Talk:Marik Commonwealth

Marik Republic

In case I forget to do this tomorrow, this article needs to be adjusted slightly; the Marik Republic link is simply a redirect to here, but Handbook: House Marik gives enough detail for a short article on the Marik Republic, which did exist for a few years before the Marik Commonwealth was founded following the conquest of Atreus. It'll be a nice project for me tomorrow to chase down the links. There's definitely more detail out there on the Marik Republic than there is on say the Nanking Collective or the Ingersoll Concordium. I wish they'd publish more on these little proto-states... maybe we could have a Historical: Outer Reaches Rebellion? BrokenMnemonic 21:17, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

The Marik Republic is the Marik Commonwealth. It occupies roughly the same territory and is ruled by the same person/family. The timeline in HB:HM even indicates that Republic -> Commonwealth is just a name change. Unless I'm missing something? --Scaletail 00:41, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

I think that the HB:HM detail on the Republic of Marik actually goes a long way to make clear that the Republic was distinct from the Commonwealth and that TPTB have deliberately clarified what the differences were. If you compare the detail in HB:HM with that in HM(TFWL), you can see that the latter uses Commonwealth and Republic interchangeably, and tells us how the Republic was formed but not much else. HB:HM gives us the date the Republic was formed, the date it was recognised by the Terran Alliance, what size it began at, and explains that Charles Marik reinvented the Republic when Atreus was conquered in 2246. It clarifies that Atreus was captured in 2246 and that the Commonwealth had expanded to 20 worlds by 2271, whereas HM(TFWL) doesn't make that distinction. HB:HM specifically says "reinvented" not "renamed", while also telling us that the modern livery of the FWL began with the Marik Commonwealth, not the Republic of Marik, and the map on p. 16 shows us that the capital of the Commonwealth was Atreus, not Marik. Those all seem fairly significant changes to me. The Republic sits within space occupied by the Commonwealth in 2271, but only because the Commonwealth expanded for 25 years after Atreus had been captured - that seems like a significant distinction to me. Given that conversations with Oystein have highlighted how difficult it is to sort out a lot of these proto-states - look at how many states from the Capellan Zone are discussed in the first House Liao book compared to HB:HL, or how even though the Muskegon Empire/Coalition has received a fair number of words in House Davion and HB:HD we still don't know which worlds were in it or even what it's name was for certain, and have similar problems with the Chesterton Trade League/Federation/Worlds, to take a proto-state that TPTB have clarified and expanded on and declare it to just be a footnote to the Marik Commonwealth seems like shabby treatment to me. BrokenMnemonic 09:08, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

See, I see it the opposite way. All of the changes you described seem pretty superficial to me. They changed their livery, moved the capital, and partially renamed the nation. Think of all the things that stayed the same, though; it's roughly the same territory and ruled by the same person. There's no indication of any sort of governmental change or anything that would indicate there's a real, substantive difference between the Republic and Commonwealth. Maybe there was, but there's nothing in the source material that indicates such (I can "reinvent" myself with a new wardrobe and a new attitude and go by my middle name, but I'm still me). By contrast, Lyran Commonwealth and Lyran Alliance are in one article because they are basically the same nation, even though there are small (but significant) differences.

There was a (poorly attended) discussion about this very subject where we decided that Marik Republic and Marik Commonwealth would be kept together along with Marik-Stewart Commonwealth. If you would like to restart that discussion, which applies broadly, please do so. --Scaletail 02:15, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

It seems as if there's already a precedence in place, so it's probably better if I just shut up. The Republic of Marik article I wrote should probably just be merged into the Marik Commonwealth article. BrokenMnemonic 07:41, 9 December 2011 (UTC)