The name Montecrux is actually a variation of Montelia, the original name of the region. This one comes directly from the Roman Empire, when Montelian territory was divided by old roman provinces named Monsterica (land of mountains) and Adanicula (from the capital's name, Adania Augusta)

The name Montecrux was given to the territory after the battle of Crus-Dépian, during one of many wars with France, where the last remainings of local army managed to defeat the invaders, which were on a 4:1 advantage. The almost miraculous victory and its repercussion on the war and on Montelian independence was so big, that the name of the Principate was changed for this sole reason.

However, the inhabitants of this nation are still referred to as "Montelians", instead of "Montecruxians", because even the MLA (Montelian Language Academy) allows both words for this use.

The first evidence of human civilisation in Montecrux goes down to 5000 b.C, to the Celts of La Tène and Hallstatt, with almost no remainings of it, other than copper weapons and funerary statuettes.

During the VII to V century b.C, greeks and carthagenesians colonies were stablished along the Mediterranean coast, such as Oléphos (Olphys), or Rusadir (Veyran), while in the north, the Gauls stablished regional dominance over meat, precious materials and other ressources with the colonizers, a trade system that lasted until the collapse of the Delos League first, and the Second Punic War lastly.
Then, the region fell under Roman hands for almost 600 years, without great resistence, where Montecrux was mostly comprised between Narbonensis and Aquitania.

In this moment of stability, the main cities were Narbonum and Oncussum (today Onquai), thanks to being very important ports, dominating in the Western Mare Nostrum and the commerce in the Atlantic and down the Garrone river, respectively.

After the fall of the Empire, and the occupation of this region by Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Franks, who finally managed to control it until the 9th century, when, with the coming of Sarrasin pirates, the region collpased into a handful of tiny dominions, where the Church had to give what the southern pirates took away.

This is how a big number of old counties and duchies were stablished, given by the HRE Emperor, by pontifical orders, such as the County of Aquitania, the Duchy of Burgundy and ultimately, thanks to his participation in the Second Crusades, the County of Montelia. The first count, Dom Felipe de Tárraga, was a catalan noble, who was officially given the responsability of the fiefdom in 1136, on an area that included the cities of Niort, Olphys and Plasian.

The Albigensian War

After almost a century of being under the responsability of the Tárraga family, who, after passing under the fiefdom of the counts of Aragon, began a slow expansion, thanks to the help to the king, Phillip II The August, in the battle of Bouvines (1214), and to a smart matrimonial policy, which allowed the County of Montelia to assert a position out of the Arelate. But the importance of the County dramatically rose after the Albigensian War.

Around the XII century, the first partisans of a renewal of the Catholic Church began to raise their voices, preaching for a higher respect of the Bible and it's principles, mostly in Occitania and the Languedoc, but also in the Holy Roman Empire and Aragon. They were mistakenly referred to as "Albigensians", the name that was popularised in the Kingdom of France, but there was a handful of different scissions, such as the Cathars (born around 1022 in Orléans), the Vaudensians (created by St. Peter Valdes in 1173) or the Patarins, whose strongest power was held in Milan and its surroundings.

That period, characterised by the constant clashes between the Pope and the Emperor, the Crusades, the Spanish Reconquista and the wars between France and England, saw the rising of those so-called heresies, who called off the religious authorities, such as the Papacy, accusing them of simony. While there was attempts from the Vatican to predicate his religion over the South of France, sending the Cister monks Diego of Aceves and St. Domingo of Guzmán, without much success.

After a skrimrish between the Papal soldiers and those of the Trencavel family, in the Battle of Milhaud, in 1223, the Pope declared the Crusade against "the Cathars, Albigensians, Valdensians, and all kind of heretics in Aragon, Navarre, Gascogne, Occitany, Brabant, Provenze and the Languedoc". A good number of nobles decided to send their armies, most of them coming from the North of France, sent by the King Louis III, along with the bishops of Onquai, Orléans and Rennes. In defense of the Albigensians were the Counties of Toulouse and Foix, vassals of Aragon, and the Viscounties of Carcassonne, Comingues and Béarn, just to cite the most important ones. As a vassal of the Kingdom of Aragon, the Count of Montelia, Ramiro II, also joined the war, to help his Trencavel and Foix allies.

The war that broke up was a local one, but had a lot of implications for the next centuries' history. After 20 years of a crude war, between the Pope's vassals, and the allies of all the critics against the Church, such as the King of Aragon and the Emperor of the Roman Empire, peace was finally reached in 1256, where the Pope recognised religious liberty to Cathars, Albigensians and Valdensians in the Iberic Peninsule, Kingdom of France, Oc Country (all the south, whose territories weren't controlled by France or England) and the Holy Roman Empire.

After this war, the changes in regional influence were drastic, and sometimes even led to war again. While the Pope, England and France were the clear losers, the County of Tolosa, who, under Louis IV Fresnel, had initially joined the War in their favour, switched sides after his brother, Ricard I, received some territories from their old allies, even though they were taken off some other lands after the war, as retaliation.

Surely, the winners of the war were the Hohenstaufen family, natural ennemies of the Vatican, the Kingdom of Aragon, and the Counties of Carcassonne and Montelia, who augmented their regional influence in those territories.

XIV and XV Centuries

After this long-lasting war, the region was devastated, socially and economically. Even though the Provenzal League states had allowed Roman Catholics to stay in the zone, some of them were persecuted by the inhabitants, sacking churches and stealing the treasures, which caused most of the Roman believers to iniciate an exode to the Kingdom of France, Navarre and England, mostly.

However, one of the elements of cohesion that made the Provenzal League not fall into bankrupty, unlike the Kingdom of Aragon, was, precisely, the influence of the Perfects in the court. The Perfects were the highest rank in the Cathar Catholicism. Just like Roman religiousmen, the Perfects had to make a voe of chastity, but their closeness to the inhabitants gave them an unexpected importance in the surroundings of the Tárraga and the Foix. The Cathar Church fought, in these first years, for the alphabetisation of the serfdom, as well as for the independence of those territories from Aragon, from who they were, until 1334, vassals.