House Marik: The Free Worlds League

Birth of the Free Worlds League

The Free Worlds League was the brainchild of Tomàs Allison, leader of the Federation of Oriente. As the 2260s drew to a close, Oriente was one of three emerging multi-world confederations in its region of space. The other two were the Marik Commonwealth and the Dominion of Regulus. All three realms had spent the past several years slowly expanding their borders, edging ever closer to one another's territories. A scholar of history and a farsighted man, Allison realized that sooner or later, Oriente would clash with one of these neighboring powers. The only hope for avoiding a potentially ruinous war was to forge a mutually profitable alliance first.

Other considerations played a role in Allison's decision as well. The Terran Alliance had limped along for more than seven decades after the shakeup of 2237, but its demise as a political power was only a matter of time. By the 2260s, it was clear to Allison that the Alliance government was dying. He was convinced that its successor would be a military regime, given the status of the Alliance Global Militia as one of the few Terran institutions not discredited by shady backroom dealing. Any new Terran government would need to consolidate its power; what better way to do so than to take back former colonies? Against the large and well-equipped AGM, the smaller militaries of independent worlds could not hope to prevail alone. Union seemed the best hope for survival.

The Marik Commonwealth, with its sizable territory and strong military, made an excellent prospective ally. The Dominion of Regulus offered distinct advantages as well, with its robust economy and large, armed trading fleet. Blending Marik's military might and Regulus' economic strength with Oriente's diplomatic skills promised to make an unbeatable combination on all three fronts. In 2266, Allison sent his most trusted envoy to the leaders of the neighboring powers with a proposal to form a federation.

Sir George Humphreys of New Delos was a proud upholder of his family's long tradition of public service. A lifetime spent in politics had honed his natural eloquence and given him unmatched skill at the art of the deal. When Tomàs Allison approached him with the framework for the fledgling Free Worlds League, Humphreys gladly agreed to back it on Allison's behalf. After five years of negotiations, Humphreys brought Detlev Marik and Raju Selaj together with Tomàs Allison for a pivotal conference on Oriente in 2271. Over the next four months, the three leaders hammered out the Treaty of Marik that created the Free Worlds League. The treaty granted internal autonomy to the founding states, gave the leader of each a prominent role in the League-wide government and provided for the appointment of an overall military leader-a Captain-General-in times of crisis. In keeping with Allison's vision of a profit making as well as a defensive enterprise, political representation was allotted according to economic strength rather than population.

The Treaty of Marik was written down, argued over, rewritten, amended, nearly thrown out and rewritten yet again in English, the one language spoken by all three heads of state. The wrangling and the choice of language both hinted at a feature of the Free Worlds League that would become a leading source of trouble over the centuries. The three nations that made up the early League represented a dazzling array of different peoples and cultures: Indian, Pakistani, Romanian, Hungarian, Slovak, Mongolian, Kazhak, Uzbek, Spanish, Italian, Basque and English, just to name a few. Many of these different populations spoke only their own tongues and had little understanding of their neighbors, linguistically or otherwise. The three founding states were also markedly different in political structure: the Marik Commonwealth military-oriented with a powerful (though not absolute) central government, the Dominion of Regulus an oligarchy controlled by a small number of wealthy families, and Oriente a British-style Parliamentary democracy. All these differences were a source of tremendous vitality for the new nation, but also frequently bogged down the League government in squabbling over where the line fell between federal authority and provincial autonomy. The desire to be left alone, a social force in almost every former Terran colony, had extra resonance in the Free Worlds League, where individual regions jealously guarded their traditions and prerogatives against "outsiders" who could not understand them.

More than once in the League's history, cultural and political tensions led to threats of secession or even total collapse. The League survived by finding a precarious balance between these potentially opposing forces-a balance forged by the knowledge that none of its component parts could prosper half so well alone as they could together.