesty's Navigators, Her Majesty's Aviators. Wasn't my idea."


Luna smirked.


"The thing with the Aviators is that it was almost tailor-made to represent the class disparity of Equestria. If you were a poor farmer or an urban layabout looking to serve your country, learn some skills and earn some money for your family, you joined the Navigators. If you were the second child of an aristocratic family looking for glory and thrills, you could join the Navigators as an officer cadet - and historically they did - but becoming a pilot in the Aviators soon became the glamorous thing for patriotic gentry to do."


"Surely they had other staff as well."


"Oh, of course - but mechanics and ground crew were and are frequently poached from the Navigators, if not just civilians. But the byproduct of this is that the Aviators have historically been substantially more conservative than the Navigators - which brings us to the National Executive."


"At last."


"The 1920s was a turbulent period for Equestria."


"Don't think it escaped my notice that the National Executive coincides with the Tyrians destroying the Institute for Sexual Studies."


Celestia took a breath. "Economic malaise had taken hold of Equestria since Sylvanian independence in 1916. The nation lost its primary supply of lumber - which was one of the impetus behind the founding of Olympia province but we've already had too many tangents - and it had knock-on effects throughout the economy. Then there was the revolutionary contagion - in the wake of independence, there were calls for regime change. Labour swept the 1919 elections -"


"Prime Minister Fireside."


"- and even more radical elements were entering parliament, left and right. Strikes were happening all the time. One of the bloodiest incidents of the period was the Cloudsdale general strike, where workers in the weather factory took over the city for weeks, until the Aviators put the insurrection down. It felt like civil war was on the horizon."


"But… you have the power of the sun. Or, the threat of it. Your backing eased such a situation before."


"Yes, but… the revolutionaries had labelled me as one of their targets. If I were to show force, I feared… it would not avert civil war, only catalyse it."


"Then why not try to join them? Atone for your role in the construction of the industrial engine of their misery by helping them to dismantle it. Your sympathies for their plight are plain to see. Bordering on unconstitutionally so."


Celestia continued in a hushed tone. She stumbled a couple of times. "I thought about it. If there was anyone who could single-handedly effect regime change in Equestria, it would have been me. I didn't trust their solutions, though. At best, their ideas were ambitious and impractical, and at worst, an undemocratic regime of revenge."


"So what did you do?"


"I tried to work with Fireside to cool the situation. Bring in reforms, build economic mechanisms to alleviate the plight of the poorest. The situation remained dire and Fireside only narrowly held on to power in '25. The longer he was in power, the more he lost the confidence of the unions - he was seen as a collaborator. And my image wasn't particularly flourishing either, what with Her Majesty's Aviators gunning down strikers in the Cloudsdale skies."


Luna covered her mouth for a second. She had noticed Celestia's shoulders tensing over the last minute. "Pardon me for diverting once again, but how do the Fortune Islands come into this?"


"Yes. Apologies. So, towards the end of the decade there were serious concerns about the loyalty of the Navigators. Mutinies were beginning to pop up, where ships were working harder than ever. And remember it was the sinking of a ship that catalysed the labour movement in the first place. If officers were overpowered or joined the mutiny, then they held a lot of power to decide the fate of the nation. The revolutionary ideas that were taking root in Equestria came with them to the Fortune Islands, which proved an explosive mixture. The extreme inequality of the Islands had the sailors join forces with the miners and natives to stage the Providence Mutiny, an attempt at a revolution in the capital."


"An attempt."


"The Mutiny ended in a bloody mess. The repression of the Aviators was extreme. Bombardment of gathered crowds, commandeering of intentionally beached boats for use as stationary artillery… The full extent of the carnage was suppressed for decades. I didn't even know all of what went on. All Equestria knew is that a rebellion had been suppressed in a distant colony, and the commander responsible - Air Marshal Grail - was touting it as a victory for order, and ingratiating himself with the Tyrian party."


"Oh no."


"Fireside was finished. The Tyrians were guaranteed the next government. The only question was who would lead them, and Grail became very popular with the kind of Tyrian grandee who was worried about the 'reds' coming for their land, gold and heads."


Luna rubbed her face. "I could have waited until after dinner with a bunch of them to ask about this."


"Grail went from commanding a colonial squadron to Secretary of the Home Office in under two years, and before the third year was out he'd staged a mutiny of the cabinet and made himself Prime Minister. What made Grail so… slippery, is that he was extremely polite in person. Gentle, well-mannered. A well-trained aristocrat."


"Manners maketh the monster."


"It was the last thing I needed. He played by the rules. Like I said before, parliament had become adept in dodging sovereign objection, and he just had the numbers and personal popularity to do whatever he wanted."


"And what is it he wanted to do?"


"The first thing he did was gut the officer corps of the Navigators and replace them with personnel from the Aviators and Fortunian thugs. Questionable loyalty at a time of emergency, it was claimed. Cloudsdale was placed under military rule for six years. All the unions involved in the Cloudsdale general strike were outlawed and new state-sanctioned ones were set up. Much of the early 30s was a constant circus of Labour MPs being investigated for insurrection. They went after the homosexuals, the immigrants, the newspapers, the vagrants, the deer, the zebras, the diamond dogs, the dragons. Anyone could have been plotting to overthrow Equestria."


"It was a dictatorship. We had an honest to goodness dictatorship in Equestria."


"Not… de jure. I don't know what resource you were consulting, but we did have elections after a fashion during the Executive, they were just… never completed. They cited foregone conclusions, security concerns, whatever they felt like to postpone it."


"We had the 'I'm not touching you' of dictatorships."


Celestia paused, sullen. "Yes, that sounds accurate."


"And where were you during all of this?"


"Well… Grail was in power for fifteen years. I had phases."


"I see."


"At first I was in denial. I trusted that the system would work itself out. Fireside had moderated over eleven years in power, I thought Grail would too. The fact that he was refined and polite rather than a raving demagogue did a lot to mask his intentions. He was more than happy to lean into my good faith."


"Most unlike you to have your strings pulled like that, sister."


"The thing that sustained him in the eyes of many during his early rule was the return of order, or at least the appearance of it. The strikes and mutinies stopped. I'll admit it was a relief for me too. For a while I could concentrate on other things. His domestic agenda was my first cause for alarm, but order gave him the political leverage to have everything I objected to rammed through by referendum. After a while he stopped needing laws to govern, which meant he stopped needing me, at which point I realised I'd been beaten at my own game."


"What did you do then?"


"I stopped cooperating. I stopped meeting foreign dignitaries, I stopped opening parliament, I refused to talk to the government. I fled to Mt. Aris in 1938. My thinking was that having made his bed he could lie in it. It wasn't very effective, all it did was start conspiracy theories, and it spared my blushes when his government got worse."


"It got worse?"


"A tyrant always needs enemies, Luna. With the unions neutered, Labour a shell of its former self, the press dominated, and foreign powers unwilling to engage, Grail needed to invent enemies. Going into the '40s he started deputising Fortunian militias as a secret police. The Fortune Islands he left behind were created in his image, and the brutes that maintained order there were more than happy to find enemies where none existed."


"Oh, sister…" 


"I knew at this point that if I was to play any role in the end of this terror, I would need to act unconstitutionally. My opponent had a better command of politics, had filled the halls of power with his allies, and my non-compliance had impacted him little. At most I had succeeded in a degree of diplomatic isolation of Equestria. The whole world absolutely knew something was wrong when they saw me leave. But…"


Luna's eyes bore a complex swirl of emotions.


"This kind of direct action is utterly alien to me. It was then as it is now. I had no idea where to start, and the risks of getting it wrong were immense. I lacked the connections to stage a palace coup. Publicly identifying with a known resistance would provoke civil war. At one point I even considered assassination."


"Goodness."


"And there was the apocalyptic option of threatening the power of the sun. I hadn't the heart for it, of course. I didn't have the heart to do anything in the end. Grail slipped in the shower and died of internal bleeding."


"Really? Such an ignoble death."


"He was approaching 80."


"Shame he didn't do it in prison."


"He lacked a clear successor, and dissent was already building due to a financial panic, so I took the opportunity to return and dissolve parliament."


"Better late than never, I suppose."


"I didn't wait for fresh elections to reverse the most obvious harms. One of the things I'd been doing in exile was preparing a shadow government to take over when the moment was right - a caretaker cabinet, judges, chiefs of the forces. Cataloguing crimes for the inevitable trials."


"How on earth did the Tyrian party survive? They should have been finished the moment their grip on power slipped!"


"That's a very good question. The party ended up as hollowed out as Labour as a result of the trials, and we had a couple of Liberal Harmonist governments, and coalitions after that. But… the Tyrians worked hard to distance themselves from Grail. Labour also wanted to distance themselves from the militancy of the 1920s, so everyone sort of converged on the Liberal platform during the healing period."


"This is going to make dinner tonight very awkward."


"Sorry."


"I would say it's not your fault, but it kind of is. It's amazing it took you this long to mention such a drastic, recent episode of history."


"You can understand why I don't like talking about it."


"Which is why it absolutely should be talked about."


"You're right. It can't be allowed to happen again."


"So what became of the Fortune Islands?"


"They declared independence, which we weren't in a position to stop. Unfortunately it was the Grailist government that was in charge, and they ran a nasty, racist little regime wherein the native okapi were legally treated as second class citizens, to the benefit of the mineral industry."


"Charming."


"Their government persisted for a couple of decades before crumbling under sanctions. In 1949 Equestria concluded a treaty with Kwadube to hand back Port Friendship after a fifty year transition period."


"Why fifty years?"


"Port Friendship had been under Equestrian administration for hundreds of years and nobody was eager for more upheaval."


"I see."


"This story really did circumnavigate the globe a few times, didn't it?"


"Fortunately I think this circuitous tale may have spared me much of the mingling, and I believe I'm seated next to the Prime Minister for dinner, so that should limit the amount of tongue biting I have to do."


"Oh, come now. Everyone involved with the Tyrians during the Grail regime is long dead by now."


"Yes, but everyone in purple today made a conscious choice to join the party of Grail."


"Sometimes ponies have shorter memories than you think."


"That's what worries me."