The current King of Averoigne — a man whose reputation was bad enough to prolong a civil war by three years.
What We Know (all GM)
- Eldest son of Michel d’Envers; succeeded him on his father’s sudden death in Fall 1733.
- His poor reputation derailed negotiations for the surrender of Touraine and the resolution of the civil war — the Fausseflammes party would rather be besieged than accept him.
- The reputation now has content: stories of cruelty, abuse, sadism, and the killing of surrendered enemies, widespread enough that even people who accept him as lawful king regard him as dishonorable and dangerous. His possession of the throne is nonetheless widely recognized, including by foreign governments — Cardacci among them, even as the Doge shelters his rivals. (GM)
- The siege ran on until Summer 1736, when Touraine fell and the Comtesse killed herself. The war is “technically over.”
- Reigns over a kingdom that, as of 1739, is wrecked, plague-struck, deep in debt, and weak in support for the Crown (S5, expat gossip in Halwa).
- Two legitimate rivals to his line — the Comtesse’s daughters — are alive and guests of the Doge in Cardacci.
Why He Matters
He is the man on the throne of the kingdom the party’s western thread keeps pointing at: the Order of the Swan’s home, the site of an undiscovered sanctum in the northern mountains, and, probably, the homeland of the swordsman who holds Kraus’s Folly.
Speculation
A king this weak, with living claimants sheltered by a foreign power and a country full of plague and debt, is a king who needs friends — or a king somebody else is already using. If the swordsman at Kraus’s Folly is an Averoigne noble running a private operation across the Circle Sea, this is the court he came from.
Relationships
- Michel d’Envers — his father.
- the Comtesse de Touraine — the enemy he could not negotiate with.