THE WINTER CROWS: Volume VI; Otto I - The Quick

[Nectorist 7423]

THE WINTER CROWS: Volume VI; Otto I - The Quick

Written by Demetrius Barrow

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Otto I - The Quick

"It was the greatest week of my life.” - An unnamed veteran who had served under Otto I since the Great Northern War

 

Prince Otto Heinrik was born the same day his father was interred in the ground beneath St. Karlsburg. The second son of Andrik II and Reza Elizaveta, Prince Otto, born on the 27th of Sigismund’s End, 1586, would never know his father: at birth he was already the heir of his brother, King Marus, who himself was just a boy. With a kingdom reeling from the failed Greyspine Rebellion and the Barbanov Dynasty on the brink of a succession dispute, caring for a child-king was one of the last things the realm needed. Even less than that was caring for that child-king’s younger brother.

 

While not neglected, Otto’s upbringing was far from the minds of men such as the regent, Prince Karl of Bihar, who in 1590 was forced to spend nearly every waking moment supporting Emperor Philip I’s war against King Tobias Staunton and his coalition. Queen Reza, isolated at court, clung tightly to her eldest, as raising him was one of the few privileges still afforded to her. His older brother was always attended to by their mother, a tutor, or a priest, and the two hardly had a moment together. With his peers kept well away from Castle Ottosgrad, given the reputation of its court for being desolate, militant, and backwards, there was only one person that the young prince could turn to for company: his elder sister, Princess Kathrerine Aleksandra.

 

In the cold halls of the Ottosgrad, made even more dour each year as the news from the Heartlands grew worse and more young nobles were returned to the familial estates, Otto and Katherine provided life. They were odd children certainly, that was to be expected when they were the only company for each other, but the two were endearing nonetheless. As they played up and down the halls of the palace during dark winter days, or excitedly danced around the palace gardens as spring made the flowers. Those who saw the children adored them, for the times gave little to adore, but they also envied them, for they were oblivious to the destruction and death that was ripping apart the world they knew.

 

Few were as envious as King Marus himself. Deprived of anything resembling a normal childhood, he occasionally watched his siblings enjoy even the diminished taste of the unburdened youth he would never have. The brothers have few recorded interactions but those they did were never warm. They were never at odds, they were never old enough to be, but the weight upon Marus’s young shoulders drove him to a depression that was far beyond his age. Otto could hardly perceive this and he revered his older brother as any else would, something that, while difficult to find in the texts of this time, manifested far more clearly later in life.

 

At fourteen, Prince Otto was given a lieutenant’s commission in the cavalry wing of the Haeseni army. While it was common for young Haeseni noblemen to squire under other lords or serve in their family’s levy, it was rare to officially join an army that lacked much prestige. Prince’s Otto’s commission is a reflection of the desperation throughout his brother’s realm: much of the army had been destroyed in the Crownlands during the Coalition War and good officers were lacking. The Brawm Rebellion a year earlier had done much to restore national pride, but it also revealed the deficiencies within the army. 

 

Originally, Otto’s commission was meant as a nominal appointment. He was only fourteen, had received very little military education, and had not displayed many natural traits of leadership thus far. More than anything, he enjoyed rocks and seemed on the route to becoming a geologist. Perhaps such eccentricities would have been suitable for a king’s younger brother in normal times, but a lack of manpower necessitated that Otto at least appear to embrace a formal role of leadership. While Otto retained his passion for rocks for the rest of his life, possessing a collection of nearly four thousand unique minerals by the time of his death, from 1600 and on his life was to be marked by his military service.

 

Wanting to make his brother proud, Otto poured his mind into many texts and treatises on warfare and leadership. He read the works of Athirius Roke, Rickard Barrow, Augustus d’Amaury, and others, learning the fundamentals of military life and combat. He frequently drilled his platoon in training methods he had read about, but he also sought advice from experienced soldiers under his command. Proving himself to not be a detached, arrogant prince as many had expected, the men he led warmed to him. Over time he was entrusted with more serious assignments, such as scouting Haense’s frontier or overseeing logging operations around the Rothswood. He did his duties well and competently, and it was apparent within only a year that he possessed a natural talent for military leadership. He was a gifted rider as well, and even though he was never more than an average swordsman he used a lance comfortably.

 

The prince’s life was set to change even more in short order. King Tobias of Courland had begun to take a more aggressive posture towards the north. Earlier in 1601, a meeting between him and King Marus had gone awry, alerting all in the realm that war was on the horizon. Needing to prepare his realm for war again, the king, now in control of his government, raised taxes to fund increased conscription within the army. He also began to strengthen ties with his most powerful vassals to ensure their loyalty during the war. The most important of these, House Kovachev, had a significant faction among them that were all but open supporters of Courland. If he was to have Kovachev men and steel at his side, he needed to secure their loyalty.

 

Thus came Prince Otto’s part to play. On the 6th of Harren’s Folly, 1601, he was hastily married to Katerina Reza, his first cousin and the daughter of Duke Heinrik of Carnatia. While it is established in record that Otto was just shy of fourteen, Katerina’s age is up for further debate. While official Haeseni records put her age at twelve, purchase receipts of a wedding dress recently found in the royal archives put her age at fourteen; however, further research needs to be done to verify the validity of these documents as mold pattern analysis suggests that they could be forged. The king had wanted to avoid subjecting his brother to the same child-marriage that he had been forced into, but the occasion necessitated decisive action. With great reluctance he did the same for his sister, Princess Katherine, who was to be wed to the Duke of Carnatia’s heir, and Katerina’s elder brother, Sergei, that same day.

 

The joint-ceremony held for the two pairs lacked much of the pomp and splendor that came with most royal weddings. With hardly a month to plan the event, and most of the realm’s budget tied up funding the army, it was modest and quick. A private reception in the chapel of Ottosgrad was followed by a humble reception in the dining room, a cold, lifeless scene for the epitome of a political marriage. In the words of the Lord Chancellor, Lukas Vanir, the setting was “bereft of any hope or joy to be found in these occasions. The shadow of the coming war hung over us all, marring what should have been a celebration of the future generations. Instead, it was a reminder of the failures of the present ones.”

 

Otto and Katerina hardly had the chance to know each other before the former was sent back off with his platoon to recruit around Rytsburg. He made infrequent returns to St. Karlsburg, but these did little to warm their relationship, which was, much like King Marus and Queen Adelaide, or Princess Katherine and Sergei Kovachev, defined by the conditions that necessitated its arrangement. Otto was quickly becoming a soldier’s soldier: his humor was coarse, his temperament was fiery, and he could not sit still. Katerina, on the other hand, was quiet and docile. She hardly raised her voice to protest her husband’s more rash words, but she never humored or glorified him much either. She possessed a keen mind and unrivaled beauty, and for these traits their marriage would never be a poor one, but they were effectively strangers to each other. Despite this, they did have their first child, Otto Georg, on the 23rd of Sigismund’s End, 1603.

 

By that point, the Great Northern War was at its height. Raids across Haense’s southern border from Courland in 1601 grew in intensity over the next year, though Prince Otto was not assigned to this front. In 1062 King Marus issued an ultimatum to King Tobias, which was rejected, and within months an army of twenty thousand under ‘the Conqueror’ had been marshaled in the former Crownlands. To complicate any response, rebellions in Turov and Metterden forced soldiers to be redirected to put them down and prevent a general uprising. Prince Otto’s unit was recalled to the capital and he was given instructions to join his brother’s host of thirteen thousand, which was to march south to confront this invading force.

 

The Battle of the Elba, fought on the 5th of Godfrey’s Triumph, 1603, was the culmination of a Haeseni march that was plagued by an unclear command structure, poor logistics, and nepotistic leadership. The Lord Palatine’s military reforms were half-completed at best and the additional funding the army had received was often misused or lined the pockets of corrupt officers. The army’s cavalry, where Prince Otto and his platoon were, was commanded by the Marquis of Vasiland, Brynden Vanir, a man whose reputation for boldness and unshaken confidence may have been well-applied two decades ago but was now terribly out of date. Lord Bryden was now skittish, constantly second-guessed himself, and rarely briefed his subordinates as to their specific assignments. Prince Otto, loyal to his brother, seethed at the poor state of the army for its failure to be worthy of their king, but he was nothing if not a loyal officer and did not air his grievances publicly.

 

These uncorrected deficiencies in the army reared their many ugly heads at the Battle of the Elba. Although the three thousand cavalrymen at Lukas Vanir’s disposal were entrusted with keeping their four thousand Courlandic counterparts at bay for long enough for the infantry to do battle, the old Lord Palatine’s plan fell apart from the start. Within the opening minutes the Haeseni cavalry had been shattered by Courlandic knights. Lord Brynden had fled the battle not long after the first pass, arising panic from his ranks as many found themselves riding about without direction. Without the horse to shield its advance, the infantry was surrounded and slaughtered over the next few hours. By the battle’s end, Haense had suffered nine thousand casualties, while Courland had suffered only twelve hundred.

 

Prince Otto was perhaps the only Haeseni soldier whose reputation was enhanced by the Battle of the Elba. After Lord Brynden’s flight, he had rallied several other depleted companies of cavalry and maintained a relatively cohesive force of a hundred men. Their small numbers meant that they could do little, but he led them to harass King Tobias’s infantry as they encircled the main Haeseni host. Prince Otto sustained this fighting for as long as he could, and even bought time for a few pockets of infantry to flee back north, but when a group of mercenary cavalry under Jacque de Felsen came bearing down against them, the prince and his men were forced to flee. Even in flight they fought well, screening the retreat of some soldiers for as long as they could until they were forced to break off and continue their ride north to avoid being cut down.

 

As much of the army lay dead or captured at the battlefield, and that portion which had survived had retreated ahead of them, Prince Otto and his men could not initially rejoin the king and his officers. Instead, the unit had to dodge patrols and scouts from King Tobias’s army as they rode furiously to safety in the north. After a week of evading the foe by the skin of their eyelids, they managed to find King Marus, the Lord Palatine, and the broken remains of what they had brought south.  

 

The flight of Prince Otto after the Battle of the Elba saved the broken remnants of his brother’s cavalry. Until the departure to Atlas, this ride was replicated every year from 1615 onwards, with prizes being given to the winner of this week-long race. Prince Otto never participated in any himself, as he claimed that he did not wish to ruin it by winning each time.

 

The loss had shattered the hopes of the Haeseni high command, chief among them the king, but Prince Otto’s bravery and narrow escape became a cause for celebration. As he stepped off his horse to enter the Haeseni camp with his men upon their return, Prince Otto was greeted by his brother who ran out to embrace him. The two then wept before the army, a rare display of affection between the two. Marus knighted his brother on the spot and put another three platoons under his command, then gave him the order to recruit whoever he could find from Metterden to Vasiland.

 

Prince Otto, although granted a larger command, had little time to scrounge together enough recruits to replenish his depleted platoons. King Tobias marched through Urguan, circumventing the southern Haeseni border defenses and descending on Vasiland. King Marus and the Lord Palatine rallied what remnants of the army remained and marched to its defense. Originally, Prince Otto was tasked with leading the cavalry wing of the army, numbering only some three hundred, but as the winter set in that changed for the worse. 

 

The Haeseni baggage train had been left in the Crownlands, and with grain routes from Mardon and Lotharingia cut off there was little food to go around. It had been a cold year as well, leading to crop failure across the realm. Famine took a hold of Haense as thousands starved, including the army. Heavy snows forced the march to Vasiland to slow to a crawl, and the cold, desperate, hungry soldiers were forced to eat what they could find. The first to go were the horses, so Prince Otto and his units were transferred to the infantry. Spring brought an end to the worst of the blizzards, but the army that stood across from King Tobias’s fresh, experienced host on the 11th of Sigismund’s End, 1604, was simply waiting to die.

 

The Battle of Curon was meant to be an attempt to relieve the beleaguered garrison at Vasiland, who had already assassinated Marquis Brynden for attempting to surrender, but it was clear to all that there was no chance of that happening. Six and a half thousand battered, bruised infantrymen, hardly a knight among them, faced against seventeen thousand of the cream of Tobias’s army. As Vasiland was assaulted by Prince Svenald’s own portion of the army, ‘The Conqueror’ moved to eliminate his foe. After some initial difficulties breaking the Haeseni pike squares, he rerouted several siege engines from the assault on Vasiland and had them fire on the squares. The battlefield was littered with dead Haeseni within minutes, and when the flags of House Vanir fell the broken northerners knew that was the signal to flee.

 

Prince Otto, once again, was one of the few who showed any bravery that day. As his brother and his principal generals also fled the battle, he managed to scrape together what men he could to offer a resistance against the incoming Courlandic cavalry. Thousands around him surrendered, but the prince and a few dozen brave soldiers managed to hold out for fifteen minutes against the thousands of knights that bore down upon them. This was just enough time for King Marus, the Lord Palatine, and the rest of the government to get enough of a head start to make it to the safety of St. Karlsburg. Prince Otto was eventually forced to surrender to save the lives of his men. When brought before Prince Svenald, for Otto’s station allowed him the comforts of a prisoner of honor, the Courlandic Archchancellor commended him for his selfless courage to stand and fight to save his brother.

 

The Battle of Curon brought an effective end to the war and Prince Otto was soon released, though later in life he reportedly said that he wished he had not been. The Peace of St. Karlsburg on the 13th of Horen’s Calling dissolved the Kingdom of Haense, exiled the Barbanov Dynasty and their most fervent loyalists from the realm, and put the north under control of the former rebel Franz Kovachev, who was named Archduke of Akovia to confirm his status as Courland’s governor of the region. Within days, carriages were loaded on the streets of St, Karlsburg in preparation for an exodus from the north by the Haeseni nobility and the royal family. They were to head to Mardon, nearly all of them, leaving behind a realm that was to be repopulated with Courlanders and have its lands redistributed among a new nobility loyal to the Stauntons. Hours into their humiliating march south, the city they had just left suddenly leapt up in flames. As the blaze destroyed all of the former capital, the feeling that the end of Haense had come sat in the hearts of all who watched it. All except for Prince Otto.

 

Rebuking the Peace of St. Karlsburg as a humiliation and its adherents as cowards and traitors to Haense, Prince Otto vowed to never set foot from Haeseni ground until his brother’s throne was restored (he would occasionally break this promise, but never for a period longer than a month, and usually in an effort to recruit and resupply). Even as his wife and son joined the royal family in their departure to the Kingdom of Mardon, Otto wildly made plans to restart the Great Northern War. He still had twenty men of his old platoon at his call, grizzled veterans who had served with him from the beginning, and they swore to fight at his side until their deaths or their victory. On the 22nd of Horen’s Calling, 1604, the men attacked a small caravan of horse traders from Aleksandria, stole their horses, and rode off into the countryside.

 

Prince Otto’s guerilla war against the Archduke of Akovia and his Courlandic overlords is a poorly-studied conflict, mostly because the records that do exist mostly come from Akovian transcripts, which are notorious for their inaccuracies. Franz Kovachev himself was illiterate and was reliant on Courlandic scribes who were unfamiliar with many of the local languages and dialects. Years of study of these documents and other sources have provided raw statistics to measure the impact of Prince Otto’s insurgency from 1604-1611.

 

I) Fifty-two towns and villages were attacked or coerced into giving supplies. 

 

II) Eight-hundred Akovian or Akovian vassal soldiers were killed, four hundred were wounded.

 

III) Two trading ships from Aleksandria were grounded, looted, and burnt.

 

IV) Seventeen caravans from Aleksandria, Lotharingia, and the Crownlands were attacked.

 

V) Eight thousand soldiers were devoted to trying to track down and defeat Prince Otto’s band.

 

VI) Prince Otto’s band grew from twenty soldiers in 1604, to three hundred in 1609, to seven hundred in 1611.

 

The campaign was a costly one for the Archduke of Akovia, especially as his frustrations at the lack of success in arresting the rebellious prince led him to take increasingly repressive measures to defeat this insurgency. Just as much as Otto and his forces harried the north, Akovian soldiers burned towns and executed subjects that were accused of having ties to these Barbanov restorationists. It was also a financial drain on Archduke Franz’s limited treasury to fund a war that was going nowhere. Even though Prince Otto never had enough manpower or resources to mount a serious attack on one of the Archduke’s vassals, much less on Turov itself, his persistent campaigning prevented his enemy from building his strength or devoting enough resources to internally develop the country.

 

Breaking his word for one of the only times in his life, Otto did leave Haense on occasion- seven times in all according to his diary. As mentioned above, these were typically to visit sympathizers in Mardon and Lotharingia to ask for money, supplies, and troops to keep the rebellion afloat. Much of this came from the Haeseni exile community, but other Heartlands lords, ladies, merchants, and officials disenchanted with the Courlandic hegemony also provided significant funding. Without this external support, there is no doubt that the flame of Barbanov restoration that the prince barely kept alive would have been extinguished. Many of these visits also laid the foundation for the coming Greyspine Rebellion, as many of the conspirators were directly linked to the prince, and his relative success in the fight against the Kovachevs and Stauntons was encouraging.

 

Prince Otto’s visits to the Heartlands also allowed him to see his family, if only briefly. During this time he and his wife, on friendly terms but still never close, had three more children. Sigmar Otto was born in 1605, Isabel Reza was born in 1606, and Elizaveta Juliya was born in 1608. Although he was absent from his children’s early lives, the still-young prince did what he could to be a father. This mostly amounted to taking them on rides around the city of Auguston in the few spare hours he could afford, but even these small gestures did much. Only twenty two at the time of his last daughter’s birth, Otto had been at war constantly from the time he was seventeen, and there was still a long road ahead of him.

 

His visits with his sister, Princess Katherine, also brought much joy to the war-weary Otto. Both were core conspirators in the growing plot to restore their older brother to the Haeseni throne, but neither wanted to spend the little time they had together discussing politics. Instead, the two siblings tested each other with riddles and word games that they had come up with in between each meeting. Whoever could stump the other more times was the winner. From a count that Princess Katherine excitedly kept and shared with her husband, she outwitted her brother four times to one, but admitted that each were close in count.

 

The deposed King Marus was a far more volatile man by this time than anyone else in the Barbanov family. The two brothers maintained their love for each other, and Otto’s loyalty to Marus was never in doubt, but their disagreements on policy prevented their reunions from being happy occasions. Otto urged his brother to return to Haense and inspire an uprising to overthrown the tyrannical Archduke of Akovia and at one time even accused him of cowardice for not doing so. Marus, by now finding solace only in the bottle, roared back that his return would mean the deaths of thousands more, and without a guaranteed victory he would not risk the ruin of his people again. He had failed them once, but to do so again would be pure selfishness from him. These arguments went on for hours, and in 1610, after one particularly vicious episode, the exiled king forbade his brother from visiting him again. It was the last time that the two would ever speak, something that both regretted by the respective ends of their lives, but Prince Otto never stopped fighting in his brother’s name.

 

The biting freeze of the winters in 1609 proved to be Otto’s greatest danger. On the run from Kovachev knights after a defeat in a skirmish, the rebel band had to find refuge in the Greyspine Mountains. They had thought that they need only hide there for a few days until the patrols gave up and left, but to their dismay the riders did not leave, remaining encamped just outside the mountain passes. With heavy snows coming down in sheets it was only a matter of time before the prince and his undersupplied army froze or starved to death. Instead of staying put, the prince led his followers on a week-long trek through the mountains, braving heights, slippery slopes, and the elements, as they sought shelter. Dozens perished during the trek, but they eventually came across a friendly village at a mountain’s base, where they were given shelter and fed adequately for that winter. Thinking them dead, the Kovachev knights departed early in the spring, allowing the surviving rebels to continue their fight.

 

Small mountain villages such as these provided much of the supplies and shelter that sustained Prince Otto and his army during their rebellion against House Kovachev, willing or otherwise. This was always dangerous, as Akovian forces were quick to burn any settlements that were suspected of aiding the Barbanovs. Although many of the hamlets and towns around Haense were split at the outset of the rebellion, by the time of the Greyspine Rebellion they were hotbeds of resistance and firm supporters of Prince Otto.

 

Prince Otto’s actions would never have been enough to topple the Kovachevs alone, but the limited support he had been receiving grew more substantial. By 1610, the tides had changed throughout the world. Two years earlier, King Tobias of Courland, the one man keeping some sense of order throughout the world, died and left behind his young son Joseph to inherit the throne. A year before, Count Viktor var Ruthern, who had betrayed King Marus during the Great Northern War, had died in a supposed hunting accident. His successor’s regent, Vladrick var Ruthern, was a supporter of the Barbanovs and soon joined the conspiracy to return them to the throne. In the Rothswood, at the center of the north, the clans there had become restless and difficult to exert control over- another thorn in the side of Franz Kovachev.

 

Marus’s death in 1611 brought Otto great sadness, and he mourned for a week, but he was a man of action. He refused any offers for the Haesen Crown, insisting that it be given to Marus’s son Petyr. Now fighting in the name of Petyr II, Prince Otto covertly aided Captain Harren of Metterden in conquering the County of Istria from House Roswell from the 16th-19th of Harren’s Folly, 1611. By attacking the town of New Pasnia and weakening its defenses enough for the Rutherns to occupy it in the name of restoring order, the prince was able to help House Ruthern expand their territories and indirectly challenge the power of Akovia.

 

The assassination of Count Joren of Metterden on the 4th of Sigismund’s End pushed House Ruthern firmly into the camp of the Great Northern Conspiracy, as it meant that Vladrick var Ruthern could now exert full control over his family’s wealth, resources, and army. He proved this at the First Battle of the Rothswood on the 26th of Horen’s Calling when he heeded the calls of the Rothswood clans to rise against their oppressive overlords, leading to a surprising victory over the Akovians. Prince Otto lamented that he did not see the look on Franz Kovachev’s face when the Ruthern contingents in his army turned on him, enabling the Rothswood clans to flank him from the other side and put his forces to flight. Even Petyr II’s death did not blunt the momentum of the rebel victories, and the veteran prince’s suggestion that the matter of kingship be settled by election after the war was heeded.

 

Otto’s role in the Greyspine Rebellion was significant, even if he was not the principal commander. He had made it clear that he did not feel capable of commanding a force much larger than his own, and his refusal to accept any talk of making himself King of Haense suggests that his ambition was not driven by any reward to himself but to his country. No one doubted that he had the potential for higher command, but the prince remained insistent that he work as a lieutenant under Captain Harren of Metterden, who had taken leadership of the armies of the Greyspine Rebellion. For most of the rebellion, Prince Otto’s band served as the cavalry and scouting wing of the army. Their many years of experience fighting the Archduke of Akovia’s armies made them well-suited to play a leading role.

 

The Second Battle of the Rothswood, fought on the 7th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1612, was the culmination of the Greyspine Rebellion and of Prince Otto’s many years of resistance. He and his soldiers served admirably at the battle and won glory for themselves on the field, so much so that they were tasked with going to Turov to accept the surrender of the Kovachev garrisons there. They moved from keep to keep across the north, forcing various Courlandic lords to surrender their holdings and return south. By the spring of 1613 all of Haense had been secured.

 

The turn of the year also brought the National Duma that Otto had wanted. Unlike with the army, he took a central role in the Yellow Party, the faction aimed at restoring the Barbanovs to the throne under his nephew Stefan Karl. Allied with Sergei Kovachev and Petyr Vanir, two of the north’s more prominent nobles, Stefan Karl carried the day and ascended to the throne as Stefan I. As a reward for his long devotion to his brother and nephews, Prince Otto was given a high place in King Stefan’s government and was given a general’s commission in the army. He reluctantly accepted both but felt that his young nephew needed loyal, competent councilors.

 

From 1613-1624, Prince Otto served as a faithful and reliable source of counsel for his nephew, primarily where the army was concerned. When King Stefan had Haense join the new Sixth Empire under John V in 1614, his uncle only asked if there were any stipulations regarding the sharing of intelligence and war resources. In 1615, Prince Otto was sent south to help quell an uprising in Lotharingia. A year later he was leading the king’s forces south again, this time to join John V to put down another rebellion in Santegia. This campaign went far poorer than the last, and while Prince Otto led his soldiers well and ably, the Emperor and his staff mismanaged their part in the war. In 1619, King Stefan could tell that the Imperial presence on Asul had been lost to the Santegians, so he ordered his uncle to lead the men back to Haense before they were destroyed. This proved to be a wise decision, for John V and the Imperial Legion were slain nearly to a man later that year at the Siege of Trier. 

 

The Santegian Rebellion was the last of Otto’s service in the field. He had bested the rebel armies in the many small skirmishes he had fought in over the two years of war, earning the admiration of many in the Empire who had heard of only failure and setback from the Imperial Legion. More importantly, he kept the army intact, so when they returned to the mainland King Stefan was able to quickly restore order to Adelburg and prevent Prince Robert from taking power. With these events concluded by 1619, the men of Haense returned home. It is also said by Thorstein of Kyatch that Prince Otto returned with eighteen new, undiscovered minerals from Asul that he added to his collection.

 

The only great loss suffered by Haense was one of its most competent generals: Harren of Metterden. An able and reliable commander since the Greyspine Rebellion, Harren despaired at his king’s decision to leave John V and his army at Trier and condemn them to their fate. During Stefan’s occupation of Adelburg at the end of 1619, his deposition of Prince Robert, and his decision to give the throne to King Peter of Marna, the Ruthern general protested at every turn. His loyalty was to the Empire, not the Empire that King Stefan and his court wished to control, and so he left the service of the Barbanovs to join the Mardons.

 

While his active service was mostly done, Otto was still young and able to contribute much to his kingdom. Second to only his cousin, Prince Heinrik of Bihar, Prince Otto had significant sway with his nephew in military affairs. He implemented a number of standards for dress and drill within the cavalry, which he believed to be the key to future victory on the battlefield. He also funded a training school for cavalry officers and encouraged merit, not birth, to determine promotion within the ranks. He would never come to personally command this reformed cavalry wing of the army, but he shaped it into being a competent force that would aid future kings well.

 

These assignments also allowed the prince to spend more time with his family, which the events of the past few years had denied him. He had missed much of his children’s early lives, but he strived to be an active and present father. He often took trips with them to the Greyspine Mountains, where his time there had given him knowledge of many caves, streams, and lakes that eluded the knowledge of most Haeseni. At times his wife, Katerina, even joined them, but their marriage was never to be an exceptionally happy one. He did earn her admiration when, during a trip into one of the caves of the Greyspine, Sigmar, their second son, tripped and hit his head on a large boulder. Otto was able to save his life and carry him out of the cave to the safety of a nearby village.

 

Ptto and Katerina’s eldest son, Otto Georg, who quite enjoyed fishing with his father, was wed to Princess Eleanor of Lotharingia, sister of the late King Hughes, as part of King Stefan’s plans to forge more ties to the south. The princess of Lotharingia had developed a reputation for being a vain, proud woman who possessed an ambitious spirit that turned the stomach of the elder Otto. He is said to have prayed for his son for a month that he not succumb to any ill-desires or schemes of his wife. While his fears were likely unfounded, and within a few years the marriage blossomed into a happy one, he never came to like his daughter-in-law. At the wedding, held in the spring of 1621, he could only offer a few words in passing to the princess. 

 

Cave drawings made by Prince Otto’s youngest child, Princess Elizaveta, who eventually became an assistant court painter during her elder brother’s reign. For a time, visitors to this cave thought that these were the remnants of some old, lost civilization, and the Barbanov family was delighted to keep the joke alive for as long as possible.

 

In 1622, Robert the Monk, the former Emperor and the same man that King Stefan had prevented from taking power three years earlier, arrived in the court of the Esenstadt Palace. Humiliated by the events of 1619 and dispossessed by the government of Emperor Peter II, the embittered prince had ventured north to challenge the man that he felt had ruined his last chance at power. Although old and poor at arms, Prince Robert knew of King Stefan’s failing health, which had only weakened him as the years went by. If there was any chance to exact his revenge, it was now. Stefan, bold and proud, did not break tradition by backing down from this challenge.

 

Prince Otto urged his nephew to allow him to fight instead, but the king denied him four times. Acquiescing to his liege’s command, he gave Stefan his sword, for the king had forgotten to bring his own. He also served as the witness and official of the duel between the two enemies, which took place in the main hall of the Esenstadt (Thorstein of Kyatch claims that instead, the duel took place in the woods, where it was seen only by Otto and some few others, but this can be disregarded as Thorstein was known to have taken to the vice of the green cactus by the time he wrote this account). The duel, poorly recorded as it is, is known to have ended with Stefan slaying Robert. Thus, the third and final great duel of Stefan’s life ended with another victory.

 

Whatever strength King Stefan had mustered to win his final duel, it was clearly the last of it. Over the next two years he grew weaker until, on the 6th of Harren’s Folly, 1624, he died of the great swelling in his neck that had hindered him for much of his late life. It was no surprise, as he had been in a coma for two months, but Prince Otto had been dreading the day that it would come. Prince Stefan had no children, which meant that the throne would naturally pass to his uncle. For a man who had frequently denied commands of armies larger than a cavalry force, the thought of bearing the crown of Haense had little appeal. 

 

With his nephew’s death, Prince Otto became King Otto that same day, but it is clear that he already had thoughts of abdicating the Haeseni throne. While it is not known precisely when he decided that he would abdicate if the throne fell to him, mere hours after his predecessor’s funeral Otto I brusquely ordered that any preparations for a coronation be delayed. He then ordered that all of King Stefan’s foremost legal advisors join him in the office of the Palatine, which was vacant because Prince Heinrik of Bihar had been sent south to help quell another Romstun rebellion in Lotharingia.

 

The following schedule, recorded by Joseph Gill, one of the foremost legal minds in the realm and a key advisor to Stefan I, is available to us. It entails nearly the entirety of King Otto I’s brief reign.

 

On the evening of the 6th of Harren’s Folly, King Otto ordered that by the next day, a study be looked into Haeseni law to ensure that abdication was available to him. He then retired to his own quarters in the Esenstadt. He never visited the quarters of the King of Haense.

 

On the morning of the 7th, he met with his son, Otto Georg, and his wife, Queen Katerina, to instruct them of his pending abdication. Neither protested, but Prince Otto raised the complaint that he and Princess Eleanor had planned on attending a wine festival in the small town of Humble Ridge in the Crownlands, which was renowned for its wine production. King Otto, displeased, ordered that the trip be canceled and that his son remain in Alban.

 

On the evening of the 7th, a written report from his legal advisors was delivered to the king in his office. They had come to the conclusion that abdication was a legal route that he could take, but he would have to relinquish all claims to the crown of Haense. King Otto readily agreed to this and ordered that a declaration of abdication be drafted.

 

On the afternoon of the 8th, he issued orders to Prince Heinrik in Lotharingia that he remain there with the army until the rebellion had been quelled. He also requested a report of the fighting down there be written and returned.

 

On the morning of the 9th, he visited a section of Alban that was being reconstructed after a small fire had burned down several buildings there. He quickly had a decree written that subsidized all purchases of lumber made by the City of Alban that were used in reconstruction as a result of natural accidents. Later that evening, he issued said decree before the town council of Alban.

 

During the 10th and 11th, he helped some in editing the declaration of abdication. He ordered that preparations be made for a small signing ceremony on the 12th, to be held in the Esenstadt. He also gave his final order as king, which was for a bust of Stefan I to be made from the artisans of Turov.

 

On the morning of the 12th of Harren’s Folly, 1624, Otto I abdicated to his son, Otto Gerog, ending his rule of a week. The small ceremony was held before the court of Esenstadt and was met with polite reception. Otto I’s abdication had come as less of a surprise that Stefan I’s death had, and in those few days he had made sure that the transfer of power was as smooth and legally-sound as necessary. To this day, Otto I is the last King of Haense to have legally abdicated the throne, though some argue that Heinrik II, over two centuries later, lays claim to that.

 

Leaving the throne did not mean that Otto planned to remove himself from all responsibility. His son, Otto II, was bright and well-liked, but he had been ill-prepared to rule and was not the most serious and diligent of men at that time. His maturity would come over the years, but the father remained to ensure that his son kept to a good path. As a minor advisor, Otto the elder continued to focus on military affairs. Over the next few years he created a standardized list of what horse breeds were to be used for what functions. He also helped design a new variety of light horse armor, which would prioritize mobility above all else.

 

Otto’s diligence did not slip, but he allowed himself (or, alternatively, was ordered) to have some time away from matters of government. In 1621, 1623, and 1625, grandchildren had been born, and he took much time to play with them. His sister, Katherine, also visited from Carnatia, and the two of them spent much time trading old tales and arguing about whatever came to mind. Delighting him most, on his forty second birthday, a great number of men who had served under his command in the Great Northern War visited him with a great cake that they had baked for him. Adorning the top was a small model of a younger Prince Otto riding atop a steed. Otto adored the cake and had four slices alone, though the last he shared with his grandson, Otto Stefan.

 

Working vigorously for his son, but also taking many days of rest and vacation with his wife and other family, Otto expected to persevere for many more years. This did not turn out to be the case, as in the autumn of 1627 a minor plague swept across Alban. A thousand died of this epidemic, and among them was Otto, who held onto life for a few weeks, but eventually died on the 13th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1627 in his quarters in the Esenstadt Palace. He was forty three years old and had been King of Haense for a handful of days. That mattered little to him, though, as on his deathbed he was surrounded by family and friends, all of whom wept for his early passing. 

 

His body was led on a procession throughout Alban, where thousands of onlookers came to mourn him. He was led to a platform beside the same crypts where Stefan I had been buried, and it was there that several speeches were given. The king spoke well for his father, as did Princess Katherine, but it was the words of Old Pap, an elderly sergeant that had served under Otto throughout the Great Northern War, Greyspine Rebellion, and Santegian Rebellion, that moved the crowd the most. Some of this speech lives on today:

 

"Without him, we would have all perished on the fields beside the Elba. We would have all perished under the hand of Franz Kovachev. We would have all perished at Trier. By Captain Otto’s will alone, we avoided the clutches of death. I do not speak for his old soldiers when I say this, but the realm as a whole. A king for a week, we’ve had that and more, but a man who does not take one step from the path of loyalty and good-duty for his country? It is something that we can all aspire to be, even the meanest beans in this crowd. I can think of a dozen times he could have rode up and taken that throne for himself, but not once did he do it. It is that spirit that we ought to see more of, but that I fear this generation sees little of. If there is one man that I wish for my grandchildren to be, it is Captain Otto.”

 

And those words, which had brought the crowd to tears once again, struck home most at all with Otto II. He had been king for three years by now, aided at every step by his father, Prince Heinrik, and other good men. However, these few years had alerted him to a dangerous truth that he thought that only he saw, but that Old Pap’s words proved all knew. The good and the competent dwindled, and with each death, each retirement, there were fewer ready and able men to take their place. King Otto’s father had left not only a gaping wound in his heart with his passing, but also a hole in the court that could not be as easily replaced. Haense was dying from within and the number of men and women who could stem its demise grew lesser by the day.

 

Dravi, Otto I ‘the Quick’

27th of Sigismund’s End, 1586-13th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1627

(r. 6th of Harren’s Folly, 1624-12th of Harren’s Folly, 1624)

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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.

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