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.
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“There is a history in all men’s lives,
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With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
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—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
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—Karl Marx (1818–1883)