The King of Humans reigns in the city of Alannis in the eastern region of the island. The kingship, which carries the title "archon", is hereditary, and is an old line that stretches back through the Age of Winter and claims blood with the original Archon. Note that the title "archon" is never capitalized out of respect for (and fear of) the original holder of the title. The archon claims ruler-ship over all of the subcontinent. In reality, his realm consists of the city of Alannis and those lands within a few days travel of the city.
Twenty-five years ago, just after his coronation, the archon Puissant assembled a group of his leading generals, scholars and craftsmen and together, formed an expedition to re-open the Great East-West road to Ringston under the leadership of Yarl Powdan, the famed cleric of Dunamis. The archon planned to use the expedition restore the old trade routes, and to reunite the island, reinstating the greatness that it once held.
But the archon's expedition instead found fractiousness wherever it went. Most of the peoples it encountered were non-Human and understandably leery of the thought of a reunited Alannis. Some took up armed resistance, for here was yet another archon pushing Westward. Even the humans were not overly willing to submit to an old king with a name out of legend and a seat of power hundreds of miles distant.
The expedition's progress was exceedingly slow. The pace was partly due to the dangers of the journey, and partly due to the resistance of the peoples along the road, but mostly because the road was in ruins and nearly all of it was in need of a complete rebuild. Yarl Powdan succumbed to disease before the road was completed even to the Cintadja River, and his Abbollan assistant Iban turned out to be over his head and unable to provide the competent leadership that an operation of the scale of the expedition required. Disarray seemed ready to overtake the whole expedition.
A previously unheralded Human laborer named Gormley organized the other laborers into an effective group of workers, and soon found other groups of the expedition coming to him for advice and eventually, instruction. Gormley proved to be a charismatic and competent leader, and with the aid of continual assistance and reinforcements from the archon, the expedition continued its slow but steady advancement.
In the end, the Great Expedition was successful, sort of. The successful part was the road itself, which is indeed rebuilt. The trade route is re-established, even if it can only be traveled in numbers and at risk through much of its length. But the reforming of the nation did not occur, and today the road winds through territory that calls the archon king in name only, and even more land that does not acknowledge the archon at all.
Gormley never returned to Alannis. Revealing himself to be as ambitious as he was competent, he used his newfound fame and the strong arm of those who had traveled with him on the expedition to anoint himself as the Governor of Ringston. In the ten years that Gormley has ruled Ringston, he has aggressively expanded its influence and territory and essentially, created a new kingdom for himself that calls itself Alannis and pays fealty (at least in public) to an archon that is 1500 miles away.