The setting of Chuhou Joutai is Kozan. Like the United Kingdom and Japan, it is a constitutional monarchy where the power of the king or queen is limited by the rules of a written constitution.
The monarchy is the core of Kozan’s governmental structure. Unlike other monarchs in media, the one shown in Chuhou Joutai is based on more modern monarchs rather than historical or fantastical monarchs. But still, the Kozanese Royal Family is fond of Victorian attire and clothing, so it feels like they’re in the 19th century! However, they often wear non-Victorian (often business casual) clothing for casual daywear, similar to what you typically see in real life. They also dress in kimono for certain Japanese holidays (such as Hinamatsuri), since the family comes from Japanese lineage.
But where do we begin? Three centuries ago, Queen Marisa created the monarchy as an absolute monarchy, a type of monarchy where the ruler has absolute control over the country (like Saudi Arabia). The reason for its creation was stemming from the fact that Kozan had no ruler and it needed one. During the queen’s teenage years, Swedish pilgrims visited Kozan and eventually met her. Despite not knowing a single word of Japanese, some of the Swedish settled in Kozan and had to learn the language themselves, therefore colonizing it.
Marisa eventually paid a visit to Sweden to speak with their monarch. The visit largely sparked the imagination of Marisa, wanting her to start a monarch of her own. But when she got back, tradegy apparently struck Kozan. A terrible disease infecting only men killed a large majority of them. One of its survivors, who went by the name of Lord Rinnosuke, opted to help Marisa rebuild its population. Eventually, she created the throne and became one of Rinnosuke’s many wives who only had one child.
Technically, marriage traditions came out of the box from Marisa’s religious text The Grimoire of Marisa, stating “all queens who marry into the Kozanese Royal Family must have their hair be floor-length in nature.” This created the culture of knee-length hair in Kozan, which you can read about in my previous post here.
In 1809, Kozan declared independence from Sweden when it was announced that Queen Mirai (Marisa’s great granddaughter) would transform Kozan from an absolute monarchy into a constitutional monarchy that people know today. Mirai wrote the constitution herself, which was enacted on May 17 of the same year.
From the 19th century until the late 20th century, everything was going well for the monarchy, until King Kenjirou was assassinated by Soviet spies, who wanted to overthrow the monarchy and transform it into a socialist republic as a satellite state of the Soviet Union. This led to the Kozanese Revolution, where Kenjirou’s cousin King Soujirou (pictured above) rose to power and led a revolutionary war that was a success for the Kozanese Royal Defense Force, who defeated the Soviets and had their American allies seal them away.
Around a decade and a half later, in 1997 and presumably six years after the Soviet Union collapsed, Frederic Sam Fawkes founded the second incarnation of SPASDOT in an attempt to overthrow the monarchy again. An offensive led by Fawkes in late 2002 eventually led to Kozan entering a period of civil war against them. Because her father does not want to fight another war, he’s leaving it up to his daughter Konata to take control.
If you want to find out how the Kozanese Royal Family will deal with SPASDOT, try Chuhou Joutai on itch.io today. For details, click here.
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