Jade War

SECOND INTERLUDE The Two Thrones

Following the Three Crowns era in Kekonese history, which ended with the self-destruction of the Hunto royal line, the two conquering kingdoms—Jan in the north and Tiedo in the south—sought to maintain peaceful relations in the time-honored way, by exchanging royal children. The second son of the royal house of Tiedo was sent to the court of Jan. The monarch of Jan had three children but only one son, so the eldest daughter was offered up instead as a hostage to Tiedo.

In Tiedo, the captive Jan princess and the firstborn prince fell deeply and fortuitously in love and were married. Once the prince succeeded his father, however, his wife pressured him to attack her homeland of Jan in a bid to rule all of Kekon. Historians debate how much she was driven by political ambition, blind confidence in her husband, or ill feelings toward the family that had traded her away. The new king was initially hesitant, but after his younger brother in Jan perished in a suspicious training accident, he acted on his wife’s encouragement and declared war.

Their rival, the prince of Jan, was intelligent but sickly. Though it was rare for women to be trained as Green Bones at that time, his younger sister was allowed to learn the jade disciplines. She married a warrior who would become a famous general in the Jan army, and she subsequently became a key figure in the military campaign against her sister and brother-in-law from Tiedo. The final victory of Jan, two hundred years later, unified the island under one monarchy with its capital city located on the northern coast, where it remains to this day. Although the strife between the northern and southern kingdoms extended long past the lives of its instigators, this segment of Kekonese history is still known as the Warring Sisters period.

The Kekonese hold an overall negative view of this era, as the prolonged conflict weakened the country and reduced the population of its jade warriors, allowing successive foreign invaders to gain a foothold on the island. Nevertheless, judging by the disproportionate number of Kekonese novels and movies set during this time, the love story between the traitorous Jan princess and the Tiedo prince is considered one of history’s great romances, and the resulting war between the two sisters recounted as one of its tragic dramas. Kekon’s most famous classical play about this period, The Two Thrones, begins with an oft-quoted line that harkens to Deitist philosophy regarding the origin of earthly conflict: “Out of small resentments, spring great wars.”