The broken crown

As you walk through your town, you witness a violent riot between supporters of the Revolution and the Royal army. Emboldened by the capture of Luteria, the capital, the revolutionaries are trying to take over this city too. The fight is brutal and you are caught in the crossfire. The Revolutionaries are getting the upper hand, slowly forcing the royalists out of the city. To your right, you notice Marie, scared and desperatly trying to bandage wounded royalist, she's about to be murdered by a rioter. To your left, you notice Sarah, pistol in hand, bravely leading a group of rebels, a soldier is about to shoot at her. You can only save one girl, and by doing so, you will become an enemy of the crown, or of the Revolution.

The Revolution is being led by a man simple known as "the voice of reason". He's a masterful orator, a very skilled politician and the most popular person in the hastily formed revolutionary council, he leads the radical faction. It's going to be very hard to know him personally, but if you fight hard enough for the revolution, you will have his support. Antoine of Whiterose, the young Crown Prince, leads the Royalists efforts after the sudden disappearance of his father. He's very pious, charismatic and a skilled commander, but he's also ruthless against his enemies and a staunch reactionary. He has some belief in meritocracy and he might notice and promote you if you serve the Royalists cause with enough zeal and bravery.

A dark barely industrial world, where muskets and canons dominate the battlefields. The powerful Kingdom of Lentia, after a decade of blunders and political turmoil, has suffered an almost successful revolution and has now collapsed into a brutal Civil War between the Revolutionaries and the Royalists. The Revolutionaries are backed by the merchant class and the progressive intellectuals, the merchants want political power and the intellectual desire to create their republican utopia over the corpses of every single person perceived by them as "reactionary". The Royalists, backed by the Aristocrats and Priesthood, seek to restore the absolutist status quo, with only vague promises of limited reforms and future benefits for their supporters.

You have only two options, fight for the Royalists or for the Revolutionaries. You begin fighting as an improvised militiaman, and you can stay that way, but if you distinguish yourself on the field of battle, or by other ways, you might become more prominent, to the point of catching the attention and maybe even influencing the leaders of your faction. You may even convince "the voice of reason" to stop the revolutionary terror or convince the Crown Prince to accept some moderate reforms, but you have a lot of work to do before you even have the privilege of being noticed by your leader.