AEDa4
A King is the collective might of his people made flesh. A Fhet King always faces the possibility of threats to his reign, but in S1, the perceived impossibility of overthrowing a king renders potential threats flaccid. The S1 King would like everyone to think that his unseating is an impossibility, but in actuality, all Kings are vulnerable to overthrow; if you separate them from their crowns. A King with a crown on his head is a one man army.
Sao-Reyne was just twenty years RET when he received the crown of the S1 King. His father, and the rest of the extended royal family, was hold up in the fortifications of the Castle Sao for nearly two years as the traitorous military waged a coup to unseat him. They were angry over prolonged hostilities with S2 that had stemmed from a personal slight against the S1 King, Sao-Rine. When King Sao-Rine had traveled to S2 with his Queen to visit with the King Tryi Yel, King Rine did not feel that proper respect was shown befitting a man of his might. There was no parade in the streets of S2 to greet him, no official envoy awaiting their arrival at Castle Tryi. King Rine was disrespected and he voiced his concerns when the two Kings met face to face.
“Have you forgotten your last visit to S1?” King Rine asked with indignation.
“Oh, how could I?” King Yel said. “What a feminine display of excesses. I had assumed that your Queen was responsible for that embarrassment.”
“Embarrassment?!” Rine was scandalized. “Our best musicians and dancers were there to greet and honor your might.”
“You had hoped to honor my might with noise and seizing fools?!” King Yel laughed out loud and almost fell from his seat.
King Rine stood and the crown on his head began to glow a neon blue and a haze of the glow slowly surrounded the stately man. He held a fist at King Yel that illuminated blue. “You have offended me. Kindly make amends or you will feel my might.”
King Yel stood and his crown exploded in a red flame. It raged high and caught the drapes in the official room on fire. It was a smokeless flame that turned everything it touched to ashes. “Let us fight.”
Before the Kings could duel, they were separated by their aids in attendance at the meeting. King Rine and his delegation left S2 in a hurry and he planned a campaign to undermine the rule of his new rival. Rine funded factions in S2 who were critical of King Yel and they attacked their king in public to stoke insurrection. These efforts were largely ineffective and eventually backfired on Rine, who became the target of Yel, who was well connected within S1 and used Rine’s plan to much better effect to cause the year long coup that had him held up in his castle.
As the resources dwindled, King Rine went out of the castle to battle his detractors more and more in hopes of ending the movement to unseat him. Rine could use the S1 crown to fly and the might of the crown imbued him with great strength and endurance. But King Yel was aware of this and he had sent many enemies of the S1 King to assist in the coup and the numbers were simply overwhelming. King Rine would fight for hours, knocking men unconscious, killing others, but it was never enough. King Yel had promised the S1 crown to the man who managed to kill King Rine, and there was no shortage of men all over the Fhetat who ached for the power that a crown bestowed upon the wearer.
After a year of exhausting battles, and growing fatigue that compromised Rine’s ability to properly yield the magics of his crown, he stood in his thrown room with his Queen and his son, Sao-Reyne. Reyne had recently returned to the castle from a campaign around the ring of the Fhetat. He had successfully led covert raids of a weapons facility in each of the sections and managed to steal technologies that were tightly protected by the militaries of each section. His raids were extremely risky, and he would have been considered a failure if he had been detected and exposed, but he had made his father proud. He was shocked to see the resistance to his father’s reign at his return.
In the throne room, King Rine had his son kneel before him and he removed the crown from his head. Rine had worn the crown at all times since he was named King by his father. Reyne was surprised that his father was willing to relent, but Rine told his son the plan to stop the coup would require a wearer of the crown at his peak.
“You will have to defeat the coup on two fronts.” Rine explained and his son took his place on the throne of Castle Sao. “You will need to stomp out the insurrection on our doorstep. And then you will need to rip out the root of disloyalty at its source; in the Castle of S2.”
Reyne thought on this. It was his father’s obsession with the S2 King that had started this whole mess. It didn’t make sense to him to stoke the rivalry with S2, not until the threat at the door was well contained and happy with their king, and that could take a generation. Reyne wouldn’t forget the chaos that the S2 King had sowed, but he would let that conflict take a backseat to his immediate concern.
With the S1 Crown, Reyne was an unstoppable force. His father had been right, on the head of a man in full command of his faculties, the crown makes a king near indestructible. And Reyne very proudly demonstrated his might to the naysayers on his door. And he very easily stomped out the coup at his doorstep.
PRL Serials 