EXILIUM REX

In 1808, during the reign of the Bonaparte in Spain, supposedly European blue-blooded clans such as the Austria of Spanish Hapsburg, the Ponce de Leon of the Dukes of Arcos, the Fernandez lineage, and the Alvarez of the Dukes of Alba were exiled to a remote group of forty-five volcanic islands in the Philippines called the Suyo islands. In 1898, the descendants of these allegedly royal families, who chose to no longer return to their place of birth, started an uprising, but somehow it was not directly rooted at that time on the ongoing Philippine Revolution for Independence. What began was a battle entrenched between the classes, a deeply-rooted struggle between the rich, represented by the Ponce de Leon and Fernandez families from Amianan, and the poor from Suba, led by the Arguelles brothers, Jose and Antonio, together with Evangelista Manlavi. Later on, it evolved into a battle between the state and religion. That particular battle was relatively unknown and unrecorded in the annals of the Suyo islands. In closed circles where the story was known, the battle was called the war of names. Today, more than a century later, no warrior of kings and no angel of gods could truly say that the war of names had all but ended.