Santa Melusina
- This article is about the Caputian Crown dependency on the island of Anterra. For the port city of the Region of New Caputia in Nouvelle Alexandrie, whose Martino name is Santa Melusina, see St. Melusine.
 Coat of Arms | |
| Status | Crown dependency of the Kingdom of the Union of Caputia |
| Former name | Region of the Northern Anterran Isles |
| Location | Island of Anterra, Corprian Archipelago, east of Keltia |
| Capital | Santa Melusina |
| Largest city | Santa Melusina |
| Ceded by | Passio-Corum (Greater Pallisican Trade Association) |
| Ceded under | Treaty of Bel-Air |
| Head of State | Elizabeth I |
| Administration |
|
| Representation | Dependencies' Electoral District (with Elizabeth Isle) |
| Garrison | 30,720 (Army, Navy and Air Force, 1663 AN) |
| Currency | Caputian laurel (₺) |
| Population | 2,008,218 (1663 AN census) |
Santa Melusina was the larger and wealthier of the two Crown dependencies of the Kingdom of the Union of Caputia, occupying a portion of the island of Anterra in the Corprian Archipelago, east of Keltia. An international aviation hub and a center of finance built around its capital, the city of Santa Melusina, it returned 2,008,218 inhabitants at the census of 1663 AN, more than a hundred times the population of Elizabeth Isle and more than the kingdom counted in its own capital district.
It came to Hamland from Passio-Corum under the Treaty of Bel-Air, which settled the Passasian Question by exchanging the Hammish holdings in Passas for two Pallisican territories. In the treaty it was called the Region of the Northern Anterran Isles; it took the name Santa Melusina from the goddess Melusine after the foundation of Caputia, well after the cession itself.
The exchange left Caputia and the Association sharing a single island, and Anterra was the one place where the two powers met on land. Within a decade that frontier was shut. The dependency was little damaged by the Hammish Civil War, but the Crown that held it did not survive the late 1660s AN.
Etymology and name
Neither name originated on the island. The first was coined at the negotiating table: the Pallisican envoy Pallisico Sitre, observing that the territories to be ceded had no formal names at all, proposed that the Anterran claim be called the Region of the Northern Anterran Isles and the Euran claim the Isle of Eastern Rey, and the Anterran territory entered Hammish possession under the first of them.
The second belongs to Caputia rather than to Hamland or to the Pallisicans. It honors the goddess Melusine, the Cow of the Sea, whose worship dates in Caputia from the Vision of Zalae and the founding of the kingdom, well after the cession; a Pallisican possession could not have carried the name, because the faith that supplies it did not yet exist. The arms, which show the crowned Melusine grasping her two tails between three suns, belong to the same renaming. Queen of Santa Melusina was among the Queen's titles, and the proclamation opening Parliament recited it, though the definitive style she fixed in 1653 AN gathered the dependencies under the words "and of Her Other Realms and Territories."
The name is shared with the city of St. Melusine in Nouvelle Alexandrie, whose Martino name is also Santa Melusina. The two are distinct places and neither descends from the other. St. Melusine stands on the Keltian coast, on ground that was never part of the Kingdom of the Union of Caputia, and was founded generations later; what they share is a devotion to the same goddess.
History
Before the cession
Anterra lay within the Pallisican sphere in the seas east of Keltia, and the Passasian War League had campaigned in the Southern Anterran Islands in the years before the exchange. The northern portion of the island that Hamland acquired was one of several Pallisican holdings in the archipelago, and the Association retained the remainder, so that the cession left the two powers sharing a single island. Under the Association the island's trade ran to pearls and abalone, and to the spicy onion that Anterra sent to Bassarid kitchens across the Corprian Sea.
Alexandrian merchants and settlers were established there under Pallisican rule, drawn by the trade of the archipelago.
Cession under the Treaty of Bel-Air
The cession arose from the Passasian Question, and from a proposal to wind up the Commonwealth of Hamland altogether and divide it between Alexandria, Stormark and Passio-Corum. That proposal was abandoned, and in its place the two governments agreed on an exchange of territory.
By the Treaty of Bel-Air, named for the great commercial city of Bel Air in Passas, Hamland ceded the Second Republic of Passas, the Overseas Colonies and Villa Levi to the Greater Pallisican Trade Association, and received in perpetuity the Region of the Northern Anterran Isles and the Isle of Eastern Rey. The treaty was signed for Hamland by Donat Ravaillac, Minister of the Homeland and Governor of Hammish-Monovia, and for the Association by Pallisico Sitre, Duke of Northman and New Zimian Ambassador to Hamland. It was signed around the turn of the tenth century WG, while Ravaillac was still Minister of the Homeland, and so before the Hammish Civil War that began in 1644 AN.
The treaty bound both parties to a non-aggression pact. By Article VII the Pallisican side undertook to support Hamland in defending its national unity and territorial integrity, and by Article VIII both resolved to build the border between them into one where ever-lasting peace and friendship prevailed. That border ran across Anterra.
Under the Crown
Caputia took direct responsibility for the dependency's defense and for its representation abroad, as it did for Elizabeth Isle, and the two together returned members to Parliament through the Dependencies' Electoral District, contested as a single district at the general elections of 1660 AN and 1665 AN. Both drew the National Social Transfer alongside the states.
The pledges of Articles VII and VIII did not hold. Passio-Corum supported the National Salvation Front against the Hammish state in the civil war, and the Greater Pallisican Trade Association was the principal source of funds for the Order of Rochefort in the sectarian violence that followed the founding of the kingdom. On 25 Liebluary 1658 AN the Queen answered with the Edict of Pallisican Expulsion and Repudiation, only the second edict in the kingdom's history, ordering the expulsion of all Bassarid nationals and practitioners of the Stripping Path from Caputia and its possessions. Caputia thereafter recognized no relations with the Association and prohibited travel to and from its territory altogether, processing and deporting those who entered unlawfully. In the rest of Caputia the prohibition was nominal; on Anterra it ran along a land frontier, which was closed.
Through all of it Caputia continued to adhere to the Treaty of Bel-Air, having repudiated the Association in every particular except the one that gave it the ground.
Civil war and collapse
The Hammish Civil War did little damage. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Carrie Fitzwater, reckoned Santa Melusina, Monovia and Elizabeth Isle the territories that were not badly damaged, and the dependency's revenues were of some consequence to a treasury with a ruined metropole to rebuild.
Caputia collapsed in the late 1660s AN. Later accounts attribute the collapse to two causes together: the White Plague, and a concurrent campaign of political subversion directed against Haifa by the Bassarid Empire, whose frontier ran across Anterra a few miles from the capital. The plague's spores could not survive long distances over saline water, which is what sheltered the isolated Elizabeth Isle; but they traveled in cargo, in wood, soil, paper and produce, and it was by that route that the plague reached Benacia. Santa Melusina was a port and an airfield before it was anything else, and salt water was no defense for a place whose business was carrying goods across it.
Geography
Santa Melusina occupied the northern portion of the island of Anterra, in the Corprian Archipelago east of Keltia, and shared the island with Passio-Corum; the land frontier between them was the only place where Caputia and the Association met on land. Its coast was low and sandy, and its beaches carried the resort trade. The Corprian Sea lay between the archipelago and the Bassarid kitchens that bought its produce, and beyond the dependency's own waters the Sea of Storms ran west toward Elizabeth Isle, the two dependencies standing at opposite edges of that sea.
Government and politics
The dependency was administered on the Crown's behalf by an officer the Crown appointed. It stood outside the metropolitan system of law, and though it drew the National Social Transfer alongside the states, it was not taxed as they were. That standing was the foundation of the finance industry: money could be held at Santa Melusina under the Queen's peace without being held in Caputia.
For representation it was joined with Elizabeth Isle in the Dependencies' Electoral District, a single multi-member district rather than a state counted in Parliament's apportionment by census. The arrangement outlasted several of the states it sat beside; the kingdom counted eleven at the election of 1660 AN and twelve at that of 1665 AN.
Economy
The economy stood on three things, and the first was aviation. Santa Melusina was one of the three great airports and aviation hubs of Caputia, with Zalae and Abeis, and the only one outside the metropole; its position in the archipelago made it the natural point of transit between Keltia and the eastern seas, and the aviation trade drew the banking after it.
Finance was the second, and it rested on the dependency's constitutional position rather than on any natural advantage. Tourism was the third. The resort trade was concentrated on the coast, the best known establishment being the Normandie Hotel and its bar, the Coconut Grove; Caputian material of the day advertised the hotel's cuisine and its cellar of fine wines and beers. The currency was the Caputian laurel (₺).
Demographics
At the census of 1663 AN the dependency returned 2,008,218 inhabitants, more than a hundred times the population of Elizabeth Isle. It was known for its large population of Alexandrian expatriates, who gave the capital much of its character and whose homeland ceased to exist when the Alexandrian Flu brought down Alexandria in a matter of months. The expatriate community outlived the state it had emigrated from.
Religion
The dependency was named for Melusine, the Cow of the Sea, the sister and counterpart of Bous, whose faith placed sacred meaning in the ocean and kept its adherents to daily cleansing and to communal immersion. A territory of beaches and salt water, bearing the crowned Melusine on its arms, was congenial ground for that observance, and the Melusinian Faith was the religion of nearly three quarters of the kingdom.
Santa Melusina was not a wholly Melusinian place, however, and its religious make-up was the one respect in which it least resembled the metropole. The Alexandrian expatriates who filled the capital were of the Church of Alexandria, which counted only about one Caputian in sixteen across the kingdom as a whole; the Edict of 1658 AN then put the Stripping Path out of the possessions altogether, so that the dependency's two great communities were the goddess's and the Alexandrians', with the faith of the neighbors across the border expelled by law.
Military
Santa Melusina was above all an air station. The Air Force kept its 8th Wing there, 22,814 strong, the largest Caputian formation in either dependency and larger than the whole population of Elizabeth Isle, with the airfields of a commercial hub to work from. Around it stood the 1st NCO Training Regiment, some 3,000 strong, and the Navy's 10th Squadron of 4,906 officers and ratings, giving a garrison of 30,720 on a closed frontier. Like Elizabeth Isle's, its establishment answered to the Overseas Garrisons under the Joint Chiefs at Zalae District.
See also
| Political divisions of Caputia | 
| ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||
