An Angel Called Eternity

Lore Chapter: The Bastard's Wars

Seventh Day, Third Month, 872 AD.
Alekos Virgilos, King.
Kingdom of Polaeros.
Polaeriopolis.
The Seeker's Palace.

My Dearest Alek,

It was so very good to hear from you again. I must confess to being glad that you covered Triarios yourself in your last letter, for whilst I am more than aware of how their kingdom runs its affairs my distaste for their methods would doubtless seep through in my words as it did with my contribution to your text about Licotemos.

Yes, I am doing well. As well as one can at the moment, anyway. Seeing you here would doubtless raise my spirits, but we all need to do our duty to weather the coming storm. That has been the mantra of my life, or at least it feels that way at times.

Ah, enough of my woolgathering. I will confess that I have few solid plans for my own writings as of yet, merely that it is intended to be a treatise on effective rulership. I have little intention on writing such a subject to completion for quite some time yet, as the coming years will no doubt prove a font of knowledge on this subject through experience, but still I have been compiling notes on examples of leadership throughout history that prove how not to rule.

Most recent amongst my readings is that of the Bastard's Wars, a subject in history I tried my best to ignore throughout a goodly portion of my childhood due to the stigmas around bastardry as a result of the wars, as you no doubt recall from our years spent in tutelage together. I wish now I had looked into it in more detail and not just viewed the bare minimum to please our tutors, for the subject has fascinated me immensely. The wars are about as well documented as they can be for being so long ago, but still the names of every bastard who fought in them are lost save only those who fought in the Great Rebellion, or the Eighth Bastard's War. The rest are referred to plenty of times, but only ever as 'the bastard', 'the nth pretender', etcetera. Therefore I believe this to have been a deliberate choice by the monarchs of the past, a way of trying to convince people that bastards never prosper.

Pricks.

Before the reign of the Barracks-Kings and the Manic King before them, there was the Interregnum, a six year long period of chaos and anarchy in Klironomea. Before the Interregnum, there were the kings of house Stagmore.

House Stagmore boasted the longest unbroken line of kings in the history of the Kingdom of Klironomea. It isn't that hard to imagine the amount of children, legitimate or otherwise, that such a feat required. Of course a large house means security for the future, however if one of those children were to grow too ambitious, too bitter, or too popular, then outside powers had a tendency to take notice.

Eight times did a bastard scion of the Stagmore dynasty rise up and attempt to overthrow their kin, and seven times were they vanquished. Some rebellions were born of outside influence and greed, others an attempt to combat injustice and help out the downtrodden. Whatever their purpose, it mattered not. They all ended the same way.

As an aside, the Bastard's Wars should not be confused with the 'Interregnum' that followed shortly after, wherein the many bastard children of King August VII fought like rabid hounds over his kingdom after the good king died with every wife he ever took providing only stillborns or dying in childbirth. Yes, that war involved a great many bastards of the Stagmore dynasty. No, I don't understand why it isn't classified as the Ninth Bastard's War. Even so, I thought that clarification worth mentioning.

The first of the Bastard's Wars began in the second century Before Desolation during the reign of King Arwald II. One of his bastard sons, influenced by a great deal of Terranean money and mercenaries, rose up in what nowadays are the border regions between Triarios and Owkrestos. He waged a four-year long campaign against his father and trueborn siblings, but was eventually cast down at the walls of Kingstonopolis, where he was the first man over the walls and the first man to die.