The split between King Unauwen’s sons turns a dispute over succession into a lasting fracture in the Unauwen Realm. As Ewijn recounts it to Tiuri, the younger prince’s resentment becomes first a challenge to his father’s authority, then a claim to rule Eviellan as an equal, and finally open conflict with his elder brother. The elder prince wins the battle, but not the peace: the younger ruler continues to send raiders into his father’s lands.

A realm divided from within

Ewijn frames the rebellion against a long history of stability. The Unauwen Realm is described as the fairest country in the world, governed wisely and justly by King Unauwen, with centuries of peace behind it. War and discord are recent, and their source is not an outside enemy but the royal family itself. The account’s emphasis on this contrast makes the fracture more than a change of ruler: it marks the loss of a shared order that had seemed durable.

The king has twin sons, born on the same day. By custom, the elder is Crown Prince of Unauwen and, from his eighteenth year, serves as the realm’s deputy king and governor. The younger is only a few minutes behind him in age, yet that small difference determines which brother is heir. They resemble one another in appearance and intelligence, a likeness that makes the distinction between their positions harder for the younger prince to accept. Their characters, however, diverge: the elder takes after his father and thinks of the realm and its future subjects, while the younger is described as ambitious for power.

From grievance to secession

The brothers’ opposition deepens over time into hatred on the younger prince’s side. King Unauwen repeatedly tries to reconcile them and persuade his younger son to accept his position. On the central issue, though, he will not yield: the realm must remain united under the person entitled to rule it. His refusal to divide the country sets a limit on reconciliation, even as he seeks to preserve the family bond.

The king eventually appoints the younger prince governor of the southern Province of River Streams. At first the arrangement appears to work. Gradually, however, the prince governs with increasing independence and sometimes acts directly against his father’s wishes. He then crosses a further boundary by marching south into Eviellan, conquering it, and making it a province of the Unauwen Realm. King Unauwen reverses that decision and orders him to withdraw. Instead, the prince declares himself king of Eviellan and claims the title of ruler, his father’s equal. He says that he is no longer bound to obey him.

The brothers at war

The declaration grieves King Unauwen, who removes his younger son from the governorship. The prince refuses to accept his dismissal. His resistance is not solitary: many people in the Province of River Streams support him. The Crown Prince of Unauwen arrives with an army to take over the governorship, and the dispute becomes a battle between the brothers’ forces.

Ewijn gives the conflict its starkest measure in the fact that brothers fight one another. The elder prince’s side, representing Unauwen, prevails. Yet the victory resolves only the immediate contest for the governorship; it does not restore the unity the king had tried to protect. The account does not describe a reconciliation after the battle. Instead, the separation persists in the changed condition of the realm.

The unsettled aftermath

Since the brothers’ conflict, Ewijn says, peace and friendship no longer prevail everywhere. The younger prince, now the Lord of Eviellan, sends fierce bands of warriors into his father’s country to stir unrest. There is no formal declaration of war, but fighting continues along the border and in the south. The distinction between peace and war becomes unstable: the realm may be at peace in name while violence repeatedly crosses into it.

Ristridin connects this account of continuing raids to a specific later danger: one band hid in Vorgóta Forest, and King Unauwen sent Edwinem to drive it out. That reference leads from the royal rupture to the armed threat it creates for people beyond the family. Ewijn also says that he served among Edwinem’s fighters in that expedition, though he was not yet a knight. In the setting of his tale, the princes’ split is therefore both political history and the background to the conflict in which he and Ristridin took part.

The rebellion as remembered history

The episode reaches the reader as Ewijn’s spoken account, offered after a meal while Tiuri and the others listen. Its movement is causal and cumulative: a minute difference in age establishes the succession; the younger prince’s dissatisfaction hardens into hostility; a governorship becomes a base for independent rule; the seizure of Eviellan provokes the king’s order; and refusal turns the dispute into battle. The elder brother’s victory closes that sequence without closing the conflict.

The central reversal is that the king’s attempt to preserve an indivisible realm cannot prevent its practical division. The younger prince’s declaration makes Eviellan his separate kingdom, while the continuing raids carry the rebellion’s consequences into Unauwen itself. Ewijn’s account thus presents the crisis not as a single failed bid for power but as an enduring breach: the fighting stops short of formal war, yet the old condition of peace and friendship does not return.