The Most Divine Imperial Republic of the Heartlands

The Most Divine Imperial Republic of the Heartlands (Imperial Republic in short form) is an empire stretching from the Balkans to the Chinese coast, ruled by an Empress theoretically curtailed by a Senate from the Imperial Capital of Catherinopolis. The Empire follows an organizational system of mixed self rule and centralization, with the core regions of Anatolia, Egypt, Irand, the Levant and Greece ruled directly from Catherinopolis, and other, more far flung areas by local authorities supervised by Imperial functionaries.

History
The Imperial Republic was formally established in 1834 under the rule of Empress Safiye II, but its origins go back to the Ottoman Empire, from which it emerged. Imperial history is traditionally divided into periods; first the Ottoman Period 1553-1683, second the Reform Era 1683-1834, third the Foundation Era 1834-1859, fourth the Courtly Period 1859-1936 and fifth the Renewal Period 1936-Present.

The Ottoman Period
The period called The Sultanate of Women, beginning with the marriage of Suleiman the Magnificent to Hurrem Sultan, is often considered the spark that ultimately led to the formation of the Imperial Republic. It was a period characterized by a series of Sultans either too young or otherwise incapable to rule, leaving their mothers and wives as the de facto rulers of the empire. During this time, the women of the empire led it into a period of peace and increasing prosperity, but also strengthened their own postition. They secured themselves control over the Devrishme (The drafting system which recruited christian boys into the Imperial administrarion and military) by allowing the recruitment of both girls and children from other faiths, and raising up a generation of administrators and a reorganized Jannissary corps loyal not to the Sultans or Viziers, but to the now significantly powerful and popular women of the Ottoman harem.

In 1648, Sultan Mehmed IV became the first sultan in a century to be old enough rule, and enthusiastically led the Ottoman Empire into a series of financial disasters and costly military campaigns. His final mistake was sending his Vizier Kara Mustafa to conquer the city of Vienna at the behest of Hungarian Calvinists. After a promising start to the siege, his army was attacked unexpectedly by a coalition of various european powers and routed back towards the balkans. In Konstantiniyye, the sultans wife Roxolana, who would later be declared a saint, used this disasterous defeat to justify the deposition of Mehmed and assume absolute power, a move welcomed by the loyal administration and a population which still remembered the time before the economic decline of Mehmeds reign. As Kara Mustafa and his army crossed the Danube in retreat, he was met by Roxolana leading half the Jannissary corps and demanding his surrender. He refused, hoping to save himself by restoring the sultan, but decisively lost the following battle, when the Jannissary regiments within his own army turned against him.

The Reform Era
Roxolana inherited a crumbling empire. Even though the empresses had done their best at controlling the damage caused by decades of explosive expansion, the religious and cultural tensions within the empire showed no signs of weakening, the economic mismanagement of Mehmets reign had left the empire almost out of funds, and surrounding powers, first amongst them the Persians, were preparing for oppurtunistic attacks, thinking that the change in leadership was a sign of weakness. What those powers did not consider was that the empire still fielded the worlds most formidable professional army, and was ruled by a group of women with a century of experience in foreign and administrative affairs. The first act of Roxolana as empress was signing the Treaty of Budapes, in which the former Ottoman Empire ceded large parts of its Hungarian and Balkan holdings to the coalition. This freed the Army to launch an unexpectedly quick and forceful attack on the Persian armies amassing on the border, killing the Shah and large parts of the old nobility. Persia was put under the rule of a governor from the court, and the riches taken in the war were put to use stabilizing the crumbling economy.

Roxolana and the empresses following her enacted a series of reforms to adress the long term problems facing the Empire. During their reigns, their empire redefined itself from a Muslim and Turkish empire into an entirely new entity built upon the rich history of the region. The Empire became one of the first states in the world to secularize its administration, and started to take a much more open approach to religion, trying to unite various religious groups through encouraging syncretic schools of thought. Similarly, it started to develop and promote its own culture and identity by appealing to shared histories and practices. Titles such as Roman Empress and Shahanashah were adopted by the new royalty. While enthusiastic acceptance of the new ideology was rewarded with high positions and wealth, dissent was systematically crushed by the Jannissary Corps and a newly established subsection of it functioning as a secret police. And through a mix of encouragement and threats, slowly the rifts threatening to tear apart the empire were beginning to mend.

The Foundation Era and Courtly Period
On the first of January 1834, the Most Divine Imperial Republic of the Heartlands was declared. The new nation took on a new name, new arms and banners bearing the symbol of the heart already commonly used by members of the court, and, most controversially a new religion. This decision did not come out of nowhere. The idea of leaving behind the Empires old identity in favour of one more suited to the direction it had been discussed for the last century, and decades worth of planning had gone into making the transition as smooth as possible. While most of the court was in favour of this change, the accompanying establishment of the Syncretic Matriarchate, a religious authority with the goal of combining the numerous religions of the old empire into one centered around the worship of the empress as a central figure, was much more controversial. Many of the older, more traditionalist members of the court stood adamantly against it, warning that such a move could rip the empire apart. By the time of the establishment of the Imperial Republic, many of the traditionalists had died of old age, and the much of the new generation of the court had been raised to be more sympathetic towards the idea. So while the establishment of the new religion was supported by the Imperial Cour, the empire was woefully underprepared for its introduction, which was met with heavy opposition throughout the empire. What followed was a series of large scale revolts and desertions that almost brought it to its knees. Various regions managed to split from the empire, most notably large parts of the Levant and western Arabia, and foreign powers used its weakness to prevent their reconquest. When in 1859 the final rebellion subsided, the Imperial Republic had lost much, but survived, with its structure now more fit to handle the divisions inherent in such a diverse empire. The following Courtly Period was dedicated to securing the Imperial Courts grip on the provinces and enforcing the new religious doctrine. It is characterised also by a series of ambitious architectural and engineering projects, amongst them the beginning of what would be the Silk Road Project, and only very small scale expansion.