THE WINTER CROWS: Volume X; Franz II - The Lost Bihar

[Nectorist 12869]

 

THE WINTER CROWS: Volume X; Franz II - The Lost Bihar

Written by Demetrius Barrow

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Franz II - The Lost Bihar

“Do not be the corpse that lay between myself and destiny.” - King Aurelius of Renatus-Marna to Franz II, c. 1666
 

Franz Jakob, son of the esteemed line of Bihar, had coveted the Haeseni throne all his life.

 

The line of Bihar, beginning with the Prince-Regent Karl in 1586, had been one of the most loyal, most capable, and most important families in Haense. Nearly all of its patriarchs had served as Lord Palatine at some point, and plenty of other sons, brothers, and nephews had been appointed to other esteemed posts. The Kovachevs and Rutherns may have jockeyed for status and influence, but it was House Bihar that stood at the king’s right hand. Some even whispered that it was truly House Bihar that ruled, while it was House Barbanov that reigned. While this was occasionally true in a literal sense, primarily during the long minorities of Marus I and Karl II, it is well-established that nearly every Bihar Palatine saw themselves as an asset to be used by the Crown but never an opponent for authority.

 

The circumstance of Franz Jakob’s birth provides one of the most contentious debates of 17th-century Haeseni history. He is recorded as having been born on the 21st of Horen’s Calling, 1633, to Prince Heinrik Otto of Bihar and Camille Stafyr. However, Prince Heinrik, who had served as Lord Palatine to Stefan I and been a brilliant military reformer and commander, is well-established as having died in 1624 of an illness he had contracted while on campaign against the Romstuns in Lotharingia. The nine-year contradiction leaves only three explanations, of which all have their serious flaws.

 

The first is that Franz was actually conceived in 1623, the year his father went south on campaign, and born either that year or in 1624. This would provide the most steady explanation, but all historical records, official histories, and monarchical rolls, provide a birth year of 1633. If we are to assume that he was born ten years earlier, we must ask why there are few, if any, records of this, and how the false birth year of 1633 came to be widely-accepted despite the apparent conflict with his father’s death year.

 

The second is that Prince Heinrik Otto did not die in 1624, but instead lived until at least 1632, which would have given him the time to conceive Franz. This is an even less-likely explanation, however, as it would have been virtually impossible for Prince Heinrik to falsify his death, in the middle of an army, then return home and fade into obscurity. He was to serve as Lord Palatine to Otto II, who was very young, inexperienced, and deprived of steady leadership within his government to manage the early challenges of his reign. It would have been an uncharacteristic abdication of his duty for Prince Heinrik to abandon his army and his king to retire to his estates while the realm needed him most.

 

The third is that he was not the son of Prince Heinrik at all, but instead the son of Camille Stafyr and another, nameless, man, but was presented to the court as the legitimate son of the very-late Lord Palatine. On its face, this theory is the most obvious to discredit: would it not be obvious that he was not the son of a long-dead man? Why would the court not obviously decry him as a bastard? Why would he be allowed to wear the Crown of Haense?

 

However, when one peels back the layers of the apparent history, and reads between the lines of the known truth, we may find this third theory to have greater credibility than it initially seems to have. Why was he not acclaimed as King of Haense and crowned immediately after the death of Karl II? He had served as Lord Palatine and regent, was apparently his kinsman, and had full control of the realm. Who possibly would have contested his ascension to the throne? If he were known to be without a legitimate claim, then it makes sense that his eventual rise to the throne was backed not by divine right, but by the force of arms that he commanded.

 

Additionally, his very late marriage, which occurred just before or during his reign, is put into greater context. If he were truly the son of Prince Heinrik, he would have been one of the leading bachelors in the realm and would have married in his twenties, if not younger. Instead, he wed a daughter of House Ruthern when he was in his thirties. His lack of prospects before, which would be on account of his lack of station, would be immediately reversed as he became a contender for the throne, and by marrying a woman from one of the most powerful noble families in the realm, he would cement his control of the realm.

 

Lastly, a reading of his almost-immediate downfall may suggest that not everyone accepted, or at least pretended to accept, his claimed parentage. There was one man who was obsessed with lineage, birthright, and familial relations. He had everything to gain from any doubts around Franz II’s legitimacy, and the actions he took verify that for some reason, he found it both imperative and possible that he could end the rule of this King of Haense. Of anyone, he would have been the one man to truly, deeply care about who Franz Jakob’s father was. That man was Aurelius, the King of Renatus-Marna.

 

Of course, it could be the case that Franz Jakob was actually born in 1623 or 1624, and the given year of 1633 was simply miswritten once, then fatefully copied and cited for the next four-hundred years. Or, Prince Heinrik may have had a change of heart in the midst of the Romstun Rebellion, feigned death, then fled for home to live out the rest of his days in peace, fathering a son in the process. Franz’s delayed coronation may have been because he was not actually Karl II’s immediate successor (that would have been his elder brother, Prince Robert, and his two sons), and the few months of de jure interregnum were the result of that. His marriage happening so late in life might just have been because he had no time to arrange it while he served as regent and Lord Palatine. To obscure any obvious conclusion even further, one of his contemporaries, Father Petyr of Alban, writing in 1649, said that he was “made in the spitting image of Lord Heinrik [his father]: tall and high-browed with a thick beard and a muscular build.”

 

As this author sets aside the question of Franz II’s parentage for now, leaving the question open for further exploration, we turn to the reality of how Haense saw him and how he saw himself: a son of Bihar, through and through, in line for the same responsibilities and weight that such a name carried. Assuming he was born in 1633, he would have been born in the middle of the reign of Otto II and grown up in or adjacent to the royal court. He received a military-oriented education and joined the royal army’s cavalry at the age of fourteen, where he would spend the next eight years.

 

Not much has been left to us about Franz’s early life, but his ambition shines through in what accounts do remain. His sword instructor, Percival d’Erc, remarked that Prince Franz “trained ceaselessly, even beyond our lessons. He [was] not my most gifted student, but his commitment to the rigor of training has made a fine swordsman of him.” In her diaries, his mother frequently complained that he burnt through several candles a week reading late into the night. Similar corroborations from peers make it clear that he was a diligent, well-educated young man.

 

While he was close with his mother, his relationship with his older brother, Prince Robert, who was named Lord Palatine when Prince Franz was just nine, was more distant. Prince Robert was twelve years older than he, the patriarch of the Bihars, with all of the responsibility that came with, and already appointed to high posts and offices immediately into his adulthood. Franz evidently looked up to his brother, and his eagerness towards training and the military life was very likely driven in part by his desire to serve his brother and prove himself worthy of the Bihar name. In a letter to his mother, authored during the Czena Conflict in 1554, Franz wrote:

 

“While I lift my sword in defense of my country and in defense of my king, when I whip Cotter’s [his horse’s] reins, my heart and mind thinks of neither. It is for Robert that I fight, for he leads not just our kingdom, but also Bihar, and it is my duty to see that his name is not smeared with the disgrace of any cowardice or failure that I have brought upon him.”

 

It was in the Czena Conflict that Prince Franz came to the attention of the royal court. From 1653 to 1656, Haense, backed by a tenuous alliance of Curon and Santegia, fought against Renatus in a series of minor raids and skirmishes. The war made few heroes, owing to its limited nature, but Prince Franz was among those commended for exceptional service by the Marshal, Ser Geralt Rouen. The Haeseni army had lacked experienced officers at the war’s outbreak, which gave the twenty-two year old Franz an opportunity to ascend the ranks. Beginning the war as a low cavalry officer, he would end it as one of the leading names in the realm, primed to succeed his brother as Lord Palatine.

 

The opening engagement of the war, and Prince Franz’s first combat, was at Markev. On the 27th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1653, a Renatian raiding party of 1,700, led by the fearsome Margrave of Styria, met a Haeseni force of 3,000 beneath the city. The night before, during a war council held by Otto III and Ser Geralt Rouen, Franz, having been invited at the latter’s behest, fiercely argued that they needed to confront the Renatians in the field, rather than wait behind the city’s walls. The king had to show that he would be willing to defend his subject, and by stopping this raiding force in its tracks, they would prove that Renatus was not immortal. He was far from the only one to make this argument- most of the war council thought the same- but the force and zeal behind his arguments made an impression on Otto III, who had seen little of his cousin until now.

 

The following day, as the sun rose over the autumn-hued battlefield, Prince Franz, leading a contingent of 200 cavalry, drew up along the left flank of the army. He spent most of the morning performing reconnaissance and harassing the Styrian horse, which was unaccustomed to the rough, wooded terrain around Markev. After six hours of this, the Styrians retreated, seeing no path to victory, leaving behind at least six-hundred dead, wounded, and captured compared to only 200 for Haense. Although Franz’s unit was one of several performing the same general actions, he won glory when he and his men rode down an isolated contingent of knights, capturing forty of them, with several of the Margrave of Styria’s bannermen in their number. The prince’s capture of a lucrative bunch of hostages did not go unnoticed, and that evening, before a cheering Haeseni army, he was knighted by Otto III, who had overseen his cousin’s feats from atop the walls of the city.

 

Even as Haense found victory that day, their allies did not fare well. Santegia struggled to counter even the token forces sent against them, and on the 30th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1653, the Curonian capital of Cyrilsburg was sacked by a Renatian legion under Prince Antonius, son and heir of Aurelius. Seeing the general incompetence of Haense’s allies, Prince Franz quickly turned from one of the war’s early heroes into one of its early detractors. “I do not disagree that Renatus must be checked,” he is reported to have said to Ser Geralt Rouen, “but I do not believe that Curon and Santegia are sufficient allies for this immense task. If we continue to prosecute this war, I can only surmise that Renatus will emerge victorious.”

 

Despite his reservations about continuing the war, Franz did not abandon his duties. When a second raiding party from Renatus came the next year, he was once again in the front lines. Given command of the scouts, the prince was able to determine that the host that approached them now was far more formidable than the last. 2,500 Renatian legionaries, not just cobbled-together soldiers from one of Aurelius’ vassals, marched on Markev, prompting Franz to advise retreating behind the city walls, as his men did not report any siege weaponry in the fast-moving Renatian ranks. Farms and homes outside of the walls would be lost, but with time to prepare, they could evacuate the most vulnerable.

 

Unlike last time, Prince Franz’s proposal fell on deaf ears. Curon and Santegia’s struggles made a second victory all the more important, and Marshal Geralt had received reinforcements to bolster his own army to 3,500. The wise general was not overconfident in his odds of victory, nor was Otto III, who also wanted to confront the Renatians in direct battle, but they saw it as a necessity to try and regain the initiative of the failing war. Their logic did not reach Franz, who, according to Pyp Pot, a horse groomer who was standing outside of the war tent because he had mistaken a tree nearby it for the designated latrine, “Prince Franz launched into a tirade of profanity that my mother would have forced me to eat soap for. He stormed out of the tent, and would have seen me had I not ducked behind a bush.”

 

The morning of the 5th of Harren’s Folly, 1654, would remedy Franz’s humiliation that night. The Renatian cavalry quickly overwhelmed the Haeseni horse on the wings, and its well-trained, disciplined infantry made quick work of the scattered men-at-arms and levied troops of the Haeseni ranks. Within an hour, the Renatian raiders had taken the gatehouse of Markev and began to plunder the city. As the enemy advanced further, Marshal Geralt’s grip on the army slipped, leading to men and women within the army to abandon him and run to defend their homes. The royal family themselves were nearly captured, but a mass of peasants, fearful for their homes and lives, rose up and drove the Renatians out at the last moment.

 

Unlike the first raid on Markev, Prince Franz had won no glory that day, for such a defeat could not warrant any, but he did not disgrace himself either. In command of 400 freeriders on the left wing, he had managed to keep his withdrawal orderly, preventing the high casualties seen elsewhere in the army, where disorganized rout had given the Renatians an opening to enter the capital. Furthermore, word had spread of his opposition to both the war’s continuation and the plan to meet the legion on the field of battle, which enhanced his reputation across the realm. In less than two years, Franz Jakob had transformed from a young, obscure relative of the king to one of the Czena Conflict’s foremost heroes, but also one of its most vindicated critics.

 

Lacking the well-trained mounted knights of the Heartlands, Haense often drew from tribes inhabiting its steppes to fill its cavalry ranks. The Haeseni light cavalry, referred to as ‘freeriders’, were maneuverable in and out of combat. Their worth came as scouts and skirmishers, but they could always be counted on to charge into the enemy’s weakened flank during a critical point in the battle. 

 

It is unknown if Franz would have come into open conflict with Otto III, Marshal Geralt, and even his brother, if he had continued the course he was on. 1655 proved no better of a year than 1654, as Cyrilsburg was sacked again, and the King of Santegia declared bankruptcy and announced that he could no longer finance his contribution to the war. Perhaps the failings of the Czena Confederation would have given Franz’s words even more legitimacy, or he would have been removed of his rank and exiled for his criticisms of the government and its conduct of the war, but those counterfactuals need not be explored in favor of the true history.

 

Any potential confrontation was ended with the outbreak of the Great Plague in the summer of 1655. Beginning as a minor, if deadly, disease reported from the Haeseni frontier, it quickly spread across the realm, decimating young and old, noble and peasant, town and hovel. By the end of 1656, tens of thousands of Haeseni had perished. Ser Geralt and King Otto III were among them, and Prince Robert was left incapacitated. The throne passed to Otto III’s second son, Karl, who was only seven. The nobility that had not died retreated to their country estates to wait out the storm, leaving the government in utter shambles. The crow’s wings had been clipped and its head had been cut clean off. Who was left to preserve the body?

 

While Franz’s elevation to Lord Palatine and regent in 1656 may have appeared to have been a foregone conclusion- he was a war hero, a respected war critic, and a relative of Karl II- at the time, the remaining husk of the Haeseni council had their reservations. The young prince, only twenty two, had proven himself as a cavalry officer, and he clearly had a solid grasp of the principles of foreign policy, but he had not been entrusted with any administrative authority before, nor had he risen beyond the rank of cavalry captain. However, his lack of credentials, while hypothetically detrimental in ordinary circumstances, did not matter much here. The realm was in crisis as it faced a devastating plague, which ripped apart its population and economy, and an unwinnable war without an army to fight it. There was simply no other person for the job who could command the respect needed to keep the realm from falling apart.

 

As he stepped into the shoes of the palatine, Prince Franz felt the weight of not only the legacy of forerunners in the office, but also of his family. “To fail here and now is to fail the Bihar name,” he reportedly said to his nephew and seneschal, Edvard, on his first day. To be regent and Lord Palatine was the culmination of his naked ambition, but it had only existed in his mind as an abstract concept. Nothing could have prepared him for the challenges that confronted him, perhaps the most terrifying that any new Lord Palatine had and would ever face in Haeseni history.

 

Although the previous installment went into great length regarding the state of Haense at the outset of Karl II’s reign, we shall retrace the general points here. 

 

Nearly all of Haense’s problems in 1656 could be sourced back to one of two calamities: The Great Plague and the Czena Conflict, of which the former was the more serious. The massive depopulation caused by the Great Plague, which ravaged the country from 1655-1657, killed an estimated one-third of the realm’s total population. The plague itself had been spread as a result of refugees fleeing to southern Haense, away from the Renatian border, because of the frequent and devastating raids during the Czena Conflict. With the farming villages of northern Haense burned and abandoned, and Markev and other cities a hotbed of disease, trade plummeted, goods dried up, and once-bustling markets turned into husks. The government could not raise the revenues it needed to effectively administer the entire realm, so the centralized power that had been built up since Stefan I evaporated and devolved to local lords and larger towns.

 

A government that had few people, little money, and a lack of control beyond Markev was a government that could not fight a war against Renatus. The army’s strength had completely plummeted as well, and reports give numbers of anywhere from 1,000-1,300 effectives. Local defense, like local governance, became the responsibility of the noble levies and town guards. Security on the roads could not be ensured, nor could the safety of those living outside the protection of walls.Seeing the plummeting Haeseni strength, Curonia and Santegia, unable to fight for themselves, both withdrew from the war and fell under control of the Pertinaxi. As Prince Franz stepped into his office, he stood at the helm of a kingdom without a friend.

 

The Lord Palatine’s first order of business was to end the war with Renatus. In the early months of 1656, he formally disbanded the Czena Confederation and inked a treaty with Renatus. The concessions were minimal: some noble hostages were to be given over when the plague died down (they never were, owing to the resumption of hostilities soon after), two castles along the border were to be dismantled (they would not be until after the following war), and the Renatian court would be provided twenty moose, thirteen bears, and seven crows (there were given within a half-year). The peace, which Prince Franz hoped would be permanent, turned out to be merely a ceasefire, but the Czena Conflict had officially ended and the regent could turn his attention towards bringing order back to the realm. The plague had begun to die down by the year’s end, and the council hoped that the Haeseni economy would heal and the population would rebound.

 

Unfortunately, the slow end of the plague only revealed the fissures within Haense that it had exacerbated. In the western reaches of the kingdom, furthest from Markev, the collapse of royal authority had given rise to rebellions there. Most of them were simple peasant’s uprisings that died down as soon as they flared up, or roving gangs of bandits that ransacked towns and caravans but otherwise had no greater agenda. They would have to be the problem of the local defenses, but they posed no true challenge to the crown.

 

It would be the rise of the Rothswood clans that proved to be the biggest thorn in Prince Franz’s side. He personally enjoyed positive relations with the Rothswood clans, as quite a few of their members had served under him in the royal army, and he had a reputation for treating them fairly and honestly. However, the brutish Andrik Tosali and cunning Andrei Dune, seeing opportunity in the aftermath of the Czena War and the Great Plague, stoked the embers of the old grudges the clans held against the Haeseni monarchy for neglecting them after the Greyspine Rebellion. Hundreds followed the two as they began to conquer swathes of the heavily-forested western lands, leaving only the walled cities and castles standing.

 

In an effort to restore order and project the power of the crown again, Prince Franz leaned on the one institution he could trust: the army. As weak as it was, it was the only body that he could assert near-total control over, especially as the death of Marshal Geralt, and the flight and death of most of its senior officers in the nobility, had left it leaderless. Throughout his time as regent, and later as king, Prince Franz made sure to closely associate himself with the army. His early credentials were mostly related to his military accomplishments, and he evidently worried about the prospects of a coup. Although it was uncomfortable, he wore his armor as much as possible to all state ceremonies and social events, and conducted his regular business in an officer’s uniform. In all but one of the portraits he commissioned of himself, he made sure to be presented in armor. He visited the barracks of the city watch and of the royal army once each week to give them an address, and often invited non-noble officers to publicly dine with him when available, all in an effort to signal his alliance with them.

 

To keep the soldiers paid, the regent slashed state funding for the military and took a number of personal loans, backed by the reliable credit of House Bihar, to pay for the men. These freed treasury revenues went towards purchasing grain shipments from Adria and subsidizing the few surviving artisans in Markev. The army was deployed along the major roads from Renatus to facilitate the transportation of Adrian goods. The economy continued to stagger along, and Markev remained a ghost of what it had been ten years ago, but by 1657 the plague and famine crises had been somewhat abated.

 

The reprieve was brief, as war soon returned to the continent. In a renewed search for allies, Prince Franz had made cause with the King of Norland, Godden I, and the Sohaer of Haelun’or, both of whom were alarmed by the sharp and sudden rise of Renatus. Although the King of Norland was a Renatian vassal, he commanded a strong host of men and had employed thousands of mercenaries, most notably the Reiver Company, to strengthen his defenses. The revelation of the Haeseni-Norlandic-Haelunorian alliance in late 1657 kicked off hostilities, as Renatus and her myriad of allies saw it as a precursor to a surprise war and chose to take the initiative.

 

Prince Franz almost certainly had no plans to declare war on Renatus anytime soon- the state of the realm could not withstand another war- but he had erroneously and hastily made allies of two overeager states. The Legion rallied in Senntisten, the capital of Renatus, and beside them were an array of Renatian vassals, Marnans, Santegians, orcs, wood elves, dark elves, and others from across the continent. The army that would eventually be formed numbered somewhere around 30,000. Norland and Haelun’or together could muster about 14,000, most of them Norlanders. Haense, for its part, could only scrape together 1,000 to send north, with a few hundred hastily-conscripted Markev city watchmen and regional levies to form a defense in the south.

 

Even this paltry force stretched the Haeseni treasury, and more cuts to the budget had to be made. The great universities, laboratories, and libraries that had been built and maintained under Otto III, already reeling from the Great Plague, were shuttered as their funding went towards defense. Prince Franz did not relish in this, for he was a learned man who appreciated the value of what his cousin had delivered, but they simply could not be prioritized above the state’s survival.

 

Although the Lord Palatine did not command the armies in person- that task was led to a war council of several officers and noblemen- he maintained constant correspondence with their leaders, primarily the Count of Metterden, Rhys var Ruthern, the most able of them all. Karl II was permitted to nominally preside over the ‘army of the home’ for purposes of morale, but little fighting came to Haense during the war, and when it did, the young king was kept well from the action. 

 

From 1660-1662, Renatus and her allies invaded Norland, seeking to bring the rebellious tributary under the Pertinaxi fold for good. The people of Haense, most of all Prince Franz, waited the agonizing months that it took for news to arrive from the war front. Half of it was false, a fourth of it was half-false, leaving just a fourth of the news they received being reliable enough to circulate. Had it not been for the relatively quiet northern border, which saw little more than scant raids from the Margrave of Styria and the construction of bridges, forts, and trenches, the nation may have collectively fallen into anxiety. What news arrived from Norland was always sour, and with each passing month, the threat of a Renatian invasion towards the south loomed large in the Haeseni mind.

 

To understand the war through the eyes of the people in Markev, and of Prince Franz, this author has provided dispatches from the war, all written by the Count of Metterden, regarding the important battles fought:

 

From the Battle of the Sleeping Swamps:

 

“On the morning 20th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1660, our army, spread in a senseless multitude of camps, against the advice of our officers, yet King Godden and his mercenary captains insisted that it was necessary, was soundly defeated. The enemy army, numbering twenty-five-thousand and led by their king in person, advanced through the swamplands and cleared each camp by itself. The hilly terrain prevented us from seeing the action unfolding, but when it was reported to me, I woke my camp, which had half of our men, and held firm against a squadron of Santegian knights for half an hour, until we were compelled to abandon the village of Trom, where we had been encamped. 

 

The sound of horns from King Godden’s tent, and the advancing legions, induced our withdrawal, which was conducted orderly and with minimal casualties.

Our other camp was not so fortunate, but they proved themselves heroes that day. Ser Vydrik of Brenik and a hundred soldiers stood their ground on Mole’s Hill for an hour, allowing the rest of our army to escape. I recommend a burial with full honors for each and every man who died on that hill, for their sacrifice preserved our lives.

 

We now withdraw north. The town of Norvik, which we had been marching to relieve, will most likely be lost. Of the fifteen-thousand that we brought, only a third of that remain. Our contingent stands at eight-hundred-and-fifty. I humbly request that we receive reinforcements, for the better part of the Norlandic army has been destroyed this day, and I fear that the casualties suffered by the Renatians are minimal.”

 

By the next spring, southern Norland had been entirely overrun by Renatus. The chiefs, jarls, and towns of the region knelt to Aurelius and accepted him as their overlord. No reinforcements could be spared from Haense. Ser Vydrik of Brenik’s body, along with the men and women who died beside him, was never recovered.

 

From the Battle of the Forkwoods:

 

“On the 15th of Godfrey’s Triumph, 1661, the army of Aurelius, flanked by wood elven archers, emerged from the Forkwoods. We were not privy to the five-weeks of combat, as it was left to the woods clans who knew the area the best. Few who marched south into them have survived, but it is reported that we bled the enemy greatly. Even as we withdraw to Ruriksgrad, we are told that the Curonians in Aurelius’ army have defected and returned home. He has stalled his offensive for now, so we have been given greatly-wanted time to prepare the defenses. It gives me reprieve to know that the Curonians will perpetually be a terror to their allies above all else.”

 

From the Storming of Cyrilsburg:

 

“It is reported that on the 11th of Horen’s Calling, 1662, Cyrilsburg was stormed and taken by Count Eimar of Gotha, who many say is the most dangerous man south of the Heartlands. The Curonians have been completely conquered, and it is all but certain that a governor will be appointed from Senntisten. The enemy alliance marches to us in Ruriksgrad, having forced the surrender of the rest of Norland in the intervening months. We have six-thousand soldiers against twenty-thousand, so our scouts say. Our own remain in decent spirits.”

 

From the Siege of Ruriksgrad:

 

“On the 8th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1662, after a spirited defense, of which our soldiers have earned the highest commendation, the walls of Ruriksgrad were breached, compelling King Godden to surrender the city to avoid bloodshed. I have been taken prisoner, but have been treated well in accordance with my station, thus permitting this report. Three-hundred of our company remain, as many were on the walls as they were rocked with trebuchet. We have been told that we will be permitted to return home upon the conclusion of the peace negotiations. I do not implore you, Your Excellency, to take any specific action, but having witnessed the ability of the legions, and of the united world which Aurelius has at his back, I believe our opponent to be unable to be defeated in conventional battle.”

 

Prince Franz was reportedly not distraught at the final letter. The foreboding and doom had lasted for two long years now, and even the young Karl II understood that the realm only continued to suffer as the war dragged on. Norland was lost, Haelun’or would soon be occupied, and Haense was once again alone. Sending his nephew, Prince Edvard, to handle negotiations, the regent was able to magically procure another light, if similarly unsteady, peace as he had a few years before. Haense would cede some border lands, bridges, and tolls to Renatus. In return, the Adrian bread, Santegian goods, and Norlandic steel would start to flow right back into Markev. It was an agreement that was bitter but entirely necessary.

 

The war had provided the opportunity for Karl II to come into his own, as he was only nine when it began in 1557, but was fourteen when it finally ended in 1662, bringing him close to the age of majority. The suffering Haeseni saw in him the hope of their country, their people, and the survival of their agency in the face of the unending Renatian warpath. While never so far as disloyal, or even openly jealous of his king, Prince Franz was worried that as the king grew older, the two would be put on a course of conflict. The situation demanded a careful balance, for at any moment the precarious peace could fall apart, or the stagnating path of economic recovery could turn even worse. In Franz’s mind, it was imperative that he, and not a teenage boy, hold the power of the realm, for even one misstep could spell the end of the dual-monarchy.

 

Resumed trade with the Heartlands alleviated the worst of Haense’s troubles, and a steady peace with Renatus gave space for the farmers and country gentry living in the northern parts of the country to return and rebuild their farms and villages. The famine that had withered the realm began to abate, and life slowly crawled back to a certain normality. Karl II threw himself into a border defense program that saw him expend significant state resources, much to Prince Franz’s chagrin, who wanted to spend that money on subsidizing certain sectors of the economy that had yet to even marginally recover. To further complicate their relationship, the king adamantly refused any peace negotiations with the Rothswood clans, which had used the war to grow their influence and power. By 1664, a fourth of the realm was under their control, and sweeping resignations in the army, mostly farmers returning to their homes, left the Lord Palatine without any means of suppressing them by force.

 

The slow recovery came with sharp repercussions. In 1665, riots broke out within the poor sections of Markev. The worst of these burned down a fifth of the city and whipped up a frenzied mob that stormed the Krepost and came within minutes of capturing the king. Franz, taking up his role of a soldier once more, put himself at the head of a faltering unit of city guards and led them to drive back the rioters. The day after, the one recorded argument between Karl II and his Lord Palatine occurred, as the two bickered over the causes of the riots and what needed to be done to address them. The king wanted clemency, and the Lord Palatine wanted martial law. The former won out.

 

Despairing at the lack of progress that the realm was making, Prince Franz turned his attention again to foreign policy, where he might find some success again, but found himself wading into the same trap as before. 

 

In 1665, Eimar var Burgundar, one of Aurelius’ most powerful vassals, was executed after a failed rebellion against the Crown of Renatus-Marna. As the Margrave of Ostmark, Burgundar had come to control much of the southern Heartlands in the aftermath of the First Atlas Coalition War. At the height of his power, he controlled the large, rich cities of White Peak, Cyrilsburg, and Arbor, with dozens of towns in between them all. His sudden downfall had removed the King of Renatus of a potential rival, but the lands that he controlled had only recently come under the control of the Pertinaxi. It was inevitable that someone would fill the power vacuum and exploit the dissent against the execution of the popular margrave. 

 

This man was Tobias Staunton, the young great-grandson of Tobias the Conqueror, who had once held the entire world in his grasp. The younger Tobias, who until this point had been living quietly in the Curonian countryside, leapt onto the scene, convincing Margrave Eimar’s widow that only a Staunton could unite the world against the Pertinaxi. Hungary for revenge and swayed by his arguments, Aldyth of White Peak bequeathed her husband’s lands and titles to Tobias Staunton on her own deathbed in the winter of 1665. Not a moment after he came into his inheritance, Tobias crowned himself King of Courland and announced his intention to overthrow Aurelius.

 

Had Prince Franz not been overeager to topple Renatus the first moment an opportunity presented itself, he would have seen just how disastrous this second Staunton experiment was to go. Inexperienced, lazy, and dull, Tobias II was nothing like his great-grandfather, and his handling of the war would turn from hopeful to embarrassing within weeks. However, Prince Franz, like others, such as the Duke of Nevada, the Duke of Rivia, the Reiver company, and several chiefs of dwarven and orcish tribes, saw the name 'Staunton' and presumed that he would replicate the successes of his ancestor. The catastrophe of Tobias’s Rebellion would not emerge until 1666, when the war officially began, but in the preceding year it was Prince Franz who was the greatest benefactor of the doomed Staunton.

 

Had the king been available at this critical juncture in late 1665 and early 1666, he may have ordered otherwise, or he may have still confirmed his palatine’s position. Unfortunately for the realm, Karl II had been laid ill with consumption for weeks throughout the bitter winter. Barely clinging to life, he did not have the strength to even dictate his preferred succession, much less elucidate a clear path on foreign affairs. Prince Franz took charge of the government, promising to relinquish power when his cousin recovered, but in private correspondence with his brother, Prince Robert, he made clear that he knew the truth: Karl II was dying. His predictions were confirmed two weeks into the new year, on the 14th of Sun’s Smile, 1666, when the young, childless king perished.

 

Few would recognize it at the time, but the death of Karl II brought about the end of the mainline Barbanovs, the direct descendants of Andrik II. From a rapid ascent to the heights of glory, to a sudden and fatal collapse, it was a cycle that Haense had experienced before. The rise of Petyr I had given way to his son’s failed rebellion, then the loss of Haense entirely under his grandson. The restoration of the dual-monarchy under Stefan I as a powerful, Emperor-making vassal sworn to the House Mardon, quickly stagnated during the early reign of Otto II. The period of economic recovery and cultural blossoming that Otto II oversaw collapse beneath the fires of war and the destruction of the Great Plague. Karl II’s death was tragic, untimely, but to the eyes of the common Haeseni, it was nothing that they, their parents, and their grandparents, had not experienced before.

 

If there was one person who knew of the consequence of the death of the mainline Barbanovs, it was Franz’s elder brother, Prince Robert. From his country estate outside of Markev, where he had spent years in solemn, solitary recovery from his bout of the plague, he arranged a candlelight vigil upon the announcement of Karl II’s death. Unlike the funeral ceremonies in Markev, and the few observations in some of the other towns across the realm, the prince and his retainers used the occasion to honor all of the deceased Barbanovs since Petyr I, including those who had not held the throne. Portraits were commissioned for each, and ever-lit candles, wreaths, and other gifts were placed at the feet of each painting for three months. Our source, a cook in service of the prince, relayed to us through his wife, who knew how to write, does not tell us the meaning behind this elaborate ritual.

 

Another looming war, an economic crisis, and a throneless monarchy may have produced chaos in any other circumstance, but Prince Franz quickly and decisively seized control of Markev on the 17th of Sun’s Smile, shortly after the funeral of the late Karl II. With the support of the army behind him, the one institution of any importance in the realm, he could effectively assert his control over the capital without much resistance. The provincial nobility had divested themselves from the capital at the start of the Great Plague, and the late king’s lack of an heir left uncertainty in the line of succession. Was Prince Franz, who as regent and Lord Palatine was the de facto sovereign already, the natural inheritor of Hanseti and Ruska? Was it Prince Robert, the eldest of the line of Bihar? Was it Princess Amaliya, the late king’s sister? These questions were put aside for the time being: as Franz of Bihar sat upon the Haeseni Throne on the evening of the 18th of Sun’s Smile, 1666, he informed the court that the regency was to be reinstated indefinitely.

 

As he began his unofficial reign, Prince Franz benefitted from the continuity of administration. There were no great resignations or council reshufflings, which allowed him to immediately confront the problems that beset the realm. 

 

The depopulation that Haense experienced during the ‘Dark Decades’ of 1653-1678 was concentrated mostly in the north, which bordered Renatus and was especially susceptible to cross-border raids. Unfortunately, these lands were also the breadbasket of the realm, so as farmers and artisans fled to Markev and other larger cities, seeking safety, they deprived these populated hubs of the food they needed, which inevitably caused spikes in the plague.

 

For the first order of business, Prince Franz needed to quell the uprising from the Rothswood clans, which had effectively cut the western half of the realm from royal control, depriving the government of taxes and manpower that would be in serious want if they were to support Tobias II against Renatus. Leveraging his positive relationship with Andrik Tosali, who had served under him during the Czena Conflict, Franz was able to negotiate a temporary peace. Some of the possessions they had taken, mostly frontier outposts and trade forts, were confirmed, and each clan was given the right to levy tolls over one bridge and one road. In return, 500 clan warriors would be provided for the army and they would allow for trade and royal order to be restored in the west. The agreement was struck on the 4th of Harren’s Folly; merchants and tax collectors went from east to west again, unimpeded, reuniting the two halves of the realm and helping alleviate the woeful economy.

 

At roughly the same time, albeit of a far lower priority, the regent sought to improve his ties to the aristocracy. Although the influence of the nobility had eroded as they retreated from Markev, and their wealth and power had similarly waned during the plague and the recent wars against Renatus, they were still a necessary part of recreating a ruling order. Nearly every king had relied heavily on the backing of one of the realm’s most powerful noble houses. Petyr I through Marus I had relied on House Kovachev for their reigns. Stefan I through Otto II had drawn upon the talents and resources of House Bihar to rule efficiently and wisely. Now, with House Bihar as the ruling dynasty in all but name, Prince Franz looked outside of his family to find the support he needed.

 

House Ruthern, which had been a reliable vassal of the Barbanovs ever since their uprising during the Greyspine Rebellion, was the most likely to fill this role. Rhys var Ruthern, the Count of Metterden, had proven himself an able commander during the First Atlas Coalition War and was one of the few who escaped from it with his reputation intact. Even more importantly, he had been one of the few vassals to openly support the crown during the war, providing soldiers of his own to fight Renatus and her allies. As he had an unwed sister, a woman of thirty six named Tatiana, Prince Franz offered to marry her to cement an alliance between their houses. Count Rhyz agreed, and on the 16th of Harren’s Folly, 1666, the two were wed in Markev in a pleasant, but not luxurious, ceremony.

 

Tatiana of Metterden, who has come to be one of the more reviled figures in Haeseni history, would be the last to carry the flame of her husband’s legacy, even if she did little to keep his faith before his demise. She was well-educated in her youth, but she shunned courtly politics and instead preferred to help manage her brother’s estates, giving her practical experience in finance and administration. Fiercely independent, no fewer than nine suitors had vied for her hand, but she rebuffed all, preferring a spinster’s life to one bound by the vows of marriage to a petty nobleman. She had a lover of her own, a monk named Karl who hailed from the Rothswood, an esteemed position at her brother’s side, and a great deal of autonomy. Only an offer to become the Queen of Haense, or something near enough to it, could tempt her. Within a week of being told of Prince Franz’s proposition, she and Karl of the Rothswood were on the road to Markev.

 

Some credit Tatiana with pushing her husband towards his eventual self-assumption of the Haeseni throne, but he had long-harbored that ambition in some capacity or another. As his regency extended, and his rule gradually became accepted by the government and the army, he began to see his reign as an inevitability. Even before he was wed, he had discussed the plans for a coronation with Prince Edvard, who he instructed with making secret preparations. Where Tatiana was important was in ensuring the compliance of the nobility, which she did through an effective mix of coercion and bribery. By the summer, there was no one left to seriously oppose House Bihar’s claim to the Haeseni throne, and it was officially announced to a positive, accepting reception from all sectors of society. 

 

The last notable act of Prince Franz’s regency was the appointment of two hundred commoners to civil service positions around the realm. In years past, these positions would be saved exclusively for the nobility and gentry, but the shortage of able men and women from both ranks forced the regent to draw from the third estate, which was ripe with undiscovered talent despite the plague. As the only ruler of Haense to appoint more from the commonry than the nobility, Prince Franz earned great admiration from those lower classes, but his actions represented a move of necessity, not of revolutionary principle. Tatiana almost certainly played a large role in her husband’s decision, being something of a meritocrat on account of her experiences on her brother’s estates, but many later historians have reduced her role here to simply acting on the behest of her peasant lover.

 

On the eve of Franz’s coronation, the state of the realm had improved, but it was still uneasy in its footing. Another war with Renatus loomed on the horizon as Prince Franz continued to support King Tobias II in the reformed Courland despite worrying indications of the young Staunton’s gross incompetence. The Rothswood rebellion had calmed down, and the west had returned to royal control, bringing with it manpower and taxation. Markev’s population slowly recovered, as did the wider economy, and areas that had been thoroughly depopulated by war and plague, such as northern Haense, finally saw a marked return of the refugees that had come to the capital. The army had stabilized its ranks, but it still lacked competent, proven leadership and was too reliant on direct oversight from the regent. Prince Franz was well-regarded despite and because of these challenges that the realm still faced: although he had effectively usurped Haense, he had brought a measure of certainty and direction that had not been seen since Otto II.

 

On the evening of the 25th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1666, before a growing crowd of spectators from Markev and beyond, Prince Franz and Tatiana of Metterden rode side-by-side throughout Markev, flanked by dozens of cavalrymen from the royal army. Children dressed as cherubs totted before them, throwing white rose petals on the recently-cleaned cobbles of the city streets. Awaiting them in the Krepost was the assembled nobility and clergy of Haense, having finally returned to the capital after many long years away. Foreign dignitaries from every nation on Atlas, save Renatus, were also in attendance. Cooks and serving maids prepared for a coming banquet, which drew from the stockpile of two large warehouses that had been built just outside of the city; the Krepost’s own storages had overfilled long before the coronation. No expense had been spared in preparation for the ceremony, and every soldier, every worker, and every overseer had been pulled into the city to help manage the events of the evening, which Prince Franz hoped would mark a new age of recovery for Haense.

 

A full moon shone over the regent and his wife as they rode into the warm, bright halls of the Krepost. To greet them was the throne of the Barbanovs itself, with the crown of Hanseti-Ruska resting atop a pillow placed on it. Beside it stood the Bishop of Markev, and surrounding the hall were the faces of the great men and women of the realm, alive and dead, and the world’s onlookers, sent to ascertain of the era of Bihar would truly begin with the strength and spectacle that had been promised and delivered thus far. The words of a local wiseman who had approached Prince Franz earlier likely still sounded through his swarmed mind.

 

“Good portents, Your Highness. They fill the air. Blessed will the reign be of the man who will restore our realm, for he shall be King of Haense tonight.”

 

The ceremony could not have gone more smoothly, all sources tell us. Composing himself masterfully, and commanding the room with regal authority, Franz of Bihar looked every bit the spitting image of the great men of his line. They who had been some of the great powers behind the throne had now assumed it. Each step of the long, careful ceremony was made without failure or delay, and as soon as it was finished, the new King of Haense, clothed in the golden finery of his coronation’s dress, with the crown of the dual-kingdom atop his head, sat on the throne. To thunderous applause, the reign of Franz II of House Bihar had begun. Only a few moments into his acclamation, screams from outside began to pierce the thick cloak of cheers for the new king. Moments later, the doors of the Krepost were flung open, and dozens of soldiers clad in the army of the Reiter Company, Renatus’s most feared mercenaries, flooded the room.

 

Having made his career and reputation on the back of his fine soldiery, it was an uncharacteristic mistake for Prince Franz to strip his defenses in and around the capital to devote them towards the pageantry of his coronation. Watchtowers were left abandoned, the gate was open for all, and only a handful of guards were posted at each street corner. The soldiers who were a part of the ceremony itself wore ceremonial weapons unsuited for combat. The Count of Metterden had warned about the inadequate defenses in the weeks leading up to the coronation, but Prince Franz had assured him that there would be no attack. Renatus was concerned with its war preparations against Courland, and the Rothswood clans had been pacified. Neither would be so bold as to resume hostilities at this occasion. The eight hundred Reiters that would storm the capital arrived on the city’s outskirts on the morning of the 25th, completely invisible to their coming victims.

 

The battle that led to King Franz’s capture lasted less than thirty minutes. The few guards positioned around the streets were quickly overrun by the Reiter’s horses. Many more soldiers were felled running to the barracks, trying to arm themselves with the weapons they had been told were unnecessary for the coronation. The cries of fleeing civilians did not reach the ears of the Krepost until it was too late: by the time the Reiters reached the palace, the fighting was over. 

We are given three accounts of the demise of Franz II:

 

The first comes from Grima the Cunning, who was a soldier with the Reiters involved in the attack on Markev but who was not present in the throne room. He states that at the head of the force of Reiters was King Aurelius himself, who dismounted in the throne room and silently strode towards the King of Haense, sword in hand. King Franz, too stunned at what had happened, had neither the strength to move nor the voice to speak. Similarly wordless, though out of intent, not inability, the King of Renatus stepped before his southern counterpart, giving him a long, cold look before beheading him. Petrified by the death of their king and fearing their own harm, the crowd did not even gasp. Aurelius and his Reiters then rode away, leaving behind a bleeding city that was once again without a king.

 

The second comes from a baker from Pila who was familiar with Rickard Vyronov, a distant cousin of the Count of Vyronov, who had come to Markev for the coronation. According to Lord Vyronov, Aurelius was not present with the Reiters, but was instead waiting in the camp outside the city. Franz II was not frozen with fear, but instead acted quickly and decisively. He offered his surrender in exchange for an end to the violence and the lives of those in the throne room. The Reiters accepted and brought him to their encampment, where Aurelius demanded his fealty. The King of Haense refused, so Aurelius ordered him stabbed to death and had his body lifted on five wooden columns outside the city, in the sight of its inhabitants. 

 

The third comes from Pertinaxi propaganda issued at the time. It provides a chronological complication, as it puts the execution of Franz II on the 15th of Sun’s Smile, 1667, and thus is seen as the least likely of the three accounts. According to them, Aurelius was not anywhere in Haense at all, but was instead with the army at Carolustadt. The Reiter force was instead led by his son, Prince Antonius, who accepted King Franz’s surrender and brought him to the Renatian capital in chains. There, before a jeering crowd of the assembled Heartlandic nobility, he was given the offer to submit to Renatus or be killed. Franz refused, so Aurelius drew his sword and struck him in the heart, killing him on the spot.

 

The Execution of Franz II of Haense in 1666, c. 1685

A stylized, and certainly inaccurate, depiction of the death of Franz II as outlined in our second source. Had his death been conducted just outside the walls of Markev, it would have been done at night, as the Reiters who had captured him would not have risked waiting until the morning, which could have made them vulnerable to a counter-attack.

 

If there are two consistencies among the three sources, it is that the Reiter attack on Haense was not permanent, and that it led to the death of Franz II mere minutes after he was proclaimed as such. The circumstances that enabled them to move in secret and capture the King of Haense without detection or resistance- their light numbers- was also the reason the kingdom as a whole was spared. Aurelius could not risk bringing a larger force to bear down on Markev, as it would have opened his eastern flank to Courland and alerted Franz II ahead of time. Perhaps more concerned in the strength of Franz II than in the kingdom he ruled, Aurelius chose to have him killed before war could be declared. Or, as other historians have alleged, the King of Renatus truly did believe that King Franz was weak-willed, or at least in a desperate enough position to trade Haense’s autonomy for its security.

 

Franz II was not of such a nature, as this author has established, for even had he been at his wit’s ends, he had lived too proud of a life to bend the knee, even when pragmatism may have excused such a decision. “For Haense’s freedom, I will give my life, for lay by Czena’s banks, I will be at peace, but beneath the dragon I will fear to close my eyes,” he is supposed to have said by the minstrels and bards who composed songs in his honor in the weeks after his death. At least in the moment, his death made him a martyr to the Renatian expansion that his two predecessors had in part succumbed to.

 

 As noble of a martyr as he may have been, rejecting foreign domination with his final breath, Franz II’s untimely death was a political disaster that did little to maintain Haeseni sovereignty. A power vacuum emerged immediately after its death, but unlike after Otto III’s death, there was no apparent successor here. Franz II had left no children behind. His brother, Prince Robert, was too feeble to serve and would have rejected the throne anyway. His nephew, Prince Edward, was a capable seneschal, but he had few friends at court and no connections in the Church or the army to compensate for it. There was another nephew, Prince Sigmar, but he had not been seen in Haense for years.

 

With a complete lack of available leadership, the responsibility of securing the state, the Bihar Dynasty, and the whole of the country, fell on the shoulders of the newly-widowed Queen Tatiana. The same evening her husband was slain, she refused to mourn. Much as Franz had done months ago, she called upon the army, the government, and the sections of the court she could rely upon to back her as she assumed the regency. No one was willing to oppose her at the moment, so on the 26th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1666, she formally installed herself as regent of Haense and general of the royal army. She named her lover, the monk Karl of the Rothswood, to the office of the Lord Palatine, knowing he was the one man she could trust. That same day, the Lord Palatine issued martial law and called upon the army to completely secure Markev. House Bihar, now commanded by a Ruthern widow and a peasant monk, would stand.

 

Before the year’s end, Franz II’s body was either returned or retrieved for burial, which was held on the 30th of Tobias’s Bounty. A sizable crowd had gathered for the funeral, but few grieved beyond what could be considered typical for the time. The late king was a blip in Haense’s short history and just another small tragedy among many of the Dark Decades. The unspectacular reception to the proceedings was matched by, or possibly the result of, the lack of funding that had created a humble environment devoid of any extremes of emotion. Even Queen Tatiana’s speech lacked a gripping sorrow, an expected longing, for her dead husband:

 

“Again, House Barbanov is tested. His Majesty, having given his life for his people, has given us yet another challenge. Shall we fall to the legions of Aurelius? Must my husband’s sacrifice be in vain? Will we abandon the dreams we harbor for our sons and daughters so we, and we alone, may enjoy the comforts of perceived protection? It is not our way, and it has never been our way: allow my husband’s death to be the clearest example of that. There is to be one state, one king, one Barbanov, and it is that state of order we shall maintain until we fall for the final time.”

 

Despite the confidence in her words, Queen Tatiana had received harrowing news earlier that morning. In the west, the Rothswood clans had risen up again, believing that their peace with King Franz was now defunct. Towns and keeps were attacked in a renewed fury, as the one man possibly able to contain the clans was now dead. To make matters worse, Aurelius had begun his campaign into Courland, and in the process had formally declared war on Haense, citing their poorly-concealed support for Tobias II. He ordered the Margrave of Styria to raid deep into Haeseni territory and prevent them from effectively supporting Courland. War with Renatus had come again.
 

Dravi, Franz II ‘The Lost Bihar’

21st of Horen’s Calling, 1633-25th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1666

(r. 14th of Sun’s Smile, 1666-25th of Tobias’s Bounty, 1666)

 

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

[Hom 1987]

Spoiler

these are always amazingly written and i always look forward to the next one, there isn’t nearly enough attention on these for all the work that you do. reading lotc history that happened before i was on the server through the lens of real historical accounts and research (with multiple retellings and perspectives) really submerges me in the worldbuilding and setting like nothing else does. already excited for the next!!