Editing Amaris Civil War

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The '''Amaris Civil War''' was a conflict in the [[BattleTech]] universe that culminated in the fall of Star League. It was a war between the Rim Worlds Republic, led by Stefan Amaris, and the SLDF, led by Alexandr Kerensky.

== History ==
=== Prelude ===
The root causes of the Amaris Civil War go back to the Reunification Wars that House Camaron and the SLDF waged against the Periphery States to bring them into the Star League by force. Whereas most of them wanted no part in the Inner Sphere, the Rim Worlds Republic's populace, who were independent-minded, revolted against House Amaris once Gregory Amaris demanded absolute loyalty to himself, the Republic, and the Star League. While House Amaris was publicly "grateful" for the SLDF relieving the besieged capital from the uprising, they held a secret grudge for not responding to their pleas for aid quickly enough. Centuries later, with the early death of Simon Cameron by sabotage that was secretly disguised as an accident, the Consul Stefan Amaris exploited the situation by maneuvering the young Richard Cameron into distrusting all political figures except himself. To make matters worse, Alexandr Kerensky, who was forced to act as Regent for the young First Lord, grew bitterly antipathetic with all the major House Leaders for their petty squabbling. Meanwhile, tensions from the Periphery boiled over and the New Vandenburg uprisings erupted with the Taurians tacitly endorsing the revolts. Kerensky and the bulk of the SLDF were deployed to quell the revolts. Meanwhile, the Rim Worlds Republic Military, who was seen as a [[Horus|poster child]] for being unusually loyal to House Cameron, were permitted to garrison the Terran Hegemony worlds alongside the skeleton garrisons of the SLDF. 

=== The Coup ===
Unbeknownst to all, [[Erebus|Stefan]] himself was the puppet master who encouraged the Taurians to revolt. With the bulk of the SLDF out of the way, the Republic Military executed a brutal coup d'état. Most SLDF garrisons were killed in their barracks without the ability to defend themselves. Meanwhile, Stefan himself murdered all known members of House Cameron secretly on Terra and sealed the capital building's antechamber with their corpses inside. He then pronounced the Amaris Empire as successor to the Terran Hegemony and claimed leadership of the Star League. However, Amaris underestimated the security measures put in place, which had picked up the laser blast inside of the audience chamber and immediately alerted the palace guards, as well as the most hardcore regiment ever to exist, the Royal Black Watch. Despite the palace guards getting cut down by hidden lasers in their attempt to get into the chamber and the Black Watch suffering heavy losses due to Amaris dropping nukes on their base, the coup was on the brink of failure as a platoon of guards with jump-packs managed to get on the roof of the chamber and nearly killed Amaris himself before reinforcements arrived. As that was going on, two Black Watch lances managed to escape the trap and engaged Amaris's elite 4th Amaris Dragoons in an epic last stand that would inflict heavy losses on Amaris's forces all while they refused to die. Eventually, Amaris said 'Fuck it!' and ordered his forces pin the Black Watch down long enough for him to nuke them a second time, losing even move of his troops in the process, and even then five members of the Black Watch still managed to survive and would carry out a guerrilla war against Amaris for the remainder of the civil war. (You heard that right, these guys were so hardcore, [[Awesome|that not even NUKES can stop them]]) Meanwhile, the populace was apprehensively ambivalent in public to the regime change besides underground resistance movements. The Great Houses and the Periphery waited with hushed breath. Upon learning of the coup, Kerensky immediately denounced it, formed a ceasefire with the Taurians, and then launched an invasion to retake the Terran Hegemony after taking over the Rim Worlds Republic.

=== Invasion of the Rim Worlds Republic ===
The society within the Rim Worlds Republic was sharply split with itself. On one hand, sympathizers of the Rift Republic Army from before the Star League loathed Amaris. On the other, the Rim World Republic military was fanatically loyal to House Amaris and both sides started fighting each other as well as pro-SLDF factions. Once the SLDF waded through the 3-sided civil war and eliminated the strongest opposition to them, the Lyrans, decided to permanently remove the Rim Worlds Republic as a threat to their own border (under the disguise of helping Kerensky without his approval) by annexing the bulk of the Rim Worlds Republic. 

=== Operation CHIEFTAN ===
With the bulk of the Great Houses hedging bets on who to support, the SLDF fought a long and bloody campaign back into Terran Hegemony space. In the end, they were able to breach the orbital defense systems around Terra and Kerensky himself captured Stefan by breaching the gates after Terra was consumed in a bloody meatgrinder. While House Amaris was originally treated fairly as prisoners of war, news of the deaths of House Cameron led to the entire house being executed while any branch families were subjected to lynchings across the Inner Sphere. To make matters worse, any bureaucrat who was a collaborator or tried to "remain neutral" during the Civil War was purged from office; leading to the Terran Hegemony being completely headless at a planetary and interstellar level. All that remained would be Kerensky as Commanding General of the SLDF and Jerome Blake as the future head of the Star League's Department of Communications (which evolved into the entity known as ComStar).

== Aftermath ==
With the eradication of House Cameron and with the Terran Hegemony reduced to an ashen husk, there was no longer a viable center of gravity that could hold the Star League together. While many speculated that perhaps Kerensky himself could take the reins, the Great Houses (who already hated him when he was acting as Richard Cameron's regent) immediately stripped him of his titles. Understandably, Kerensky decided that the only way to save the Star League was to take its fighting force into exile with hopes that the spirit of the empire can survive while acting as the Sword of Damocles over the Great Houses heads to prevent the Inner Sphere from falling into a vicious period of war. Unfortunately, he failed with the [[Succession Wars]] occurring while SLDF would disintegrate [[The Clans|before mutating]] after his death under the iron grip of his son, Nicholas Kerensky. 
[[Category: BattleTech]]