New segment time!
Trying something a little different from the norm today, fellows. In the past few months, I’ve gotten a number of requests pertaining to my novels: specifically, for a little more of that information we writers like to call “worldbuilding”. Now, I’ve long since ceased with the whole, “Inside Idasia,” topics, but I thought perhaps expanding on some of the characters of the Haunted Shadows might fit the bill and quell some appetites. With that in mind, I cracked open ye olde notes and whipped up the first of what I’ll call: We Need Another Emperor—stories of Idasia. We start, appropriately, with the emperor as of “The Hollow March”. Enjoy.
Excerpted from the annals of Die Geschichte von Idasia (The History of Idasia)…
Matthias I
Matthias came to the throne following the death of his short-lived brother, Joseph III, at a time of uncertainty for the laws of Idasia. Though the Altengard—the electors—of Idasia had confirmed him with little debate, there was some question as to his legitimacy. It had been Joseph who had been groomed for the throne, and his sickly statue had been seen as a staunch rebuke of the Durvalle line. Matthias was viewed by many as a bookish scholar, a boy with his head in the clouds. Many a rebellious lord at the time urged the claims of his younger brother, Mauritz, instead, or even those of his uncle, also named Joseph, and a long established councilor of his father.
Though he began his reign under the regency of his mother and his protector, the Count Palatine Kurste, it was not long until he reached majority. Within three years, he married a daughter of the principalities of Ravonno, Noelia Tirozzi. Theirs was to be a fruitful marriage.
He has survived no less than three attempts at assassination, all of them stemming from those early days. The most prominent of these, later to be known as the Burning of Bruchsal, resulted in the deaths of no less than the Count Palatine Kurste and three lesser lords. The conspirators, a group of no less than fifteen nobles and courtiers, were found out, strung up, and quartered before the gates of Anscharde. Although the Emperor’s uncle was never implicated in the crime, it is worth noting that he resigned his commissions shortly thereafter, and retired to his estates, his claim all but forgotten.
Though young to the throne, and untested before that time, Matthias was to reveal himself from an early age as a true and able emperor. Decisive, shrewd, a fine warrior and a finer horseman, he often played the peacemaker, but would gain the sobriquet “the Bold” for his strategic and quick-moving mind in times of war.
His empress, Noelia, was less beloved of the realm. Though beautiful and keenly intelligent, she was a creature aloof, severe both to courtiers and subjects alike. Some said she ruled the empire as much as her husband, but there is little proof of this. It is a notion stemming largely from how quickly the emperor turned from certain old policies upon her death.
For sixty-some years, their marriage nonetheless held true, and for the most part it was a happy marriage, from which many children (and eventually grandchildren) would flow. A fact which, many have claimed, has contributed to the state of affairs in the realm today…but this is not our tale.
For all the love they held for one another, Matthias was never a particularly faithful man. No less than three bastardies are recorded as his issue, on different women of his court, and noblewomen even in Asantil have claimed children of his own bearing. Of Surelia herself, eleven children would be born. Only one would fail to outlive her mother—this being the second, Sarre, who fell to plague in the flower of her youth, and would bear her parents much grief.
With the help of his brothers and his councilors, Emperor Matthias set out to reform the realm. He took the unified code of the old kings and reworked it, diminishing the rights of the old blood and paving room for new, whilst bolstering those of the littlefolk who toiled beneath his banners. Roads that had been allowed to wear for years were reworked, and new ones ground across the empire. This, in turn, funneled the supplies and troops which tirelessly expanded the boundaries of the nation, boundaries Matthias would be constantly attending throughout his lifetime, such that it was said he scarcely rested anywhere more than a day.
In his youth, so too was Matthias heralded as a champion of the faith, his marriage to Noelia and his own carefully worded essays on Visaj seen as a growing (and troubling, for other nations) link between Idasia and Holy Ravonno. After Noelia’s death, of course, this would change. Today, Matthias is sometimes called the Scourge of Visaj, though this is hardly fair. The emperor has always remained staunch in his faith. What changed were his people. As Farrenism spread throughout his lands, he simply opened it to them, allowing them the same rights as his brothers in faith.
Tragically few see it as such, even amongst his own family.
Thus the greatest problems of the later years of Matthias’s reign would be two-fold: religious dissension, and the unheard of simplicity of too many heirs. Though his son Joseph was named heir apparent from birth, there was no love lost between the two men. Following Noelia’s death, Joseph openly rebuked his father’s policies of conciliation with the Farrens, and for his decision to take up a Farren bride. Some have pointed to the son’s days in the military less as a chance to build his character than as a means to remove him from the emperor’s daily sight.
Of his children from Noelia, only Princess Sara would embrace the new faith. The others would remain steadfast, and there are many who have spoken of “the great factions,” of the court, contained only by the will of Matthias himself, the personal loyalty of his bannermen, and the soothing words of his skilled Chancellor. That the Emperor has had two more children since from his marriage to Surelia Jerantus, a princess of the Jerantus line of the Farren-littered kingdom of Banur, had not aided matters, though.
Today, however, it is the war with Effise in the east which holds the attentions of the scribes of tragedy. For years, the two nations had seethed over their borders. Effise’s navy had long controlled the seatrade routes, while Idasia held all land routes to the west. Effise had long held the advantage of technology, being masters of the cannon, but Idasia was far the larger, and flush with the wealth of its conquests.
For all this, all accounts agree it was the Council of Anscharde which decided things. Matthias’s decision to allow equal rights of property and worship to Farren and Visaj alike, and the murder of an Effisian diplomat on his return from that same council were to be the sparks of a brutal war which has stretched for nigh a decade now. The Church of Visaj, as well, has used this proxy war to push its agenda in the court of Idasia, and to funnel money into Effise.
Matthias has proven himself on the field of Effise, and abroad. Under his reign, his military accomplishments have included:
- The Duchy of Walim, in the west, was brought into the sphere of the Empire’s influence. Its old duke, an uncle of Matthias’s, died without issue. Attempts to put a niece upon the throne were contested by Matthias, and the resulting war ended in a year’s time.
- The Kingdom of Surin, in the east, was reduced to a chaotic strip of land, generations of petty warfare between the two nations finally brought to a head and the waning power of the kingdom utterly smashed. The Idasian Empire seized the remainder of Ulneberg forest, and all of Surin’s holdings on the western side of the River Jurree. Surin’s king was rendered incapable, its royalty reduced to little more than first amongst many, a horde of barons squabbling for scraps.
- The aging Kingdom of Durscht was finally eliminated in the south, its lands split between the imperial provinces of Varstein and Karinth, and the southern Wine Coast thus secured for Idasia.
- The Margravine provinces of Momeny and Arlaine were founded in the east, with land seized from Effise.
- The Effisian navy was smashed by a resurgent Idasian fleet in the Crystal Bay and, consequently, the Effisian blockade of Imperial territory was lifted. Never before had the Idasians been anything but a land power, yet thanks to retrofitted cannons developed by an Idasian admiral, imperial cannon gained a ranged superiority unmatched by neighboring states.
- At the Battle of Halensa Fields, the Zuti menace was finally checked. After having consumed the Kingdom of Naran in the west, Zuti forces had moved to take Asantil and Lorace. Recognizing the threat to its western borders, the Empire joined the coalition of Marindi states on the fields of Asantil, where its cavalry, as well as the advent of gunpowder proved a decisive victory for Marindi nations, and spelled the end of Zuti ascendancy on the continent.
For more than sixty years, Matthias had led the Empire of Idasia to the very peak of its power and prestige. He is called “the Bold,” “He Who Rides,” and the “Good Emperor Matthias.” Yet as the war in Effise drags on, and initial victories have dragged into stubborn sieges, some question whether the aging Emperor, once renowned for his nightly travel from castle to castle and town to town, can still hold up the nation he so embodies…
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The Waking Den 