The Tricolor Revolution began as a simple mission from The Order to further spread the church-sanctioned word of the gods to the Republic of Valdar. Sure, there were churches already there, but they spread their own interpretations of the gods to the people, which was not what the Order wanted out there. Besides, a recent scouting mission had told the Grandmaster that Valdar had one of the highest heresy rates in the entire Continent, barring the lawless wasteland of Ravenna. This mission was to be the first of many sent to Valdar, to civilize the place, give it order, and hopefully convert it into a staunch ally of the Order.
The mission was comprised of only about twenty priests and a number of scribes and acolytes, along with a healthy guard force of fifty soldiers raised from the Order to accompany this mission to Valdar, a land some had only heard about. Of this group, the most important would be Zhang Yun, a priest of the Order. He was born in a region of what is now Moneeri, but his parents moved to Yunnaiteddo before any war could spiral the balance in the region out of control. In his youth, he proved to be devout in his belief in the goodness of the gods, and before long he was sent off to the Order to study the arts there, but while he was in the Citadel, he grew to want to join the Order, which he did later in his life. He continued to work in the Order, doing humanitarian work and the like across the area controlled by the church. Zhang proved to be dutiful and a reliable member of the Order, accruing a positive opinion among the higher ups of the church.
When a missionary party was being assembled to venture into Valdar, Zhang immediately volunteered, and he was granted the spot in the mission due to his long-standing loyalty and commitment to the Order, having spent about a decade and a half in the church as a priest. When the mission arrived at Ravenna, their first goal was not to find a place to build a new church to spread the message of the Order, but rather to meet with the local nobles, barons, counts, dukes and the like. While Zhang protested this, the head missionary consoled him with the fact that all this kowtowing was meant to secure them rights to build the church in the first place. These meetings would shape Zhang's view on Valdar and his overall mission here in a way entirely different from why he originally came here.
The missionaries were to first meet at the manor of a local Duke, one that controlled the land that they were going to build the church on. When they got there, the first sight that greeted them was of slaves, driving carriages, doing hard manual labor, cleaning the manure of livestock worth more than them. This soured Zhang's mood and provided the first seed for what would become the Tricolor Revolution. Nevertheless, the missionaries dined with the Duke, and Zhang was further exposed to the inequalities of Valdar and its caste. The whole system clashed with his ideals, of brotherhood and equality that he was taught as a child in the Federation and further built upon during his time in the Order. At this point, Zhang had already decided to do something about this whole thing, and every new experience added to this vindication.
After departing from the meeting, the missionary group built a modest church on a hilltop near a local city and a few towns. During this time, Zhang was on the fence about what action to take. He wasn't inclined to violence (and an armed uprising seemed impossible and out of the question), but peacefully asking nobles to change their entire political and social system obviously wasn't going to work either.