This is a Caputia article. Click here for more information.

Queen Elizabeth I

From MicrasWiki
Jump to navigationJump to search

Her Royal Majesty
Elizabeth I Queen of all Caputians, &etc.
Titulary Queen of all Caputians, Queen of Hamland
and of Her Other Realms and Territories,
Queen and Governor-General of Haifa,
Supreme Governor of the Church of Caputia,
Captain-General of all Caputia, Defender of the Faith,
Uniter and Defender of the People.
Reign 25.XII.1653 AN - 1723 AN
Investiture 25.XV.1653 AN
Predecessor None.
Successor Edgard III (titular)
Heir Apparent Prince Edward (b. 1664 AN)
Spouse Francis Joseph IV of Alexandria
Issue Prince Edward (b. 1664 AN)
Princess Carla (b. 1664 AN)
Princess Andrea (b. 1665 AN)
Prince Lewis (b. 1669 AN)
Prince Felipe (b. 1671 AN)
Prince Donat (b. 1673 AN)
Royal House Rothborne
Father Donat Ravaillac
Mother Eva Ravaillac
Born c. 1636 AN
Died 1723 AN (aged 87)
Religion Melusinian Faith
Signature

Elizabeth I (born Regina Ravaillac; c. 1636 AN to 1723 AN) was the founding monarch of the Kingdom of the Union of Caputia, reigning from 1653 AN until her death. A daughter of the House of Ravaillac and formerly Governor-General of United Monovia, she led the Ravaillac Loyalists through the closing stages of the Hammish Civil War and was unanimously elected President of the Constitutional Convention that offered her the crown of the successor state to the Commonwealth of Hamland.

Following the Vision of Zalae, the religious revelation that founded the Melusinian Faith and from which she took the regnal name Elizabeth, she proclaimed the Kingdom of the Union of Caputia in the Declaration of Zalae and became its first constitutional monarch, Supreme Governor of the Church of Caputia, and Captain-General of its armed forces. As sovereign she granted royal assent, appointed prime ministers, and legislated by proclamation when Parliament could not be summoned; she presided over the governments of Christophe Landry, Royston Merrick, and Gerhardt Eugen Seydlitz, founded the House of Rothborne as her royal house and the Most Noble Order of the Melusine as its senior order of chivalry, and carried the kingdom through a period of sectarian violence and reconstruction.

Her marriage to Emperor Francis Joseph IV of Alexandria in 1661 AN united the Caputian and Alexandrian crowns. After the kingdom's collapse in the epidemic known as the White Plague she led the Royal Caputian Government in Exile, and in 1722 AN she returned to public life as the first Regional Governor of New Caputia within the Federation of Nouvelle Alexandrie. She died in 1723 AN, aged 87; her son Prince Edward succeeded to her Caputian and Hamland crowns and later reigned as Edgard III.

Early life

Little is recorded of Elizabeth's early life, and Caputian records preserve no exact date or place of her birth, which is placed at about 1636 AN. She was born Regina Ravaillac into the House of Ravaillac, a daughter of Donat Ravaillac and Eva Ravaillac. Her father served as Minister of the Homeland in the final government of the Commonwealth of Hamland, was among the last officials of that state to remain at their post, and declared the state of emergency that preceded the civil war; he was later assassinated.

Before her accession Ravaillac held office as Governor-General of United Monovia, a title she still used when she gave her reply to the offer of the Caputian crown. She would afterward describe her purpose as sovereign as being to open the path of progress through a constitution, as her father had wished.

Leader of the Ravaillac Loyalists

See alsos: Hammish Civil War and Ravaillac Loyalists

During the Hammish Civil War, the many-sided conflict over the collapse of the Commonwealth of Hamland, Ravaillac led the faction known as the Ravaillac Loyalists. Her principal opponent was the National Provisional Authority, the military government of the Council of State for the Salvation of Hamland under General Augustus Eliphas. The war was transformed by the Alexandrian Flu, a lethal viral disease that the Authority had developed as a biological weapon at the Bureau of Research and Defense Technology at Iron Point Base; a transport accident at a facility in Porapa released it across the country, killing an estimated 30 to 60 percent of the population of the eastern regions and forcing the withdrawal of the foreign peacekeeping mission.

With support from Natopia and Shireroth, the Hammish Republican Army and the Ravaillac Loyalists advanced to the outskirts of the Authority's capital at New Kirrie, where the fighting settled into a prolonged siege. A ceasefire was brokered by the Council of Free Nations at Maison Verneuil, outside Geneva in Alexandria, and the opposition factions united under the National League. A Constitutional Convention of 250 deputies then assembled at the Zalae City Hall to settle the shape of the successor state; the deputies elected Ravaillac as its President and, after days of debate, chose the name Caputia for the new nation, reviving the name of an ancient people of the land.

When Ravaillac left to attend the peace conference, the Convention elected Carrie Fitzwater as President Pro Tempore, and Fitzwater began drafting a constitution. On the nomination of the delegates George Blakeslee and Jean Overstreet, the Convention resolved to offer Ravaillac the crown of the new kingdom, and a delegation headed by Theodulus Bertrand Michel carried the offer to her at Maison Verneuil. Having had no prior notice of the matter, she at first considered declining, but accepted on the condition that the choice be confirmed by a plebiscite of the whole country.

Vision of Zalae

Main article: Vision of Zalae

According to Caputian tradition, while Ravaillac was traveling from the city of Judah along the shore road to Zalae, a great wave swept her and her party into the sea. A voice called to her, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Regina, Regina, open your eyes and let me grant you a vision, and the goddess Melusine appeared to her as a mermaid, touching her forehead and revealing a vision of a united and prosperous nation to be called Caputia. Melusine declared the nation her own daughter, blessed by the god Bous and by herself, and asked that a home be built for her in an underwater cavern at Zalae.

The revelation was followed by events remembered as the first miracles of the Melusinian Faith. At the ruined city of Macsen, before a crowd said to number one hundred thousand, Ravaillac was believed to have healed two children, Michael and Lucia, who had been stricken with the Alexandrian Flu. At Zalae a still larger gathering witnessed what became known as a solar miracle, in which the sun appeared as a dull, spinning disc that cast colored light while an approaching wave dissolved into vapor. The events drew a mass pilgrimage to Zalae and gave rise to the faith, at first known as the Cult of Melusine; from the vision Ravaillac took the regnal name Elizabeth, by which she reigned.

Reign

Elizabeth I reigned as the first and only monarch of the Kingdom of the Union of Caputia. Her reign, dated from her investiture on 25.XV.1653 AN, lasted seventy years, longer than the kingdom itself; after the state collapsed she continued to reign over it in exile.

Accession and coronation

The path to the throne opened with the death of General Augustus Eliphas, who died in his sleep. A broadcast from Pratchett Hall in New Kirrie announced his death and made public his will, in which he asked that the war be ended and that Regina Ravaillac be invited to march upon the capital. Ravaillac assembled a force she named the Grand Army of Liberation and Unity, said to have numbered more than 200,000, and set out from Zalae; before she departed, a delegation of the National Provisional Authority delivered to her a verified copy of Eliphas's will together with a signed statement of surrender and allegiance. General Richard Blackwell, sent ahead to secure New Kirrie, greeted her with the title Queen of Caputia and rode in beside her before resigning his commission and retiring to his native Ersoy.

From the balcony of Bellesea Palace in Zalae, Ravaillac proclaimed the end of the Commonwealth of Hamland and the establishment of the Kingdom of the Union of Caputia in the Declaration of Zalae, taking the regnal name Elizabeth. In the first year of her reign the lords of her Privy Council joined the officers of the National Provisional Authority and its interim prime minister, General Alcides Hall, at Pratchett Hall to publish the Proclamation of Accession, which recognized her as Queen of Hamland and Caputia, Supreme Governor of the Church of Caputia, Defender of the Faith, Duchess of Zalae, and Princess of Monovia, and invoked the blessing of the gods Bous and Melusine.

The Constitution Act, to which Elizabeth granted royal assent by letters patent at Zalae, established the framework of the new state, and the Constitutional Convention dissolved itself so that the constitution could be put to the people. In a two-part referendum conducted by the National Elections Board, with more than twelve million citizens registered and a turnout of about 90 percent, voters approved the constitution by a margin of some 8.3 million votes and confirmed Elizabeth I as Queen by a margin of some 9.2 million. Her reign was dated from 25.XII.1653 AN and her investiture recorded on 25.XV.1653 AN.

Constitutional monarch

Under the constitution Elizabeth I reigned as a constitutional monarch. The document provided only a broad framework and reserved ample powers to the crown, which she traditionally exercised through her ministers; it named the Queen, whether in Parliament or in Council, the supreme and final judicial authority of the kingdom, and it empowered her to legislate by proclamation or order in council when Parliament could not be summoned, subject to Parliament's later review. Otherwise legislative authority rested with the unicameral Parliament of 422 members, which met in the old Zalae City Hall and whose bills required the royal assent. Ministers were sworn to the Privy Council as Ministers of the Crown, and the Queen appointed as prime minister whoever could command the confidence of Parliament.

Elizabeth's reign was administered by three governments. The first, under Christophe Landry, later Duke of Arbington, included Carrie Fitzwater as Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Blakeslee as Foreign Minister, Ford Dalton Tollemache as Home Minister, and Allen Greenstreet as Defense Minister. The second, under Royston Merrick of the National Salvation Party in coalition with the National Unity Party, retained Blakeslee at foreign affairs and Gerhardt Eugen Seydlitz as Minister of Reconstruction and Infrastructure, and added Edward Weatherhill as Home Minister and Chancellor and Sofia Soren as Minister of Health.

The third was formed by Seydlitz of the National Unity Party, who had served under both his predecessors as Minister of Reconstruction and Infrastructure. On the resignation of the Merrick government, Elizabeth received Seydlitz in audience and appointed him Prime Minister and Lord High Steward; the proclamation appointing the First Seydlitz Government, issued at Bellesea Palace on 12.XIII.1665 AN, named a ministry of nineteen, with Jean-Noël Prudhomme as Minister of Home Affairs and Lord President of the Privy Council, the outgoing prime minister Merrick as Minister of Defense and Lord High Constable, Blakeslee retained at foreign affairs, Fitzwater as Minister for Women, and Helene Primavera as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Seydlitz was among the kingdom's most prolific legislators, the author of measures that included the Truth and Reconciliation Act, the Caputian Nationality Act, and the Criminal Code; his government confronted the aftermath of the second Haifan independence referendum and a deepening recession.

Acting in council, the Queen established several of the new state's institutions. She promulgated the Peerages Act, which defined the degrees of the Caputian peerage, and issued the Real Cédula de Gracias, or Royal Decree of Graces, a naturalization decree that for a term of five years opened Caputian citizenship to settlers from friendly nations in order to rebuild a population depleted by war and disease. Her government adopted a policy of armed neutrality, aligned with neither of the major power blocs, and administered the National Credit System that underpinned the kingdom's economy.

The spread of the Melusinian Faith brought the crown into conflict with the Order of Rochefort, a militant order that had vowed at the Vision of Zalae to spread the faith by peace and by sword. Under its Grand Master, Lee Grantham, the Order carried out forced conversions of the Stripping Path, an older religious community numbering some tens of thousands, and the killing of a policeman during one such conversion touched off a large uprising known as the Yell of Tonar. The government answered with Operation Cobalt, deploying 20,000 troops and issuing letters of marque against the Order; the Royal Caputian Air Force bombed its command center at Rudolfh, and Grantham was captured and killed. The Edict of Pallisican Expulsion and Repudiation, only the second edict issued in the kingdom's history, was promulgated during the same period.

Regencies

The Royal Succession Act of 1658 AN provided for a Seneschal to act as Regent during the Sovereign's absence or temporary incapacity. Elizabeth invoked it to appoint Ford Dalton Tollemache, Lord Mournstead, as Seneschal, first in 1662 AN, when she left Zalae on a holiday with her family, and again in 1666 AN. For his service in the first regency she raised him from Baron to Viscount of Mournstead.

Fall and exile

The Kingdom of the Union of Caputia did not endure. Following its collapse, attributed in later accounts to the epidemic known as the White Plague, much of the population left Keltia or resettled among the Wechua Nation. Elizabeth I remained at the head of what survived of the state as the Royal Caputian Government in Exile, established at Nivardom in Constancia under a charter called the Declaration of Nivardom. Rather than a movement for restoration, the exiled government served as steward of the Caputian diaspora, holding the records and archives of the former kingdom and its National Credit System; Elizabeth commissioned Royston Merrick to serve as its prime minister under a commission of government.

Regional Governor of New Caputia

Caputia's legacy was carried into the Federation of Nouvelle Alexandrie through the region of New Caputia, admitted to the federation in 1722 AN. On its admission Elizabeth I became the first Regional Governor of New Caputia, serving as an independent from 1722 AN to 1723 AN. She declined to seek election to a full term and was succeeded by Frederick Landry, a son of her first prime minister. Elizabeth I died in 1723 AN, at the age of 87.

Public perception and character

Elizabeth I was at once the founding monarch of Caputia and the religious figure around whom the Melusinian Faith formed. The Vision of Zalae cast her as the recipient of a divine mandate, and her styles as Uniter and Defender of the People and Defender of the Faith expressed the unifying role that the kingdom assigned to its crown. She was the kingdom's only sovereign and its Supreme Governor of the Church, offices she kept through the collapse of the state and the years of exile that followed.

House of Rothborne

The House of Rothborne

In the first year of her reign Elizabeth I established the House of Rothborne as the reigning house of the kingdom, composed of the Sovereign, her heirs and successors, her family, and such others as she might name by letters patent, all of whom were to bear the name Rothborne. The house descended from the House of Ravaillac, her own family. In 1661 AN she gave it a written constitution in the Rothborne Family Pact, adopted by order in council, which named her Head of the House with the dignity passing to her legitimate heirs, defined the Royal Line as her direct marital descendants and the Royal Family as the descendants of her father, Donat Ravaillac, and constituted a Family Council to govern the dynasty's affairs.

Marriage

Elizabeth I married Francis Joseph IV, titular Emperor of the Alexandrians and Duke of Anglien, of the House of Carrillo. Their engagement was announced on 13.IX.1658 AN, and the Caputian Privy Council gave the Queen's consent on 13.IX.1659 AN; the Landry government confirmed that the marriage was not morganatic, and the Archbishop of Zalae endorsed the match in a declaration titled Amor Et Pertinacia. After a courtship of three years, the royal wedding opened with a civil ceremony at Bellesea Palace in Zalae on 25.XV.1661 AN, chosen as neutral ground because each spouse was the head of a church. It was followed by a Melusinian service of prayer and dedication at the Most Holy Temple of the Faith in Zalae and, on 29.XV.1661 AN, by an Alexandrian consecration at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Storms in Dos Gardenias. At Zalae Francis Joseph IV was created Prince Regent, Duke of Nouveau Geneve, and Baron Carrillo; at Dos Gardenias Elizabeth was crowned titular Empress Consort, Baroness of Reistag, Countess of New Alexandria, and Princess of Neridia. The witnesses were Benjamin Meir, Lord High Steward of the Most Serene Union, and Prime Minister Royston Merrick, and the ceremonies were watched by an estimated global audience of 750 million.

Issue

The marriage produced six children. Twins, Prince Edward and Princess Carla, were born in 1664 AN, and were followed by Princess Andrea in 1665 AN, Prince Lewis in 1669 AN, Prince Felipe in 1671 AN, and Prince Donat in 1673 AN. Because the children were reckoned to their father's House of Carrillo, the Caputian royal house was joined through the marriage to the Alexandrian imperial dynasty. Prince Edward married Vadoma I, Empress of the Natopians, in 1689 AN; their five children, among them Princess Adelaide, the future Empress Clara, carried Elizabeth's line into the Natopian imperial succession. On Elizabeth's death in 1723 AN, Prince Edward succeeded to her titular Caputian and Hamland crowns, and on his father's death in 1737 AN he further inherited the Alexandrian imperial dignity, reigning as Edgard III.

Family

Elizabeth I's parents, her marriage, and her line through her eldest son:

Finances

As head of state the Caputian crown was maintained through the institutions of the kingdom rather than from private means. The royal domain included two crown dependencies, held as possessions of the Crown rather than as states of the kingdom. Elizabeth Isle, off the eastern coast of Eura, had its capital at Marielagrad and a population of about twenty thousand, and hosted a military base and weather station. Santa Melusina, on part of the island of Anterra in the Corprian Archipelago, was far larger, with a population of some two million and an economy built on aviation and finance. Both had been ceded to Hamland by Passio-Corum under the Treaty of Bel-Air, which settled the Passasian Question. A detailed account of the royal finances is not preserved in the surviving record of the kingdom.

Titles, styles, honors, and arms

The phoenix badge of Elizabeth I

The style of Elizabeth I evolved over her lifetime, from a provincial governorship before the kingdom's founding to the royal and imperial dignities she held as queen. As sovereign she was the fount of honor of the kingdom, from whom its peerage and orders of chivalry proceeded.

Titles and styles

  • Before 25.XII.1653 AN: Governor-General of United Monovia
  • 25.XII.1653 AN - 25.XV.1661 AN: Her Royal Majesty The Queen of all Caputians
  • 25.XV.1661 AN - 1723 AN: Her Royal Majesty The Queen of all Caputians, titular Empress Consort of the Alexandrians

At her accession she was also proclaimed Duchess of Zalae and Princess of Monovia. By a proclamation of 1653 AN issued under the Constitution Act, she fixed her definitive royal style as Elizabeth, Queen of all Caputians, Queen of Hamland and of Her Other Realms and Territories, Queen and Governor-General of Haifa, Supreme Governor of the Church of Caputia, Captain-General of all Caputia, Defender of the Faith, Uniter and Defender of the People. Her realms included the crown dependencies of Elizabeth Isle and Santa Melusina, and through her marriage she also held the Alexandrian dignities of titular Empress Consort, Baroness of Reistag, Countess of New Alexandria, and Princess of Neridia.

Honors

Elizabeth I defined the degrees of the Caputian peerage in the Peerages Act and conferred titles and dignities by letters patent under the Great Seal. In 1654 AN she founded the Most Noble Order of the Melusine as the senior order of chivalry of the kingdom, of which the reigning sovereign was Sovereign and Grand Master. The order took as its motto Vincit Semper Veritas, or "Truth Always Conquers", and admitted two classes of members: knights and dames drawn from the Queen's subjects, and knights stranger drawn from distinguished foreigners. Among its early members were her first prime minister, Christophe Landry, Duke of Arbington, and Juana Beazcoetxea, Lady Dragonmoor.

Arms and seals

The instruments of Elizabeth I's reign were authenticated by several seals, among them the Seal of Melusine, the Elizabeth Regina Seal, and the Queen's Cipher, together with her personal signature.

  • The Seal of Melusine
    The Seal of Melusine
  • The Elizabeth Regina Seal
    The Elizabeth Regina Seal

See also

Retrieved from "https://micras.org/wiki/index.php?title=Queen_Elizabeth_I&oldid=417726"