Empress Giselle

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Early Life and Election

Empress Giselle de Sarvos was a born politician; clever, manipulative and cunning. Her guild, the Alvetti carta, were long-established players in the games of the Jewelled City and she enjoyed every advantage growing up While she was not lineaged herself, she had ties with several reckoner guilds both through her mother, a naga, and her merrow husband Teodore von Mestra. She never lacked for useful information about the political and financial affairs of her allies and rivals. Through a delicate web of blackmail and patronage she cultivated agents and business interests throughout the League, and made a special point of extending her reach to Siroc, Meade as well.

She made little secret of her love for the League. Wherever she could exert influence, she encouraged the prosperity of the League as a whole. While she obviously favoured her supporters, she was not selfish with her patronage and favoured League citizens over citizens of other nations wherever possible. While her interests were primarily economic and political, she made regular charitable donations to the bishops of Prosperity and Pride, and was an active patroness of the church of the Little Mother. She encouraged politically minded League bishops to take active part in Synod politics; even before she became Empress the League National Assembly enjoyed an unparalleled influence over religious matters. She was even-handed in her largesse - despite being a child of the bay of Catazar she was as active in Temeschwar and Holberg as she was in Sarvos and Tassato

Some historians credit her with actively fanning the flames of Senatorial worry after the loss of Spiral in 331 YE, encouraging the idea that the Empire would need unified leadership in the wake of that crisis, Most historians see her as being more opportunistic; recognising the chance to increase her power and the power of the League she loved, she did exactly what she had done to become a merchant prince; employ blackmail, bribery and patronage to bring as many senators as possible under her influence.

Reign

Unfortunately the approach that had made her a successful merchant prince helped made her a dangerously ineffective Empress. Her skills were honed on the subtle battlefields of the League, and they proved to be much less effective on the larger stage of Imperial politics. She made little effort to conceal her love for her own nation, which immediately made her unpopular. While she was free with her patronage, those who refused it were often cut off completely from the Throne; in some cases she actively blocked their future careers if she considered them a threat to her allies, her nation or her own position. Her habit of playing her supporters off against one another to safeguard her own position deepened the divisions in the Senate. Her agents, alert for signs of dissension and potential blackmail material encouraged an atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia.

Under her benign gaze an atmosphere of nepotism flourished in the Empire as never before. She even exerted influence over the election of several Senators, and for many years the Freeborn Senator for Madruga was in her pocket following extensive 'loans' to her political campaign. She even managed to exert some influence over the selection of senators in Dawn and the Marches by favouring her allies with gifts of money to help them claim their Senate seats.

Her allies in the conclave never lacked for crystallized mana, and for a brief period in 338 YE five of the six Archmagi were magicians of the League, each owing their position to the patronage of the Empress. Efforts by the Synod to express their disapproval for her methods were repeatedly stymied either by priests who owed patronage to her or by priests who simply approved of her bold character. Few could fault her virtues - without a doubt she was proud, ambitious, prosperous and loyal. She simply directed her virtue more towards her nation that toward the Empire.

After months of wrangling with the Synod, Giselle made an outrageous and extremely unwise claim to be a reincarnation of the Paragon Empress Richilde despite a complete lack of evidence. Encouraged to use True Liao, in 341 YE she scandalised the Synod by taking her husband Teodore as her guide, whose confirmation of her past-life as Richilde was considered transparent and unconvincing in the extreme. In what many saw as an attempt to emulate Aldones di Sarvos, she completely misread the mood of the Synod. Giselle merely succeeded in alienating several of her Dawnish supporters and outraging many of her supporters in the Synod. It proved to be a turning point in her reign.

Further scandal was to follow; in 342 YE damaging letters between the throne, the Senator of Madruga and the Aldermen of Meade came to light in which it became clear that she was trying to encourage the cities of Meade and Siroc to secede from their nations and join the League. It ended the political career of the Freeborn senator, and saw relationships between the Marcher households and the Market Towns sour even further. Giselle was able to distance herself from the plan, but in the process was forced to abandon some of her supporters who bore the brunt of Freeborn and Marcher ire in the Senate.

For many these revelations were the final straw. By 344 YE it became clear that not even her supporters in the Synod could quiet the growing dissatisfaction at the methods and her obvious favouritism towards the League. Before she could be publicly censured, however, the Druj barbarians and their subject tribes launched a series of attacks along the eastern borders of the Empire, ranging deep into the Barrens and attacking the outskirts of Semmerholm and Weirwater. In the face of this aggression, and massive political pressure from the Senators of Dawnish, the Empress made a hurried reconciliation with the Synod, and turned her attention to the defence of the Empire.

Death and Legacy

After two years of campaigning against the Druj, Empress Giselle was killed at Holberg during an ill-fated attempt to defend the territory. She repeatedly ignored the advice of her Generals - that the apparent weakness in the Druj lines was clearly a trap. Her refusal to listen lead to the resignation of the Marcher General Maria of Upwold and the Brass Coast General Xavier i Torelia i Riqueza, and she personally removed the Dawnish Generals Leon de Rousillon (coincidentally uncle of her successor to the throne, Emperor Hugh) and Elaine de Ballion when they point-blank refused to send Dawnish troops to the aid of Holberg.

Exactly what happened at Holberg is not clear, but Giselle and her husband were killed as the Imperial forces defeated - the Druj and their allies took the territory and lay siege to the city to this day. The Empress, riddled with deadly venom, survived long enough to refuse the honour of being interred in the Necropolis and instead insisted on being entombed in her beloved League alongside her husband. She was placed in a massive marble tomb in Caricomare where she rested for only two years before the Alivetti estates were devastated in the storms that sank the streets and drowned that part of the city.

Following her death, the Synod wielded the power of revocation against several senators who owed their position to her patronage, much to the chagrin of those priests who still saw her as a larger-than-life character strong in the virtues of pride, prosperity and even loyalty. The resulting divisions persisted for many years.

Her own guild, and several others that had been tied to her patronage, suffered near-catastrophic reversals of fortune; the Alivetti in particular were left almost destitute (by League standards). Historians point ironically to her love of the League, and the fact that it was during her reign that the League suffered one of its greatest setbacks (the loss of Holberg).

It was decades before the reputation of the League recovered from the taint of having had such an inwardly-focused Empress, and to this day many citizens of the League consider her reign to have been a low-point, rather than a high point, in their history. There is no doubt that Giselle was a clever manipulator, but her skills did not transition well to the wider canvas of Imperial politics. She was charismatic, but personal magnetism was insufficient to win her enemies to her cause. She understood politics, but she woefully misunderstood how complex the Imperial political arenas actually were.

Her reign is used as an object lesson of the dangers of overconfidence, of under-estimating the political savvy of the other nations, of the damage that can be done by placing someone who loves their nation more than the Empire on the Imperial Throne, and of the importance of listening to one's generals.

"She loved not wisely, and too well."

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Giselle in Play

Giselle was on the throne