Coventry

Coventry is the capital city of the Queendom of West Mercia on the Anglia Isle. Formerly a city in the English county of Warwickshire, it was created the capital of the new Duchy of West Mercia in 1141 by Empress Matilda of Anjou before assuming its present status during the Second Age of Hycath.

History

Coventry was razed in 1016 by King Cnut, whose success was due in part to a pledge of fealty from its inhabitants.

Coventry would be important in Hycathic history as the scene of a pitched battle in late 1069, where Willem the Conqueror and his Norman forces quashed a rebellion led by Earl Edwin of Mercia on their way to harry the North. Two of Edwin’s men were Steffan Eymor and Godwin Sherman; their daughters, Meredith and Elspeth respectively, were Hycathae who vowed to avenge their male relatives by organising Hycathae – and eventually Hycathi – into a clandestine resistance effort. Over time, other clandestine resistance efforts would spring up in diverse locations around England, most often led by local Hycathae.

Empress Matilda of Anjou instigated the First Hycath War to reclaim her usurped English throne from her cousin King Stephen of Blois. She sent Meredith’s daughter Alice on a mission around England to recruit Hycathae. During the mission Alice and her own daughter Mered visited Meredith in Coventry and convinced her to enlist her community to their cause. Alice died at the Battle of Lincoln in 1141, at which the war was won. In recognition of her services, she was posthumously created Duchess of West Mercia, with Coventry as the Duchy capital; all would be inherited by Mered as she came of age. Coventry therefore came to symbolise the Legacy of Eymor, passed down from Meredith through her Hycathic descendants.