The Kingdom of Talossa is an independent, sovereign nation in North America which seceded peacefully from the United States in 1979.

Talossa has sometimes been classified as an imaginary country or "micronation," but according to a statement approved in a 1993 referendum, "The Kingdom of Talossa is a community of persons having fun by doing things which are reasonably similar to what other ('real') countries do, whether for reasons of tourist nostalgia, out of a lust for power, in pursuit of parody, or -- yes -- as nationbuilding."

Most (but not all) Talossans consider "micronations" and the "micronational" hobby to be rather boring, and a distraction from the unique community socializing and nationbuilding that goes on in Talossa. Indeed, some Talossans say Talossa isn't a "micronation" at all, but something that has transcended micronations; perhaps a "mesonation"?

Talossa is not a computer game or a role-playing world. It is an ongoing political adventure, and foreigners are invited to become Talossan citizens and participate. If you are in Talossa, you are a major figure in Talossan politics. There are no "winners" or "losers" except from election to election, and from bill to bill in the legislature. Talossa is real life politics, only smaller and more accessible. This home page is your invitation to come and participate!

Since Talossa erupted onto the Internet in 1995 the country's population has ballooned from about 20 to more than 50. There are (at last count) more than fifty webpages world-wide which feature a link to this page, and Talossan citizens have used the Internet to provide a variety of news, political, and other services to the population. Many of the links in this page are to the work of other people, who all share a common dream of making Talossa a fun place to be in.

For information on Talossa's foreign relations please go to our Talossan Foreign Affairs Page.

The current page and all pages directly linked to it are copyright (c) 1997 R. Ben Madison, unless otherwise noted.

Since 1979 Madison has continued in a prominent role, as King and as a leading light in the Progressive Conservative Party, but other citizens have also assumed prominent roles. Indeed, the Organic Law now prohibits the King from holding the chief offices of political power in Talossa.

Over the past 19 years some 80 people have been involved with Talossa as citizens, from the USA, Canada, Québec, France, Switzerland, Norway, Australia, Italy, Cyprus, and the United Kingdom. For a spicy taste of Talossan history, click here!

The Kingdom has signed treaties with various people claiming to represent the United States of America. Correspondence has been exchanged with the Hutt River Province Principality. A 1980 war with the Glib Room Empire ended with the formal surrender of the Glib Room, including a signed peace treaty. Further efforts to establish relations with the nations of the world continue. Recent efforts have included an attempt to recreate the League of Secessionist States as a forum for inter-Micronation dialogue.

Members of the Ziu deliberate by e-mail or in person year round, and pending legislation appears in a legislative journal called The Clark, which is published monthly by Secretary of State Johan Anglemark. Members of the Cosâ (MCs) are elected every six months (unless the Cosâ is dissolved early). Senators are elected or appointed for a twenty-one month term. The Government is led by the Prime Minister (PM; el Seneschal), who with his Cabinet is responsible to the Cosâ and can be booted out of office if he loses a Vote of Confidence (VOC). The PM has broad powers and can issue Prime Dictates (PD's), edicts with the force of law.

The Progressive Conservative majority Cabinet, last organized in October 1997, was reorganized as a bipartisan "National Government" after the General Election of April, 1998. The Head of Government is Prime Minister Christopher C. Gruber (PC-Maritiimi-Maxhestic; shown here). Prime Minister Gruber maintains an official Your Prime Minister's Page, as well as an archive of the Prime Minister's Important Speeches.

The ruling Government now consists of:

• Prime Minister and Deputy Stuff Minister Christopher C. Gruber (PC-Maritiimi-Maxhestic)
• Distáin (Deputy PM), Deputy Foreign Minister, and Deputy Micronational Affairs Minister Steven Ehrbar (PC-Mussolini)
• Foreign Minister Nathan Freeburg (PC-Mussolini)
• Micronational Affairs Minister: Albrec'ht Stolfi (ind.-Maricopa)
• Minister of Stuff and Deputy Secretary of State: R. Ben Madison (PC-Vuode)
• Culture Minister: Tomás Gariçéir (ind.-Cézembre)
• Defence Minister, Deputy Wargames Minister and Deputy Culture Minister: John A. Jahn (PC-Maritiimi-Maxhestic)
• Immigration Minister: Gjermund Higraff (PFPT-Cézembre)
• Attorney General: Gary Cone (PC-Vuode)
• Wargames Minister and Deputy Defence Minister: Wes Erni (PC-Vuode)
• Minister of Silly Walks and Deputy Minister of Silly Walks: Brook Gläfke (PC-Mussolini)
• Minister w/o Portfolio: Matthias Muth (PC-Mussolini).

Johan Anglemark (PFPT-Cézembre) serves as Secretary of State (a non-partisan position). He also runs the Talossan Science Fiction and Whisky Society.

Maxime Paquin-Charbonneau (RCT-Florencia) was appointed Leader of the His Majesty's Loyal Opposition by the King on 26 April 1998. He resigned from the office effective 10 June 1998, and the post is currently vacant.

RT politics features several political parties. Most tend to come and go, and one-person parties are common. The country has seen a multi-party structure since 1985 and, since 1987, the basic polarity in RT politics is between the Progressive Conservative Party in the centre, with various challengers appearing on the political right or left.

The dominant organized political party is the Progressive Conservative Party of Talossa, founded as such in 1985 and chartered in 1993. The "PC" (also nicknamed "Tories") has its own bylaws and a multimember structure with an elected President, Secretary, and Treasurer. The PC reflects a moderate/conservative stance and is intensely devoted to RT independence and to the maintenance of a distinct Talossan identity through cultural activity and education. The official party colour is blue. The PC bills itself as the "national movement" and has won every election (save one) held during the decade of the 1990's.

As of June 1998 the Cosâ contained five political parties: the Progressive Conservative Party (Prime Minister: Chris Gruber), the Raßemblamáintsch dels Citaxhiens Talossáes (Leader: Maxime Paquin-Charbonneau), the Communist Party of Talossa (Leader: Albrec'ht Stolfi) and the Zefençadéirs del Päts Talossán (ZPT; Leader: Gregory Tisher).

Previous elections featured such parties as: United Front for the Nation (FUN), Black Hand, Liberal Party, Communist Party, Páts Vráts, Democratic Dandipratic Party, Talossan National Party, Party of Death, Talossan Double-Cross Movement, Peculiar Way, Un-Named Party, Talossan National Progressive Conservative Neo-Feudalist Fascist Party, Jahnistische Bewegung, Thundersword, the Positively More Sensitive Party, the Bob Fights Ticket, the Third Wave Party, the Silver Phoenix Party, and the Whigs.

• Immigration reform: How fast should Talossa be growing?
• Perpetual crisis of leadership at the head of the PC Party
• Reform of the 1997 Organic Law
• Composition of the Uppermost Cort (with various factions demanding a seat on the Cort)
• Relations with other Micronations, especially those with a policy of jealousy or hatred for Talossa
• What if anything to do about inactive citizens ("pocket votes")
• Whether to prohibit citizens from holding more than one government office at a time (known as a "multiple office prohibition," or "MOP")
• The country's mystical Berber heritage
• Whether Gloria Estefan should be national entertainer
• Whether Talossan English should be an/the official language
• Friction between "Old Growth" and "Cybercit" Talossans

The discovery of Byzantine relics on Talossan territory in recent years has lent credence to the country's "ancient Berber heritage." A majority of citizens support the Berber heritage aspect of Talossa while others dismiss it as "balderdash." You can read excerpts from the King's elaborate scholarly defence of Talossa's Berber heritage, "The Berber Project."

The coat of arms has two forms, the Lesser State Arms (shown here) and the Greater State Arms (shown at the top of this page). The Greater State Arms consists of the country's seal (a disk bearing the name of the state around an archaic Chinese character, topped by a crown) supported by two squirrels standing on a ribbon bearing the national motto. The motto is "Miehen Huone on Hänen Valtakunta" (Finnish for "A Man's Room is his Kingdom.")

The capital is Abbavilla (shown to the left), in Abbavilla Canton, Atatürk Province.

The official ethnic cuisine of the Kingdom of Talossa is Taco Bell.

La páxhinâ da casâ dal Comità për l'Útzil del Glheþ is the official homepage of the CÚG--the "Committee for the Use of the Language," which oversees the Talossan language and its development. The excellent Talossan language pages, maintained by RT citizen Tomás Gariçéir, are actually written in Talossan and contain a ton of further links.

If you want to hear what Talossan actually sounds like, you can click over to Las Penetrontâs, and hear the King himself speaking in Talossan, or else click on Rádieu Ladintsch and hear the language from another perspective, that of Tomás Gariçéir! The King and Gariçéir are the country's two most fluent speakers, and during the latter's visit to Talossa in early 1998, the two managed to sustain a conversation entirely in the Talossan language for about half an hour.

While most citizens do not speak Talossan, the language serves as a patriotic symbol and as a fount of patriotic terminology; most Talossans are familiar with words like "Cosâ," "Cestoûr," "Regipäts," and others which have passed from the Talossan language into the Kingdom's unique dialect of English. Some translations (such as the entire Biblical epistle of James) and a number of poems have been written in the Talossan language. There is a 25,000 word dictionary and a 100-page official grammar of the language. The Talossan history book Ár Päts: A Cheap Talossan History is currently being translated into Talossan.

"So Støtanneu declared that the Tories would coalesce with the Sponge or the TNP, and the Androids might still try some abzurd VBP screwery in the Cosâ. Don't they know that Electrabase's standpoint of view is sceptimistic about their Ben-bashing, Cézembre attitude? Sure New Blood is nessecary in the RT, but I'd collapse the government if I thought that reptiles or sport-infested youth were writing their Essays just to become non-entities or danarchists. It should be inorganic to let nutsoid, bozoid rabbers into the Regipäts; can't the Seneschál PD that? Even the Fringe Party wants to defunk these luds; at least the FM said so at the last Living Cosâ."

Talossan National News (TNN), which was founded in 1985 and is published by John A. Jahn, is a snail-mail paper which represents its editor's pro-PC viewpoint. Chris Gruber publishes two newspapers, the political Pórt Maxhestic Observer and the cultural Vénéneux.

Other papers have existed over the years, including the left-wing Neophyte and the right-wing Integrity, all now defunct.

• ATATÜRK PROVINCE
• MUSSOLINI PROVINCE
• VUODE PROVINCE
• FLORENCIÂ PROVINCE
• MARICOPA PROVINCE
• MARITIIMI-MAXHESTIC PROVINCE
• CÉZEMBRE PROVINCE

WARNING: Talossa can be habit-forming. Talossa is real-life politics, only smaller and more accessible; it engages a lot of the same emotions and requires many of the same commitments that are needed for success in politics in other countries. If you really enjoy Talossa, it can take over your life!