>>283524559
note that joyboy isn't described as the leader of that faction, just a member of it
here's what we actually know about the void century
>the world was ruled by Lunarian God-Kings who lived atop the Redline
>the Ancient Kingdom was the most technologically advanced nation in the world
>One of the inventions of the ancient kingdom was a global wireless energy grid
>all of the ancient kingdom technology was powered by an 'artificial sun' of which the mother flame is an incomplete attempt at reverse engineering.
>Joyboy was born in the ancient kingdom
>according to the Halley Text, 'the sun aggravated the fires of war.' This could mean wars were fought over what was left of the 'forbidden sun' mined in the first era, and/or it could mean that Joyboy's use of the nika fruit just escalated conflict. Probably both since 'people killed the sun and became gods' can be applied to both the death of Joyboy and also the destruction of the artificial sun, which would have caused all the ancient kingdom tech to be left depowered and inoperable
>the ancient weapons were wielded in the void century. Uranus/the mystery UFO raises the sea levels by one meter with each shot. Since Vegapunk calculated that the sea levels rapidly rose 200 meters over 100 years, we can conclude the weapon was fired 200 times.

I posit that the 2nd era was a cyberpunk dystopia where the Ancient Kingdom was functionally a megacorporation that catered to the Lunarian Elites but in practice were the defacto rulers of everything due to having a monopoly on basically every aspect of day to day life that can possibly be privatized.
and that initially, Imu vs the Ancient Kingdom was more like AVALANCHE vs Shinra Corp. and because Joyboy kept thwarting both sides whenever they were going to do something he didn't like - such as blow up a town that he had friends in- which turned what could have been a swiftly resolved rebellion/coup regarding one superpower nation into a prolonged global arms race