The Great War, also known as the World War, was a global conflict fought from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918 between two major coalitions: the Entente, led principally by Arverne, Elvester, Nichirin, and Rudania, and the Central Powers, led by the Holy Evrian Empire, the Xing Empire, and Askurias. Combat took place across Evria, Valtheria, Elysia, parts of Pelagonia, and the Panthalassan Ocean. The war introduced or accelerated the use of armored vehicles, military aviation, and chemical warfare. Between 72 and 79 million people are estimated to have died as a result of the conflict, including combatants, civilians killed by military action, and victims of war-related disease and genocide. The war ended without a decisive victory for either coalition, and its political consequences, including the dissolution of the Holy Evrian Empire and the reshaping of both the Evrian territorial order, continued to define the international landscape into the following decades.
Background
In the early 19th century, the Napolyonic Wars reshaped the political order of Evria. Between 1805 and 1815, Arverne dissolved the Holy Evrian Empire and reorganized its Alemannian constituent states into the client Confederation of the Arven, placed northern Vicily under direct administration, and compelled Oestenia into a subordinate alliance that preserved its matriarchal throne while ceding foreign and military autonomy to Arverne. The Treaty of Menisku (1813) brought Cortesia under Arvernois control and imposed nominal neutrality on Rudania. Elvester, unable to sustain its position without continental allies, signed the Treaty of Plimuth in 1815 and withdrew from continental affairs.
Napolyon II, who succeeded to the Arvernois throne in 1827, departed from his father's policies. He suppressed the revolutionary and reformist institutions that had provided the continental system with domestic legitimacy in its subject states, replacing them with conservative and clerical governance. Opposition accumulated throughout the 1830s and 1840s, particularly in the Alemannian territories and Vicily.
In 1845, coordinated uprisings erupted across the continent. The revolts, collectively known as the Tempest of the Peoples, began in the Alemannian states and spread within months to Vicily, Oestenia, and beyond the Arvernois administration into Selmiran Astriya. Arvernois, Elvesterian, and Rudanian forces intervened on behalf of the existing order, but could not contain the scale of the upheaval. The Alemannian states reconstituted the Holy Evrian Empire under the Treaty of Berelstein in 1848. Vicily overthrew its Bonparterrist client government the same year. The emperor of Oestenia expelled Arvernois advisors and reasserted sovereign control over foreign affairs. In Selmira, East Astriya fought a war of independence against the Murad dynasty, securing its sovereignty with Vicily's support. Napolyon II abdicated in early 1849, and his son Napolyon III inherited a state whose continental influence had been sharply reduced.
Over the following decades, the Evrian powers consolidated into two rival alliance blocs. Arverne, Elvester, and Rudania formed the core of the Entente, while the Holy Evrian Empire and Skjarnland formed the core of the Central Powers. Arverne's transition to a republic following the Lutèce Revolt of 1876 did not alter its alignment; the new government maintained its Entente commitments on strategic grounds. East Astriya, which Selmira had not recognized as independent, aligned with the Entente against its former sovereign. Turulia aligned with the Central Powers against what it regarded as Entente encirclement.
The reconstituted Holy Evrian Empire was not without internal tensions. Its Alemannian constituent states had unified under a restored imperial constitution, but their political traditions differed considerably. Ymiria and Arlbern retained hereditary monarchies with strong aristocratic establishments, while Nordmark, influenced by republican currents from the Tempest, had developed parliamentary institutions that placed significant constraints on its executive. By the 1890s, Nordmark's delegation to the Imperial Diet had begun to resist military appropriations and colonial ventures that it viewed as serving Ymirian and Arlbernian interests at Nordmark's expense. Speculation that Nordmark might withdraw from the Empire or seek independent alignment with Elvester circulated in diplomatic circles throughout the decade. The Imperial government responded by deepening economic and military integration across the constituent states, binding them through joint command structures and a common industrial policy. These measures strengthened the Empire's external posture while deferring the question of internal reform.
Outside Evria, older conflicts had already drawn additional powers into the emerging alliance system. The Miyamoto Shogunate and the Xing Empire had fought a series of campaigns over control of Manshu between 1764 and 1802, ending in a costly stalemate that left both states financially exhausted. By the late 19th century, Nichirin had consolidated control over Manshu and incorporated it as a resource-producing territory with a substantial Hezhouan minority population. The Xing Empire, which regarded the loss of Manshu as an unresolved grievance, aligned with the Central Powers in part to secure support for its recovery. Nichirin's entry into the Entente formalized the opposing position. The rivalry between the two states extended the alliance system beyond Evria and ensured that a continental war would carry consequences across the Panthalassan.
Tensions between the Entente and the Central Powers intensified during the Scramble for Pelagonia, as competing colonial claims produced a series of diplomatic crises between the 1880s and 1910s. In 1897, a Vicilian naval squadron and a Selmiran flotilla confronted each other at the Strait of Aspadana, the narrow passage connecting the Tethys Sea to the Sahara Sea and one of the most heavily trafficked commercial waterways in the world. Both states claimed the right to regulate passage through the strait. The standoff lasted several weeks before Arvernois mediation produced a provisional agreement, but neither side accepted the arrangement as permanent, and Selmiran continued fortifying the strait's southern approaches into the 1900s.
Elvester, whose merchant fleet depended on access to the Saharan trade routes, regarded the dispute with particular concern. The Elvesterian navy, though among the largest in the world, operated from a constrained geographic position, hemmed in by the Sargassum Straits with access to the open Panthalassan dependent on passages vulnerable to interdiction in wartime. A Selmiran-controlled Aspadana, combined with the Holy Evrian Empire's expanding naval capabilities, threatened to reduce Elvesterian maritime reach to its own colonial possessions. These anxieties reinforced Elvester's commitment to the Entente and its interest in preserving the existing distribution of naval chokepoints.
By 1914, military expenditure had risen sharply across both blocs. Armies expanded, navies modernized, and new weapons systems entered production. The alliance system that had developed to manage Evrian rivalries had instead bound the great powers into a configuration in which a regional crisis could, through cascading treaty obligations, escalate into a general war.