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As the ease and availability of interstellar travel developed in the roughly two centuries following the launch of the Providence in 2199 CE, both supranational organisations and territories formerly their own independent nation-states launched several colony missions in an attempt to further their own gains on Earth and in the near-Earth sphere of influence. While Aurora was the first interstellar colony, she was located too far away for the United Commonwealth to actively control it directly, and others like the Eurasian Federation and the Latin League chose to settle habitable worlds closer to Humanity's cradle. However, even this proved impossible to manage from afar, and as the various political formations of Earth congealed into the United Earth Alignment in the 2280's, the colonies their predecessors had created continued to develop on their own.
However, the effective colonisation of so many worlds was extremely impractical given that Earth's population was a "mere" thirteen billion in 2270, but humans had already settled thirty different worlds at this point. In order to expedite the process, judicious use of cloning was applied to create enough people to live on all these worlds and transform them from untouched wilderness into Earth-likes that were financially sustainable in their own right, which became especially important once interstellar trade really took off in the early 2300's. As the centuries progressed, these embryonic societies largely took on a veneer of old Earth history and culture. Sometimes it was because the main body of settlers came from a specific region of Earth, like the majority of the original Aurorans came from countries with ties to the United Kingdom, or the Caliphate of New Asqalan, where the first few colonist groups came from the Arabic Middle East. Others were different.
The Neuhansa Sternbund was initially a very loose pact of economic cooperation that started on the world of Thrakesion, but as more and more nearby worlds were colonised and they developed their own orbital-based industry, it became clear to the collective political leadership of the region that they were better off together rather than disparate. Creating first a closed currency zone, they quickly escalated to include treaties regarding shipping fees, customs dues, transfer of goods, work force, and money, before settling on the logical solution and signing mutual defence agreements. As of 2874, the Sternbund is a very well-functioning confederated multi-polity state that might be the most democratic in all of Human Space considering the time and effort it takes in order for every member world's populace to have their say on political affairs that may or may not affect them. In turn, this has led the political process of the Sternbund's Altersrat to be excruciatingly slow.
Another divergent is the United Stars of Autarchos. This polity started as a refuge for Gen-Two people who left their original homeworlds following the pogroms and persecutions many worlds experienced following the Tau Ceti Accords of 2503. Generation Two people had always lived with the stigma of being different and genetically superior to "naturals", and while the Tau Ceti Accords had been intended as a force of good as it outlawed cloning, it resulted in a lot of societies basically condoning outright oppression and genocide by forcefully evicting the Gen Two populations. In scenes eerily reminiscent of certain European nations of the 20th century, Gen Two'ers were forced to board spaceships that were destined for uncharted regions of space. However, they largely managed to survive and even thrive, and whilst a thoroughly isolationist star nation, the United Stars of Autarchos is one of the most financially and socially successful of the "frontier" polities.
After the United Earth Alignment imploded in the late 2370's, Earth and Sol lost most of its political significance. Earth itself retained the status of the "Mother World" from which Humanity had originated, but other than as a monument to past glories and a certain cultural allure, she has progressively sunk into the molasses of history. Mars, Venus, Titan, and Europa, all of which had at the time of their colonisation been trumpeted as the future of Humanity, has become nothing but space-based suburbs for Earth, which still remains the most populated world in the galaxy. This is not a positive thing, since pollution has done away with the polar ice caps, 80% of the natural wildlife, and Earth is the only world in Human Space reliant on food imports from other worlds and its own orbital agricultural industry. Luckily, most of Earth's flora and fauna has lived on on other worlds, even thrived. One notable (and very invasive) example is the Earth rabbit, which has become pests on more the three-fourths of the worlds it has been introduced to. The same can also be said of the ubiquitous rattus rattus, cockroaches, various forms of spiders, but also more curious species like kangaroos, opossums, and even water buffalos. Please note that none of these are apex or high-level predators; local fauna predatory species almost uniformly learned very quickly how to adapt to this rapid influx of new prey. Auroran, Angevin, and Amaranthine predators remain curious outliers in this case.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
As a final note, this map seems to indicate that the Royal Union is a monolithic political structure, which is about as far away from reality as is possible. The Royal Union was the brainchild of King Henry II de Roze of Aurora, but it was His Majesty's own intent to make sure the individual star nations retained as much social, cultural, and political independence as possible whilst still being in a interstellar supranational alliance. As such, it is important to note that many foreign people, even politicians, academics, and pundits, have a hard time differentiating between the Royal Union and the Kingdom of Aurora. A brief explanation is forthcoming.
The Kingdom of Aurora is composed of the seven worlds that are directly pledged to the Monarch and Parliament of Aurora, currently being King Nicholas I de Roze, plus the two dominion worlds. The first seven are (in descending order of population) Aurora, Amaranth, Angevin, Westernesse, Cymru, Avalon, and Nova Caledonia. The other two are Novorosyia and Kitezh. These are regarded as "dominion worlds", as in they have their own elected bodies that do not directly answer to the Auroran parliament, but they are still pledged to the monarch, however in a slightly different fashion. On Novorosyia, the king or queen is referred to the "Grand Duke" or "Grand Duchess", which was agreed upon after the Novorosyian referendum in 2570 which established that no one would be the sole ruler of Novorosyia, but should be subservient to the nation's duma. As this was already common parliamentary practice in Aurora, walking in the British footsteps, this was deemed more than acceptable. In the wake of the plebiscite, a new national Novorosyian nobility was formed through lottery. Some very more lucky than others, which is illustrated by the extreme disproportion between the "haves" and "have-nots" in the Novorosyian nobility; some can compare themselves to old Auroran noble families, whilst others are close to the poverty line but still retain their titles, often as a source of pride if (almost literally) nothing else. Kitezh did not go down this second route after joining the Kingdom of Aurora in 2609, and the Kitezhians refused to create a planetary nobility, and forbade any Auroran noble to establish themselves primarily on Kitezhian soil. That is not to say they refuse any Aurorans aristocrats, but Kitezhian financial authorities are diligent in shutting down Auroran nobles trying to move their primary financial operations to their planet as a sort of tax-evasion scheme. Still, Kitezh youths form a disproportionately large percentage of the Royal Army in particular, and the Royalist party is the most popular one by far in every Kitezhna Rada parliamentary election.
The rest of the Royal Union is composed of a number of nominally independent polities, the most influential of which are, in descending order of GSP (Gross System Product, a relatively problematic measurement) the Republic of Corinth, the Sacred Kingdom of Dionysia, the Principality of New Malta, the Despotate of Antioch (contrary to popular impression, a despot or tyrannos in Ancient Greek did not denote a gruesome ruler, rather someone with close to absolute power, which the Antiocheans with their largely Greek, Sicilian, and Northern African cultural roots are still to this day trying to make clear), the United Duchies of Valerian, the Dual Kingdom of Mithras, the Republic of New Babylon, and the Republic of Azurea. There are several more systems and worlds attached to most of these polities, but none more so than Aurora, and since it is the leading economic, financial, and most importantly, the military hegemon in, not only the Royal Union, but Human Space, it is obvious why she remains the figurehead of this extremely diverse alliance. However, that might be challenged by the Independent Systems Alliance in the short to medium term, considering the extreme financial and industrial muscles the Republic of Elysium and its alliant star nations are capable of putting together.
Excerpt from the galactic encyclopaedic networked service regarding the search topic of "Royal Union vs ISA rivalry", accessed 30th of December 2874 CE.