Jefferson, Confederation of Sovereign States
Sometimes great changes begin with simple questions. In the midst of a debate in the Confederation House of Representative on some matter not long remembered, a junior member of the Liberty Party posed the question: “Well, technically, isn’t the President of our republic, Sean Collins, the subject of a Grand Duke?” A second, like unto it, followed: “And isn’t the Grand Duke technically a tributary of a foreign monarch, namely the Excalbian Emperor?”
Despite no discernable reaction in the moment, by the time the evening news programs aired footage of the question and the following morning’s leading dailies had posed it on their front paged, reactions on all sides began to mount. At first, it was just a quirky, thought-provoking question. When the talking heads and pundits got to thoroughly debating it as the Sunday talk shows rolled around, it was becoming a fierce political conundrum. How could Sean Collins, a man who had supported Saxmerean independence and who was a subject of Grand Duke James Kennan’s Autonomous Grand Duchy of Saxmere serve as President of the Confederation - a nation founded on republicanism?
In a twist of fate, it was the Liberty Party, the party of former President Tom Caine who had fought so fiercely against Saxmerean independence, that first posed the next momentous question: “Should Saxmere separate itself from the Confederation for the good of both?”
Fueling the public debate was the perennial division between the misty-eyed remembrances of leaders past and the what-have-done-for-me-lately critiques of the current leadership. Out of office for two years, Tom Caine was beginning to positively glow with the aura of fond memories. After all, was it not Tom Caine who brought the Confederation to international prominence it have never known before? Was it not Tom Caine who stood down the Excalbian bully, and who forged a partnership with Knootoss, a nation more reflective of the Confederation’s Libertarian values? Was it not Tom Caine who had presided over the best period of economic growth in the nation’s history? By contrast, President Collins was a man seemingly out of his depth, a politician but not a leader. A man struggling to implement an agenda that was being thwarted at every turn by an opposition Congress and that half the country was no longer sure it wanted.
Demographics, too, had played a role. Despite its autonomy, Saxmere’s borders were open to the rest of the Confederation. Those in Saxmere who wanted socially progressive policies on marriage and abortion and more laissez faire economic policies simply moved to other States of the Confederation. Those citizens of other States who yearned for traditional values - especially if they were Catholic - moved to Saxmere. Meanwhile, Saxmere’s biggest ally among its fellow States, Southland, had seen its devout Protestant Christian majority eroded by foreign immigration, the emergence of an increasingly non-religious post-Millennial generation - called the “Generation of Caine” in the media, and by the emigration of Southlanders to Saxmere and the Holy Empire of Excalbia.
And so, seemingly from nowhere amidst a backdrop of prosperity with no sign of conflict on the horizon, the Confederation’s political class - and increasingly its general population - was becoming consumed with one question: Should Saxmere leave the Confederation?
