Volume X: Manifest Destiny
New Avalon City, capital of New Avalon and the Federated Suns today, fills an area roughly six hundred square kilometers, and is surrounded by a three-river crisscross made possible by diverting the flows of the Albion, Rostock, and Burbank rivers to create what the locals affectionately call the New Isle of Avalon. The geography is no accident; it was a deliberately engineered effort to recreate a city—Avalon City—whose remains lie just 80 kilometers farther south, a ghost city of ruins, blast craters, and debris 50 kilometers in diameter. It stands as a silent memorial to the horrors of the Word of Blake Jihad.

Beneath an aqua-blue sky and lit by a small yellow sun, New Avalon City sprawls amid a collection of grand towers and the palatial estate of the Davion family—a dazzling modern castle as formidable as it is beautiful. Surrounding the city, beginning as near as the opposite shores of the Albion and Burbank rivers, the fertile plains of Albion give rise to massive agro-plexes, a rural landscape that contrasts sharply with the urban sprawl just one bridge-length away.

The Six Liberties of the Federated Suns’ Constitution covers both the hard-working farmers who toil the fields of the agro-plexes and the First Prince, who resides in the castle at the heart of the city, with equal force, despite the presence of an aristocratic governing order. These rights – to personal liberty, fair treatment, privacy, ownership of property and weapons, and participation in planetary government – serve to protect the people and worlds of the Federated Suns from the excesses of a true dictatorship. These liberties imbue the people of the Federated Suns with a sense of pride and enthusiasm not often found in other realms, but has at times instilled equal – or even excessive – levels of arrogance and self-righteousness.

For too many in the Federated Suns, pride in their democratic traditions easily turns to arrogance. The average citizen sees his homeland as the only truly free realm in human space and therefore superior to all others. Some take this righteousness a step further, believing themselves duty-bound to spread the Federated Suns’ enlightened ways by any means necessary. They sincerely believe that, given a choice, any sane human being would live exactly as they do. When confronted with entire interstellar nations whose people live differently, they tend to either pity them as ignorant or despise them for intentionally rejecting a “better” way of life. Such attitudes bolster the promilitary mindset so prevalent in Federated Suns society, turning the frequently ugly business of war into an expression of manifest destiny . . . .
--Anastasia Marcus, PhD., On Setting Suns, ComStar Press, 3064

The institutions that maintain fairness and help protect these fundamental rights date back to the original signing of the Crucis Pact. But as the realm grew more and more aristocratic, successive rulers tried to reign in the power of the nobility they themselves spawned. The 25th century, for example, saw the reign of Simon Davion, who assassinated his own despotic cousin, then threw himself on the mercy of the Suns’ High Court in the name of controlling the excesses of the government. All but acquitted for his crime, Simon Davion established an interlocking checks-and-balances web of new nobility during his rule, while simultaneously dismantling the less-feudal government titles, including that of President. Power was decentralized, with five March Lords created to maintain a balance of power so that, in theory, no single Lord could claim command over the entire state—until the crisis of the Davion Civil War, that is.

The Davion Civil War was a huge setback for the egalitarian system in the Federated Suns, and highlighted once again what’s probably the feudal system’s greatest weakness, just as the Amaris Coup would prove so aptly years later.

In the hope of ensuring that no single ruler stood above all others, the Davions planned to install five Regents, including two March Lords, to rule while young Alexander Davion grew up. Of course, by the time he had all but done so, some of these Regents grew ambitious enough to want to remain in power.

The details surrounding the kidnapping of the First Prince by two of his own Regents have proven bedeviling enough to fill a major holodrama or five on the matter. Living at first in captivity, then in hiding as his Regents fought for dominance, Alexander himself was the only person who apparently could bring an end to the situation—but only after more than 10 years of fighting had reduced the realm and its military to shambles.

Given the outcome of the war, Alexander can thus hardly be faulted for reorganizing the army, making military service for the First Prince mandatory, and curtailing the powers of the High Council and March Lords. Having seen for himself the horrors of ambition, it became clear to Alexander that there was indeed such a thing as too much power-sharing.
--Arthur Luvonne, The Long, Dirty History of the Federated Suns, Commonwealth Press, 3100

The lessons that Alexander Davion learned from the Davion Civil War continue to have repercussions. Firstly, the powers of the March Lords and the High Council were redefined, placing more authority in the hands of the First Prince and effectively demoting all other nobles to emphasize their position in the hierarchy. Secondly, the FPF was reorganized and rechristened the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns (AFFS) to emphasize its loyalties to the entire realm, rather than to any March Lord. And finally, the First Lord himself would henceforth be required to serve in the AFFS for a minimum of five years before being eligible to rule. These sweeping reforms strengthened the power of the First Prince, weakened those of the other lords, and more tightly bound the fate of the nation to its prominent military defenders.

Through it all, however, efforts to promote the freedoms of the people continued. Alexander Davion himself passed the Laws of Noble Conduct and Review in 2634, which granted the right of appeal to the common citizen, even against the ranks of nobility, and obligated planetary rulers to look into such complaints whenever they arose. Nobles could thus be judged for their conduct, found guilty of crimes, and stripped of title, land, money, and even their very lives if found to be acting in poor faith with the people.

But where the rights of the people are often looked after, the prevalence of the military throughout much of the Federated Suns’ history created a far more serious imbalance that continues to plague parts of this realm even today. With so much of the national budget earmarked for defense, taxes are high and particularly hard on those worlds with fewer resources to draw upon.

On these worlds, the haves and the have-nots are sharply divided. Education is poor for those who work the fields and mines, particularly near the fringes of the Periphery, where children go to work as soon as physically possible. Perhaps a passing “vagabond school” JumpShip may happen by long enough for local children to learn at least how to read and write, but such government-sponsored measures are stopgap at best.

Yet, ironically enough, many citizens – even those who live on the poorer fringe worlds of Davion space – maintain their admiration for the military, either seeing service as a noble cause or as a means to escape a life spent in poverty. Still others cling to the freedoms they still enjoy, even without the prosperity known in the urban sprawls of New Avalon City. These are the people who look upon House Davion’s neighbors and see nothing but oppression and hopelessness, for even the poorest citizen of the Federated Suns, they say, can hope for something better.

Join us for part three of this four-part look into the Federated Suns, when we’ll look into the most well known of Davion rulers and the watershed events of the 31st century. Please join us as we continue our tour of the stars! I’m Bertram Habeas.