The War of Polemarchs

The wheel of time turns ever round, breaking men who do not change with world as easily as the millstone turns grain to powder. We have become those who do not change, and we risk disappearing beneath the millstone, never to be seen again aside from our component pieces.

The Republic of Syreneon, or simply the region known as Syreneon at the time, was a collection of city states that had a surprising reputation for cooperation. It's various warlords and petty kings had the understanding that they couldn't keep the thrones they were on if they were constantly warring with each other, and so they came together when outside threats presented themselves. Threats such as King Gowyr, who decided that he didn't want to waste men and material on fighting them, instead granting them their general independence, as long as they fell in beneath him and made their decisions collectively. This caused the creation of a rudimentary parliament system while Camlann stood.

It would seem that while Gowyr ruled them, they lost the innate knowledge of their own fragility, and when Camlann fell, they had a falling out.

The War of Polemarchs, as it was named for the Syrenic word for "general" or "war leader", was fought between the regional powers of Syreneon as they attempted to assert themselves as the overall ruler of the area in the kings new absence.

By the wars end, many of the old Polemarchs had combined their forces into vaguely aligned armies, slowly witling each other down until the few remaindes near the wars close realized that foreign war hawks, or perhaps vultures would be an apt term, were waiting for the final battle to break them completely. To survive, they fell back on their democratic roots at the urging of a few well placed individuals who had earned distinction, and hammered out a system they could live with. Those that couldn't find common ground were eliminated from the discussions.