Timeline
A dated chronology of the Romulan Star Empire, from the exodus to 2393.
1. About This Timeline
This is a dated chronology of the Romulan Star Empire as the Federation knows it. It is arranged by era, with a short note at the head of each. For the story behind the dates, read History of the Romulan Star Empire; for the treaties and incidents between the two powers, read Romulans and the Federation; and for the offices named here, read Government of the Empire.
Some cautions apply throughout. All dates are given in the Federation calendar. The Empire’s own calendar is not used here, and the Empire does not publish its history for outsiders, so almost everything before the 2150s is undated or dated only roughly. Where a year is uncertain, the entry says “about”. Where an event is assessed rather than confirmed, the entry says that too. Several entries record incidents that one side or both still deny. They are listed because they happened, not because anyone has admitted to them.
2. Origins
The Empire’s founding lies so far back that only its outline survives in Federation records. Vulcan sources place the departure in the era of Surak’s reforms. Romulan sources, where they can be found at all, describe the founding as a matter of pride rather than of dates.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| About two thousand years ago | During the Vulcan Time of Awakening, a large group of Vulcans who reject Surak’s teaching of logic leave Vulcan. Vulcan tradition remembers them as those who marched beneath the raptor’s wings. |
| Unknown | The travellers settle Romulus and Remus. The length of the journey and the number who made it are not known. |
| Unknown | The Remans become a separate people on Remus, treated as a labour caste. When and how this began is not recorded in any source the Federation holds. |
| Unknown | The Senate, the office of Praetor and the great noble houses take the shape later known to the Federation. The order and dates of these changes are not known. |
| Unknown | The Empire expands beyond its home system and comes to call itself a Star Empire. |
3. The Earth-Romulan War (2154 to 2160)
The Empire’s first known actions against the peoples who would found the Federation were secret ones. Open war came soon after. It was fought at long range and ended with the line that still divides the two powers.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2154 | Romulan agents are found to have penetrated the Vulcan High Command, working toward a Vulcan under Romulan influence. The plan fails. |
| 2154 | A Romulan drone ship, able to disguise itself as the vessels of other powers, attacks ships of several species to set them against one another. The attempt fails and helps draw Earth, Vulcan, Andoria and Tellar closer. |
| 2156 | The Earth-Romulan War begins, by the dating used in Federation histories. |
| 2156 to 2160 | The war is fought with atomic weapons and early warp ships. No crew on either side sees the enemy on a viewscreen. No human sees a Romulan face. |
| 2160 | The war ends. Peace is arranged by subspace radio. The Romulan Neutral Zone is set up as a buffer that neither side may enter without it being taken as an act of war. |
| 2161 | The United Federation of Planets is founded. |
4. Behind the Zone (2160 to 2311)
For a century the Empire stayed out of sight. When it reappeared in 2266 it came with new weapons and a cloak, and the decades that followed were a time of probing, theft and quiet interference.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2160 to 2266 | No recorded contact between Romulans and the Federation. Earth outposts along the Zone keep watch and report nothing. |
| 2266 | A Romulan bird-of-prey with a cloaking device and a plasma weapon crosses the Zone and destroys several Earth outposts. The USS Enterprise destroys it. The Federation sees a Romulan for the first time and learns that Romulans resemble Vulcans. |
| 2268 | Starfleet intelligence reports that the Romulans are using Klingon ship designs. |
| 2268 | The USS Enterprise takes a Romulan cloaking device from a Romulan ship inside the Zone. |
| 2293 | The Khitomer conference makes peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. A Romulan ambassador, Nanclus, is among the conspirators who try to stop it. |
| 2293 | The Khitomer Accords are signed, joining the Federation and the Klingons in a formal alliance. |
5. The Long Isolation (2311 to 2364)
After the Tomed Incident the Empire broke off contact with the Federation entirely. It did not stop acting. The Klingons felt the weight of Romulan attention in these years far more than the Federation did.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2311 | The Tomed Incident. No full public account has been released by the Federation. |
| 2311 | The Treaty of Algeron restates the Neutral Zone and its rules. The Federation agrees not to develop or use cloaking technology. |
| 2311 to 2364 | The Empire has no contact with the Federation. No Romulan is seen on the Zone for fifty-three years. |
| 2344 | Romulan warbirds attack the Klingon outpost on Narendra III. The USS Enterprise-C is destroyed defending it. |
| 2346 | A Romulan attack on the Klingon colony at Khitomer kills thousands. A Klingon traitor had given the Romulans the colony’s defence codes. |
| 2350s | A generation of Starfleet officers serves without ever seeing a Romulan. |
| 2358 | The USS Pegasus, testing a cloaking device in secret in breach of the Treaty of Algeron, is lost. The breach is not known outside Starfleet until 2370. |
6. The Return (2364 to 2372)
The Empire’s return in 2364 began nine years of pressure without open war: incidents at the Zone, interference in Klingon affairs and a plot against Vulcan itself.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2364 | Outposts on both sides of the Zone are found destroyed. Both sides deny responsibility. A Romulan warbird meets the USS Enterprise-D at the Zone, and the Empire makes clear it is again taking an interest beyond its border. |
| 2366 | A Romulan scout crashes on Galorndon Core, on the Federation side of the Zone. A standoff between a warbird and the Enterprise-D ends without a shot. |
| 2367 | Romulan agents program a Starfleet officer to kill the Klingon governor of Krios, to break the Federation-Klingon alliance. The attempt fails. |
| 2367 to 2368 | The Empire secretly supplies the House of Duras in the Klingon civil war. A Federation blockade exposes its convoys and it withdraws. Commander Sela directs much of the Romulan effort. |
| 2368 | Ambassador Spock goes to Romulus to support the reunification movement. Proconsul Neral and Commander Sela use the movement as cover for an invasion of Vulcan in captured Vulcan ships. The plan is exposed. Spock remains on Romulus. |
| 2370 | The wreck of the USS Pegasus is recovered near the Zone. Starfleet’s breach of the Treaty of Algeron is admitted in front of a Romulan commander. |
| 2371 | The Empire lends the Federation a cloaking device for the USS Defiant, under strict terms, for use in the Gamma Quadrant. |
| 2371 | The Tal Shiar and the Cardassian Obsidian Order strike at the Founders’ homeworld in the Omarion Nebula. The fleet is destroyed in an ambush. The Tal Shiar officer commanding the Romulan side, Colonel Lovok, proves to be a Changeling. The Tal Shiar is nearly destroyed. |
7. The Dominion War (2373 to 2375)
The Empire first kept out of the war, then entered it as an ally of necessity. The alliance held until the end of the war and very little longer.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2373 | The Empire signs a non-aggression pact with the Dominion. |
| 2374 | Senator Vreenak is killed on his way home from a meeting with Federation officials. The evidence points to the Dominion. |
| 2374 | The Empire enters the war on the side of the Federation and the Klingon Empire. |
| 2374 | Romulan forces take part in the first allied offensive into Cardassian space, at Chin’toka. |
| 2374 to 2375 | Remans fight for the Empire as shock troops in the hardest fighting. Shinzon commands Reman forces. |
| 2375 | The Empire places plasma torpedo launchers on Derna, a moon in the Bajoran system. It removes them after Bajor and the Federation refuse to accept them. |
| 2375 | Senator Cretak, the Empire’s senior representative at Deep Space Nine, is removed from office after the Tal Shiar chairman, Koval, accuses her of treason. |
| 2375 | Romulan ships fight at the second battle of Chin’toka and in the final battle at Cardassia. The Dominion surrenders. |
| 2375 | The wartime alliance ends with the war. |
8. Recovery and Coup (2375 to 2379)
The only joint work to outlast the war was the clearing of the battlefields. The Empire itself had four years of something like normal government left.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2377 | The Federation, the Klingon Empire and the Empire set up a joint recovery initiative of twelve ships each, led by the USS Viola. For most of a decade its crews dismantle derelicts, recover material and return the dead to their homeworlds. |
| 2379 | Shinzon takes power with Reman forces and part of the Romulan military. The Senate is killed in its chamber by a thalaron weapon. Praetor Hiren dies with it. Shinzon declares himself Praetor. |
| 2379 | Shinzon offers the Federation peace talks while preparing to attack Earth. In the Bassen Rift the USS Enterprise-E, joined by two Romulan warbirds under Commander Donatra, defeats him. Shinzon dies and his warship, the Scimitar, is destroyed. |
9. The Silence and the Inward Years (2379 to 2389)
Romulans call the three years after the coup the Silence. The Restored Senate ended it in 2382, and Praetor t’Keleth’s government spent the rest of the decade on repair at home.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2379 to 2382 | The Silence. There is no Senate. Surviving noble houses and provincial governors run their own provinces. The Imperial Fleet holds the Empire together by refusing to take sides. |
| 2379 to 2382 | Romulan traffic and patrols along the Zone fall away. |
| 2381 | Romulan law declares the Remans “subjects of the Empire under protection”. Little changes on Remus. |
| 2382 | The Restored Senate first sits, rebuilt from the surviving noble houses and provincial governors. It is smaller than the Senate of 2379. |
| 2382 | Sorrel t’Keleth becomes Praetor. |
| 2382 to 2389 | The inward years. The Empire is occupied with its own succession and repair, and does not press its borders. |
| 2384 | The chair of the Tal Shiar is publicly named for the last time. No holder of the office has been named since. |
| 2380s | The Lyreth Shiar, a sect calling itself “the True Empire”, grows with unusual speed through a secret alliance with the Breen, gaining power and territory with their help. |
| 2380s | After several years the Lyreth Shiar is dismantled from within. The details have never been made public. |
| Mid 2380s | The joint recovery initiative of 2377 winds down after most of a decade of work. |
10. The Return to the Zone (2387 to 2393)
The Empire came back to its border in two steps: first patrols in 2387, then a new Praetor in 2389 who made the return the policy of the state. The Reman breakaway at T’Met has shaped the years since.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2387 | The first Romulan patrols return to the line. The Tal Shiar returns with them. |
| 2388 | The cold war on the Zone settles into the shape it holds in 2393. |
| 2389 | Praetor t’Keleth steps down. Ardhal tr’Vesuin becomes Praetor. |
| 2389 | Tr’Vesuin makes the return to the Zone the policy of the state and sends the patrols back in strength. |
| 2390 | At the tri-border near Starbase 24, raiders working from a freighter outpost called the Hub strike Romulan and Klingon shipping. Talks aboard the USS Ragnarok with the Romulan ambassador V’rel fail. See The USS Ragnarok and the Romulans. |
| 2390 | Stardate 67213.4: a classified Starfleet operation against the Black Spades pirates on Ad Pontes, a world inside Romulan space the Empire had declared uninhabited. The Empire later makes clear it knew. |
| 2390 | Reman settlers in the T’Met system, just outside the Romulan border, declare independence as the T’Met Republic under a Caliph. The Empire answers with blockades and troop landings, which are driven off. |
| 2391 | A biogenic weapon kills the entire city of Fa’ran on T’Met, almost seventy thousand people. The Empire is believed responsible and has never acknowledged it. |
| 2391 | T’Met asks the Federation for help and the USS Ragnarok leads the relief. The warbird IRV Aen-Terrh faces it over T’Met; the Romulan envoy Felaen t’Lehu is killed by a Reman bomber at Sharlos; a battle with Romulan fighters ends in stalemate and Imperial withdrawal. T’Met comes under Federation protection. See The USS Ragnarok and the Romulans. |
| 2392 | T’Met receives permanent Federation defensive guarantees and becomes Starfleet’s staging base against the Borg in the Typhon sector; the Reman cruiser Tal’Vesh is lost. Later that year T’Met is admitted to the Federation. |
| 2392 to 2393 | The T’Met region grows less stable. The Empire regards the breakaway as an affront that has not been answered. |
| 2393 | The Zone is a hard border in all but name. Listening posts are manned on both sides, sensor buoys line the line, and cloaked warbirds patrol ground the Empire insists they never enter. |
| 2393 | Starfleet regards the Vulcan reunification effort as wise and quietly backs it. |
11. Offices and Holders
Only a few of the Empire’s office holders are known to the Federation by name. This table lists those named in the entries above and in Government of the Empire. It is not a complete list of any office.
| Office | Holder | Known dates |
|---|---|---|
| Proconsul | Neral | 2368 |
| Tal Shiar chairman | Koval | 2375 |
| Praetor | Hiren | Killed 2379 |
| Praetor (self-declared) | Shinzon | 2379 |
| None | The Silence | 2379 to 2382 |
| Praetor | Sorrel t’Keleth | 2382 to 2389 |
| Praetor | Ardhal tr’Vesuin | 2389 to the present |
| Proconsul | Mevrek tr’Annai | Under tr’Vesuin |
| Tal Shiar chair | Not publicly named | Since 2384 |
12. Gaps in the Record
The largest gap is the first fifteen centuries. The Federation does not know when the Senate was founded, when the first Praetor ruled, or when the Remans were made a servant people. The second is the Tomed Incident, whose full record has not been published. The third is the Empire’s inner life after 2379. The dates of the Silence, the Restored Senate and the praetorships are known because the Empire announced them. What happened between those announcements, including how the Lyreth Shiar was brought down, is largely unknown outside the Empire.
Entries for 2387 onward are drawn from Starfleet observation on the Zone as much as from anything the Empire has said. For the border itself, see The Neutral Zone (2393) and The Romulan Side of the Zone.
13. See Also
The Romulan Star Empire · History of the Romulan Star Empire · Romulans and the Federation · Government of the Empire · The Tal Shiar · T'Met · The Klingon Empire
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