Duchy of Trelyn
Duchy of Trelyn
Imperial Client-State administered from the Domain of Deneb by a jump route through the Foreven sector, located on the Far Frontiers - Vanguard Reaches border and spanning five subsectors. Capital located at Trelyn Vrra (Vanguard Reaches 2504).
A group of Imperial industrialists formed the Allarton Corporation in 941 to exploit and develop the Vanguard Reaches, starting with the Trelyn Subsector. Resistance was met from the growing Eslyat, but the coreward and spinward areas of the subsector flourished.
President of the Allarton Corporation board of directors, Ardesh Varen, was made Duke of Trelyn in an official ceremony at Capital/Core by Emperor Styryx. Two years later, Duke Varen arrived at Trelyn Vrra/Trelyn with a squadron of colonial cruisers and the Duchy of Trelyn was founded.
The Duke selected the term "royal" to differentiate local forces from Imperial troops, hence the "Royal Navy" and the "Royal Scouts." Ardesh also coined the term "Grand Duke" to refer to the sovereign of the Duchy of Trelyn as being superior to an average Duke but not quite an Archduke.
Grand Duke Ardesh passed away in 994 when he succumbed to a disease on Emmerling's Refuge (Vanguard Reaches 1801). His son Khashla became the second Grand Duke at age 27.
Khashla died of natural causes in 1056, and his son, Ashir, became Grand Duke at age 45.
Ashir died in 1082, and his son Laram became Grand Duke at age 30 (Ashir's oldest issue, Shannara, died of the same disease that killed her great-grandfather Ardesh).
The oldest issue of Laram, at his death, was his daughter, Lissa Dyana, born in 1074. She became the first Grand Duchess in 1105, the great-great-granddaughter of the first Grand Duke. Lissa Dyana is the current Grand Duchess as of Imperial date 1120.
The Trelyn Domain encompasses worlds in 63 systems with a population of over 67 billion sophonts. The wide-ranging Allarton Corporation is based at the Duchy capital of Trelyn Vrra. It is the largest commercial enterprise in the sector, rivaling small Imperial Megacorporations in size and extent.
The Duchy's policies towards its citizens are quite oppressive, and the Allarton Corporation was a profit making enterprise first and foremost, and a legitimate state almost as an afterthought. In this it reflects the worst aspects of its parent, the Last Imperium. The Duchy possesses a number of exile camps and restricted producer worlds where it dumped convict labor and dissidents, both Imperial and local, into wretched living and working conditions.
Grand Duchess Lissa swore fealty to Regent Norris after the Collapse, but close relations were made difficult by his insistence on closer relations with the Zhodani, and the Regency's legalization of psionics. Relations were strained by the Regency's Representational Reforms, as it raised the spector of insurrection in the Duchy, and confirmed that its Imperial style of rulership was now an anachronism no longer tolerated by the "Imperial" mainstream. Relations have never returned to their antebellum amicability, and the Duchy has been a vocal supporter of the Regency's disenfranchised nobility.
The Duchy's previous expansionistic policies, and poor relations with neighbors led to a series of border wars with its Far Frontiers neighbors that shed much blood but did not appreciably change the status quo. Grand Duchess Lissa died in 1152, a month before Regent Norris did. She was succeeded by her son Ardaresh, age 44, who is still the current Grand Duke at a ripe old age, but more and more power is wielded by his daughter Haranna, who is likely to succeed him within the next three years.
- Source : Peter Gray - Gray Matter