Editing Star League (section)

== History ==
=== Origins ===
The Star League was born of the Age of War, where pretty much all of the Inner Sphere was fighting each other over resources, territory, and technology. Centuries of battle had taken their toll on the weary populace, and the '''Terran Hegemony''', itself merely a small player in the now larger Inner Sphere, had seen an opportunity to maybe cut down on the killings and warfare, especially now that the BattleMech had become the default way of war. The process began in earnest with two noblemen; Albert Marik, and Ian Cameron. Both were extremely disillusioned with the worlds they inherited; Marik and the [[Free Worlds League]] constantly trying to take the planet Andurien, and Cameron having to deal with the fact that while the Hegemony was still the most technologically advanced state, Terra and its nearby planets had been completely drained of resources, and the Hegemony being relatively  small and surrounded by hostile factions at the time meant it could have very easily been subsumed by some other group or coalition if they didn’t set up some safety net. Further, it would have meant that for the first time, man's first home would not matter in the grand scheme of things. Cameron, an idealist, couldn't allow this to happen whatsoever, and began drafting his idea for what would become a massive interstellar confederation that would bring the Age of War to an end. And it started with Albert Marik.

Cameron showed up over the planet of Andurien to sue for peace against the FWL and the nascent [[Capellan Confederation]], who had been fighting for what was now centuries over a single star-system. The Chancellor at the time, Terrence Liao, had no interest in signing a peace treaty for he saw it as a way to legitimize himself, and only dug himself deeper. Albert Marik on the other hand, was far more receptive of the idea, having inherited the Andurien Wars and was exhausted from the quagmire, and indeed was swayed by Cameron's cause. A few more years of war left the Capellans battered, and when Cameron tried again, Terrence, a much older, humbled man, was all too willing to take the suit for peace, especially since it meant Andurien became Capellan property.

From there, Cameron brought Marik and Liao together, and they brought an end to the Andurien Wars with a peace treaty. But far more importantly, in the Terran city of Geneva, they signed a secret second treaty: the establishment of a 50-year implementation treaty that would turn the Terran Hegemony into the Star League. Thus began years of negotiation with the [[Lyran Commonwealth|Steiners]], the [[Federated Suns|Davions]], and especially the [[Draconis Combine|Kuritas]], all of whom were at first unconvinced of Cameron's desires, and the concept of the league itself, but were at long last swayed by his persuasiveness and his honest, simple goal of uniting humanity. Finally, all three houses agreed, and in 2569, the Combine joined in. Two years later, the Star League was signed into law and all parties joined.

Ian Cameron signed his name on the document, [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|punctuating it with a single tear just above his name]], the only time he had ever faltered in the quest to bring the myriad warring nations together, and he was declared First Lord of the Star League.

=== Height of Glory ===
[[Image:StarLeagueCameron.png|300px|thumb|left|The Federation if it had balls.]]
Now that he had consolidated power in the Inner Sphere, Cameron immediately set about pumping up the Star League's combined military might into dragging [[The Periphery|the Periphery]] back under a Terran ruler, which presented a bit of a problem: the [[Taurian Concordat|Taurians]] and the [[Magistracy of Canopus|Canopians]] did ''not'' care for the Inner Sphere as a matter of principle due to their founders being scornful of the Inner Sphere's corruption, and the [[Outworlds Alliance]] had largely been a proxy for House Kurita's expansionism at the time with realpolitik focused on balancing [[Draconis Combine|Draconis]] and [[Federated Suns|Suns]] relations. Thus sparked the Reunification Wars, where they dragged all parties involved into an all-out, drag 'em down war where two of the three powers got seriously merked, and forced through a lengthy rebuilding process. By the end of it all however, Ian Cameron had died, and his son Nicholas had taken over.

Because there really weren't any real frontiers left to conquer (there was the [[Deep Periphery]], but at that point it was like saying you wanted to conquer a bunch of farms out in the boondocks. It just wasn't worth the effort.), the Star League put it's money towards technology, and under Nicholas' reign, many of the great things that the BattleTech universe takes for granted were discovered, created, and then put into practice; the HPG network, neural-dimensional computing, advanced water purification, and major advances in medical technology such as the Stasis Tube. Star Leaguers were by and large some of the richest, most fulfilled, most well educated, and in general best lived people in the entire history of mankind. And while the Star League Defense Force and House Cameron did have to deal with secretly state-sanctioned piracy or skirmish disputes during the Hidden Wars with the Great Houses, the League's planets and citizens by and large were relatively peaceful with modestly advanced technology shared by the Terran Hegemony.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't last forever.

=== Downfall ===
While their might was considerable, one thing that had become increasingly clear is that after Michael Cameron's death in 2602, the Camerons began a slow but steady decline in impactful leadership. All others after Michael were a pretty quick descent into numerous failsons and paranoid dipshits that ultimately only enriched the SLDF at the expense of everybody else, and their hesitance in the face of inter-league conflict meant that the myriad powers of the League began to believe that they were becoming more important to the League than the League was to them. This, on top of tensions from the Periphery States treated as second-class members with no voting power inevitably led to brush-fire revolts among dissatisfied Periphery citizens. This ultimately led to a coup by the madman Stefan Amaris, who gained the young First Lord Richard's trust, nicely drove a wedge between him and the rest of the House Lords by supporting his worst decisions, and then, having attained the peak of the young First Lord's trust and favor, slew him in a grand show of destruction, and declared himself the new leader of the Star League. The SDLF's commander-general, Alexandr Kerensky, was having absolutely none of that shit, and began the [[Amaris Civil War]], which spanned all the way from the Periphery back down to Terra, and in an extremely bloody confrontation, Kerensky finally, personally, put Amaris down, and ended the so called "Amaris Empire".

But the war had also left the Star League in tatters: worlds were devastated, the entire Terran Hegemony's bureaucracy was gutted by pro-Amaris and pro-SLDF purges, and House Cameron had gone completely extinct. To make matters worse, many powers making up the Star League were now all squabbling and declaring themselves as true heir to the Star League. Worse, Kerensky expected that he'd be called upon to support any one of the Houses that were trying to take over the now-very-dead League. Furthermore, he'd just spent 14 bloody years feeding his men into a meat grinder to save it at the cost of over 75% of the SDLF's strength being destroyed. While the overwhelming majority of the Star League's citizens supported Kerensky if he were to take the throne, all of the Great Houses distrusted him and stripped him of his leadership titles. So on the half-joke of a colleague, he brought [[ComStar]]'s Primus Jerome Blake in to tell him he was going to leave the inner sphere altogether, with as many members of the SLDF as he could, and he would like his help in masking his retreat. Blake naturally resisted, since that meant ComStar was just as susceptible to control, but he ultimately backed down out of respect for Kerensky and after Kerensky negotiated the integration of the SLDF remnants who stayed behind to serves as the Com Guard. With that, the last vestiges of the Star League, it's defense force, left the Inner Sphere entirely, never to be seen again until their grandchildren came back as [[the Clans]]. 

From there on, the [[Succession Wars]] began.