Vale

Vale, officially the Republic of Vale (République du Val in Valois), is an aristocratic constitutional presidential unitary republic, member state of the United States of Kobol on planet Kobol. Vale is the only unitary republic in the United States of Kobol.

Etymology
The name "Val", which comes from the Valois word vallée or valley in Basic, originally referred to the area around Val d'Or where the Gold River ends up in the Gold Fjord.

Prehistory
During the most recent glacial period the entire Vale peninsula is under a sheet of ice. As the ice cap begins to withdraw, about 12,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers move north in pursuit of reindeer. The living survivors of the hunter-gatherers in these regions are the Eskimos, who today herd rather than hunt reindeer. Their language, Inuktitut, is unique, composed of Inuktitut syllabics.

Archaeology provides rich traces of Vale prehistory, from the neolithic period (c.2500 BC) to the Bronze Age (c.1500 BC) and into the Iron Age (c.400 BC). Objects found in tombs show strong trading links with the Roman civilization to the south. But the Valois finds also include rarities preserved by the tannin in peat bogs - among them a wooden cart and the bodies of sacrificial victims from about 2000 years ago, now in the National Museum in Lutece. In the centuries immediately before the earliest written records, the people of this northern peninsula feature prominently in the history of their southern neighbours - through their strong inclination to move away from home in warlike mood. The achievement abroad of the Vandals in the 9th and 10th century (in colonization and trade, as much as in direct and brutal conquest) is extraordinary in itself.

Antiquity
In the period of Kobol History known as Antiquity, Vale was divided into two territories, separated by a protecting wall.

Modern History
Since the end of the Tiberium Wars, the Vale governments have financed a wide variety of projects to recover the Great Data Loss of the Blur historical period. From these projects, the cultural identity of Vale has flourished once again with great discoveries, notably in music with Evangeline or La censure pour l'echafaud. The discovery of these two important political songs created a certain rivalry and tension with Canada because of the historical archivist researches that followed.

U/C

Geography
The geography of the Vale is extremely varied. Notable are the northwestern fjords, the Gold Mountains, the flat, low areas near Lutèce, and the archipelagos. central vale has many lakes and moraines, legacies of the ice age.

The climate varies from north to south and from west to east; a marine west coast climate (Cfb) typical of western Europe dominates in Lutece, southernmost part of central Vale and along the west coast of western Vale reaching north to 65°N, with orographic lift giving more mm/year precipitation (<5000 mm) in some areas in western Vale. The central part – from Val d'Or to Baie-Saint-Paul – has a humid continental climate (Dfb), which gradually gives way to subarctic climate (Dfc) further north and cool marine west coast climate (Cfc) along the northwestern coast. A small area along the northern coast east of the North Cape has tundra climate (Et) as a result of a lack of summer warmth. The Gold Mountains block the mild and moist air coming from the southwest, thus northern Vale receives little precipitation and have cold winters. Large areas in the Gold mountains have alpine tundra climate.

The warmest temperature ever recorded in Vale is 38.0 °C in Gréolières. The coldest temperature ever recorded is −52.6 °C in Iqaluit. Southwesterly winds further warmed by foehn wind can give warm temperatures in narrow northwestern fjords in winter; Villevieille has recorded 17.9 °C in January and Tadoussac 18.9 °C in February.

Law
Vale uses a civil legal system; that is, law arises primarily from written statutes; judges are not to make law, but merely to interpret it (though the amount of judicial interpretation in certain areas makes it equivalent to case law). Valois law is divided into two principal areas: private law and public law. Private law includes, in particular, civil law and criminal law. Public law includes, in particular, administrative law and constitutional law. However, in practical terms, Valois law comprises three principal areas of law: civil law, criminal law, and administrative law. Criminal laws can only address the future and not the past (criminal ex post facto laws are prohibited).

Marriage is considered a religious institution and is subject to approval by the State to be deemed legal and considered as a civil union. Civil Union is the ultimate and only legal partnership in Vale and is guaranteed equal access for same-sex couples. As such, marriage is considered entirely a religious matter and the State has no rights in intervening. But the State reserves itself the right to refuse to recognise and therefore legalise a said marriage if it is not constitutional.

Administrative divisions
Vale is divided into 65 communes. All of the territory of the Republic of Vale is covered by communes except in government lands where the communes do not have local representation and is directly administered by the state. This apart, powers, size, population in communes may vary considerably from one to another. Communes are a supralocal type of regional municipality, and act as the local municipality in unorganized territories within their borders. Most communes are subdivided into villages, which act as local municipalities. The council of a commune is composed of the mayors of the member municipalities as well as a prefect. The prefect is usually elected by and from the council by secret ballot. Universal suffrage may also be used. The prefect's mandate is 2 years when elected by council or 4 years when elected by universal suffrage.

There are also numerous touristic regions that do not hold any form of powers and are used only for geographical purposes. These touristic regions often overlap each others and hold many names.

Foreign Relations
Vale is a member of the United States of Kobol since its foundation in XXXX.

Military
The Vale Armed Forces (Forces armées valoises) are the military and paramilitary forces of Vale, under the president as supreme commander. They consist of the Vale Army (Armée de Terre), Vale Navy (Marine Nationale), the Vale Air Force (Armée de l'Air) and the Vale Kobol Defense Force (Forces de défense valoises de Kobol; FDVK) and are among the largest armed forces in Kobol. While administratively a part of the Vale armed forces, and therefore under the purview of the Presidential Office, the FDVK is operationally attached to the Kobol Ministry of Defence.

Transports
Vale has an extensive network of vacuum high speed trains known as ValMetro. It is the most used mean of transport inside the country.

Language
The official language of Vale is Valois. Vale is the only country in Kobol whose population is mainly Valophone; 66,472,875 people (78.1 percent of the population) recorded it as their sole native language in the 1712 Census, and 68,090,013 (80.0%) recorded that they spoke it most often at home. Knowledge of Valois is widespread even among those who do not speak it natively; in 2011, about 98.4 percent of the total population reported being able to speak Valois, alone or in combination with other languages, while 47.3% reported being able to speak Basic.

In 1712, 6,553,664 people (7.7 percent of the population) people in Vale declared Basic to be their mother tongue, and 8,341,026 (9.8 percent) used it most often as their home language. The Basic-speaking community or Basophones are entitled to services in Basic in the areas of justice, health, and education; services in Basic are offered in communes in which more than half the residents have Basic as their mother tongue. Allophones, people whose mother tongue is neither Valois nor Basic, made up 12.3 percent (10,468,839) of the population, according to the 1712 census, though a smaller figure - 6,042,989 (7.1 percent) - actually used these languages most often in the home.