One might ask themselves: why did Danaen join Gerovia against the Grand Coalition for the first part of the War of the Grand Coalition?

Danaen had no loyalties to Gerovia, no shared culture or history. Indeed, they had wanted the large swaths of northern Danaen back from Gerovia for many generations now.

They had more to gain from joining against Gerovia than for it.

Yet, Gerovia was run by cunning, if insidious emperors, who sought nothing less than the complete domination of Enayra in the style of Volesus’s Enayran Empire.

They could not pierce through the Danaen wilds with a military due to their need for reekweed, which even in those days were still heavily controlled by the Danaen Crown. So Gerovia instead began its “soft invasion” of Danaen by intermarrying their princesses into the royal family.

They bribed chieftains and local leaders in attempts to sway the kingship in their favour, and married off their daughters to princes, chieftains and future kings, knowing they could exploit the diarchy to that end.

With their princesses eventually becoming Queen Mothers, and part of the diarchy, holding sway over the kings, their sons, Gerovia could begin influencing Danaen politics in their favour.

Gerovia manipulated Danaen politics for about two-centuries, and at the height of their influence, they were able negotiate the “exchange” of northern Danaen into Gerovian control. It was not so much an exchange, as the Danaen received, truthfully, very little in return.

With northern Danaen under their control, Gerovia now controlled a large swath of the reekweed production, and thus, could easily dictate its will to Danaen even further.

And so, Danaen, whether or not they believed in Gerovia’s promise of returning northern Danaen after the war, joined the war on Gerovia’s side.

But this war became Gerovia’s undoing.

War is expensive, and fighting a war against a majority of the continent is surprisingly time consuming.

The Gerovia’s believed their control over the Danaen kingdom unbreakable and complete. In truth, they may have been right, but they did not account for the sitting monarch to die.

Danaen withdrew from the war, and without Gerovian money and political influence funnelling into their royal palace and political systems, a king without ties to Gerovia was elected, and he returned to the war, proclaiming himself on the side of the Grand Coalition, which became the Grand Alliance.

They took northern Danaen back by military force, and the armies of the Coalition pushed towards the Gerovian capital, sacking it and imposing their peace upon the former empire.