System: Royal

During the Davion War of Succession in 2729, Federated Suns forces under the command of General Kessem and Prince Joseph Davion, finally linked up in the Royal system, catching the main Kurita force off-guard and inflicting heavy casualties. In a rash move, Joseph insisted on personally leading his forces in his Marauder. The Prince's 'Mech was disabled in the fight, and a malfunctioning ejection mechanism trapped Joseph inside as the Kuritans moved forward for the kill. With the death of the Prince, the Davion troops fled, and the Battle of Royal became a costly defeat for the Federated Suns.

Fortunately for House Davion, the Star League finally decided to take action. Elements of the Star League Regular Army - including an impressionable young MechWarrior Captain named Aleksandr Kerensky - arrived off Royal to impose a cease-fire between the two sides. The League council censured both sides for resolving the dispute by force, but House Kurita received the brunt of the criticism. All troops were ordered withdrawn to behind pre-war frontiers, and the Kurita claim to the Davion throne was refused once and for all.

[3039] The underground on Royal had long been supported by the Stephenson family, thanks not only to the fact that Royal was but a single jump away from their home on New Ivaarsen, but also because Royal and its people were part of Duke Stephenson’s landhold. When Prince Davion forbade Duke Paul Stephenson from dispatching his New Ivaarsen Chasseurs regiments to retake Royal after the Fourth Succession War, the duke nevertheless sent what aid he could to the world. While often that aid consisted of food, medications and spare parts for those who would not deal with the Combine, it did occasionally take the form of quasi-military operations to smuggle select individuals off-world or to engage in piracy or limited strikes against Combine interests.

When Prince Davion informed Duke Stephenson of the impending invasion of Royal, he secretly gathered together a force that would ensure that the world would fall with no problems. Even while his New Ivaarsen Chasseurs were given orders that would put them in place for action in the war, he recruited MechWarriors from both regiments to form a volunteer battalion and likewise put together a regiment of volunteers from New Ivaarsen’s militia. He then dispatched his son, Leto, to accompany Fuchida’s Fusiliers, which was assigned by the AFFS High Command to support the Royal action. Just before the Fusiliers jumped, Leto Stephenson signaled his father, who dispatched his volunteers almost immediately.

This both surprised and angered the Fusiliers, but before they had left, Duke Stephenson arranged to have his son, an AFFS colonel, assigned as their liaison officer. As soon as the volunteers arrived, Colonel Leto Stephenson assumed direct command of the Royal invasion. Resistance leaders had already learned through back-channels that their duke’s son was leading the invasion, and broadcast that fact across the world just as the first strikes were launched. This news brought a good percentage of Royal’s population directly into the fight, who defiantly stood up against the three conventional DCMS regiments on their world. And when Leto Stephenson was captured after leading the attack on the Combine headquarters in Port Sibut, it was Royal’s citizens that rallied together and quickly overran his captors, even though it cost more than five hundred civilian lives.

The fight for Royal was brief, consisting to many historians of little more than a footnote in history books, but it was significant because, in that five weeks of combat, it was the ordinary citizens of Royal that truly won the war on their world. They literally made it almost impossible for the Combine troops to operate effectively, giving the New Ivaarsen Volunteers and their duke’s son the ability to soundly crush their opponents.