Sounds like the aristocracy's pretty entrenched. They'd better watch out for some fellows talkin' 'bout liberty, equality, and fraternity.
Did you know that, before the Ghesites held dominance over the Alechi people, the Berghi Empire did? Until about 1000, the Empire's northern reaches included the Alechi territories, then called the "Alchi" (Berghi for "fishers"). The Ghesite migration east during this period brought the two powers into a years-long low-level conflict for the region that culminated in an escalation that the Berghi call "the Battle-without-End". During this event, a large Berghi occupying force that had traveled north to solidify the Empire's hold over the region was engaged by the Ghesites with brutal force and ultimately forced back south, at great cost to both sides and over the course of about a month and a half. This event would so deeply ingrain in the Berghi the sentiment that the Ghesites were cowards and barbarians that they created the "Stele of the Battle-without-End" in its commemoration, a monolithic structure reaching four metres tall that depicts the conflict over twenty-eight panels carved into sandstone, the last of which has been engraved with the device of the commander of every expedition against the Ghesites to date. It includes such colorful depictions of the people of Ghes as "monstrous defilers of men's corpses", "butchers who kill with a thousand pricks", and a phrase most literally translated as "sexual lovers of horses". It's fair to say the hatred is mutual among the Ghesites.
