History
In comparison to the other Successor States, the Free Worlds League experiences a wider level of autonomy among its component regions, most notably the Duchy of Oriente, the Principality of Regulus, and the Duchy of Andurien. Because of this laissez-faire approach, however, the League's history is rife with vicious civil wars and power plays. During the Clan invasion, the League, along with the Capellan Confederation, remained intact and used the widespread war facing the Federated Commonwealth and the Draconis Combine to emerge as an economic powerhouse, supplying desperately needed resources and equipment to the besieged nations. This elevated the League to a position of great economic strength and the realm soon contributed a host of new military hardware and BattleMech designs to the Inner Sphere. The Free World's League newly gained clout inadvertently contributed to the death of Hanse Davion, former prince of the Federated Suns, who suffered a fatal heart attack upon learning of the marriage arrangement between Captain-General Thomas Marik's illegitimate daughter, Isis Marik, and Chancellor Sun-Tzu Liao, which would align the strengthened Free Worlds League with what remained of the Capellan Confederation in what was surely a bid to reclaim territory either nation lost in the Fourth Succession War. The alliance would be used for just that in a joint Capellan-FWL offensive into Federated Suns territory known as Operation Guererro, though as of the Whitting Conference on Tharkad in 3058, the two had yet to be wed.
Prior to the launch of Task Force Serpent and Operations Bird Dog and Bulldog, League forces had yet to see combat against Clan forces. The League's Knights of the Inner Sphere, a noble military organization led by Sir Paul Masters and dedicated to conducting war in an honorable manner, was that nation's primary commitment to the task forces. Following the Word of Blake's breakaway from ComStar proper after the Battle of Tukayyid, Captain-General Thomas Marik, a former Comstar acolyte, welcomed the Blakist zealots into League territory, providing the Word of Blake with a haven until their conquest of Terra.
After the Word of Blake Jihad, the Free Worlds League dissolved into several bodies. Three powers continue to struggle for supremacy over the League as a whole, but many smaller realms and even non-aligned planets carry out wars and vendettas against each other.
Read more about this topic: Free Worlds League
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If you look at history you’ll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“The custard is setting; meanwhile
I not only have my own history to worry about
But am forced to fret over insufficient details related to large
Unfinished concepts that can never bring themselves to the point
Of being, with or without my help, if any were forthcoming.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)