1205-1220 (452-467 AD) (L'Uniona Homanus)

The Years Prior
The Death of Constantinus II came on a midsummer night when the stewards of the Palatine Palace prepared to wake the Emperor and found him in a peaceful unwakeable state. The Discussions as to the succession of the Emperor were not limited to the Senate, though they were scrambling for any suitable replacement. The People of Rome had long been aware of the difficulty of succession. The former Emperors had all either had sons or brothers or another male relative to leave the Imperial title to; or there were strong and famous Generals from recent wars who would be suitable to start a new dynasty. Because of the Peace of the last century there were no prominent Generals or Military members. The Succession of Emperor Constantinus could not be filled by any member of his family because his only son had died of typhoid fever before he turned four years old. Constantinus II had three brothers, all older than him, but during the last years of the reign of Constantinus I he had killed them all in order to take the throne for himself.

Gallia
No period between Emperors had lasted more than five years at any time before the death of Constantinus II. By the year 1212 the interregnum had lasted seven years and the Senate was beginning to lose its grip on power within the Senatorial Provinces, not to mention the military which had taken over in the Imperial areas of Rome. The tensions between the Provinces of Gallia, that is to say the three provinces of Francia, Narbonensis, and Aquitannia, were coming to consist of more than words and rhetoric.

In Aquitannia the government led by the most powerful and devout General of Burdigala (Bordeaux), Amulius Falco Rutilus, who was the younger brother and most influential advisor of the Governor of Aquitannia The Province was becoming more self-centered with the absence of the Emperor for so long. Their belief that they were destined to reclaim their former territories and that the gods supported their dominion over as much as they would endeavour to take.

Britannia
In the city of Eboracum (York) in Britannia the Community of Anglians was causing controversy on the border between Britannia and Caledonia. The Cimbri in the Jutland peninsula in Scandinavia drove out the Saxon people and the Angli. The Angli came to Britannia, on invitation, and were allowed to settle in the forest lands around the city of Eboracum. The Saxons moved into Germania, due to migration, and almost started a war with the Province of Scandinavia. This was prevented by the Emperor at the time but the Saxons continued to remain in Germania. The City of Saxonium (Hanover) on the River Lenus (Leine) and started out as a forest surrounded slum town which was a small pittance to the Saxon population, who were considered a nuisance by many of the other aristocrats of Germania. Saxonia, the most powerful Duchy in Germania, became a model to their brothers in Eboracum, who also wanted to establish an equal, if not greater, area for their people as the Saxons had in Germania.

Iberia
While Western Europe was facing these problems, the Iberian Peninsula, a usually peaceful place of development, was facing changes which they had no experience in managing. The opportunity presented by the lack of control from the capital, as there were upheavals almost everywhere, left the several different ethnicities in Hispania, primarily, to begin to try and carve out parts of the provinces for their people. The Valenci, the Catalani, the Cantabri the Ibri, the Occitani, and the Taracci began to divide the peninsula. The Valenci, who were descended from the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians were identifying themselves as separate not only from these origins but also from the Romans in Italia.

Being a Coastal area on the Mediterranean like all of the wealthiest parts of the Empire, the Valenci had many concerns in the other groups would not have had. Among these was the fact that more interior areas of the main sea of the Roman Empire like Italia in the center and the Anatolian Provinces and lands of the Levant had much more developed cities and trade that the peninsula on the edge of the Mediterranean. The Valenci were centered on their main trading city of Valencia and that was where the majority of their population and resources were. The mayor of the city would be essentially the office held before they could be the Dux of Valencia for most of the years before any attempts were made to invest in the forested countryside.

Catalani were in a similar situation with the Valenci in their position on the Mediterranean being rather far from most of the trade with the wealthiest provinces. Also like Valencia, they depended on Taragonensis, Numidia, Narbonensis, the Western Islands, and Mauretania for most of their exports. Unlike Valenci the Catalani had many more cities and places of industry to access. From Tarragona to Barcelonum (Barcelona) and Terrassa to Cervera the economy among the Catalani was much more prosperous than their Phoenician neighbors to the south. The Catalani, descendants of Celtic people from Gallia, were much closer to the provinces north of them than they were to the rest of Hispania, they identified not only with the proud modesty of Narbonensis and patriotism of Aquitania but also, particularly among the youth of the country, the call for freedom and peace from Francia.

On the Iber River, the river for which the name of the peninsula comes, was a landlocked group of people known as the Ibri.They lived mostly in forested areas and their numbers made up stock for the military of Roman Hispania which would reside mainly in the big cities like Valencia and Barcelonum. As the power from the Governor, who was usually from a family which immigrated to Hispania from wealthier lands like Italia and Aegyptus, diminished to irrelevance around the time of this Interregnum, and even more so during this period. This gave the Ibri the opportunity they needed to pursue their goals of supremacy on the peninsula. The Iber River was the largest on the peninsula and was able to support ships of war and of trade from the upstart cities and towns along its fertile basin. The immense forests of this land made many ships which were used to take on the task of moving goods either to or from the cities which were tough to find outside of the eastern coastline of Hispania. The Ibri were not a single group defined by a common heritage in moving to this part of the Empire. The Ibri were native to it and remember when the Romans were unknown to their previous rulers. The states of Iberia were separate and in many ways peaceful, but the immigration to the open lands changed that. The few native people moved into the forests and retreated from the society which was beginning to march deeper and deeper into the forests. The Ibri would begin to push back after the Emperor was not there to stop them. But they were still preparing at the time of the death of Constantinus II.

During the Frankish Revolution, where disaster was consuming the formerly large Provinces of Aquitania, left many refugees, especially from the South of Aquitania. The massacre in Burdigala (Bordeaux) and the conflicts made by Narbonensis to be independent like Francia with the support of Emperor Jacobus drove many refugees over the Pyrenees and into the, legendarily, peaceful areas of Hispania. These people were called the Occitani and they established a small area to live in after their exodus from the north. The small cities of Pampaelo (Pamplona), Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza), and Osca (Huesca) grew into the havens for the Occitani and when they became connected, because their refugee population was more than the native population, they could defend themselves uniquely. The Industry of Occitania, the name which they decided to give to their land, was the largest among any of the other areas of Hispania. The connection they could get easily to the provinces of Britannia, Francia, Germania, and, if they worked cooperatively with the Catalani who were similar to them ethnically, any of the Mediterranean Provinces was the source of their exporting economy but their resources in coal and wood allowed their cities to become the envy of the Peninsula. The concerns of their culture were however focused on peace and their immigration policies were so strict that there were times when they had shortages of labor that projects were beginning to be halted in many parts of Western Europe. The limited immigration of people into the Occitanian region of Hispania made it difficult for its population to grow, though it did, but it also secured the defense of the Occitani by the Occitani and not from foreign legions.

On the Northwestern coast of Hispania was Cantabria, a mountainous part of land which separated a very diverse group of cultures for a long time until the arrival of the Romans. On the end of Hispania lived the Gallaeci, and on the eastern end of this area lived the formal Cantabri while in between them was the Asturi people. All of these together made up a resource of the Roman military that was essential to its efforts against the Carthaginians during the Punic Wars, these were provinces of mercenaries. Iuliobrigensium (Santander), Campus Stellae (Santiago de Compostela) and Ovidum (Oviedo) were the largest cities in the lands which became Cantabria each belonging to the Cantabri, the Gallaeci, and the Asturi respectively. The Cantabri did not emerge as the most powerful, they were for a long time the least wealthy and most vulnerable, until they gained more monetary resources than their neighbors. The source of gunpowder is sulfur and charcoal both of which were most plentiful in the areas of the Cantabri. Just as the people called the Occitani moved into areas of Hispania, the other refugees from Francia also moved into the trading cities like Iuliobrigensium primarily, this included some Occitani and was due to its proximity to the border of the Pyrenees. This influx of people provided more labor than the native Cantabri could have produced and they also allowed these immigrating people to integrate themselves into the native culture, which was a mercenary culture that focused on money and then led to development. The Hispanian Civil War, a small conflict actually, ended when the Cantabri members of the Hispanian military took the cities of Campus Stellae and Ovidum and brought thouse areas under their hegemony. The Cantabri became a blanket term for people of this area and the older tribal names faded into obsurity.

The poorest and least developed people of Hispania were the Toleti. They had a single major city, Toletum (Toledo), and any villages around them would not extend to a population of more than a few hundred. The Toleti were natives, not unlike the Ibri the other landlocked part of Hispania, but they were much more unified than the Ibri due to their centralization around this single city. The Tagus river was the main water source for Toletum and their ancient forests filled with high quality wood for ships and furniture was their main source of income and economy. The Navy of HIspania and Rome depended on the ships of Toleto to make the strongest ships for war and for trade. Toleto, though it was marginal in the scheme of HIspania a province which was itself on the edge of Europe, it would be the first area to declare its independence from the Senatorial Province of Hispania.