Lyra of Little Skovaji
| Lyra of Little Skovaji | |
|---|---|
| |
| Lyra in February 2023 | |
30 April 2024 | |
| President of New Rubix | Pio Lowe |
| Predecessor | Office established |
15 July 2020 | |
7 July 2022 – 25 April 2024 | |
| Citizenship | New Rubix |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Religion | Catholicism |
| Pronouns | they/them |
| Known for | Micropatriology Beti de Quadri scandal |
Lyra of Little Skovaji, whose previous aliases include Kerry and Blackwood,[note 1] is a Rubixian micronationalist who has served as Secretary for Legal Affairs since April 2024. In the wider MicroWiki community, they are the editor and lead reporter for the Home-made Crown Journal, which they founded in 2020. Lyra was previously the Prime Minister of the Republic of Skovaji from 2014 to 2016 and the leading micronational figure of its successor state Glastieve from 2017 to 2024, as well as being active in the Abeldane Empire in 2017 and 2020–21. They joined the MicroWiki community in 2015, served as an administrator of MicroWiki from 2019 to 2021, served as a moderator of MicroWiki@Discord in 2021, and were banned from this community on 7 June 2024. They have made notable contributions to micropatriology.
Early life
Lyra was born in County Clare, Ireland in the early 2000s. They moved to south-west England in 2012, where they met and befriended Glastieven U, Glastieven N, and Pontius of the Holy Road.
As children, Lyra and her brother established the Republic of Skovaji in October 2014 in the context of their family and the Acteriendian model countries sector, which was dominated by Lyra and Glastieven N. Skovaji was formally led by their brother, with day-to-day work and diplomatic relations delegated to Lyra, whose interest in the project would prove more enduring. They served as Prime Minister, with their brother as the Lord Wesley, a title equivalent to a constitutional monarch or the largely ceremonial President of Ireland.
MicroWiki community
Kerry: Skovaji and the MEG
After initially making an entry for Skovaji on MicroWikia in July 2015, Lyra, using the pseudonym Kerry, was invited to MicroWiki proper by Ned Gunderson, and Skovaji became an ally of the State of Nedland. At Gunderson's suggestion, they also negotiated Skovaji's ascension as an autonomous republic to the Empire of Paravia, although in January 2016, their brother intervened to insist that they reassert Skovaji's independence.
Subsequently, after making themselves known on the MicroWiki forums, Kerry was invited by Anthony Clark to join the micronational Skype rooms where most community activity then took place. In the community, they took an immediate interest in micronational economics. They became a supporting character in the 2016 intermicronational economics boom after opening the Skovaji Stock Exchange, and they were invited by Henry Clémens to become a founding member of the Micronational Economic Group (MEG). They perceived a link between the MEG and the efforts of Gunderson and Emperor Patrick Renwick of Paravia to respond to the "micronational existential crisis" by creating a Paravian federal empire, and suggested merging the two projects, to no avail.
In the summer of 2016, Skovaji gained a second ally, the Shorewellese Empire, and Kerry won election as the second chair of the MEG. However, their ambition to establish an academy for micronational economic scholarship never came to fruition as their activity in the community came to an abrupt halt in response to a family crisis that September. Lucas Campos seized control of the MEG in response to their inactivity and Skovaji was dissolved in October 2016.
Mark Kavanah: Abelden and Glastieve's MicroWiki golden age
Adopting the new pseudonym Mark Kavanah, they returned to micronationalism in February 2017 with the Republic of Glastieve, a state based on the largely organic social group which had emerged since their arrival in England in 2012, and especially since 2016. The entire Acteriendian model countries sector, including Skovaji, would later be subsumed under the aegis of "Glastieven history". Kavanah was the de facto micronational leader of Glastieve until their departure in 2024 and (less unambiguously) the group's de facto social leader until at least 2021 as well.
Kavanah returned to a Skype-based community that was similar to the one Kerry had drifted away from four months prior, where nations of Skovaji's generation like Mcarthia and Zenrax were now on the rise, and the Abeldane Empire, perhaps somewhat in the place of Paravia, had asserted itself as the predominant community micronation. It was an era when being mentioned in the Coprieta Standard was a major achievement for a junior micronationalist, and Kavanah was so excited when the newspaper discussed an economic paper of theirs that they felt emboldened to set up the Micronational Association for Finance and Economics (MAFE) to revive the spirit of the MEG. Initially, this culture percolated down into Glastieve too, so much so that Glastieven R could describe the Supreme Court of the GUM as the "Microwiki high court" and expect to be believed when he claimed it would be "shutting glastieve down".
Kavanah joined the Abeldane Empire in early 2017, becoming Baron Kavanah and Prime Minister of Legatia. After initially serving as communications director of Edwin Farrar's Labour Party, they became a SEPA member when it absorbed the Labour Party in July. They served in the Fourth Renwick ministry as Minister of Media and Governmental Communications during the summer of 2017.
They were also amongst the participants in the abortive Republic of Silofais project in May and June 2017.
New Community
In 2017, Gunderson and some of his associates, including King Nikola I of Coria, were regarded with mistrust by much of the community. Kavanah felt this was unfair and drew a parallel to how they had been invited in private to join the community's Skype chatrooms and what they perceived as supercilious treatment of 'Forum newbies' who had not been so invited. They developed this into an analysis of the 'class structure' of the MicroWiki community, arguing that beneath the traditional 'Old Guard', there was a 'middle class' of inter-micronational community members who dominated organisations like the GUM and might have been implicated in the micronational existential crisis of 2016 or have become Abeldane politicians in 2017. To be taken seriously with community projects, such as new YAMOs, meant winning social acceptance within this middle class. Kavanah charged the middle class with having an exclusionary and snobby attitude towards both newbies and Nikola and Gunderson's circle. With somewhat circumspect support from some members of this circle, they sought to launch a breakaway egalitarian community, the New Community.
The declaration of the New Community was met with unanimous condemnation, indifference, and humour by most members of MicroWiki. Kavanah quit Abelden and was removed from their position in the MAFE by a vote of no confidence.
Kavanah and Glastieve were offered a hand of friendship by Dylan Callahan, Jordan Brizendine, and other representatives of a faction of micronations that were engaged in a diplomatic dispute with the Empire of Austenasia. Together with Jonathan I's refusal, as site owner, to permit the New Community to organise on micronations.wiki, this helped to shift the theme of Kavanah's campaigning from attacks on the 'middle class' with the Nedland/Coria circle as intended allies to attacks on Austenasia (and loosely the broader 'Old Guard') with Glastieve, the Consulate of Delvera, and Karnia-Ruthenia as allies. A September of espionage and hostile reporting came to nothing and in October the Cabinet of Glastieve formally instructed Kavanah to stand down and give up on MicroWiki. Callahan soon expelled Kavanah from his own network of chatrooms, calling them "toxic, destructive and a major disappointment".
Will Campbell: Failures with Statecraft and Envardia
The newly established Second Republic of Glastieve formally returned to the MicroWiki community in January 2018 and made a show of re-establishing relations with Austenasia, going as far as to accept its formal suzerainty, and Lyra changed their alias from Mark Kavanah to Will Campbell. However, the mild interest shown by Glastievens other than Campbell in the Skype community of 2017 would never again be regained and Glastieve was no longer a MicroWiki nation in practice. Concomitantly, Campbell would remain relatively distant from the community until the Glastieven interregnum in 2019. They successfully pursued national reforms in line with New Secessionism, which laid the groundwork for Glastieve's later golden age but distanced from the mainstream micronational ideal.
For much of 2018, the old world that had been inhabited by Kerry and Kavanah was dying, with activity drying up on both the forums and Skype. Whilst the wider community saw a sudden revival with the launch of MicroWiki@Discord in September 2018, Campbell remained stubbornly and conservatively attached to traditional forms. This contributed to the failure of their next project, the Statecraft Association. The ambition with Statecraft was to create an organisation to support the offline activities of individual micronationalists in regional groups. It sought to exist outside the world of micronational politics and deliberately had almost no governance structure. Despite the enthusiastic participation of Calden Releth and several Glastievens, the project failed to take off, in no small part due to Campbell's insistence on using Skype over Discord.
Campbell also worked with the same subset of Glastievens on another abortive project, the Envardian Republic, which sought to recruit friendship groups as New Secessionist provinces of a federal micronation that would represent a declaration of independence by youth counterculture.
Jonathan I appointed Campbell an administrator of MicroWiki in May 2019.
Ives Blackwood: Micropatriology and the HCJ
Adopting their fourth main pseudonym, Ives Blackwood (updated to Saxber Blackwood after coming out as non-binary in October 2021) sought to re-enter the now Discord-based mainstream of the MicroWiki community in 2020 with an opinion article for Henry Clémens' Messenger arguing for a renewed focus on micronational economics in response to COVID-19. Four months later, they became a citizen of the Grand Duchy of Rai, a federal state of the Abeldane Empire, and founded the Home-made Crown Journal, an Abeldane newspaper aimed at the wider MicroWiki community. The HCJ was loosely inspired by, although never pretended to the status of, the erstwhile Coprieta Standard. Blackwood made an effort to recruit staff writers, including by absorbing Daniel Hamilton's MicroWeekly. However, their involvement in MicroWiki remained limited prior to November 2020 due to an increasing workload outside micronationalism and distaste for the toxicity of the new Discord community.
When Jonathan I attempted to close the Discord as a general forum in November 2020, Blackwood returned, and was briefly involved with the Kingdom of Brienia before being expelled for using profane language to critique its international alignment with the controversial Empire of Pavlov. They also found themselves apologising for "being so loud about supporting the Discord closure". In January, they were appointed as a moderator, in which position they agitated for the team to adopt a written safeguarding policy given the interactions between adults and minors in the server.
Blackwood began to attract attention for their micropatriological writing, which Guillaume Sœrgèl characterised as an extension of the New Secessionist project of reconciling an essentially simulationalist view of micronations as radically distinct from genuine countries or serious secession movements with the conviction that micronations remain a genuinely fruitful endeavour and a benefit to their citizens beyond fun or simulation. Their attempts to impose some order upon micropatriology as a field drew praise from prominent figures in the New Guard whilst more experienced members of the community complained behind closed doors about their tendency to give too much weight to Glastieven examples and to present their own opinions as fact. Together with Zabëlle Skye, they created a micropatriological version of The Political Compass, the micronational compass.
Their final project in this period was the 2021 attempt to create a community micronation, a collaboration with several others, including Sertor Valentinus, that yielded the short-lived Glorious Anthean Republic. Newton von Uberquie critised the project for copying Abelden. Anthea collapsed following Blackwood's ostracisation from the community in March 2021.
Beti de Quadri
In late 2020, Blackwood secretly wrote a fictional spy report and released it to MicroWikiLeaks, hoping to establish a ludibrium, or a hoax constructed as a puzzle to be solved, about a conspiracy theory in the community. It prompted some discussion amongst members of the Micropolitan Club and Lounge, but not the general interest for which Blackwood had hoped, so they escalated the puzzle by having 'Beti' join the community, a persona they had previously used to troll the Homestuck fandom. Ostensibly the queen of the Good and Holy Quadripartite Kingdom (Quadria), the conceit of Beti de Quadri was that they started arguments by being obnoxiously 'woke' whilst clearly being narrow-minded and bigoted beneath the surface. Once Beti had been established as a community meme, Blackwood used the Home-made Crown Journal to 'unmask' Beti as the author of the original leaked report and to encourage speculation about their true identity, hoping to use the troll to spark interest in the ludibrium.
After some back and forth bans and unbans to general hilarity, Beti was permanently banned from MicroWiki in March 2021, at which point Blackwood revealed them to have been a persona controlled by them, expecting people to be amused. Instead, there was an angry backlash, and Blackwood was sacked as a Discord moderator and wiki admin. Vera Hewitt dismissed Blackwood as irredeemable and argued that their previous friendship with Ned Gunderson suggested they were fundamentally only ever a troll. In Sertor Valentinus' words, Blackwood was "ostracised".
Blackwood hoped to return to the community in July 2022, updating their MicroWiki entry accordingly, but realised they would not be welcome after overseeing a conversation in which two experienced micronationalists who had noticed the edit expressed dismay at the prospect of their return.
Lyra of Little Skovaji: New Rubix and continuing the HCJ
Pontius of the Holy Road announced during her turn as Glastieve's rotating leader in July 2023 that the commonwealth would triumphantly return to MicroWiki in what she called the "imperial project". Against their own better judgement, Lyra was tasked with overseeing this. The pseudonym "Lyra of Little Skovaji" was adopted as part of a new convention of Glastieven names on MicroWiki using just a first name and a location in Glastieve's sacred territory. They warned Pontius that Glastieve was unpopular on MicroWiki and they even more so, and between July and October, Glastieven applications were executively rejected by both the Grand Unified Micronational and the Cupertino Alliance, with the latter citing the Beti scandal and Pontius' imperialist rhetoric as key factors. Nevertheless, Lyra was able to re-establish civil terms with some individuals.
Lyra left Glastieve in April 2024. Left with no micronational outlet (and in the wake of being separated from their main friends), they elected to double down upon their partial return to the community the previous year and find a new main micronation. They joined the New Rubix Republic and volunteered to draft legislation and procedure to create a judicial system for the state, being sworn in as Secretary for Legal Affairs in the small hours of 30 April 2024. Lyra submitted their first report to the President, a five thousand word assessment of the constitution, on 6 June 2024. They also resumed writing the Home-made Crown Journal.
Styles and honours
Lyra (as "Mark Kavanah") was awarded Shorwellese and Essian honours in 2017. In the same year, they were also made Baron Kavanah in Abelden.
Peerages
Baron Kavanah, created 30 June 2017 by Stephen I and II.
Honours
Knight of the Order of Peace, awarded 8 June 2017 by Bilal I.- Knight of the Order of the Imperial Feathers, awarded 2 July 2017 by Bilal I.
Member of the Essian Order,[note 2] awarded by Henry Clémens.
The Honourable Societarian, awarded 10 January 2020 by the Lawbey of the Starry Moose.