| Yanina | |
| |
| Derlavian Kingdom Darkness Fantasy | |
| Capital: | Patras |
| Government: | Absolute monarchy |
| Status: | Active |
Yanina was a kingdom in south-central Derlavai with its capital city at Patras. When the Derlavaian War broke out, Yanina was ruled by King Tsavellas and the country maintained a colony across the Narrow Sea in the Land of the Ice People.
History[]
Modern Yanina was ruled in ancient times by the Kaunian Empire at its height. Like other Derlavaian nations, Yanina fought its share of wars with its neighbors in the millennia between the collapse of the Kaunian Empire and the Derlavaian War. While visiting Patras, the Lagoan mage Fernao viewed tapestries boasting of Yaninan triumphs in these wars; Fernao concluded from Yanina's modern borders that the tapestries didn't faithfully portray that country's history.
Derlavaian War[]
A small country sandwiched between its more powerful neighbors Algarve to the east and Unkerlant to the west, Yanina opted for neutrality when the Derlavaian War broke out, even granting asylum to the refugee King Penda of Forthweg when his country was crushed by Yanina's neighbors. However, when Algarve launched its invasion of Unkerlant two years after the war began, Yanina allowed itself to be used as a staging ground and participated in the Algarvian invasion. Around the same time a Yaninan army invaded the Lagoan colony on the austral continent.
Yanina's participation in the war quickly proved to be a problem for Algarve. Though individual soldiers and specialist forces such as dragonfliers performed competently, the Yaninan army as a whole proved to be inept and unenthusiastic about waging the war. Barely a few months after Yanina entered the war, King Mezentio of Algarve quipped that fighting with Yanina as an ally was akin to being shackled to a corpse.
As a result of Yaninan incompetence, Algarvian forces had to be diverted from Unkerlant to the Land of the Ice People to prevent a complete Lagoan victory there. In Unkerlant, Yaninan troops were only useful for holding quiet stretches of the front and shielding Algarvian flanks; this policy had disastrous consequences during the Battle of Sulingen, when Unkerlanter armies smashed through the lightly defended Yaninan lines to trap the Algarvian army in the city.
Even as the Algarvians were driven east out of Unkerlant and a joint Lagoan/Kuusaman army conquered Yaninan's austral colony, Yanina maintained its alliance with Algarve. Only in the final year of the war, when Unkerlant was poised to crush Yanina, did Tsavellas attempt to switch sides and preserve his kingdom. Yanina's defection was successful, and its armies fought alongside those of Unkerlant during the final thrust toward Trapani.
When the war ended, Yanina had successfully avoided outright conquest but was reduced in effect to being an Unkerlanter vassal.
People and Society[]
Yaninas were generally small, swarthy, dark-haired, and big-nosed, somewhat like Unkerlanters but shorter and more slender. They shared with the Algarvians a love for ostentatious mustaches and macho behavior; arguing was semi-humorously considered the national sport.
The pom-poms which Yaninans wore on their shoes were a source of constant ridicule by other Derlavaians.
Literary Note[]
Yanina is a city of Epirus, in north-western Greece. The language and character names of Yaninans resembles those of Greece.
Yanina's role in the war combines aspects of World War II Italy and Romania.
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