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The Kingdom of Amina-Zazzau

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I'm planning to make a few pieces exploring powers other than the Coalition of Independent Worlds and United Earth Federation, this is the first.

The planet Amina, named for the legendary Hausa warrior queen, is the capital and crown jewel of the small Sagittarius Commonwealth. Amina has an Earth Similarity Index rating of 0.93 and a Human Habitability Index rating of 0.97. It has a single large moon, Zazzau, which is large enough to retain an atmosphere and has a large ocean which covers over 90% of its surface (ESI: 0.67 HHI: 0.79). There is considerable debate as to whether Zazzau is technically a moon or whether the Amina-Zazzau system should be reclassified as a double planet, given Zazzau's large size and the considerable effect each object's gravity has on the other. Amina was colonized by the United Earth Federation approximately 200 years ago with the initial colonists coming from West Africa, Hausa people from Nigeria in particular. Due to it's distance from Earth later waves of colonists mainly came from the Federation's outer core worlds, forming small minority communities--such as the Yemayana settlements in the Alubosa Archipelago just north of the planet's equator--rather than integrating with the planet's population at large. The planet thus has a great amount of cultural and ethnic diversity, though it does have a distinctive overarching culture of it's own that grew out of the Amina Nationalist Movement that led to the planet's declaration of independence from the UEF sixty years ago. Zazzau has significantly less diversity due to its limited population and living space, and the Zazzi have developed their own unique culture that is closely tied with that of the dominant, Hausa-derived Aminan culture.

Approximately 75 years ago the distant Earth colonies in the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way, near the edge of what humans call the known galaxy, became the victims of a series of coordinated and sustained act of piracy by what was then an unknown species of alien. Their requests for military aid from the UEF were met with only token military actions that resulted in no solution to the piracy problem. The colonists began to arm themselves however they could, and a confrontation between an illegally modified cargo vessel transporting rare earth minerals from a mining outpost to Amina ended with one of the alien ships being disabled and boarded. The crew was taken captive and brought to Zazzau for interrogation. This prompted a series of reprisals from the aliens in which they bombarded several settlements throughout the Sagittarius colonies. Though the casualties and damage were limited the incident prompted the UEF to send a larger military force than they previously had to attempt to secure their borders. When the UEF ships arrived at Amina's star system rather than attempt to fortify the system from attack they instead made orbit around Zazzau and arrested the crew of the cargo vessel. This sparked outrage among the populace of the colonies, particularly among the wealthy and influential families on Amina which had historically acted as community leaders during the colony's development. One family in particular, the Alheri, led the people of Amina in a popular uprising against the Federation military presence, freeing the imprisoned crew and taking control of several of the military ships. A standoff between the hijacked ships and those still under UEF command went on for two weeks before the Federation forces, unwilling to fire on their own ships and colonists, agreed to retreat back to the Orion Spur and convey a request for an opening of dialogue between the colonies and the Federation central government. When the talks finally began eight months later the representative of the colonies, Gambo Alheri, presented the Federation representatives with a petition signed by 3.8 billion colonists from throughout the Sagittarius colonies demanding their independence. The UEF rejected this petition and sent another military expedition to restore their control over the region, but to their surprise they found their ships harassed by the same aliens that had previously attacked the colonists. They soon learned that Gambo had used the alien captives to open a dialogue with the alien government (who denied all knowledge of the piracy) and gotten a guarantee of independence from them in return for very favorable trade rights. The aliens, who the Aminans called Teku (a shortening of the Hausa word for pirate, fashin teku), were not really a match for the UEF, but due to the distance of the Sagittarius colonies from the Federation's core territory the UEF could only afford to send a small force which the Teku could likely stand toe-to-toe with. The Federation forces were alarmed at this development and had anticipated a simple peacekeeping occupation of a few backwater colonies, not engaging in combat with unknown alien assailants. To add to this predicament the forces the Teku sent were not the petty raiding parties that the pirates had utilized, but fully fledged warships designed for ship-to-ship combat in deep space. After the Federation's expeditionary force suffered an utterly humiliating defeat a few light-years outside Amina's star system the UEF government decided to cut its losses and allowed the Sagittarius colonies to break away.

What followed was a cultural revolution known as the Amina Nationalist Movement, during which time an explosion of political debate engulfed the populace of the colonies as to how they should organize themselves. Some favored a confederation of the colonies into a single polity, while others--the ANM in particular--wanted independent planet-states with close diplomatic and economic ties. In the end a compromise was reached in which those colonies that favored confederation would form their own polity while the others would remain independent, but all the colonies would agree to join the Sagittarius Commonwealth, confederated and independent alike. Amina and Zazzau agreed to collaborate on the drafting of a constitution which they would both share as a single polity. The population was divided on opinions between a republic and a constitutional monarchy, the latter of which was overwhelmingly supported by the common citizen. Gambo was herself in favor of a republic, and declined to accept her popular election as monarch three times before finally acquiescing to the will of the people (which led to the origin of the monarchy's honorific "Your Humility," as opposed to, say, the British monarchy's honorific "Your Majesty"). Initially the constitution was more in line with that of the German Empire rather than the United Kingdom, granting the monarch quite a bit of executive power, but the Alheri Dynasty was always uncomfortable with this arrangement and amendments limiting the monarchy to more of a figurehead and unifying force rather than an active government official. Interestingly three of the other Sagittarius colonies also ratified constitutional monarchies with the Alheri family as their reigning dynasty, though they remain independent from the Aminan-Zazzi Kingdom sharing only a monarch. The dynasty continues to rule to this day, with Her Humility, Queen Farih Alheri II currently occupying the thrones of Amina-Zazzau, Khafra, and Uhaggar.

The population of Amina is 1,360,599,023 while the population of Zazzau is 33,005,193, of which 99.9% are human with the remainder being teku refugees granted status as Aminan-Zazzi nationals after fleeing the ethnic violence of the civil war currently raging on their homeworld. Although no official census data exists due to religious freedom laws the majority of Amina-Zazzau's populace practices either Sunni or non-denominational Islam with significant Vodun and Yoruba religious minorities. The capital city of Bayajidda (pop. 31,495,603) is the largest urban center on Amina and is considered the premier economic and cultural hub city of the entire Sagittarius Commonwealth. It is famous for it's cuisine, art galleries, universities, and the unique Aminan architecture that blends traditional Tubali building styles with a combination of brutalist and organic architectural styles. The official language of Amina-Zazzau is Hausa, and all media is required to be printed in both Simplified Aminan Ajami Script and the English-based Boko alphabet. The current government is a coalition government of the Unity Party and the Democratic Technocracy Front in opposition to the previously dominant Popular Nationalist Party. The Kingdom has an estimated Gross World Product (GWP) of E$ 115 trillion in PPP (purchasing power parity) and E$77 trillion nominally, ranking first in the Commonwealth.
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The problem for me is that these two worlds is the Roche radius. The two look much to close for them not to get along. Either the smaller one will crash back into the primary, or the larger one will gravitationally disrupt the smaller one. If they were just past the impact they would still be showing the effects of a hadean eon, not one with land seas and an oxygen atmosphere. Other then that it is beautiful.