House of Mir
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As the first imperial dynasty of the Empire of Athalē, the noble house of Mir was hugely influential in the formation of the empire, and the golden age that followed them was built largely on foundations they laid. Following is a chronicle of the internal workings and family tree of their dynasty.
Contents |
Tēmekas I
Tēmekas I
Born: 204
Enthroned: 244
Died: 253
Children with Liduni (205 - 235):
- Khīles, boy. 223 - 250
- Mikha.
Children with Bathisēpa (214 - 293):
- Naiōla, girl. 236 - 278
Tēmekas the First was the heir of the disenfranchised royal family of Thāras, the house of Mir, who had not tasted power in three generations. Despite being held as "guests" in Athalē at the time, the family never ceased in their machinations to regain power, and Tēmekas was no less ambitious than his forebears. He joined the army at an early age, and by 229 worked his way up to the rank of general.
Tēmekas was married in 222, to his distant cousin Liduni. Their early passion faded fast, but she bore him two sons, Khīles and Mikha. Tēmekas' high regard for his firstborn, Khīles, was in stark contrast to his disdain of Mikha (to whom he did not even give a noble suffix). Khīles - athletic, tall, gregarious, and confident - was his father's darling, and was groomed as his heir. Mikha was thin, unhealthy, and disinclined to both physical and social activity, and grew up in his older brother's shadow, largely ignored by his father. 215 In 233, Liduni took ill with a coughing and wasting disease. Publicly worried for his wife, in private General Tēmekas' eyes were all on the Mezarasian beauty Bathisēpa, who he had spied bathing herself in front of a window. She later confessed to having spent weeks at that window trying to catch the general's eye; unlike quiet Liduni, Bathisēpa was ambitious. Even as his wife was dying, Bathisēpa installed herself first into his bed and then into his council. She quickly gained a reputation among the nobility as a wily manipulator, but in Tēmekas's mind she could do no wrong. Liduni died in the spring of 235. Under Thārasian custom, marrying a commoner would have constituted abdication as the heir of Mir, and so his hunger for power prevented him from marrying Bathisēpa. The traditional Thārasian solution was for her to be an unmarried consort, which role she modeled herself on thereafter - it meant her children would be considered legitimate heirs of Tēmekas provided she remained in good standing. The two of them plotted and waited for their chance. She also bore him a daughter, Naiōla, in late 236.
When his father Idores died in 240, Tēmekas became the head of the House. He and Bathisēpa watched as the rulers of Athalē pretended they weren't behaving like the very kings the city wasn't supposed to have, and he grew jealous of Phanal even while serving as his general. He and his consort plotted to install him as king, and the opportunity came in 244 when Phanal died unexpectedly with no clear successor (he had one very young son). Some suspected foul play, but nobody dared to bring charges against Tēmekas; it was whispered that Bathisēpa had engineered the ruler's death. The army idealized Tēmekas and Phanal together as the team which led them to repeated victories, and with the latter out of the way, Tēmekas used the army's loyalty to ensure no one dared oppose him. At the advanced age of 40, he proclaimed himself king of Athalē and Thāras. The king proved quite authoritarian, but at the same time, he was a capable ruler, and the incipient Empire of Athalē expanded strongly under his reign.
The birth of Naiōla was very difficult, and Bathisēpa was unable to bring any subsequent children to term. She remained powerful throughout the king's reign, though, and came to be so respected in Thāras that a personality cult arose around her there. After Tēmekas died in 253, she retired to Thāras and lived there for another forty years.
Mikha and Uremas I
Mikha
Born: 225
Enthroned: 253
Died: 257
No issue.
Uremas I
Born: 240
Enthroned: 257
Died: 274
Children with Naiōla (236 - 278):
- Tēmekas II.
Prince Khīles died in 250 in a hunting accident. Tēmekas I was dismayed; his well-groomed heir was dead, leaving the introverted and ill-prepared Mikha in line for his throne. He resolved to prepare his remaining son, but it was too late; Mikha was already 25 years old and well set in his ways. Uninterested in ruling, he nevertheless began to study at his father's urging. But the going was slow, and when Tēmekas died three years later Mikha ascended the throne still quite unfit to do anything with it. He relied on his counsellors and generals to such an extent that he was effectively a puppet. Bathisēpa tried to advise him, but they had never gotten along well, and the new king remained weak.
Mikha's downfall was not long in coming. Only four years later in 257, Uremas, son of the same Phanal that Bathisēpa may have had killed, returned the favor. Having won many of the top nobles of Athalē to his side, Uremas - not a man to have others do what he could perfectly well do himself - simply walked one morning into the palace kitchen and stabbed Mikha from behind as he was speaking with the cook. The guards and even the cook were all with Uremas on this, and raised no outcry. The rivalry of Athalē with Thāras had not yet grown stale, and the Holy City was happy to have a native Athalēran of the house of Aiathi back in control.
Thāras, however, was severely displeased. Spurred on and orchestrated in large part by the wily old Bathisēpa, the Thārasian body politic delivered to Athalē what was then called the Final Threat: restore the House of Mir to power or fight. Thāras, despite not being the capital of the young empire, had more than twice the population of Athalē at this time, and the latter knew it would lose. So while nobles on both sides spoke out against the other, and amid much public posturing and jingoism, a quiet but steady stream of diplomatic missions between the councils of Uremas I and Bathisēpa worked out a solution: Uremas was to marry into the house of Mir by taking Naiōla, its sole remaining heir, as his queen.
The bride and groom wanted nothing to do with each other, but bit their tongues for the sake of averting war and married less than a year after Mikha's assasination. Thus were the houses of Aiathi and Mir united into a single family with undisputed claim to the throne. Once again out of duty, Uremas I and Naiōla produced an heir - which they named Tēmekas the Second, at her insistance. Uremas remained firmly in charge with Naiōla exerting only marginal political power, but when it came to her child, she dug in her heels and forced him to go along with what she wanted. Their uneasy marriage lasted through the rest of his reign until he died in 274 by choking on his dinner, and no other children were born.
Tēmekas II
Tēmekas II
Born: 258
Enthroned: 274
Died: 310
Children with Māphini (257 - 300):
- unnamed stillborn girl. 276
- Tēmekas III.
- Sumini and Thīoze, fraternal twin girls. 280 - 321 and 280 - 338
- Uremas II.
- Semōnes, boy. 284 - 351
- Rebas, boy. 285 - 290
- Hekhes, boy (paternity uncertain). 287 - 324
Children with Ngaxeuda (283 - 305):
- Marāla, girl. 302 - 340
- Texozonon I. 302 - 364
- Lekhīrā, boy. 303 - 328
- unnamed boy, died with his mother in childbirth. 305
Tēmekas II was the first to declare himself seathiauk - emperor - and the first to study the imperial model of Huyfárah. He was also a prolific sire of offspring. Between his two wives, he was the father of twelve legitimate children (two of which did not survive birth), although the paternity of one of these has always been questioned. Additionally he is believed to have fathered at least twenty-two illegitimate children, and possibly more.
Tēmekas II acquired a reputation as a ladies' man from an early age, and four of his known illegitimate children were born before his sixteenth birthday - all in the same year, and to four different young ladies. His mother Naiōla was scandalized at first, and later, refused to acknowledge her son's promiscuity. When he inherited the throne, he married Māphini, daughter of a Khalanese noble house - a political marriage he was forced into soon after accession. Their union proved loveless, but not fruitless. She gave birth seven times to eight children. The worst-kept secret of the court during this period was the sheer number of mistresses the Emperor wooed privately, often several at a time, which was an ongoing source of embarassment for Māphini. She grew bitter and lashed out against Tēmekas publicly on more than one occasion, but he was generally a tolerant man and took this in stride.
His tolerance was strained in early 287, however, when Hekhes was born. Unlike his fair-haired and fair-skinned parents, Hekhes had dark hair and an olive complexion, and Tēmekas was rumored to be furious. Nevertheless, distasteful of courtly drama, he publicly acknowledged the boy his son and did his best to quench the rumors. The happy family illusion they maintained finally cracked open later that year, when Māphini upbraided Tēmekas at length at an official dinner over his drunken behavior the night before, severely embarassing the Emperor in front of the new envoys from Xsali and the fully assembled court. After a week of fuming, he announced a divorce. The queen was exiled from court to a small town near Radias and set up with a small household of her own; Tēmekas agreed to let her raise the three youngest boys while keeping the older children in court, and by all accounts she eventually accepted her fate and found a happier life there.
The Emperor found himself freer than ever to engage in his proclivities. The servants giggled and whispered about it, and nobles of the court simply smiled and changed the subject. This carried on for another 14 years, until 301, when a beautiful new chambermaid from Akelodo was hired. Tēmekas was smitten with Ngaxeuda from day one. Against the advice of his counsellors and ignoring the scandalous age difference (she was younger than his son Uremas), he married her late that year. Uremas too was smitten, and fought with his father repeatedly - and left the court when the royal couple married. Only two months later Ngaxeuda gave birth, and to nobody's surprise, only four months after that it was announced she was pregnant again. A third child followed soon after. By all accounts, Tēmekas and Ngaxeuda were a love match, and for his wife the Emperor wrote a number of highly emotional poems that remain on record.
The new queen became pregnant a fourth time in 305, but the happiness of the court came to an abrupt halt when she and the child died in labor. Tēmekas was devastated, and fell into a deep depression. He secluded himself from courtly life and allowed governance of the Empire to fall to his eldest son Tēmekas (III). He grew ill, and by 309 it was clear the end was near. Tēmekas II died the next spring.
Tēmekas III and Uremas II
Tēmekas III
Born: 277
Enthroned: 310
Died: 310
Children with Bīa (274 -300 ):
- Dīrā, girl. 295 - 356
Children with Umadoze (278 - 322):
- Ukhirā, girl. 301 - 351
- Bunōrā, girl. 303 - 339
Uremas II
Born: 281
Enthroned: 311
Retired: 325
Died: 332
Children with Lona (289 - 331):
- Masōthi, girl. 311 - 348
- Haiēla, girl. 314 - 379
- Alakathi, girl. 315 - 344
- Oboni, girl. 317 - 336
Tēmekas the Third was enthroned shortly after his father's death. His reign started off well; he sent trade envoys to Huyfárah and Xsali which were well received, and on the domestic scene he set in motion an ambitious plan - devised while acting for his ailing father, who had suggested it - to construct a network of imperial highways. Late that autumn, however, a plague struck much of the central and southern Rathedan. In the Holy City of Athalē, as many as one in ten succumbed, and Tēmekas III was among them. He had three young daughters, but no sons. The throne thus fell to his brother Uremas.
Unfortunately, Uremas - who had been largely out of the picture since leaving the court in 301 - had to be tracked down. Couriers were dispatched throughout the Empire, and the next brother in line - Semōnes - held everything together while they waited. Semōnes was a priest with little ambition for himself, and refused the suggestions of others that he take the throne himself instead of waiting for the alienated Uremas. It was not until three months later that word came; Uremas had been in Xsalad, carrying on an affair with the niece of the Xsali emperor. Uremas caused a minor scandal when he arrived in Athalē in the winter of early 311 with his black mistress at his side. Negroid traders from Xsalad had been known and welcomed in the Rathedan for centuries, but marrying someone so different was another matter - especially for royalty. Nevertheless, Uremas II married his outlandish and very pregnant queen ||oena (rendered into Adāta as Lōna) as part of his coronation ceremony.
It took time for Lōna to be accepted by the court. Those who knew her spoke well of her, but she mostly kept to herself and never developed any close friends beyond her husband. Uremas, too, was a very private man. He continued the highway project begun by his brother, strengthened trade with Xsalad (with the help of his wife), proved to be very world-wise and gained wide respect for his capability, but he kept his distance from the social life of the court. Historians have speculated on how matters might have gone differently had Uremas cultivated the respect of his nobles.
Lōna bore him four daughters, all of them nearly as dark as their mother, but no sons. Many nobles were quietly horrified. Some feared for the future of the dynasty, while others saw opportunity to gain advantage for themselves. But the public remained firmly behind the emperor, and when in 321 the fourth plot to unseat Uremas was uncovered, an angry mob killed the instigating Lord Iadan before he could be brought to trial. After this incident, the loyal Semōnes - the next brother in line - came forward with a list of twelve nobles who had offered to help him gain the throne. Counsellors urged the emperor to execute everyone on the list, but fearing rebellion by their houses, he exiled them instead. Uremas' relationship with his nobles continued to worsen. He had befriended the elderly Bathisēpa in his youth and absorbed a great amount of political wisdom from her, and applied it successfully earlier in his reign, but as time wore on no amount of political savvy could stop the tide of sentiment.
In the summer of 325, a major scandal erupted when it was learned that his eldest daughter Masōthi had secretly married his young half-brother Texozonon. This walked the line of acceptable distance of kinship - it would have been outright unacceptable if Texozonon and Uremas shared a mother instead of a father - and the fact she had married without her father's permission at the young age of 15 was just as bad. Uremas himself was stunned, but it didn't take the nobility long to move. They quickly realized that this development finally offered the acceptable succession path that had been missing: by virtue of descent from Tēmekas II and marriage to the eldest daughter of Uremas, Texozonon was heir-apparent. It undoubtedly helped that Texozonon was popular, decisive, and devout. The nobility pressured the emperor to step down, and by the end of the year there was nothing left he could do. Uremas II announced his retirement and the reign of Texozonon I began.
Uremas and Lona retired to the quiet city of Hiphago with their youngest three daughters, and the former emperor died there in 332.
Texozonon I and II
to be written
