"U⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠nity or Peril"

Formerly the Kingdom of Markia, it was a nation rich in oil and gas. An absolute monarchy disguising itself as a constitutional one. 

Under the King Edmund III's rule, the kingdom was subjected to multiple downturns. For one, he sold 95% of the country's largest oil company to an oligarch that soon turned out to be a foreign spy as well as practicing unholy amounts of financial fiscalism, depriving the kingdom's economy from its much needed cash injection which ultimately crippled it. Not only that, it is observed that Edmund III inherited the rather stable and prosperous state of the economy left behind by his mother, the late Queen Morgna—even before he was crowned he downright destroyed the stability of the kingdom's tradition, put his mother's reputation in the mud, and tarnished the credibility of the throne and the Royal Armed Forces by significantly defunding the military which earned the king the ire of the general staff. 

The worst of it all, however, has to be without a doubt the king's military campaign on a small, highly-urbanized coastal city-state, where many have claimed that he did so to distract everyone from the internal instability. And somehow despite being larger in manpower and equipment, with the city-state's military being extremely small, the Markian military had abysmal AA defenses and naval power that they got absolutely stomped by that city-state thanks to the aid of a neighbouring power's air force. The former's armed forces were humiliated for years to come. 

And, after losing the war and subsequently causing a civil war in his own kingdom, Edmund sold out a rather important region to a nearby country ruled by a totalitarian dictator in exchange for help in the conflict. After the civil war ended with untold amounts of damage to infrastructure and loss of life, the Markian Royal Armed Forces decided that they had enough. The following day, under the leadership of the renowned Army General Viktor Holstron, the military swiftly assumed control over interior security duties to quell the remaining unrest while taking over multiple government institutions and blocking off any paths for escape. 

In the same day, General Holstron announced to the press that the Markian Royal State has been rendered dysfunctional with its main organs and later said that the king was detained and declared a change in governance. Half an hour after the announcement, the military soon arrived at the Maroon Palace and surrounded it, demanding the king's abdication and surrender which the latter refused. About a moment later, General Holstron ordered the troops to forcefully enter palace and capture the king in which they succeeded in doing so. 

Soon after that, General Holstron, now High Marshal, "dismissed" the king and installed himself as the new head of state. A military tribunal was later held where Edmund III was found guilty on the charges of high treason, corruption, and insubordination. He was then sentenced to life in prison and is to be held up in Antel Rock where he would die of a heart attack a few months later. 

Days after the king's passing, the new military government under High Marshal Viktor Holstron managed to quell the remaining dissidents and declared Markia to be safe from internal threats. He then launched a campaign to abolish every single trace of the monarchy while keeping certain parts of it like music and later restored a certain number of freedoms except the freedom speech. He used the large surplus the king had been hoarding for a long time to finally inject significant amounts of it to both the military and the economy, including many welfare institutions. The following day, Holstron nationalized Markia's largest oil company after detaining and then executing the foreign spy that owned it by electric chair minutes after the death penalty was legalized, bringing them back into the fold—soon after that, Holstron established a new economic model dedicated to protecting domestic business and imposing tairiffs on foreign products in what would be referred to as Markian Protectionism. A few days later, he contacted the neighboring dictator to transfer the ownership of the region the king sold to them back to the Markian State, offering him a peaceful solution in which the dictator rejected. Holstron then highlighted Markia's military strength and threatened an incursion to depose the dictator, so the latter forced himself to accept the peaceful transfer and stated that the rejection was but "a joke among friends".

Many years have passed, High Marshal Holstron secured many economic pacts with nearby countries which eventually expanded into the political, economic, and military union it is today, gaining territory as more countries joined it. He soon announced the establishment of the Federation of Markia, commonly referred to as the Markian Federation.