The Great War of Remnant.

The single most devastating conflict in Remnant's history, and the one that ultimately gave rise to and define the modern era of Remnant that all alive know today. Of course with a conflict that ended eighty years ago with the coming of the 40th Vytal Festival, the current generation often take the war for granted as something that happened a really long time ago and just another thing they got to learn in a classroom. How can anyone blame them though? Eighty years was quite long ago with very few people alive in the modern day to tell their grandchildren or great grandchildren tales of the war. As far as most of the current generation of young people are concerned, the war is just another note in history class.

They'll simply carry on with their lives in this so called time of peace that Remnant is in.

Well, what if this peaceful world they knew never came to be? What if in an alternate timeline, all this peace, this technology, this growth, this development, never came to be? It all comes down to the events of the Great War.

Prelude to War: A World Divided

The Great War was a ten year conflict that ended eighty years ago, making the actual start of the war ninety years ago. So the war is nearly a century old, no wonder why there's barely anyone alive who remembers it as it happened, but there was a whole other century of tensional buildup long before the proper start of the war.

The Kingdom of Mantle and Mistral had a long standing positive relationship between each other after a good history of trade between the two. However, these two kingdoms were very different from the other. Mantle, replaced by Atlas in the modern day, was a harsh land of extreme colds where the people had to adapt quickly in order to survive, leading to the rapid development of new dust technologies. Mistral was a much larger kingdom in Remnant's eastern hemisphere that encompassed a wide array of different cultures and climates. Instead of focusing on rapid technological development, the Kingdom of Mistral was much more focused on the arts and culture where the kingdom to this day is still known as a culturally rich place. The trade relationship between the two kingdoms was that Atlas shared their technological developments with Mistral as well as taught them how to settle the harsher northern areas of their territory in texchange for the latest arts and fashion. Another thing the two kingdoms shared in common with each other was that slavery was fully allowed in both of them, something resented heavily by the western kingdoms of Vale and Vacuo.

So when an incident in Atlas led to the sudden decree that basically said all emotions are banned, the western kingdoms were shocked when Mistral agreed to follow the same policy despite what the kingdom was renowned for. The only people who could enjoy the pleasure of culture were the high class of Mistral, where everyone else was forced to throw away everything and live a dull life.

The idea behind this was that if their people couldn't feel emotions, then the chances of an overwhelming attack by the Creatures of Grimm would be reduced significantly. While this sounds like a wonderful idea on paper, it completely ignores that it is physically impossible. People can't just throw away their individualities and creative expressions just because they are ordered to. That's why the Kingdom of Vale's relationship with the eastern kingdoms dropped severely the moment they heard of it.

Vacuo felt largely the same, except that at this time in history the Kingdom of Vacuo was under a tight hold by both Mantle and Mistral after those kingdoms set up a presence there. This on itself was already something that Vacuo hated both kingdoms for more than their decree to end individuality. Their land was slowly being occupied and governed by people who live on the other side of the world, and it wouldn't be much of a surprise if those kingdoms gained enough influence that they'll just take over Vacuo and split the kingdom's land between each other.

Things only got worse when the Kingdom of Mistral decided to expand its borders overseas and settlers were sent to eastern Sanus. It just so happened that settlers from Vale happened to be also colonizing the area, and conflict eventually rose when the settlers met each other and a dispute for what land belongs to who occured. The current king of Vale wished for no hostilities, but he couldn't stop what ultimately happened next.

Ninety years ago, the Great War began with the first battle being fought between the settlers of Vale and Mistral after the disputes had taken a violent turn.

No one knew who started the fight, but ultimately, it didn't matter.

The Great War: A World At War

As soon as word of violence made it back to the Kingdom of Mistral, armies were sent forth to Sanus and the Kingdom of Vale had no choice but to send it's own armies out to meet them on the battlefield. Shortly afterwards, Mistral's ally of Mantle joined the war against Vale.

Vale found itself alone against the two most powerful kingdoms in the world. Mantle had a technological advantage and the world's best military alongside the support of the entire Mistral army to back them up. For a couple of months, the fighting of the war was centered in Eastern Sanus where it began, but eventually it spread elsewhere when Vale was unable to hold their ground. Now Vale was on the retreat and it's armies were forced to withdraw to the west and into the mountains, giving up a lot of ground to their rapidly advancing enemies who were hot on their trail. From here, the armies of Vale were holding at the proper border of the kingdom in the mountains where they were successful in holding off the enemy's advance and breaking their initial momentum.

It seemed like the war was going to be a stalemate where men were doomed to slay each other in the mountains of Sanus. Eventually, the stalemate ended when Mistral and Mantle started to spread their forces out to take advantage of their numerical superiority over Vale. There was no way Vale by itself could muster the men needed to hold Mistral and Mantle off everywhere, and soon the kingdom found it's forces being spread thin. It was a genuine fear by the people of Vale that their enemy will march into their kingdom and burn everything down when word got out that Atlas was able to break through in the south.

On the other side of the spectrum, it was a genuine hope for Mantle and Atlas who wanted a speedy end to the war so that they could end the rival kingdom of Vale once and for all. Mantle and Mistral were poised to become the two superpowers of Remnant. They already had a lot of influence in Vacuo, and if Vale falls, then there will be nobody left to oppose them.

It came as a huge slap in the face then when unexpectedly, Vacuo suddenly joined the war on Vale's side. No matter how hard the eastern kingdoms tried to tighten their influence on the poor desert kingdom, Vacuo knew that if Vale falls, then they would have no hope of ever being free. Vacuo's sudden inclusion in the war was a major relief for Vale. When the last kingdom joined the war, Mantle and Mistral had to divert forces that were supposed to be deployed in the Vale campaign over to Vacuo as there was now a new threat for them to deal with. Vale was saved.

For the next ten years, the two alliances fought tooth and nail against each other in grueling battles all over Remnant. Throughout these ten long years of bloodshed, the world was in chaos. Villages across Remnant regardless of what kingdom they belonged to were left vulnerable against both bandits and Grimm attack with all their best fighters leaving to join the war. Millions of refugees rushed to the cities when they were forced to abandon their villages, and a lot of these villages were never returned to.

The Creatures of Grimm had grown unimaginably powerful due to surge of negative emotions happening in the world during the war. They were so powerful that there were several instances in the war where battles had to be temporarily paused where both sides had to work together to defeat the attacking Grimm before going right back to killing each other again when they were gone. Of course, the Grimm are never truly gone. They always come back.

Out of the estimated three million combined casualties of the war, about a whopping 39% of all that were due to Grimm attacks and not from the opposing side. Keep in mind that these were military casualties of the war estimated from official records from both sides and combined. There are untold millions more civilian casualties that records were unable to keep track of. Nobody knows for sure how many innocent people were killed, wounded, or forced to leave their homes as a result of the war. We only know that it was far more than the three million military deaths mentioned above.

Everyone was getting tired of battle after these long years of fighting. Soldiers were being sent to meaningless battles where a lot of them will never see their homes again. Vale and Vacuo in particular were getting tired of the war as they actually cared for their people, but Mantle and Mistral were getting tired of it because it was a huge drain on resources. Both kingdoms made the decision since before the war started to desensitize their people, and so they didn't have to care for them much when they sent them to lose their lives in battle. That's not even mentioning the civilians affected by conflict.

The Great War wouldn't see an end until the final days of the Vacuo campaign. Mistral and Mantle planned an invasion into Vacuo territory after successfully breaking through the kingdom's defenses. The goal of the invasion was to bring a decisive end to the war by capturing Vacuo's dust resources. Doing so would irreversibly cripple both Vale and Vacuo and hopefully weaken them enough for Mantle and Mistral to finally defeat them.

Vacuo scrambled all forces back to the homeland where they were hellbent on making a final stand against their enemies in the sands of the desert. Of course, Vacuo was not alone as the armies of Vale went to join them in the final battle of the war, led by none other than the king of Vale himself. The day came when the forces of the two alliances clashed, and the king of Vale became a legendary figure of the war after it was said that he slayed hundreds of men all by himself.

After days of some of the harshest and most brutal fighting the war had ever seen up until that point, it was finally over. The sands of the battlefield were stained with the blood of men from all the kingdoms. The dead and dying lay about everywhere. The survivors looked around and saw all this. There was no cheers of victory. There was none of the glory that came from winning a battle here. All there was here on the sand they stood on was death and despair.

With Mantle and Mistral's armies broken, all kingdoms bowed down to the king of Vale and proclaimed him as essentially the one king of Remnant. Pretty much an emperor, if you will. However, the king refused the offer. He instead took the leaders of all the kingdoms to a tiny island north of Sanus called Vytal where they would sign the peace treay that would officially end the war, and ultimately decide the future of Remnant that we all know today.

The rest is history.

The Day Freedom Died, A World of Ashes

But what if it wasn't though? What if the peace that the people of modern Remnant knows and loves never happened if things had turned out differently? What if in the final battle of the war, Vale and Vacuo were defeated by Mistral and Mantle?

If this happened instead, then the world would be completely unrecognizable from what it is now.

Vacuo and Vale would be punished severely by their enemies. Both kingdoms would be taken over and controlled as either puppet states or territories of Mantle and Mistral depending on what land the kingdoms split up. The citizens of the defeated kingdom will be subject to heavy taxation to pay for all the losses of the war as well as the introduction of slavery and the same suppression of emotions that the people in Mantle and Mistral have to live with.

It's likely that there will actually be NO kingdoms at all in this alternate Remnant. There's a possibility that instead of four, or two kingdoms in this case, Remnant would have a single empire formed by the combination of Mantle and Mistral after the defeat of Vale and Vacuo. The Empire of Remnant will trace its beginning back to the Great War and mark the end of the war as the founding of the Empire.

The day freedom died.

All across the globe will emotions and self-expression be suppressed in the name of keeping the Grimm away. Slavery will be a normal thing where both Humans and Faunus are enslaved. The Faunus will be persecuted here more heavily than they ever were in our current timeline due to prejudice against them being encouraged by the mainly Human Empire. There will be no Menagerie given to the Faunus to be called home, or anywhere else for that matter. Faunuskind will be forced to live outside the territories of the Empire where they will have to deal with Grimm and bandits relentlessly due to their intense hatred for the Empire and humanity by extension attracting the evil creatures, where the majority of humankind will be relatively safe from Grimm attack due to the forced suppression of emotions. The White Fang or some other equivalent will form and become Faunuskind's main form of defense against the Empire, meaning that they will be so many more times more powerful and violent than they ever were in our current timeline. This time there will be no objections to their methods.

Then there are the Humans who don't believe in the Empire. Humans who absolutely refuse to follow anything the Empire says and retain their individualities and right to express themselves. These kinds of people will usually live in hiding within the Empire's territory where they will be persecuted, or they'll live outside the relative safety of the Empire and rather risk their necks out with the Faunus, bandits, and Grimm.

In this alternate world, there will be no huntsmen or huntresses to keep the peace. At least, not how we know them in our timeline. If they are even called huntsmen in this timeline, they're purpose will still be to battle Grimm and criminals whenever they are needed to, but also to hunt down and destroy or capture Faunus or Human dissenters to the Empire.

Even the Vytal Festival Tournament will be different. Obviously, it's not going to be called that since the Treaty of Vytal never happened so it will go under some other name like 'Imperial Victory Day Festival Tournament' or something more creative than that, but instead of being an event meant to celebrate the peace and cooperation between the kingdoms of the world, it will be celebrating the beginning of the tyrannical and oppressive reign of the Empire.

Remnant is a much darker place in this alternate timeline if that wasn't already obvious.

However, when there is darkness, there will always be some light.

Freedom may have died when Vale and Vacuo fell, but that doesn't mean it's not at the back of the minds of every living person on the planet. So, it's actually a little misleading of a title then. The idea of freedom is more like a phoenix if you will. It may die, but it will always rise from the ashes of its death and burn bright and new again.

There will always be rebel groups forming to oppose the order of the Empire and battle against its armies and huntsmen until one day, the people will have had enough. The tensions will boil to a point where a grand civil war will occur. Rebel cells across the planet will join together and form rebellions too large for the Empire to just send a few huntsmen or a hundred soldiers to deal with. The Faunus will rise up in their own separate rebellions where they will be striking out against Imperial forces and maybe even Human rebels as well due to how much they hate humanity. The slaves may even revolt and slave rebellions will spring up across the entire planet as the slaves lash out against the Empire for what they did to them.

The Grand Civil War of Remnant where the world's ultimate fate will be decided by whoever wins. Be it the Empire, the rebels, the White Fang, the slaves, or the Grimm...

No matter who wins, one thing is for sure.

Remnant will only be devastated again, and this time it's uncertain if it will continue to exist for long afterwards.

Of course this is just one of an infinite number of possible alternate timelines. Any detail in history can be changed and there's no telling for absolutely certain what would happen. It just makes one think and thank how the modern Remnant they know and love is all because the right side won the war.