THE WINTER CROWS: Volume V; Stefan I - The Strong

[Nectorist 7423]

THE WINTER CROWS: Volume V; Stefan I - The Strong

Written by Demetrius Barrow

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Stefan I - The Strong

"He is a scourge who knows no loyalty nor tact. I could not conceive of a greedy opportunity that he would not jump at eagerly. I fear, Your Imperial Majesty, with words that must express my utter contempt despite my reservation to make such a pronouncement, that the King of Haense is a deviant to the Imperial State and a foe to all humanity.” - Prince Philip Owyn, Archchancellor of the Holy Orenian Empire, c. 1621

 

Although he died at the young age of twenty six, Stefan I had lived several lives by the time drew his last breath.

 

The first of these came when he took that initial breath on the 15th of Godfrey’s Triumph, 1597, in the Ottosgrad Palace. Born to the child royal couple of Marus I and Queen Adelheid, Prince Stefan Karl’s early life was dominated by tutors, priests, and nuns that attended to him far more than his parents ever would. Much of what was said for Petyr Mark can be said for Stefan Karl: the scant few years he had in Haense before the Great Northern War ended abruptly upon his father’s defeat. Forced into exile in Mardon in 1604, Prince Stefan was only seven when his childhood home was burnt and his father’s kingdom conquered by King Tobias of Courland. As he entered his middle youth in Mardon, what few memories he had of his home were so muddled that he questioned whether they existed at all.

 

Where Prince Stefan’s upbringing differed from his brother’s was in his nature. The elder brother was meek, the younger gregarious; the elder sickly, the younger strong; the elder an afterthought, the younger a symbol of hope for the lost Haeseni. Stefan did not have the time to make a great impression on the court of Ottosgrad, but throughout his upbringing in Mardon he was a central part of King Peter’s court and frequently mistaken as the heir of the Barbanovs. He even served as a personal page and aide to the king during the brief Courland-Mardon War.

 

The many intrigues of the Greyspine Rebellion have been discussed in the previous novel, so treading that same trail shall be avoided. Prince Stefan was briefly considered as a candidate to sit a restored Haeseni throne over his brother, but a break in the line of succession was quickly dismissed by the conspirators. Throughout the later of 1611, as the combined forces of House Ruthern, Prince Otto, and the Rothswood clans cemented their alliance in the First Battle of the Rothswood against House Kovachev, it was King Petyr that they fought in the name of. Unfortunately this would not last, for mere weeks after the sickly boy was dead and the plans of the conspirators had fallen into disarray.

 

While one would assume that the aims of the Greyspine Rebellion would naturally shift towards putting Prince Stefan on the throne, matters had changed. Lukas Vanir’s arrest at the order of King Hughes of Lotharingia had removed a key, unifying voice in the movement to restore Haense. Additionally, the early death of Petyr II had made many wary of the prospect of enthroning another young boy as their king. Within a few months, another problem of succession could arise. With the forces of the Archduke of Akovia marshaling to launch a counterattack, the Greyspine conspirators tabled the issue of succession and focused on simply winning the war.

 

This temporary agreement does not mean that the command was unified within the rebel camp. Captain Harren of Metterden and Count Vladrick var Ruthern wanted to return to Metterden and await reinforcement by the experienced soldiers of Dunamis Company and the Knights of the Black Sepulchre. Prince Otto thought that they should disperse in the face of an amassed Kovachev army and focus on raiding many of the small towns and poorly-manned castles in Archduke Franz’s control. Brynden Tosali and the Rothswood clans called both ways cowardly and bitterly argued that a full assault was needed to finish the battered Kovachev forces before they could be reinforced by their allies in Lorraine and Clan Frostbeard or, even worse, an army from Courland.

 

Prince Otto, knowing that a break in strategy was far worse than a plan he did not care for, relented to the Rutherns and retreated to Metterden with them. The Dunamis Company and the Knights of the Black Sepulchre were only weeks away, and they brought not only additional manpower but an edge in quality that was desperately needed by the rebels. This general agreement in strategy was not fully adhered to. Not the sort of people to be convinced otherwise, certainly not with their homes on the lines, the Rothswood clans remained and gathered in force. This proved to be a most unwise policy by the clans, but they were no adepts in warfare to begin with. 

 

Immediately after his humiliating defeat, Archduke Franz called upon each vassal still loyal to him, each village where reserves could be drawn from, and every sworn knight and man at arms in all of Akovia. He knew well that the fortunes of his house were now on the line. He could either usher in a century of glory for House Kovachev, and perhaps a royal title to go with it, or the power of this old, esteemed house would be exterminated by the Greyspine Rebellion. The Frostbeard mercenaries arrived in Turov on the 26th of Owyn’s Flame, and the King of Lotharingia promised that he would arrive by the year’s end with his army of knights. King Joseph of Courland also began to organize an expeditionary force, but large-scale demobilization and retirement after the end of King Tobias’s conquests had left behind an army that was small and ill-equipped. A new one would have to be trained and supplied.

 

Not wishing to wait for months and give his enemies time to grow their own strength, Archduke Franz launched a counteroffensive into the Rothswood on the 4th of Godfrey’s Triumph, 1611. At the head of an army four thousand strong, the Archduke met two thousand Rothswood clansmen led by Brynden Tosali six days later at the Battle of Dunarsund. Ill-equipped, ill-prepared, and poorly led, the Rothswood army could only count on its collective ferocity and bravery, which could only go so far. In a confusing mess of a battle lasting over four hours in the thick woods around the small village, Franz Kovachev managed to avenge his earlier loss by soundly defeating the Tosali chief. Most of the Rothswood army lay dead or had scattered, while the Kovachevs had only lost two hundred soldiers. Mortesviel and Dunarsund, the homes of the Tosalis, were captured and made a base of operations for Franz Kovachev. The Grimrichs, Dunes, and Blackwoods, among other families, set their own manors and villages ablaze to prevent them from being taken by the advancing Kovachevs.

 

Raising additional soldiers by the day, the Archduke of Akovia felt confident enough to divide his forces and spread out across the north. Isolated guerilla bands were crushed. Villages sympathetic (or at least accused of being so) to the rebel cause were burned. Those who had pledged support to the Greyspine Rebellion were executed. Refugees from the Rothswood flooded towards Metterden, seriously straining resources in what was quickly becoming the last bastion of the rebellion. Fortunately it was the gateway to the north, so possession of it could ensure limited trade and reinforcement from the south.

 

As the year drew to a close, many in Haense and abroad in Mardon feared that the First Battle of the Rothswood had only been a minor victory, the high-water mark of what was quickly becoming a faltering rebellion. Franz Kovachev had now assembled an army numbering some seven thousand two hundred strong, so it could afford to be divided and garrisoned across Haense. Four and a half thousand of those were personally sworn to House Kovachev, which meant their loyalty could be relied on. Two thousand came from the settled Courlandic vassals in the north, who did not wish to be dispossessed by a successful rebellion. Seven hundred were Frostbeard mercenaries and formed a formidable core of shock infantry.

 

Over much of the next year, Franz Kovachev was able to secure his hold on the north. By the month of Owyn’s Flame only Metterden stood, but reinforcements from the Order of the Black Sepulchre and the Dunamis Company made it a formidable target to attack, so the Archduke of Akovia decided to wait for the arrival of the armies from Lorraine and Courland, but that was no certain thing. Despite it having been over a year since the outset of the Greyspine Rebellion, both had been slow to arrive. Unusually slow.

 

As mentioned in the previous volume, the strength of King Joseph of Courland paled in comparison to what his father boasted. The core of veteran soldiers, loyal officers, and capable commanders had been lost to years of campaigns and later retirements. The boy’s regency council cared more about cementing their individual stations than managing the affairs of the realm. As political intrigue in Aleksandria took the attention of more and more figures in the government, the Greyspine Rebellion became an afterthought, a matter that the governor of the north could handle.

 

As for the King of Lotharingia, he truly had no intention of supporting Franz Kovachev nor the Courlandic government that had failed to sufficiently reward House d’Amaury for their services. King Hughes, though young, was ambitious, and he knew that if he could aid in toppling the Courlandic hegemony, he would be a power broker in the ensuing interregnum. His arrest of Lukas Vanir in 1611 had been a ruse to convince the Archduke of Akovia that he was a loyal friend, but as he allowed his army to slowly meander across the Heartlands at a snail’s pace, he enjoyed tea and charcuterie with the former Palatine of Haense. The pair got on well, and in between discussions of strategy they spoke of philosophy, politics, and infrastructure. Simple things, but the young King of Lotharingia made a strong impression on the old Vanir.

 

The war lay dormant for many months. The Kovachevs did not dare to move against the well-fortified Metterden, but the Rutherns did not have the strength to face their foe in the open field. Just as it seemed a long stalemate was set to ensure, the Lothairingian contingent finally arrived in the south of Haense on the 21st of Owyn’s Flame, 1612. With Lukas Vanir there to prove their good intentions, the southern knights were accepted into Metterden and joined the Haeseni rebels to raucous cheers. At a council a day later, King Hughes advised an aggressive offensive against Franz Kovachev, who was blindsided by the Lotharingian betrayal.

 

Due to Lukas Vanir’s old age, King Hughes’s inexperience, Count Vladrick’s youth, and Prince Otto’s unwillingness to command an army larger than his roving band, Captain Harren of Metterden was given full authority over the forces of the Greyspine Rebellion. Concurring with the King of Lotharingia, the army of the rebel lords marched north from Metterden, catching the scattered Kovachev army unaware. Archduke Franz’s forces were scattered across the north, but he was able to organize a skillful retreat to his camps by Mortesviel in the Rothswood, where he began to consolidate his forces. Captain Harren, an aggressive but not foolhardy general, did not confront this united force, having failed in the objective of defeating it in detail. Instead, over the next month he took a few small towns and castles, projecting the authority of House Ruthern outside of Metterden again. However, this was not a popular strategy, and by the end of the month of Godfrey’s Triumph, the pressure from the mercenaries and hotheaded lords within the rebel army to fight a battle was too great. Acquiescing, Captain Harren marched north to Mortesviel to decide the fate of the war.

 

The Second Battle of the Rothswood, fought on the 7th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1612, was no sure thing for the Haeseni rebels. Franz Kovachev was a capable, experienced commander, and his host of seven thousand two hundred men was formidable. Under his command, Captain Harren had two thousand Ruthern levymen, seven hundred Barbanov soldiers under Prince Otto’s command, four hundred mercenaries from the Dunamis Company, another four hundred mercenaries from the Order of the Black Sepulchre, seven hundred Rothswood clansmen, and one thousand Lotharingian knights and squires. It was a motley army, but the Ruthern armory had been nearly emptied to outfit every last man and woman, and despite having two thousand fewer men than his Kovachev foe, Captain Harren’s army was experienced and of high quality.

 

Heavy blizzards marked the days leading up to the battle, creating a foreboding atmosphere that was noted by the soldiers of both armies. This battle would certainly decide the war, the very fate of Haense. A Kovachev victory would spell the end of any resistance and cement themselves as the rulers of the north for generations, while Courland’s hold on the region would be kept. A Ruthern victory would bring back the Haeseni Crown and catapult House Ruthern into primacy in the north, effectively replacing the spot that House Kovachev had inhabited before them. The stakes could not have been higher, and as the snowfalls forced the two armies to proceed on foot, the soldiers endured the mind-numbing cold knowing that each and every one of them would be needed for the coming battle.

 

Lotharingian knights being guided by a Ruthern footman during a scouting expedition, c. 1611. While King Hughes’s army was famed for its cavalry wing, their unfamiliarity with the northern terrain meant they had to be guided by locals.

 

On the afternoon of the 7th of the Grand Harvest, 1612, the two armies met just outside of Dunarsund and arrayed against each other. The snowstorms had abated, but several inches still coated the ground. This made maneuvering difficult, and by the time that lines were drawn it was well past midday. With the Archduke of Akovia holding a strong defensive position around the village, he wisely felt no need to press an attack against the smaller army. He simply had to lure them into a foolish advance and overwhelm them with his numbers. To bait them, he sent forth a skirmishing force.

 

Captain Harren, similarly, did not wish to be the aggressor here, but the Kovachev skirmishers forced him to deploy his own. He had hoped to use the expert cavalry under Prince Otto and the King of Lotharingia to his advantage in the battle, but the snows made it impossible. With no camp to retreat to and a need for a swift victory, the general was forced to respond in the exact manner he did not want to. Calling upon the light javelinmen of the Dunamis Company, he began to harass the Kovachev entrenchments around Dunarsund. For an hour this state of affairs persisted, but the tides shifted when the Archduke of Akovia was struck in the face with an arrow while shoring up his archers. Although it was not a fatal blow, it did force his retirement from the battlefield as he was taken to the manor of Mortesviel to be treated.

 

Franz Kovachev had failed to establish a clear chain of command, so as he withdrew, unconscious from his wound, confusion spread through the ranks. Many of his personal bannermen in the center, fearing their liege had been killed, drew back to the manor to investigate. Captain Harren, seeing this weakened center, ordered the Ruthern contingent of the army to advance and support, among them the young Count of Metterden himself. Prince Otto’s band and the Knights of the Black Sepulchre on the left pinned down the Frostbeard mercenaries, while King Hughes led his Lotharingian knights and the Rothswood clansmen to counter the Courlandic-Akovian vassals that were also directionless. The Dunamis Company was given the most simple task of the day: cause panic.

 

Taken from his army at the height of his power, Franz Kovachev was not there to rally it when it needed him most. Scattered, confused, and leaderless, thousands of Kovachev soldiers were cut down by the advancing Rutherns. On the left, the Frostbeard mercenaries quickly withdrew as they saw the tide of battle turn almost instantly, and the many vassals of the Archduke did the same. Many still had lands in titles in Courland. The north may be lost, but they had a place in the south, so hundreds more fled the battlefield for their homeland, at times even ignoring the castles and towns they had taken possession of after Tobias’s conquest.

 

Only the Kovachevs stood to fight, losing the numerical advantage they had boasted at the start. With thousands dead or fled, the remainder tried to defend the Mortesviel manor and their unconscious liege. For a short time there was a stalemate and the Kovachevs gained control of the gates around the petty manor, but in doing so they only sealed their fate. Prince Otto, not wishing to lose significant numbers in a frontal assault against the manor, ordered it set ablaze. A great fire swept through for the next hour, killing many hundreds of Kovachev men including the Archduke of Akovia, who apparently never woke from his injury as the fires raged around him. As the final embers died the moon had risen over the battlefield, illuminating the strewn bodies in its soft glow. Three thousand Akovians had perished, most of them Kovachev soldiers, and another two thousand had been captured. Only seven hundred Haeseni had been killed or wounded, but among that count was the old Palatine, Lukas Vanir. In his final hours, the elder statesman had helped secure the restoration of his kingdom.

 

The Second Battle of the Rothswood marked the end of House Kovachev’s primacy in the north and forever changed the balance of power within not just Haense, but the whole of Axios. As the Kingdom of Hanseti-Ruska was restored from the ruins of Akovia, and all the exiled lords invited back to repossess their old estates, the King of Lotharingia and the King of Mardon followed the north’s lead and declared themselves free and independent of Courlandic rule. King Joseph of Courland, now of age, dismissed his regency council and informed the Haeseni lords that he would be willing to make peace on favorable terms to them.

 

With the power of House Kovachev broken forever, even if the loyal Duke Sergei of Carntia was to be granted some of his traitorous cousin’s old possessions, House Ruthern now took the position of the strongest family in the realm. Count Vladrick and Captain Harren knew that their role was that of the kingmakers, for after Petyr II’s death no heir had been recognized. Although the rights of the late king’s brother, Prince Stefan, would seemingly take precedence, he personally lacked the means of enforcing his claim as he had not fought in the Greyspine Rebellion. 

 

Crossing into Haense on the 30th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1612, mere days before the turn of the year, Prince Stefan returned to a realm that he hardly remembered. Having only been a boy when he first departed, the prince, in the company of a few loyal Barbanov men, remarked that “... the snow, which I had remembered being a vivid, blinding white was very much that, but often too we came across a patch that was stained red.”

 

Fortunately for the young prince, the violence that had been shed over the past year was not without cause. The returning vassals of the north flocked to Metterden and its surrounding villages. It was here that the beginnings of a Duma, as agreed to by the victors of the Greyspine Rebellion, commenced over the ensuing weeks. As the lords of Haense gathered to elect a king, three major factions emerged throughout the late winter months of 1612.

 

The first, the Yellow Party, was led by Prince Otto, Duke Sergei Kovachev, and Marquis Petyr Vanir, son of the late Marquis Brandon Vanir. They represented the Barbanov cause and advocated for the return of the legitimate line to the throne, beginning with Prince Stefan. House Barbanov had ruled the north well, and the Greyspine Rebellion had its origins in the plot to retake the throne for Petyr II. It was obvious that most of the realm desired a return to what had been. The way to do that was to avoid notions of elevating another line and put faith in the capable Prince Stefan, who was well-liked in the court of Mardon and could keep the strength of the anti-Courland coalition together through it.

 

The second, the Greyspine Party, was led by Count Vladrick and Captain Harren, and found support among many of the veteran soldiers of the rebellion, who argued that those who had led Haense to victory and reclaimed its independence were best-suited to rule. Boasting impressive lands and many bannermen to themselves, the Rutherns were by far the most powerful family in the north. St. Karlsburg had been burned, the Barbanovs had shown their failure in the Great Northern War, and Haense needed to enter a new age, one led by the forward-thinking House Ruthern. Additionally, King Hughes of Lotharignia made it known that they favored a Ruthern king, which added further weight to the legitimacy of the Greyspine Party.

 

The third, the White Party, was led by House Vyronov and the Rothswood clans, who desired a swift departure from the ways of old. Whether Barbanov or Ruthern, all that would happen upon either’s ascension was the return of the ancient families to their seats and the continuation of the same aristocratic hierarchy that had existed before. Although they had fought against Franz Kovachev, the White Party did so believing that they would be amply rewarded. When it became evident over the course of the Duma that this would not be the case, they turned towards more radical calls for land redistribution and the reorganization of the aristocracy, which won the support of many minor lordlings, merchants, and landless knights.

 

Although the weeks of the National Duma were contentious, the outcome was never truly in doubt. Fearing the power of an all-controlling House Ruthern as much as the radical platform of the White Party, many of the middle nobility flocked towards the Yellows. Winning a great majority of the vote from the assembled nobility of Haense, Prince Stefan was formally accepted as King Stefan I on the 3rd of Sun’s Smile, 1613, to great applause in Metterden. A number of speeches were given, and while their contents have been lost to time, accounts from those there remarked that the young king was well-spoken and resolute.

 

It was determined that the king, aged sixteen, needed no regent, so Stefan I was thrown into the politics of a newly-independent realm that had been ruined by war. He officially had no seat of government- much less a government itself-, faced disaffected factions in the Greyspine Party and the White Party, and sat in an uncertain place in the global stage. It was to be a mountain of a task, but thankfully for the young king he was not without key allies. His uncle, Prince Otto, and his cousin, Prince Heinrik of Bihar, son of the regent Prince Karl Sigmar, became leading voices in his government and aided him in rebuilding a state bureaucracy. House Ruthern and its vassals were invited to partake, and from then on the Greyspine Party ceased to exist, as many young lordlings were granted posts and titles in the government and Count Vladrick and Captain Harren were given places on the king’s council. Notably, the White Party was neglected, and while the Vyronovs and the Rothswood clans could do little but protest, they returned to their homes and vowed only to fulfill what their oaths to the king required of them and nothing more.

 

Ironically, one of the first acts that King Stefan did to secure his reign was to return to the Heartlands, more specifically to Lotharingia. King Peter of Mardon had already responded positively to the restoration of House Barbanov, but the court of Metz was far more muted on the subject. To curry some favor with Lotharingia, and keep intact the united front against Courland, King Stefan decided to venture down there with his court. In what was a shocking move at the time, the King of Haense also agreed to have his coronation in the Hochspitze Palace, home of the absurdly wealthy House of Horen-Pruessens, one of King Hughes’s key vassals. Held on the 6th of Harren’s Folly, 1613, to a crowd of mostly Heartlanders, Stefan I was officially recognized as lord and master of Haense, a move that ruffled many feathers among his northern courtiers, but more than pleased the King of Lotharingia.

 

King Stefan’s connections to the Heartlands was unprecedented for a King of Haense and proved to be a defining point of his reign. Raised in Mardon and well-connected with the southern nobility, the young monarch was thought to be more comfortable in the warm, colorful courts of Auguston and Metz than he ever was in the cold, backwards north. He struck up many friendships during his ventures south, most fortuitously with Prince Frederick of House Horen-Preussens, the head of the Horenic scion and perhaps the wealthiest man in all of Axios owing to his abundant lands in the fertile, bountiful lands of eastern Lotharingia. It was the Prince of Pruvia who gave King Stefan a number of loans to finance the rebuilding of Haense and was a key southern ally for House Barbanov during the early years of Stefan’s reign.

 

Another key step in King Stefan’s ‘southern ambitions’ was formalizing peace between Haense and Courland. King Joseph of Courland had effectively recognized House Barbanov’s right over the north by his refusal to attempt to reconquer it after the Archduke of Akovia’s defeat, but it had not yet been made official. The ensuing weeks of negotiations, mostly conducted by Prince Heinrik of Bihar and Sir Louis de Felsen, saw King Joseph’s formal recognition of King Stefan’s possession of all lands and titles that had been taken during the Great Northern War. Additionally, King Joseph’s twin sister, Princess Elizabeth Mariya, was sent north to marry the King of Haense. In return for this, King Stefan gave much-needed loans to Courland to keep its government afloat financially.

 

While hindsight proved King Stefan’s wisdom in his foreign policy in 1613, it did not make him a popular king in his early reign. He had spent most of it in Hochspitze Palace with the Prince of Pruvia and other Lotharingian vassals, dining, hunting, attending balls, and operating his government out of a bedroom he had been given. His coronation in the south, rather than one of the traditional estates of Haense, was another slight, as was his eagerness to make peace with Courland and marry one of its princesses. Many, specifically those who had made up the White Party or were veterans of the Greyspine Rebellion, loudly decried their king’s neglect of affairs in the north. Towns had been burned, including a capital that had yet to be rebuilt. Much of the unapportioned land in the north was unclaimed, or even worse, claimed by two or more parties. The government apparatus was present enough in the south, where it established embassies in Mardon and Metz and had garnered recognition for an independent Haense across the world, but back in the northern realm law and administration had been left to local rule.

 

Hochspitze Palace, home of the House Horen-Preussens in Lotharingia, c. 1609. Stefan I spent at least five winters here during his reign and visited twenty two times in all. Although officially owned by his friend, Prince Frederick, he was given considerable say in  renovations and expansions to the palace.

 

To further these difficulties, a small revolt broke out in Turov led by Andrei Kovachev, brother of the late Archduke of Akovia. This rebellion was bloodlessly put down by Captain Harren, who had Andrei executed, but in the aftermath he loudly questioned why the newly-elected king was spending more time in the south than he was back in his home where there was serious work to be done. 

 

King Stefan was not ignorant to this, and in the summer of 1613 he returned north, perhaps wishing to stave off any ambitions by House Ruthern or others even more than he desired to truly rule there. Still, at the urging of Prince Otto and Prince Heinrik, he established his court in Metterden and turned his focus towards settling domestic matters. He left Prince Heinrik in Lotharingia, where he would stand as his cousin’s proxy for his wedding with Princess Elizabeth, but otherwise he brought most of his court back to the north with him.

 

In Metterden, the king made up for his neglect by working furiously to rebuild his realm, perhaps with greater diligence than a King of Haense has ever shown. He spent weeks settling various land disputes, confirming titles, granting abandoned castles, towns, and other lands to key supporters, and ordered the reconstruction of all estates and settlements that had been damaged during the war. Fatefully, he cemented the loyalty of House Ruthern by confirming the possession of all lands that they had occupied during the Greyspine Rebellion. This angered many, foremost among them Duke Sergei of Carnatia and Marquis Petyr of Vasiland, who both stood to lose the most from this, but they had neither the allies nor the manpower to leverage any sort of weight. The end of the prominence of Kovachevs and the Vanirs, two of Haense’s oldest families and key parts of its early history, was solidified at this moment. They would continue to occupy places in Haense’s nobility, but never again would they play any decisive role in history.

 

On the 14th of Horen’s Calling, 1613, King Stefan was married via proxy to Princess Elizabeth in a large ceremony in Hochspitze Palace. In an odd display, nearly all of the Heartlands nobility, from the King of Mardon to the nobles of the Crownlands, were present for this occasion. The only person absent himself was the groom, who was far away in Metterden finalizing the establishment of a new capital at a place called Camp Alban, located at the base of House Ruthern’s seat on the Greyspine Mountains.

 

The origins of Camp Alban, which would later become the City of Alban, is hazy. It seems to have its origins as a logging camp along the southern border of Haense, close to one of the roads leading to the Heartlands. From here, a trade town grew around it, which later became a military outpost. It was overrun by King Tobias’ army during the Great Northern War before its occupation by House Ruthern in 1609. Possessing room for growth, strategically located, and along a thriving trade route, Camp Alban was an ideal location for a new capital. By late summer of 1613, construction had begun for a palace and city that would become the new seat of House Barbanov and the Haeseni Crown, but it would not fit the court of Haense for some time, so King Stefan remained at Metterden where he could overlook the construction’s progress from the ramparts.

 

The busy year of 1613 came to a close with Queen Elizabeth’s arrival in the north alongside Prince Heinrik. The young king was recorded to be “....thoroughly excited to meet his wife, and throughout the weeks leading to her arrival he planned a number of festivities for his queen’s entry. He commissioned a number of paintings of her, and he told all his courtiers that he had been told that she was the most beautiful, lively woman in all of Axios.” Whether misled or lying himself, King Stefan’s words were far from the truth. Upon her arrival in Haense on the 19th of Godfrey’s Triumph, 1613, the vibrant decorations and luxurious fairgrounds that greeted her could not mask the unenthusiastic reception from the people of Haense. King Stefan may have been working hard to repair his reputation, but it did not mean that a Staunton, much less a Staunton queen, was going to be embraced with open arms.

 

One would assume that Queen Elizabeth’s reputation would improve with time as her husband’s did, but this was unfortunately not the case. The nobility understood the strategy behind the marriage, so they acted courteously in her presence, if never warm. The soldiers, peasants, and lower classes of the realm were a different story. To them, she was the living embodiment of the continued grip that Courland had over Haense. Thousands had died to try to keep the north free from the conqueror, and thousands more had died to free it from his son, but no punishment came from House Staunton itself. Instead, they had been rewarded with the greatest honor that they could have possibly been given: the queen.

 

King Stefan’s initial excitement and enchantment with his wife also quickly extinguished. Queen Elizabeth had been given a modern education in Aleksandria, where she was well-tutored in politics, history, and government, and for her efforts she was a prominent advisor for her brother and a close counsel for him. This clashed greatly with the far more conservative courtly apparatus of Haense, where she was expected to be a quiet, pious matron and mother. Her acerbic wit and refusal to conform to the traditions of the realm angered King Stefan. The young king barely tolerated being contradicted by his own councilors, but to ever have it come from his wife was an insult that dug deep within him. Within a month the couple took to separate bedchambers, and soon the Queen of Haense, like her husband, sought every excuse she could to go south, away from the north and to the courts and salons where she would not be rebuked for trying to voice her opinion on the affairs of the world.

 

This frigid marriage, ”colder than any northern gale.” as put by one of the king’s secretaries, Ludvik Poetl, did little to dent Stefan’s high spirits. Without a queen to build a court he did so himself, and he imported many traditions and fashions from the southern halls he had so often frequented. There was some resistance to this, but many of the higher nobility had been with him for years in exile, so they readily took up the traditions of Metz and Mardon and incorporated them in the Haeseni courtly apparatus. A fine dancer and an energetic conversationalist, King Stefan was a lively participant in the many balls, festivals, and tournaments that he often personally organized and hosted during his reign.

 

By 1614, the winds of Axios had changed again. In the south, rebellion in western Lotharingia had taken King Hughes by surprise and pushed his forces back to the gates of Metz. In the old Crownlands, petty lords and robber barons feuded and fought, as there was no central authority to govern them all. Courland had begun an ill-advised expansion into the interior of Asul, which strained its thin resources further than it could afford, leading to an economic collapse. From his calm seat in Auguston, King Peter of Mardon observed the scene with an eager eye. He sent word to his elder brother, Prince John Frederick, who had been quietly living in exile in the Kingdom of the Westerlands for all these years, that an opportunity to restore the Empire had now presented itself.

 

Over the next few months, John Frederick went around the courts and keeps of the Heartlands, making his pitch to restore the Empire to any lord or lady that would hear it. In this time of great tumult and uncertainty, a return to the days of the Johannians was much-desired. King Hughes of Lotharingia, most of all, hoped that with a new Empire could come the protection and military aid he so desperately needed to fight off the rebels of House Romstun that threatened him. On the 14th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1614, John Frederick was crowned Emperor John V in the court of Auguston, bringing the Heartlands under his control. His successive campaign in Lotharingia was less successful, but by the summer of 1615 he was openly courting Haense to follow suit.

 

King Stefan was eager to take advantage of this, even if the rest of his council harbored some concerns. It was obvious from the outset that John V was not made in the mold of his Johannian predecessors, nor was his realm anything close to the power that John III had boasted two generations ago. By tethering itself to a weak Empire, Haense would be thrust into the intrigue and politics of the south to a greater degree than it had before, and with that would come all the consequences. Of course, to King Stefan this all sounded like music to his ears, and he knew that a strong Haense could leverage its place in a weak Empire far more effectively than before. He agreed to pledge his fealty to John V and send an army south, but in turn demanded extensive trading rights, tax exemption, and legal autonomy within his kingdom’s borders. The Emperor, desperate for assistance, agreed without haste, and so on the 2nd of Sun’s Smile, 1615, the Kingdom of Haense officially took its place back in the Holy Orenian Empire.

 

It must be noted that at this time, King Stefan’s brother-in-law, King Joseph of Courland died of a burst belly. His young son, Henry, took the throne, but a regency, this time held by one man, Prince Frederick Staunton-Baden, a brother and senior general of the late King Tobias. Desperate to resolve his kingdom’s dire finances, Prince Frederick dissolved the Kingdom of Courland and had his great-nephew take the title ‘Prince of Evreux’ in exchange for vassalization by Emperor John V and the assumption of House Staunton’s debts by the Imperial Treasury.

 

To fulfill his end of the agreement, King Stefan sent an army south led by his uncle, Prince Otto, to aid the floundering Imperial campaign in Lotharingia. Little fighting was done, but this show of force was enough to convince House Romstun that a favorable peace was in their interests. They pledged direct fealty to John V and laid down their arms in exchange for tacit permission to flay King Hughes alive. Reluctantly, the Emperor agreed to these terms in order to bring peace to his new realm, and so the King of Lotharingia who had been so instrumental to the Greyspine Rebellion’s victory, was killed on the 18th of Harren’s Folly, 1615.

 

The Emperor’s mishandling of the rebellion, and his willingness to allow the execution of one of his vassals unpunished, did not inspire confidence among his subjects, least of all King Stefan. Although he had been raised in the court of Auguston, and was a friend of King Peter of Mardon, he was little-impressed with the heirs of the Fifth Empire. Over the next few years he devoted himself to strengthening his own realm. Under Prince Heinrik and Captain Harren’s leadership, the Haeseni army professionalized and grew, giving the king a reliable force of his own again. It was tested during a series of riots in the fall of 1615 by farmers protesting low wheat prices, which they blamed on Queen Elizabeth. The new army was able to quickly and effectively put these down.

 

By 1616, enough of the City of Alban had been built for King Stefan and his court to move there, even if further construction happened around them daily. Taking residence in the Esenstadt Palace on the western end of the city, the king and his court began the process of shifting power away from the seat of House Ruthern and towards that of House Barbanov. The presence of the royal court gave the city a much-needed stimulus, and over the next few years thousands moved to the new capital. By 1619 construction had finished, the Esenstadt Palace was completed and christened, and Alban had grown to be the largest city in all of Haense.

 

Around this time, a daughter of a local burgher in Alban caught the king’s eye. In part by the king’s own insistence, the woman’s surname is not known, only her first: Agafokliya. The pair fell in love by 1617, and it was said that this burgher’s daughter was closer to a consort than Queen Elizabeth was. Agafokliya, owing to her station, was never allowed anywhere near the circles of the Haeseni court, nor was she officially recognized as King Stefan’s mistress, but the pair often danced at public festivals, and on occasion they could be spotted together in a tavern or during a hunt in the woods. In 1620, Agafokliya bore Stefan his only child that would live past infancy, a boy named Jakob Ludvik, who would come to be the progenitor of the House of Ludovar.

 

This was the case because Queen Elizabeth failed to produce an heir. The royal couple hardly spoke to each other, much less shared the same room, and as said by Prince Heinrik, “the lifeless marriage between the two birthed children that inherited this disposition.” Prince Heinrik, a loyal Palatine and soldier to his cousin, would no doubt have been executed had these uncharacteristically cruel words been overheard by anyone other than a water-carrier with a reputation for lying.

 

The couple’s first child, a girl named Viktoriya Katerina, was born in 1617 but died three months later from consumption. Their second, a boy named Petyr Karl, was born a year later, but came out stillborn. Neither loss seemed to trouble the monarchs too greatly, but after that they only saw each other in passing, as Queen Elizabeth spent more time in the courts of the south than she did in Haense. In a rare trip back north on the 17th of Sun’s Smile, 1619, she and her party were caught on the road by members of Clan Blackwood and killed. 

 

King Stefan did not shed a tear at the news, but he issued a challenge of a duel to Viktor Blackwood, the patriarch of Clan Blackwood. In the first of his many famous duels in his life, King Stefan, a fine swordsman, slew his foe. He then ordered the manor of Clan Blackwood to be burned and the principal conspirators executed. This was perhaps the kindest deed he had done his late wife, and it made up for his short, uninspired speech he gave at her funeral a week after her assassination.

 

People of the Rothswood clans being investigated by a Haeseni patrol for suspicious activity, c. 1614. In the aftermath of the Greyspine Rebellion and the National Duma of 1612, the Rothswood became a hotbed of dissident activity from those who felt that their loyalty had been taken for granted. While it rarely escalated to violence, at times tax collectors and surveyors were attacked while traveling in the region.

 

As this was happening, King Stefan had not lost sight of his ‘southern ambitions’. In 1616, a series of letters between him and King Peter of Mardon surfaced, detailing a conspiracy to depose John V. The Emperor, powerless to act against them, instead gambled on turning the forces of the Empire outwards. Rebellion had broken out in Evreux and Prince Frederick had requested the aid of his liege to put it down. In the winter of 1616, the Emperor ordered all of the vassals of Haense to assemble in Adelburg, the restored Imperial capital. King Stefan maliciously obliged, assembling a force of two thousand under the command of Prince Otto, perhaps a third of his true strength, but he wisely joined the army in person to quell suspicions.

 

King Stefan’s role in the disastrous Santegian Rebellion is as hotly-debated now as it was back then. Some, adhering to The Debacle of the Santegian Campaign, the seminal work of James FitzJames, an officer in the Imperial army at the time, accused the King of Haense of having deliberately weakened the Imperial host alongside the other vassals of the Empire. He and Prince Otto were slow to follow orders, at times resisting them outright, and barely pretended to cooperate with the Imperial high command during the war. They did not arrive on Asul until four months after the main Imperial host, and even then they went around raiding separately from the main body. King Stefan was late to arrive at the Battle of Castell in 1618, where John V’s host was shattered and routed back to Trier. At the Siege of Trier itself, Prince Otto directed the army outside of the walls of the city, where it occasionally skirmished with detachments of the rebel Santegian army. When the defeat of the Imperial army at Trier became an inevitability, the King of Haense and his host boarded their ships and returned home, hardly losing a man in the whole affair while the Emperor and his army perished at Trier.

 

In 1620, Prince Heinrik published a response to James FitzJames, titled A Defense of the Conduct of Prince Otto and of His Majesty During the War in Evreux. In it, he accused Emperor John V of outright incompetence and revealed that Prince Otto had in fact written to the Imperial war camp, begging them to not engage in direct battle with the Santegians. The Imperial army was ill-equipped, poorly-trained, and far from a functional force to wage a campaign. Knowing that following them would mean the death of the Haeseni contingent, Prince Otto faithfully led the army in a number of successful smaller battles and raids. The Emperor’s defeat at the Battle of Castell and retreat to Trier would have only been made more disastrous if another host had entered the city, draining it of much-needed resources. It was a sounder strategy to position the Haeseni army outside of the besieged port, where it could effectively harass the Santegian army. By the time of the siege’s end, King Stefan knew that the destruction of the Imperial army would have disastrous ramifications back home, so he made the decision to withdraw not to save himself, but to save the Empire.

 

Following the disastrous Santegian Rebellion and the death of John V at the Siege of Trier on the 8th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1619, King Stefan made for Adelburg and occupied it with his army. This proved to be a wise decision, news of the Emperor’s defeat and the loss of all Imperial holdings on Asul sparked riots throughout the Empire. Without a garrison, the capital would have been at the mercy of the mobs, but Prince Otto and the Haeseni army kept order. When Prince Robert of Marna, the former Emperor Robert II, tried to make a ploy for the Empire, it was King Stefan who had him arrested and briefly installed himself as the de facto Lord Protector until King Peter of Mardon could arrive to assume the throne. This was done on the 31st of Tobias’s Bounty, 1619, and as the year closed the new Emperor Peter II rewarded the decisive action of his loyal vassal with several jewels from his late brother’s collection and a number of estates in the Heartlands.

 

While the Santegian Rebellion had been a loss for the Empire, it was a great boon for King Stefan who had now proven himself to be the dominant political and military power in the Empire, even above the Emperor himself. It made him a popular man with much of Haense, save House Ruthern, which still held strong loyalties to the wider Empire and fellow southern vassals. Captain Harren of Metterden acted most drastically, resigning from the Haeseni council, his post in the army, and joining Peter II’s government in Adelburg as a senior military advisor. Count Vladrick was not so temperamental, but he did hint to his liege that he would not stand by any talk of outright rebellion. 

 

King Stefan did not immediately return home after this brief succession crisis, and instead he sent the army back north while he traveled to Lotharingia to see his old friend, Prince Frederick of Pruvia. Remaining in Pruvia for a month, King Stefan and Prince Frederick arranged a most fortuitous arrangement for the realm. Knowing that the winds were shifting against Lotharingia, which had experienced a number of assassinations, small rebellions, and other schemes since King Hughes’s death, Prince Frederick arranged for his family’s acceptance into the peerage of Haense in the event of Lotharingia’s downfall. In exchange, he gave Stefan half of his wealth, which included a thousand different manors, shops, vineyards, castles, and other lucrative properties across Axios. Overnight, the Haeseni treasury had reached an unprecedented size.

 

On the 15th of Sun’s Smile, 1620, Stefan fought his second famous duel with Odo d’Amaury, a former King of Lotharingia who had been King Hughes’s predecessor before a palace coup. According to Francis of Geese (or Guise, for Francis’s account can only be found in the journals of Olof of Hedeby, who was infamously poor with spelling), Odo d’Amaury was incensed at the Haeseni king’s sudden possession of nearly a fifth of Lotharingia’s lands, far greater even than its king’s own properties. The pair fought a gentleman’s duel for first blood to decide who would have ownership of a bridge that had been formally bequeathed to the King of Haense, but led to a wheat farm belonging to one of Odo d’Amaury’s estates. King Stefan won this duel handily and severely wounded his foe. King Leufory, wishing to be rid of his troublesome father, did not even bother to send for a medic and allowed him to bleed to death.

 

King Leufroy and King Stefan had a previous history of working with each other. They had both been involved with the initial plot to overthrow John V, then during the Santegian Rebellion they made an effort to cooperate some, even fighting a small battle together in 1617. During Stefan’s occupation of Adelburg in 1619, Leufroy moved in support of the temporary regent by arresting supporters of Prince Robert of Marna in Metz. The two reaffirmed their alliance by arranging a betrothal between King Stefan’s cousin, Prince Otto Georg, and King Leufroy’s cousin, Princess Eleanor Aleksandra.

 

With his latest ventures down south completed, King Stefan returned his attention to matters in the north. He had not set foot in Haense since 1617, when he had left to join the ill-fated Imperial campaign to defend Evreux, but he came to a thriving realm. Prince Heinrik’s competent administration had led to a growth in trade within the kingdom. The Pruvian Inheritance only bolstered this economic expansion, and with its steady revenues a number of ports, bridges, forts, roads, towns, and other pieces of infrastructure were built across the realm. The City of Alban was expanded again to accommodate a swelling population, which had begun to flock to Haense from all over the Empire, owing to the instability of the Imperial regime. This added to Alban a number of artisans, merchants, and craftsmen who only further allowed the capital to flourish.

 

In these later years of his life, King Stefan seems to have had a change of policy when it came to culture and the court. Perhaps due to his distaste towards the weakness of the Heartlands and a need to affirm Haense’s own autonomy, Stefan began to devote more time and attention to emphasizing and promoting Haense’s culture, which had suffered through violent wars of conquest then through the adoption of many traditions from the Heartlands. King Stefan, Prince Heinrik, and Lord Elias Colborn, assembled a commission of scholars and historians to record Haense’s history, find obscure cultural traditions, and piece together the New Marian language.

 

Before the codification under Stefan I, New Marian had been a tongue fragmented by local dialects that descended from mixtures of the Old Marian and Raevir Botch languages along with several others. Because of this, it had been impossible to issue laws or conduct royal business in any language other than Common. This only further muddied the distinction between the cultural spheres of the Highlands and the Heartlands. A lack of a clear distinction had been fine while Haense had been under a strong Empire, but it was clear to all in the court of Esenstadt, not least the king, that the end of the Mardon Empire was a matter of when and not if.

 

After the fall of the Empire in 1595, members of the Canonist Church flocked to Haense, as they faced persecution under King Tobias of Courland, who created a new Church with his handpicked favorites. Monastic communities in particular sprung up across Haense, and they became an important part of King Stefan’s project of standardizing New Marian given their literacy and access to many manuscripts which they could translate.

 

The emphasization of the unique place of Haense among the human realms as the home of all of the Highlanders was almost certainly King Stefan’s impetus for standardizing New Marian. That said, this is by no means the unique consensus, as others point to the king’s lack of familiarity with Raevir Botch and Old Marian, and he could only roughly speak the mixed dialect of the St. Karlsburg region. Over the course of three years, starting in 1620, King Stefan, Prince Heinrik, and Lord Elias Colborn collected all texts containing the broader Marian language, sent out royal agents to every town and village to note all linguistic patterns, and enlisted the aid of a group of monks that specialized in calligraphy. The three men, along with dozens of other contributors, established a formal and universal New Marian language to be used across Haense. Authors, poets, and playwrights were sponsored by the government to promote the use of the New Marian language in the arts, which laid the roots for the Haeseni literary tradition that would blossom several generations later.

 

Troubles on the border confirmed Haense’s need to maintain its autonomy. In the spring of 1620, raiding parties from Norland, taking advantage of the weakened Imperial garrisons in the west, made forays into Haense. Several farms and towns were burned and looted, which prompted the King of Haense to send the reliable Prince Heinrik down to strengthen it. Several more attempts were made from Norland, sometimes so serious that Stefan himself fought alongside his army, but all were repulsed. Proving Haense’s strength, the king was reportedly quite relieved when he heard that the Norlandic raiding parties had begun to focus on the western Heartlands of the Empire, which were weakly-defended.

 

Able to settle into a short period of peace, Prince Heinrik was able to implement a number of military reforms based around the old Carnatian system under Jan Kovachev, which emphasized intensive selective breeding of horses to create an industry that could supply a proportionally massive heavy cavalry wing. This was a sudden departure from the discredited Imperial army structure at the time, which was based around heavy infantry with only light cavalry in support for scouting and harassing maneuvers (this was only nominal- quite frequently, the Imperial army did not have the resources to equip its soldiers properly. Although it was an expensive venture, the Palatine was able to secure the funding to create a number of large stables. Soon, the Haeseni steeds were considered the finest in the known world and were sought far and wide.

 

By 1622, Stefan had also begun a series of reforms within his beloved court. Free from the pressing demands of inter-Imperial relations and border security, he implemented many of the same ‘Haensification’ policies (as they were now being called by southern courtiers in Alban like cultural historian Sir Walter Rowley). The southern ways of dress and court ceremony were discarded, music and instruments had to originate from the north, and New Marian was made the mandated language in all court settings. These changes brought some grumbling from those who had become accustomed to the Heartlander culture that had been imported, but they quickly adapted to their king’s new court rules.

 

King Stefan’s consolidation of power over the court and his establishment of a stronger national identity could not have come at a better time. Emperor Peter II had been even less stable of a figure than his older brother and the Empire was suffering for it. The Imperial army, which had never recovered since the disaster in the Santegian Rebellion, was all but replaced with unreliable, untrustworthy mercenaries. The Emperor himself was unhappily married to a daughter of House Romstun, one of the most notorious of these gangs that had already caused the Empire trouble back in 1614, but in 1623 any pretense of an alliance was shattered when his brother, the Archchancellor Philip Owyn, was flayed in the streets of Adelburg by members of House Romstun. While Peter II’s initial response had been one of indifference, as he retreated into his palace while his brother screamed for mercy, his council urged him to take action.

 

The banners of the Empire were called again, and from reports received from Harren of Metterden, now in charge of prosecuting the war against House Romstun, victory would rely on the ability of the north. In the summer of 1623, an army of six thousand Haeseni led by Prince Heinrik marched south to join the main body of the Imperial army in Adelburg. This Imperial force, around ten thousand soldiers in all, then marched into western Lotharingia, the homeland of House Romstun. After a quick campaign that saw little fighting, the rebellious mercenaries were driven out by an efficient, well-led Haeseni vanguard. By the month of Sun’s Smile, 1624, western Lotharingia was restored to Imperial control, mostly as a result of the Haeseni contribution.

 

The reason that King Stefan had been unable to join his army was because of a swelling around his neck that had onset early in 1623. While he was able to attend to his royal duties with the same diligence as before, he often had to take long breaks and sprinkle brief naps throughout his day, something that would have been unthinkable before. By winter he was bedridden and only rose for mass and to hear reports of Prince Heinrik’s operations in the war against the Romstuns. He was bled, leeched, and drained many times, but his condition only seemed to worsen as a result. Never to be discouraged, he wrote two poems in New Marian meant to help young children learn the language and established a committee to translate Church documents from Flexio to New Marian to be chaired by Lord Colborn. Even in the closing months of his life he worked tirelessly to transform his country’s national identity.

 

After these final acts, he slipped into a coma for two months until he finally passed away on the 6th of Harren’s Folly, 1624. He was twenty six years old and had ruled Hanseti-Ruska for twelve years. He was not awake to hear of his cousin’s victory in Prince Philip’s War, but he likely would have been assured of success. The news he had been receiving was positive and the Haeseni army was perhaps the single most competent force on Axios at that point. 

 

As the first King of Haense to die in his homeland, no great procession around the continent was needed. In a well-attended funeral on the 7th of Harren’s Folly, with crowds in Alban numbering in the tens of thousands, Stefan I was interred beneath the Esenstadt Palace. All mourned for the young king, whose death had been expected for months, but was no less devastating. He was a strong, wise ruler beyond his young years, and had he lived to a prime age he certainly would have become one of history’s greatest men.

 

His old friend, Lord Elias Colborn, delivered a eulogy that brought a close to a ceremony that had lasted ten hours. Some of his words have been preserved to today.

 

"There was no certainty that our restored country would prosper as it had before. Were a weak incapable ruler to have been elected to the throne in 1613, we would be suffering the same ills that some states in the south presently are confronted with. Instead, it was King Stefan who guided us. Unburdened by the evils of the past, he bounded forward relentlessly into this new age and made the most of it. He took the fortune of our past and applied it to his designs of the future, which has made us a people united by customs and language more closely than before. Our Haense, emerging from our war for independence, was a blank canvas with which he had painted a most beautiful picture. His successors will need only to follow his example, and our tapestry will be the most magnificent the world has seen.”

 

At a high place of honor in the funeral ceremony was a man who had been burdened by the evils of the past. With no sons or daughters to inherit, the Crown of Hanseti-Ruska would pass to the man who had fought the hardest to see it put upon the head of the Barbanovs again. Prince Otto Heinrik watched his nephew’s body descend into a prepared crypt beneath the Esenstadt with clenched teeth and a stoic demeanor. The last thing he had ever wanted was to rule the north, but when the corpse of Stefan I was sealed shut all eyes would turn to him.

 

Dravi, Stefan I ‘the Strong’

15th of Godfrey’s Triumph, 1597-6th of Harren’s Folly, 1624

(r. 7th of Owyn’s Flame, 1611-6th of Harren’s Folly, 1624)

 

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Svyatye Kristof, Yuda i Piyus. Dopuskaem, chtoby my znali, kak Bog nas sozdal. Nikogda ne pozvolim sebe videt' temnotu, no budem videt' tol'ko svet mudrosti i istiny. Pust' Bog tebya blagoslovit.

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