THE WINTER CROWS: Volume VII; Otto II - The Builder

[Nectorist 7618]

THE WINTER CROWS: Volume VII; Otto II - The Builder

Written by Demetrius Barrow

---

Otto II - The Builder

 

"Not all strongmen wield power from the hilt of their blade. To keep his realm together, he has wielded the power of an astute mind.” - Bruno of Lotharingia, political theorist, c. 1640

 

The final King of Haense born in St. Karlsburg, Otto Georg was too young to even recall the old capital by the time it went up in flames at the hands of King Tobias of Courland and his armies. 

"...Stone, grey stone, and the plume of flames and the smoke that came with it…” Those were the only words that Otto II had to say about his birthplace and the ancestral seat of House Barbanov. It was only so fitting that his reign would come to mark a drastic shift from earlier policy.

 

As the son of Prince Otto Heinrik, later Otto I, who was at this time an open rebel against King Tobias’s northern governor, the Archduke of Akovia, much of Otto Gerog’s early years were spent with his mother, Catherine of Carnatia, in the King of Mardon’s court in Auguston. Little is known of these first years of his life, owing to a dearth of sources, but it can be assumed that he was, alongside his cousins, participants in the courtly life of Mardon. If it made any impact on his early years, it was certainly little, for by the time that he was king, Otto could barely remember his time in King Peter’s court.

 

However, that may have been an exaggeration on his end. Haense had been restored in full by the time that he was ten, and he had no trouble telling lively stories of the colorfully dour court in Mardon, replete with corruption, vice, and sin. Some of these may have been fabricated- though an honest man at heart, he always loved to tell a tall tale- but he would always speak eloquently and with clear memory. Even at an early age, his mother could tell that her son had a sharp mind, so she spent what little money the family had on some of the better tutors that Auguston, and later Alban had to offer. Professors initially despaired at having to teach Otto anything, and in their evaluations they remarked how he was “restless” and “a loud liability to the education of other pupils”, but all eventually came to appreciate his sound mind for arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry, and rhetoric, even if other subjects bored him.

 

When Haense was restored and his cousin Stefan elected to the throne in 1613, the ten year old Otto and his mother joined them. He reunited with his father for the first time in years, and in between some of his formal court duties as a member of the diminished Barbanov family and his studies, he enjoyed a routine, normal family life. He was close with his parents and his three siblings, even for as much trouble as he caused, and he remained active, whether it be running through the muddy, poorly-planned streets of Alban with his friends or going on hunting trips with his father.

 

Otto’s rowdy nature came to define his early life. He was a large, big-boned lad who had the energy to match his size. He wrestled and brawled, much to his mother’s chagrin, and enjoyed playing soldier. He begged his father to allow him to take up lessons in sword fighting, and, hoping that it might be the only instruction that his son took easily to, the elder Otto agreed. Unlike in the wooden desks of the classroom, the younger Otto was far more attentive while learning swordplay and became a natural talent with the blade. His recklessness did continue outside of his lessons, as he soon began to challenge others to duels just for the sake of practice, but no incident came to serious violence.

 

With a disposition that matched his similarly-boisterous cousin, King Stefan, Otto became a favorite within the court of Esenstadt. In 1615 he was made the king’s cupbearer, and in 1616 he was appointed as a page of the court. A year later, he graduated to become one of Stefan’s many squires, though he only received direct tutelage from the busy king twice, and continued his instruction from his usual instructors. As he grew into adulthood, his penchant for drinking developed, and soon the street brawls he fought turned into drunken street brawls. This did much to displease the court of Esesnstadt and his family, save King Stefan, but it earned him the admiration of many of the commonfolk of Haense. Drunk or not, many found Prince Otto to be a good-natured, genial young prince who could speak to the average taverngoer as easily as he could the high nobility of the Empire.

 

In 1617, Prince Otto took part in the Santegien Rebellion as a part of his cousin’s army. His role seems to have been minimal, but it would have been his first experience in combat. He was able to see his father and cousin navigate the Haeseni army away from destruction in a well-conducted campaign of maneuver and quick marching, all the while the slow, bumbling Imperial army was destroyed at Castell and Trier. He was also present for King Stefan’s occupation of Adelburg in 1619 after John V and his army had died at the hands of the Santegians. Stefan, looking to increase his influence on a weak Heartlands, saw Prince Otto as a useful piece for his plans. 

 

Although the Haeseni army left Adelburg shortly after their occupation, Prince Otto was ordered by King Stefan himself to remain behind with a small guard. King Leufroy of Lotharingia, distrustful of Emperor Peter II and fearful of threats to his own shaky rule, looked to Haense to help stabilize his position. On the 12th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1619, an alliance was made between the two kingdoms, with a marriage between Prince Otto and Princess Eleanor of Lotharingia, a cousin of King Leufroy, sealing the pact. 

 

If Otto had acquired a reputation as a well-intentioned, if occasionally troublesome, prince, then his bride-to-be was close enough to the devil incarnate in the rumors that filled the ballrooms and salons of the Empire. Born in 1594 or 1596, Princess Eleanor had quickly become known as a domineering, intelligent, and ambitious woman with a quick temper. She had aggressively courted John V in 1614, just for him to choose her sister, Claude, who was less likely to try and exert any control over him. Refusing to settle for anything less than royalty, she did not entertain any offers until, in 1619, King Stefan’s own wife died and she put herself forward as a suitor for him. 

 

King Leufory, annoyed with his cousin’s antics, instead arranged to have her wed to Prince Otto, which she flatly rebuked. The dispute lasted several months, but eventually Leufroy exercised his royal mandate and ordered her to wed Prince Otto. This did not stop her from acting out against her husband-to-be, who she had not even met before, and on the day of their wedding in Metz, on the 25th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1619, she delayed her arrival to the cathedral by over an hour. The wedding itself was said to be a jovial event, but the pair only spoke a handful of words to each other throughout the night.

 

Prince Otto was well aware of the infamously cold marriages of his predecessors, Andrik II and Marus I, and decided to avoid the same fate. Despite his own temper and propensity towards practical jokes, he treated Princess Eleanor with a straightforward kindness and respect that endeared him to her over time. He remained in the Heartlands for a year and a half, and is recorded as having taken part in a tournament in Adelburg in 1620. In turn, Eleanor, older and more experienced in life in the Heartlands, kept a check on her husband’s rowdy outings. While tavern brawls and conversations with commoners in the street may have played well in Alban, it would have disgraced him in Adelburg or Metz, and his manners, while never rude, were far from refined. Eleanor instilled a discipline in her husband that few others could before, and when they returned to Haense in the latter months of 1620, the immature Otto and the overbearing Eleanor that had been wed a year earlier were thoroughly changed.

 

Life in Haense from 1620 to 1624 went well for the pair. At this time, Haense enjoyed a peace and stability that was not shared by nearly anywhere else in the realms of humanity, and so few official duties burdened the royal pair. Prince Otto did slip into some old habits- his love for drinking and dueling had not totally vanished- but for every night where he came home with bruises, he spent five afternoons fishing with his father or attending the court with his wife. The courtier Nestor of Pribizslavityz recorded how “the image of the prince had improved considerably, and to the childless King Stefan, he was considered the closest thing to a son.”

 

On the 22nd of Horen’s Calling, 1621, Otto and Eleanor had their first child, Otto Stefan. Two years later they had another son, Karl Ludvik. For members of the high aristocracy, they were doting enough parents and took an active part in their children’s early years, but the immense responsibility that was soon to come to them made it difficult. After their last child, Henrietta Louise, was born in 1625, the couple made an uncommon agreement: they would cease having any more children so that their household would not be deprived of familial closeness and comfort.

 

1624 was the greatest year of change in Otto’s life, but while his cousin Stefan’s death and his father’s abdication may be perceived as a sudden, potentially-destabilizing force for Haense, giving it three kinds in one year, the events were surprisingly well-managed. King Stefan’s illness had been known among his close family and council for over a year, and his death was expected, especially in the weeks leading to it. Otto I may have taken a few days to formally abdicate as he made a show of coming to a decision, but he and his son had spoken about the matter at least a month before even Stefan’s death. The soon-to-be Otto II’s only protests were that he and Eleanor be allowed to attend a wine festival in the south, which was brusquely denied by his father, who then instructed him vigorously on the maturity that he would need to bring to the throne.

 

So it was on the 12th of Harren’s Folly, 1624, that Otto Georg was anointed and crowned King of Haense. The ceremony was reportedly pleasant, if lacking in great spectacle, though one decision did stir some controversy. Princess Eleanor, delighted at the opportunity to receive the crown she had long-awaited, pushed her ambitions further. She convinced her husband to have her crowned alongside him as Queen of Haense, which he acquiesced to. No great uproar came from this, but many noted that it was a sign of immense change that was to come. While Otto was not the loose-moraled youth that he had acquired a reputation of being- the Haeseni nobility and the Church would have acted to prevent his ascension were that the case- he was not a strict conservative in the vein of his forebears, as his reign would soon prove.

 

As well-prepared as Otto II was for the inevitability of his rule, the challenges that he faced immediately upon his ascension were entirely new to him. In the south, Emperor Peter II’s war against House Romstun had occupied the end of of King Stefan’s reign. While the war was mostly over by 1624, the last remnants of Romstun control in Lotharingia stubbornly held out, knowing that surrender meant death. Prince Heinrik, the competent Lord Palatine and brilliant army reformer, was still down in Lotharingia with six thousand soldiers from the Haeseni army. This force was not a massive one, but it was a drain on a royal treasury that had already exhausted itself from King Stefan’s ambitious foreign and domestic policy. 

 

To make matters worse for King Otto, Emperor Peter, now freed of King Stefan’s powerful, overbearing influence, sought to undermine his northern vassal. With security being brought to the Heartlands, he openly recruited many of Haense’s finest officers and bureaucrats with promises of newly-conquered Romstun land and high salaries from the war plunder. Many took up this offer, and the sons and daughters of Haeseni nobles could be found in the courts of the south. Everyone from artisans to military officers to scribes flocked to the Heartlands to find opportunity and employment. The streets of Alban, which had been lively at all hours just a few years ago, grew cold and barren.

 

Compounding this were the severe setbacks that Otto II was also confronted with in the realm of foreign policy. Peter II, previously a puppet of his cousin, had started to assert his position more now that his hold on the realm was greater after a victory over the Romstuns. King Leufroy of Lotharingia, one of King Stefan’s most stalwart allies in the south, had been killed by assassins in 1622. The crown of Lotharingia, which had seen a number of kings in only a few brief years, fell to his young cousin, Lothar. Despite the threat of the Romstun rebellion having been dealt with, the true enemy of Lotharingia was itself. Within months of Lothar’s ascension, his many councilors, regents, courtiers, and vassals had begun to squabble among themselves, ripping the southern realm to shreds and giving House Romstun the opportunity it needed to revolt. The war had temporarily papered over these deep splits, but its end meant a return to the infighting. Lotharingia was no longer a reliable ally for Haense.

 

Of little fault of his own, the Haense that Otto II stepped into ruling was a vastly weaker, frailer one than Stefan had built. The high nobility had been gutted by death and flight, the army was seeing widespread desertion in the south, and the treasury was as empty as the streets of Alban. For the first year of his reign, Otto despaired at what had suddenly befallen his kingdom. Even when Prince Heinrik returned, the trusty, capable Palatine could not get his king to do more than review infrequent charters and review an army that had fallen to only a few thousand standing soldiers. While Prince Heinrik’s return was supposed to right the ship of state, the Lord Palatine died in the waning months of 1624 from an illness, shocking the court and removing Otto of the one man he could trust the most. The mountain of challenges that he now faced were far more than anything his comfortable life had prepared him for, and the drink soon returned to his hand as he spent half of his days shut in his room. 

 

Even more alarming than the capital was the state of many of Haense’s smaller towns and cities. Some had been outright abandoned, while others had only a handful of lonely, stubborn souls inhabiting their worn streets. The effort to repopulate these centers took years, as most favored Alban, but a census taken in 1630 showed that efforts had been successful.

 

Fortunately for him and his realm, Otto’s stupor did not linger over him for long. In fact, it may have been to his benefit. Although likely apocryphal, the following story has gained traction in popular and historical circles as a point of change in the young king’s life that set him upon a better path:

 

On a cool autumn’s night in 1625, King Otto staggered through the silent, dimly-lit streets of Alban. With few guards to watch over him and few retainers that would accompany him, he sang old tavern songs that he had picked up in his youth in such a noisy tone that it awoke those who remained. One of these was an old widow whose husband had died in the Battle of the Rothswood along with her two sons, and she had lost an arm and an eye in it as well. As King Otto passed by her small home, his rough, somber voice cutting through the crisp air, she barged out the door and began to chastise him for his behavior. Here he was, a king who could want for nothing, wasting his hours disturbing the peace when he could be restoring the realm as his cousin and father had done so tirelessly. Even if he were to drink himself to death, hoping that with him his realm would die, there would always be those like herself, willing to last through any hardship until the end of her days.

 

King Otto then asked her why she thought it proper to raise her voice to her king, to which she replied, “everyone says that you’re a good man, just in need of the occasional clout behind the ears.”

 

Whether it was from that lesson or not, by the end of 1625, Otto had learned a valuable lesson that would inform his governance for the rest of his reign. If there was no one else, he could always rely on the people that he knew well. His silent drinking turned into visits to the tavern, where the personal presence of the King of Haense, nearly unprecedented for the time, warmed the hearts of those who had remained in Alban and bound their loyalties to him. With Lotharingia in utter shambles, Otto used Queen Eleanor’s connections there to recruit capable bureaucrats and talented winemakers, craftsmen, masons, and other trades that were in want in Haense, and gave them, if not bountiful, extensive lands, a measure of security and freedom from competition in the capital. He reviewed the army frequently and made sure to familiarize himself with new recruits to bind them to him. Slowly, Alban’s population stabilized at 10,000, a far cry from the 28,000 it had been years early, but soon grew past that, reaching 19,000 by 1630. Otto II’s realm was not nearly as powerful as his cousin Stefan’s had been, but his tactics, as unorthodox as they were for the time, reversed the sudden and sharp decline.

 

One benefit to the relative lack of peers that Otto II had upon his ascension was a freedom from the factional politics that had forced his predecessors to adjust their policies. From Petyr I through Marus I, it had been House Kovachev. From Petyr II through Otto I, it had been House Ruthern. Count Vladrick var Ruthern, one of the architects of the Greyspine Rebellion and a powerful vassal under King Stefan, had been stricken with an affliction of the mind that left him incapable of exercising the control that he had. Duke Viktor Kovachev was one of Otto’s more celebrated councilors, serving him reliably as Lord Marshal, but his house’s reputation and power had been greatly diminished after the Greyspine Rebellion. Other minor nobles, such as Count Otto Baruch or Count Adolphus Vyronov, were generally absent at this time and also had little influence over the king. From 1624-1627 Otto even ruled without a Lord Palatine, handling most matters himself when he could.

 

Despite his perception as a people’s king, willing to sit on a tavern stool and talk openly about the state of the realm, Otto II was neither a fool nor lacked diligence. Alongside Ser Anton Kyngeston, Haense’s High Seneschal since 1614, he spent hours of his day reviewing the many grants, appeals, taxes, and charters that came across his desk. In many ways, his time spent fraternizing among his subjects was as much a means of escaping the boredom he felt at his desk as it was an intentional strategy of public appeal. The one area he did enjoy was counting revenues, which had come in at a higher volume as the realm’s population began to grow again. He was never a thorough enjoyer of the tedium of rulership, aside from maintaining strict, well-tracked budgets on his growing coffers, but he did what was required and left the rest to his growing field of bureaucrats.

 

By 1626, the realm, and more importantly, its treasury, had recovered enough for King Otto and Queen Eleanor to involve themselves in foreign affairs once again. Just as it had been for King Stefan, for them Lotharingia would be the principal focus of their reign. In 1626, the Daelish clans, united under Callan Gromach, had emerged from the factional disputes in Lotharingia as the victors. King Lothar III, who had accommodated the ambitious Daelish at nearly every turn, was killed in a palace coup on the 11th of Sun’s Smile, 1626, by a group of palace nobles who wished to avert the mastery of the uncouth, rugged clansmen over their affairs. This sent the kingdom spiraling into yet another period of interregnum. Emperor Peter, wishing to test the limit of his power once again, intervened directly into the realm’s affairs. He sent in an army to secure order in Metz, then called King Otto south to meet with him over the future of Lotharingia.

 

Queen Eleanor, traveling with her husband, had made her desires clear. Under the rule of her many cousins and brothers, Lotharingia, one of the most fertile, pleasant, and populous realms in Axios in the 1590s, had plunged into utter chaos after a string of ineffective kings. It was still a wealthy land, but weak governance had squandered its resources at nearly every turn over the past two decades. If her husband could push her claim to the Lotharingian throne, or at least that of their son Otto Stefan, then they could bring much-needed stability to her homeland in exchange for profiting from its natural and material wealth. If the Emperor would approve of this union, then it could accelerate Haense’s recovery tenfold and start a similar process in Lotharingia, eventually producing a realm that would be unstoppable.

 

As much as King Otto and Queen Eleanor excitedly discussed this plan during their travel to Adelburg- three different accounts from officials accompanying them confirm this- it was never going to happen. Otto was neither as powerful as his cousin nor as deft at the diplomatic table as him, and Emperor Peter well-knew the dangers of a powerful Haense. From the beginning of the two’s discussion at Adelburg, which began on the 21st of Sun’s Smile, 1626, he made it clear that Lotharingia would become the property of the Imperial Crown and would be governed by Callan Gromach. King Otto protested in a rage, furious that his wife’s birthright was being so blatantly disregarded, but he lacked the means to enforce her claim. Queen Eleanor, more familiar with the Emperor, if in a quite negative manner, and more accustomed to southern diplomacy, was able to extract some concessions. After ten years, she would be given the rights to the City of Metz and twelve other palaces and castles across Lotharingia. It was a bitter settlement for the pair, but they agreed to the terms on the 11th of Harren’s Folly, 1626, which were made official with the Settlement Act issued by the Emperor.

 

Defeated as the couple were, they did not allow this diplomatic defeat to ruin their strategic plans, or even just their time in Adelburg. It is recorded that the two lingered in the Imperial capital for four months, attending court and building their connections within the nobility of the Heartlands. King Otto even participated in a joust held during the first two weeks of Godfrey’s Triumph in honor of Emperor Peter’s coronation as King of Lotharingia. It is recorded that he won the first round against a wandering knight, but all records of his performance after are lost. In the trials of public opinion, he acquitted himself far better in this stint in the capital, and the reputation that he had left in 1620- a naive troubadour- had transformed into that of a competent and personable monarch. It was a great contrast from the conniving, inarticulate, and reclusive Emperor, so while his time in the south had indisputably been a diplomatic and strategic defeat, he had still emerged with his reputation enhanced.

 

Returning to Haense, Otto devoted himself to improving his realm, returning to the same tactics that he had utilized to near-perfection in the previous few years. Haense continued its steady growth, and by 1630 it had returned to its status as the most important Imperial vassal. Otto was acclaimed throughout his realm for the diligence and personal transformation that he had undergone, even if his popular appeal was based off of the same behavior he displayed during his time as a prince. However, his tireless work to simply keep Haense from succumbing to the same rot that had taken Lotharingia had begun to take a personal toll on him.

 

A master of his people and a master of his state, a master of his household Otto II was not. The exertion of his self-rule was extremely taxing, and there would be stretches of time where he did not have an hour of formal leisure. His sons and daughter were thrust into the care of tutors who became dearer parents to them than the king. He made formal appearances at the court when it was demanded, taking petitions that were deemed important, but this was done at infrequent intervals and often left to Queen Eleanor. 

 

Aside from playing an active role in her husband’s foreign policy, Eleanor was the more proactive of the two in matters involving the court and their family. Forward-thinking and progressive for the age, especially in the culturally conservative Haense, the queen caused a stir with the fashion trends she introduced. With many designers fleeing Lotharingia, she invited them to Esenstadt in order to do away with the dour blacks and browns that were signature to the atmosphere then. Bright colors: reds, blues, greens, purples, and golds, all featured far more prominently and began to become adopted by the lords and ladies of the realm. The queen even caused some mild controversy when, in 1632, she attended a ball in a dress that revealed her shoulders. Seventeen clergymen in Alban issued a condemnation of the act, but it did not amount to anything further.

 

For the household, Queen Eleanor maintained a firm grip where her husband’s was weak. Most of the day-to-day raising of the children was left to tutors, but she oversaw their curriculum and spoke with them at length once a week. She made sure that all of her children were instilled with an appreciation for the arts- poetry, painting, sculpting, literature, music- as was custom of young aristocrats in the Heartlands. Fitness was still important, but she put far less of an emphasis on a martial education, opting for a liberal, humanist, and broadly well-rounded set of subjects for her children. Only interrupted by King Marus II’s education of his children, the practices initiated by Queen Eleanor of training the House of Barbanov have continued nearly unbroken to this very day.

 

Finally, Queen Eleanor was a good patron of the arts in a way that her husband never was, even if he could at least appreciate them. Many composers, musicians, painters, and other artists from Lotharingia and Mardon had come to the Esenstadt looking for employment, which the queen readily provided. It was no golden age for the arts in Haense, but new poems were read and circulated, and well-tuned musicians played at every dance with enough skill as to be complemented by foreigners in the court. Were it not for her efforts, the kingdom would have likely fallen victim to a base efficiency and brutal straightforwardness most-desired by her husband.

 

With the Heartlands having settled into peace, as frail and uneasy as it was, and Haense continuing to benefit from the state of affairs, Otto II’s reign seemed to have overcome the early dangers at its outset. On the 16th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1630, the king himself remarked that “there may soon be a day that we will return our sights on the south again and claim Her Majesty’s inheritance in Lotharingia.” Whether hinting at future defiance against the Emperor, or simply a belief that Haense was in a better position to assert its interests against perceived Imperial overreach, it would go unfulfilled. While Peter II’s Empire may have had the trappings of a more complete state than his brother’s had been, it was fatefully weak, held together only by a broader malaise around the world. Its first challenge had been overcome, but its second would be its undoing. Falsely confident in his strength and still carrying the honor wounds of John V’s loss of Asul, Emperor Peter turned north to try and exert his realm’s authority outwards again.

 

The Chateau de Rochambeau, one of the finest of King Otto’s southern palaces, was a favorite of Queen Eleanor, who occasionally ventured there when she visited her homeland. It was one of the few properties that they immediately received in the settlement of 1626. King Otto is only recorded as having visited his Lotharingian properties three times: in 1626, 1629, and 1640, all when he had business to do in the south.

 

The Kingdom of Urguan, once Oren’s most powerful and consistent enemy, had been severely weakened by internal strife. Aggrieved by the misrule of King Zahrer Irongrinder, in 1626, the major clans of Frostbeard, Goldhand, Blackaxe, and Silvervein declared their lands independent and joined together to form the Kingdom of Kaz’Ulrah. Unable to enforce his law, King Zahrer did little as his realm began to slowly be carved up by smaller rebellious clans flocking to Kaz’Ulrah. A coup in 1630 removed King Zahrer and brought forward his son, Frerir Irongrinder, who promised to take more aggressive action against Kaz’Ulrah. Urguan could not do so alone, so he looked south for aid and found a willing partner in Peter II. Emperor Peter likely thought that his support for King Frerir would net him at least a strong ally in the region, if not a puppet, by the end of the war, so he took little care to sign a strong set of provisions. The Empire would effectively run the entire war, providing 20,000 soldiers to Urguan’s 5,000, paying for and equipping both armies, and developing the wider war strategy.

 

The war would fall hardest on Haense for a number of reasons. Hostilities began in the spring of 1631, at first localized to just Urguan and Kaz’Ulrah, but eventually spilling over their borders. Haeseni towns along the Urguani border were susceptible to Frostbeard raids, and attacks even went as far south as the Rothswood. The hypothetical Imperial army of 25,000 did not exist- calls for mobilization had yet to be sent out- so it fell to Haense to defend itself. At least twenty towns and another thirty farms are recorded as having been attacked from 1631-1632 alone, a staggering assault that the Haeseni army simply was not equipped for. Otto II and the Duke of Carnatia did what they could to supply their soldiers, but the sheer magnitude of the problem was too great for Haense’s resources.

 

Part of the reason why the Imperial army had not yet been mobilized and dispatched was because of the want of funds in the treasury, which was a fact that the diplomats sent to Urguan been unaware of when they made such a large commitment. The Emperor was forced to raise taxes and tariffs, issue war bonds, and take loans. Taxes in Haense, already disproportionately favoring the rich, only continued to rise on the poor in order to cover their dues to the Imperial crown. Bread riots commonly broke out around the cities of Haense as the urban peasants lacked the coin to buy it and farmers lacked the protection to produce it. King Otto and Ser Anton Kyngston had to debase the currency in order to produce enough silver to buy bread from the Heartlands and sell it at a subsidized price, but another Imperial tax increase in 1633 forced them to end the program. Thousands fled from the kingdom, but the reality was that everywhere else in the Empire suffered the same problems, and often worse in severity.

 

To compound this, an army of 25,000 was not just unrealistic to finance, but unrealistic to raise. While it had been feasible at the height of the Johannian Empire, recent scholarly estimates have the maximum manpower that could be fielded across the Mardon Empire in 1631 as somewhere between 12,000 and 14,000. An additional 9,000-13,000 soldiers over capacity also required the recruitment of many thousands more to make weapons, lead supply lines, care for horses, produce clothes, and a number of other tasks to outfit an army. Commoners were drafted to fill these roles, many of which came from Haense, taking farmers from fields and craftsmen from cities, and had to be trained back in Adelburg. This drain on the kingdom could not be easily replaced, especially when it removed an important tax base for King Otto, who was already struggling to help finance the Imperial army.

 

With all of these inefficiencies, it would have been no surprise had the Haeseni contingent of the army been among the least-prepared, but it would turn out to be the opposite. Although not inclined to military matters, King Otto’s grasp of numbers and logistics made him uniquely capable to equip, feed, and organize his army of 5,000 into something of an effective fighting force. Over the course of the War of the Beards, lasting from 1631-1636, Duke Viktor Kovachev would hold actual command of the army, but it was Otto’s efforts that ensured it did not freeze or starve to death in the inhospitable Greyspine Mountains.

 

The Imperial army that crossed the border in Urguan in 1633 was, in the words of Haeseni Captain Andrei Gryph, “lumbering, ragged, and eating the rags that it had, all before a single dwarf had been seen.” The Imperial Legion, rotted to the core with corruption and driven by the engines of nepotism and purchased officer’s commissions, was suffering from desertions and camp plagues. By the summer of 1633, when it reached Kal’Omith, the Urguani capital, it had been reduced by a fifth. Notably, only three desertions and fifty-four deaths by illness had come from the Haeseni army, whose king had ensured that they were well-provisioned with medical supplies and had set aside necessary payments in advance. He had even sold three of his palaces to cover the costs.

 

Disarray affected the Imperial war tent throughout the campaign. Hardly a military man himself, much like his vassal Otto, Peter II delegated the running of the war to his officers. However, unlike Otto, he could not effectively mediate disputes that arose from his top generals, so he resorted to simply choosing one side and replacing any opposition with those who would not voice dissent. For the rest of that summer and autumn, the Imperial army rarely ventured outside of Kal’Omith, only sending small parties to skirmish with Frostbeard raiders. Unfortunately, the army’s slow movement allowed Kaz’Ulrah to gain much-needed reinforcements. Wanting to prevent the Empire from regaining its footing, the Hordes of Krugmar, the Kingdom of Norland, the Kingdom of Santegia, and the tribes of the Warhawkes had all sent armies of their own. By the spring of 1634, Kaz’Ulrah had a force of around 30,000 to contest the combined 25,000 from the Imperial-Urguani host.

 

Unaware of the number disparity he now faced, the Emperor ordered the army to move towards Jornheim, the capital of Kaz’Ulrah, on the 3rd of Sun’s Smile, 1634. A month later, they encountered the coalition army at the Jornheim Fields, ten leagues from Kaz’Ulrah’s capital. It was then that, when retreat became impossible, that the gravity of their error had been made apparent. “Only when they were within sight of the hundreds of banners that faced us, had we realized our error,” said Nauzican Commander Owein aep Cynan, “We had not conducted thorough scouting, nor had we allowed our vanguard to stray too far to give us a means of escape. The King of Haense had urged His Majesty to do so, but it was brushed aside as a needless expense and endangerment to our knights.

 

Surprisingly, the Battle of Jornheim Fields, fought on the 19th of Harren’s Folly, 1634, was far from the bloody, decisive engagement that the situation and numbers had led the respective commanders to believe. At dawn, the Imperial-Urguani army drew itself upon a slope across from the flat plains where Kaz’Ulrah and its allies had deployed. Arrow fire was exchanged from both sides, and cavalry attacks were sent back and forth as the lines were probed. At noon, the Imperial Fourth Legion, in the center, was ordered to advance, but it met heavy trebuchet fire from several nearby forts and was forced to pull back. The coalition then sent forward several dwarven brigades, but they were quickly driven from the field by a charge of Imperial knights. The skirmishing resumed, but it was to be the only action that day. Seeing that his army was outnumbered, deep in enemy territory, and unfit to fight, the Emperor and his staff agreed to withdraw back to Kal’Omith and await a resupply from Adelburg.

 

In what was a day with only a moderate amount of bloodshed- 4,000 casualties from the Orenian-Urguani army compared to 2,000 from the coalition’s- King Otto and his army escaped without losing a single soldier. The only casualty reported that day was a spearmen in the service of House Ruthern who had stepped on a nail while leaving the Haeseni camp to gather water that morning. Some in the ranks, especially the proudest soldiers, and those whose homes had routinely been threatened by dwarven raids, were disappointed, but most were relieved that the army had not marched towards what would have been certain doom.

 

Few others seemed to share this sentiment. Although the decision to retreat had certainly been the correct one, this is not questioned by any serious military scholar, it was merely the better of two catastrophic decisions. Desertions continued again from the Imperial army as soldiers from across the Empire lost faith in their cause, but this was nothing compared to what Urguan was facing. Nearly all of the clans and their followers deserted to Kaz’Ulrah, for the Battle of Jornheim Fields had been proof of the war’s hopelessness. With only the Imperial army now standing between Urguan and an invading coalition, the Emperor decided to abandon his ally’s realm for the time, against the protests of King Frerir. As his nearest vassal, Haense would be where the forces of the Empire regrouped.

 

The diminished, if still mostly intact, Imperial army arrived in Haense on the 23rd of Sigismund’s End, 1634. Occupying Fort Vanir, a border keep half a league north of Vasiland that had been built during the Great Northern War, the Emperor and his council hoped to blunt the coalition’s advance and retake Urguan, which had been quickly overrun by the king of Kaz’Ulrah and his allies. “It was a hope that bordered on delusion,” said Garon Stafyr, a cavalry captain in the Haeseni army. Garon Stafyr had, like many in Haense, experienced the destruction that Kaz’Ulrah had inflicted on the north alone. With thousands of allied soldiers now joining them, they would have free reign to make the region utterly inhospitable for a large force to have to sustain itself from it. The battle outside of Jornheim may have been indecisive in and of itself, but the momentum had suddenly, drastically, and in too great of a degree to be corrected, shifted towards the coalition.

 

These concerns were not lost on King Otto, who went great lengths to prevent an inevitable tragedy from befalling his own army. His personal headquarters were at Vasiland, which was more defensible than Fort Vanir and had direct access to the main roads in the realm. He also ordered his soldiers to prioritize warding off Frostbeard raids against nearby villages over helping fortying and expand the bloated Fort Vanir. What siege preparation he did make was focused around Vasiland, where he had extensive resources and supplies devoted to. Some within the Imperial high command accused Otto of hedging his bets on an Orenian defeat, but his actions would be what saved his army and likely his kingdom as well. On the 8th of Tobias’s Bounty, the first of the coalition troops were seen over the horizon. Instead of confronting them in another battle, Emperor Peter ordered his army to dig in and prepare for a siege.  A week later, Fort Vanir was surrounded by 20,000 coalition soldiers. Another 6.000 bottled in the Haeseni army at Vasiland while the remaining 3,000 pillaged the north.

 

Almost immediately, the logistical problems of the Imperial army came to bear. Despite his promises that Fort Vanir would be equipped to hold the entire Imperial army, it was struggling to accommodate the 12,000 that had actually been assigned to the fort. The other 4,000 had been ordered to occupy a string of other northern keeps, while 5,000 Haeseni were still at Vasiland. King Otto had ensured that his army was well-supplied enough to endure at least eight months of siege, but the rest of the Imperial armies had just enough for three. Norlandic raiders sank over thirty different ships bringing supplies to the beleaguered defenders of Fort Vanir, and supply wagons crossing overland were intercepted by Santegian scouting parties. By the winter, the Imperials were starving and freezing to death by the hundreds. Far from luring the coalition to an unwinnable siege, the army had trapped itself in its own coffin.

 

On the 30th of Sun’s Smile, 1635, the scattered garrisons in the smaller keeps and walled towns near Vasiland surrendered. Two weeks later, the Emperor agreed to surrender Fort Vanir in return for he and his army being allowed to return to Adelburg, which the King of Kaz’Ulrah, wishing to avoid the expenses of prolonging the siege, agreed to. Peter II and 6,000 soldiers limped back to the Imperial capital. Five days later, King Otto made a similar agreement, and he and 4,500 soldiers returned to Alban as Vasiland was occupied. Otto’s bravery during the siege- he often stood atop the walls and subjected himself to enemy trebuchet fire as he observed their positions- was praised, and he had saved his army yet again. Of the 21,000 troops that had stood to resist the coalition, only 10,500 had been able to return home, of which slightly less than half were Haeseni. 

 

Northwest Haense had been conquered, all of the north was suffering from incessant raids, the treasury was utterly spent, all progress King Otto had made had been wiped, yet the Barbanovs had emerged from the War of the Beards as the best-positioned realm in the Empire. On the 5th of Sigismund’s End, 1636, Peter II was forced to abdicate after a military coup to his nine year old son, John Maximillian, who fell under the influence of a regency council. King Javier of Norland, wishing to avenge the earlier humiliations of his people at the hands of Oren, and desiring the wealth of the collapsing Empire, announced that he would be pressing on with the war. The rest of the coalition followed behind.

 

At hearing this news, few despaired more than Otto II. His kingdom had already been brought to its knees servicing failed Imperial ambitions, and soon it would be dragged into another offensive. Outcry spread across the north as news broke of the war’s continuation, leading to several riots that were barely suppressed. Walking a delicate rope between a collapsing Empire and his suffering kingdom, Otto chose to commit his efforts to the latter. The request for reinforcements from the regency council technically did not go unanswered, but the force that Otto sent was never going to turn the tide of the war: 200 knights under Ser Peytor Vance, one of his more able commanders. The rest were ordered to drive out continuing Frostbeard raids and prepare the defenses for a coalition push south.

 

Despite King Otto’s reasonable fears that his realm, which stood between the Heartlands and the dwarven realm, would be the next object of invasion, it was truthfully an unlikely prospect from the start. The coalition had exhausted its own finances supplying a massive army, which had faced its own logistical setbacks in the resource-sparse north. An extended conquest of Haense would only allow time for the Mardons to regain their footing and prepare a more adequate offensive. Instead, an invasion force of 10,000 would be assembled at Vjorhelm and attack the Heartlands from the east. John VI’s regents tried to assemble some kind of army for a defense, but a number of bankruptcies and desertions had ruined any hope of raising and supplying a competent force. In 1637, an army of 6,000 conscripts and mercenaries was sent west to stop King Javier’s army.

 

As the Empire was scrambling to put together a host to defend it, Haense was decommissioning its own. The treasury simply could not sustain the army in the field, so King Otto disbanded nearly all of his army except for a force of 500 cavalrymen to act as a mobile reserve in the event of emergency. With Kaz’Ulrah’s attention focused inward on consolidating its conquests, the Frostbeard raids had nearly stopped, with only three occurring from 1637-1638. The dwarven army had also withdrawn from Vasiland, Fort Vanir, and the connected fiefs after a series of negotiations led by the Palatine Ser Fordsen Kyngeston. They had never been the object of the war to begin with, and the king of Kaz’Ulrah could not ruin his finances on their occupation. 

 

Economic crisis continued to grip Haense, but it was nothing compared to what was happening in the Crownlands. On the 4th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1638, the Imperial army was destroyed in the Battle of the Bloody Road by King Javier just five days from Adelburg. Four days later, Aurelius Horen, a minor nobleman from the Crownlands, led an army of his own into Adelburg and slew John VI and his Nauzicans, proclaiming himself King of Renatus and declaring the end of the Holy Orenian Empire. The situation immediately threatened to devolve into a civil war, as a faction of Mardon supporters consolidated around Frederick Horen, Duke of the Westerlands, who named himself King of Marna and began raising an army around his capital of Bastion. Lotharingia and Mardon split into their own pro-Aurelius and pro-Frederick factions, falling into violence themselves.

 

In relative safety in the north, King Otto could see clearly just how disastrous the situation could become. Canonist revolts in Santegia had forced King Javier to turn his army back around to Vjorhelm before he could assault Adelburg, but he promised to return the next year. Pagan forces threatened the Canonist princes from all sides: infighting was the last thing that they needed. As the only man in a position to mediate between the warring factions, Otto put great effort in repairing the bonds of man that had prevented the fall of humanity to outside forces.

 

Throughout his life, Otto’s relationship with his faith was tumultuous and difficult to define. In his early years, when his days were occupied with drinking and dueling, he had hardly been able to recite the most basic of prayers and had been known to skip mass semi-regularly. As he became king, he made more of an effort of attending mass, public ceremonies, and engaging in more outward professions of faith. Queen Eleanor herself was not particularly religious, but the two were by no means atheists, just far too preoccupied with the management of the realm, and the time that it required, to devote themselves as other kings had. From 1631, though, the king had thrown himself in the arms of his faith as one of the only ways to keep his mental state intact from all of the crises around him. He strictly attended mass daily, even when he fell ill, and he dedicated an hour a day to prayer and another half-hour with his confessor. Icons of various saints were put up all around Alban as a way of warding off the ill-omens brought by news of the Empire’s collapse, and he ordered the construction of giant crosses at every important pass and road into Haense. 

 

In addition to the growth of his personal faith, King Otto also enjoyed a strong relationship with the High Pontiff, Everard IV, who had served in the position since 1622. Born Josef of Alban, the son of a cobbler, Everard IV was a native Haeseni and had spent time in service of Otto II in his government. Leveraging this personal connection and his own piety, Otto implored his former advisor to force the squabbling Heartlands to peace. Just as concerned of a Norlandic conquest of the south, the High Pontiff agreed, and over the course of 1639 and 1640 he and King Otto hosted a dozen talks from the various sides in the confused, messy civil war that had broken out in the ruins of the Empire. What emerged from it on the 11th of Horen’s Calling, 1640, was a tenuous, but workable, peace agreement. The forces of Canondom would set aside their grievances with each other to assemble an army to drive back King Javier, who was to launch his new offensive later that year. It was a reluctant, uneasy truce, not least for King Otto, who found King Aurelius to be an ambitious warlord and King Frederick to be a stick in the mud, but the threat posed by the coalition threatened to undo them all. That same day, a crusade was declared against Norland, with the objective of not just repelling them, but conquering them.

 

King Otto had mostly been an outsider to Heartlander politics in his early years, but by 1638 he was generally seen as a trustworthy, honest figure who had a grasp on their society. He would never be one of the Heartlander lords, despite his titles in Lotharingia, but his role as a mediator was unanimously accepted.

 

These peace conferences had also given Queen Eleanor, who accompanied her husband at nearly all of them, to turn back to her ambitious foreign policy. In late 1639, she arranged the marriage of her daughter, Princess Henrietta, to King Frederick. She trusted neither Aurelius nor Frederick, but unlike her husband she made her preference for the latter clear, especially after hearing of Aurelius’s ruthless, bloody conduct during his conquest of the Crownlands. The pair were wed on the 11th of Sun’s Smile, 1640, in a humble ceremony in Bastion. Queen Eleanor also established a betrothal between Prince Otto Stefan and Ingrid de Sarkozy, the daughter of the titular Prince of Ulgaard, a wealthy southern nobleman, which would bring Haense a hefty dowry. With Haense as possibly the most powerful remaining Canonist state, even if it was relatively weak on the world stage, its queen returned to crafty diplomacy and matchmaking, wanting to position it as the victor of the coming crusade.

 

Raising a new army was not an appealing prospect to King Otto. His realm’s finances had not really recovered since 1636, but if the war was to be won, it was going to be with Haeseni men and Haeseni steel. Stretching his resources to the absolute maximum, Otto was able to raise and equip a fresh host of 4,000 men, which was half of what the united Canonist forces would put out into the field. They were bolstered later that month when news came of the conversion of King Leo of Santegia to Canonism and his new support for the coalition. The combined army was to be led by King Frederick, who was by far the most competent commander of them all, but King Otto played a similar role as he had in the War of the Beards, quietly providing the crusading army with the food, medicine, and equipment that it needed. It was Haeseni oxen and carts that drove the supply lines, Haeseni siege equipment that was brought south from Metterden, and Haeseni nurses and surgeons that cared for the ill and wounded during the campaign, all organized and managed by King Otto and the Duke of Carnatia.

 

The benefits of sound strategy and logistics put the crusaders at an advantage at the start of the 1640 campaign. Over the past two years, the Warhawkes and the orcs of Krugmar had been forced to recall their armies because they lacked the means to upkeep them. A few pro-Urguani rebellions in Kaz’Ulrah had forced the king there to recall all but 1,000 of his soldiers from Norland. The army that was to face the crusaders was only 6,000 strong to their 8,000, and made up almost entirely of Norlanders. King Javier, although a brilliant battlefield leader, was less gifted in other aspects of war. As he marched against Adelburg again in the autumn of 1640, the army he led was underfed, owing to a crop blight that had affected that year’s harvest, and knew little of the crusading army that they faced.

 

The Battle of Rochdale on the 10th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1640, was the culmination of a well-directed crusader campaign against a poorly-managed Norlandic one. Encamped at the small town of Rochdale, a day’s march from Adelburg, the Norlandic army was awoken that morning by the sounds of war drums and Canonist hymns. Within minutes, they were set upon by a frenzied mass of zealots, out for revenge from the past decade of humiliations. King Otto himself fought well in the battle, his first significant combat, often throwing himself into the thick of the fighting with his guard. The battle was over within an hour; half of the Norlandic army was destroyed against only a few dozen slain crusaders. The Haeseni army, by far the largest contingent, had been tasked with leading the charge and bearing the brunt of the Norlandic shieldwall, which they had quickly overwhelmed and scattered. Glory went to the crusaders as a whole, but it was King Otto and his men who were the highest-acclaimed that day.

 

The crusader armies wintered in Adelburg, where Otto and Aurelius jointly held a series of games and tournaments to celebrate the victories of the past year, financed by the captured Norlandic booty. Camaraderie was built among the crusader ranks, even if the leaders would never be anything more than cordial with each other, and Otto remarked fondly on the time, claiming it “was a greater salve than the ambrosia of the muses.” The joy continued for him as his son and heir, Prince Otto Stefan, traveled south to join the army in the coming offensive against Vjorhelm. More bookish than warlike, it had taken some convincing for Prince Otto to join his father, but the latter presented it as a rare opportunity for them to jointly lead the affairs of state. Although the two had been relatively distant for most of their lives, they reportedly got along well during their brief stint in the south, and King Otto himself believed that, though his son was no soldier, he had acquitted himself well in front of the army.

 

The march to Vjorhelm began at the break of spring on the 13th of Sun’s Smile, 1641. A month later, they reached the walls of the Norlandic capital. King Javier had abdicated out of shame the previous winter, leaving behind his unready son, Jevan. With only a scant force of 2,000 to resist a crusader army that had swelled to 9,000, the new king of Norland could only wait and hope that one of his allies would come to rescue him. An assault against the walls was finally made on the 7th of Tobias’s Bounty, which was repulsed. Three days later, King Otto himself led one, which almost led to King Jevan’s capture, but the crusaders were again thrown back. Finally, on the 12th, a general assault overwhelmed the thinning Norlandic defenders and conquered Vjorhelm. Over the following weeks, Norland would be secured, dealing a final blow to the coalition that had felled the Empire and nearly slain the Canonist world.

 

In the peace negotiations that followed in Vjorhelm, King Otto made his interests clear. Someone would have to govern Norland, but it would not be him, who had no wish to expend more resources to occupy, administer, and pacify the region. That duty he gave to King Aurelius, either as a genuine belief that he was better-equipped to rule over the Norlanders or as a poison pill to give him a rebellious territory that he could never truly exert his will over. What Otto desired above all was an extended peace, so he demanded the continuation of their joint alliance for another five years, even if it was relatively meaningless, so that Haense could rebuild. The others all agreed, facing similar dilemmas of their own, and so Otto II returned from the Third Crusade a clear victor, perhaps the clearest of them all.

 

As is known to history, a great calamity struck the lands of Axios in 1642, requiring all of its inhabitants to flee to a new land called Atlas. Unsettled in the way Axios was not, hundreds of petty dukes and hillbarons sprang up across the continent. King Otto and his followers settled the cold south, where he drew up clean, clear lines as to what fiefs existed where.

 

The final great act that King Otto II would undertake would be the building of his new capital, Markev. In 1642 he appointed Prince Robert of Bihar, the son of Prince Karl of Bihar, who had served Stefan I and Otto I ably, as his Lord Palatine. Far less of a soldier than his father had been, but far more of a statesman, Prince Robert assembled a fine team of architects and engineers to build his king a formidable seat and city. On the 18th of Godfrey’s Triumph, 1642, the Krepost, to be the seat of House Barbanov, was completed along the banks of the great Czena River, which flowed throughout the realm. Early next year, the walls around the city of Markev had also been built. With fields unburned, farmsteads grew and spread across the new Haense, bringing regular incomes and harvests to the kingdom. The nobility began to build estates and keeps within their given lands, extending their king’s borders, establishing his law, and rebuilding their own powers. Trade, coin, and people flowed into Haense, where stability and prosperity could be found.

 

For the next two years, King Otto governed peacefully and ably, finally ruling a realm that was free from the squabbles of the Heartlands or the threats from pagans elsewhere. While far from the power that they had been, this Haense, independent and free to chart its course, clearly stood as one of the more powerful realms in Atlas. A future that had been in doubt at the start of Otto’s reign, and multiple times after that, finally looked bright. The great tragedy was that Otto would not live to enjoy this prosperity for long, nor ensure its continuation.

 

Otto II’s health, which had always been strong, began to fail him in the autumn of 1644 when he contracted a congestion of the stomach, inducing heavy vomiting and preventing him from eating or drinking much. On the 27th of Owyn’s Flame, he was moved to his rural palace of Baldemar, where they hoped he would recover, but his condition continued. For a month he battled death, but his stomach only continued to swell and inflame. Portly before his illness, he looked thin and emaciated at the time of his death, having lost one hundred pounds in two months. He remained conscious and in pain throughout this, and was receptive when he took confession and the last rites on the 5th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1644. Four days later he died during a sunset, which, with his final words, he remarked was “a beauty that has eluded me until my final moments. How blessed I am to look upon it now with my eyes.” Twenty minutes later, he fell into a coma, and an hour after that he was pronounced dead.

 

The funeral procession from Baldemar to Markev met many mourners, most especially from the common people who had lived, drank, and fought with their king. He had been no less present in his final years, often marching into the taverns of his new capital to drink with his subjects, inquire as to their thoughts of the city, and make recommendations for the menu. Until the very end, even when he needed it far less than he had, his immediate and personal connection with his people drove much of his time and being. It was far from the cunning, if desperate, strategy that he had initiated twenty years earlier to secure his realm. It had evolved into a part of his life and legend.

 

His funeral, held on the 19th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1644, drew over 25,000 spectators to Markev, half of them not residents of the city. Ser Anton Kyngeston, the now-retired seneschal who had worked beside three Barbanov kings in tireless, forgotten, service, delivered what was acclaimed as the finest speech that day in honor of the beloved king, whose death had brought all to tears.

 

"Given a realm that was near its end, His Majesty may have easily been overwhelmed by the machinations of fate that had conspired to collapse us earlier, and none may have judged him poorly for it. We may have gone the way of Lotharingia, cannibalizing ourselves and our wealth. We may have gone the way of Mardon, rudderless and decrepit without a strong leader. We may have gone the way of the Crownlands, subsumed by outside invasion and internal coup. Instead we stand strong, the envy of the world, but our strength was not built through evils, but through humble diligence and reverence to our Lord. His Majesty did his duty as king, did well by his subjects, and defended his realm. For it, he undertook what was to many an unorthodox path, but was, as we may realize now, that one, narrow window to not just our survival, but our triumph.”

 

Watching from a distance was the new king, Otto III, who had ascended to the throne the prior week, but had yet to receive his coronation. He had given a speech that day, but he was no orator like his father. It had come off to many as awkward and stilted, and a stutter and short stature had made him a less-than-imposing figure. He was more comfortable seated in a covered pavilion, where he could watch the funeral from some security.

 

 My place is at my desk in the library, not here. Otto III thought. But I am king now. Must I do what my father did? Or will my rule be done my way?

 

Thirty four years and four kings after his death, the kingdom of Otto II would bend the knee to the same Renatian warlord that it had dictated peace terms to before.

 

Dravi, Otto II ‘the Builder’

23rd of Sigismund’s End, 1603-9th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1644

(r. 12th of Harren’s Folly, 1624-9th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1644)

 

 

---

O Ágioi Kristoff, Jude kai Pius. Dóste mas gnósi ópos sas ékane o Theós. Poté min afísoume na doúme to skotádi, allá as doúme móno to fos tis sofías kai tis alítheias. O Theós na se evlogeí.

---

The reign of Otto III shall be covered in the next volume of The Winter Crows.

[yopplwasupxxx 5807]

Very cool +1