The First, and Viscount Sunset
The First Princess of Vespana
This week, we look at another pair of founders who shaped the Princess Wars from beginning to end; The First Princess of Vespana and the Viscount-Eternal, Lourdus Sunset.
Early Life
Born Valerie Esperenza in the [Cite de Douarnenez] (situated in CURRENT YEAR's Esperenza City), Princess Valerie grew up just as the [Heroine Alliance] was formed as part of the noble family there. Since Douarnenez is situated at the far North-Eastern end of the continental coast, neither [The Eunarchy] nor the [Graven Cult]'s influence reached this far, Valerie grew up without knowing the ludicrum of the times. However, that peace was illusory, since The Eunarchy had long detested the region for birthing the [Sword Heroine], and for continually rejecting the [Constitutional Slavery] edicts.
Douarnenez lies on flat land overlooking the seafoam of the continent's east coast. To its west separated by an impassable mountain ridge are the plains of [Burlion]. To its south are long stretches of forested and fertile land broken up by sporadic hillsides that meets with the [Red Land] of East Fabrique. For many years, The Eunarchs worked to infiltrate the region, finding success after the [Graven Cult]'s end, bypassing Viscount Sunset of East Fabrique. [1]
In O.E 786, the [Controllists] infiltrated a celebration for Valerie's coming of age ceremony, staging a [Multi-colored Revolution] and managed to take Valerie prisoner along with the rest of the city. Valerie is taken to an unnamed [Imprisonment Tower] along with her servants.
It is unknown what fate transpired there, but going by [Controllist] behavior, The Eunarchs would have tried to brainwash her into becoming a The Eunarchy aligned puppet princess. The Eunarchs most likely would have tried to gleam her [Manifest] from her, but to no avail. No word is heard from the missing princess until O.E 789.
The Oración Prophecy
Why would The Eunarchy go to such lengths for the princess of a far-flung city? The answer lay with a decade-old prophecy that a "golden haired and blue eyed" girl would end The Eunarchy. Such was the influence of the prophecy that it was sung by little children in the streets of [West Fabrique]. Since other parts of the prophecy have come true in the form of [Moonfall] and [Sharryn's Last Stand], the fearful Controllists started rooting out all young girls with the above description as part of Constitutional Slavery.
Flight to Bylon
During the winter of O.E 789, the princess Valerie was suddenly condemned to a quiet execution. It is believed that her re-education had gone badly, retarding parts of her mind and making her unfit as a useful puppet. Furthermore, by this time the subjugation of Douarnenez was already complete, and her use was at an end.
On that snowy day, Valerie was marched in thin rags up the execution stand. As she was forced to bow her head to the jeering fort soldiers below, Morganna and Satella who had disguised themselves as soldiers leapt onto the execution stage, executing the executioner with a blast of Satella's Four-Shooter.
As the blast resounded in the valley, it was followed by multiple explosions in the snowy mountains surrounding the Fort-Tower. By no coincidence, an avalanche was triggered by Morganna's machinations, burying the fort in snow. As the torrents of snow came crashing down the slopes, panic set into the fort's soldiers, who attempted to flee the area by horse. In the midst of the chaos, the Founding Trine slip away through an underpass.
Valerie's Insistence
In [[Princess Wars]], this is dramatized by Valerie urging the other two to allow her to pay her last respects to the servants who were taken with her. Despite being greatly opposed by Satella, they would make their way to a torture chamber only to find the half-eaten corpses of her former servants. The shock from this scene is too much to bear, and she becomes a fearful wreck for the rest of the Flight to Bylon.
While unlikely to have happened in history, it is a far more generous way of explaining away the fitful and often naïve mind of The First during the early parts of the Princess Wars. In contrast to her forceful demeanor after Shirohime, early Valerie is consistently recorded as being weak and helpless on every record.
At this point, the years of torture should have taken a toll on her body and mind, that the sheltered and spoilt princess would even propose "paying respects" is out of character and more likely a later Sunset family invention. The Starlight family records are far less generous, recording the Founding Starlight's frustration at her insistence on having a specific servant attend to her, even though she had only just barely escaped execution. The Founding Trine would escape from the underpass out into a coastal cave, where they would take a small rowboat to Bylon Island.
Last Word
The First in her adolescence was a victim of The Eunarchy's paranoid machinations, only narrowly escaping a closed fate by the other two members of the Founding Trine. Despite her early disadvantages, she would slowly pick the pieces of her mind back together during her stay on Bylon and while rebuilding New Coimbra, events far down the timeline.
[1] Passing through that to that region would have meant going through the barren deserts of the Red Land, or traversing the mountain region that borders Burlion. The Viscount Sunset cited the [Separation of Death and Afterlife] as reason for not interfering in mortal politics. His forces were also spent in the assault on the [Graven Cult], successfully defeating the leaders of the cult but becoming "gravenly wounded" in the process.
The Eternal Viscount, Lourdus Sunset
Of all the founders, we know the most of Lourdus Sunset, the only founder who lived through the Old Empire, served The Eunarchy, and saw the founding of Vespana.
Early Life
The Founding Sunset's early life is tied up with the flourishing of magick. As magick became more and more commonplace, so too did the fortunes of the Sunset family. All that came to a screeching halt when the [Empire-Eunarchy] instituted the [Witch Hunts], imprisoning Lourdus before dismembering his body into six and seven pieces. [1] While ostensibly a routine action due to The-Eunarchy's fear of magick, the Eunarchs targetted Lourdus as they believed that eating the bodies of their victims would grant them magickal power and manifests. Thus, cannibalizing Lourdus whose manifest is closely related to the dead would grant them immortality.
Story's Beginnings
"Immortality is a curse. Not a blessing." - Lourdus Sunset
He would be put back together after a continent-spanning effort by the treacherous Witch of the Beginning, another who coveted Lourdus' immortality. Together, they crossed five passes, besting all six Eunarchial forces sent to stop them, reaching their homeland of Bylon Island. Their story is retold in modern times through a children's storybook [The Sorceress and the Sunset], an admonishment against the pursuit of power for power's sake.
According to legend, Lourdus would combine powers with the Brother Viscount, a piece of his body brought to life by The-Eunarchy and defeat the Witch of the Beginning at Bylon Clocktower. Thereafter, the armies of the Afterlife would become quiet for years after [Moonfall].
Personality and Outlook
The Lourdus we know of in the [Princess Wars] has many faces, sometimes appearing as a young boy, an old man, and a pallbearer with long grey hair. Part of the Eternal Viscount's manifest allows him to swap forms with his mummified servants, it is said that "Lourdus is the Afterlife"; so too is his personality ever-shifting, sometimes laughing, other times stern and morose.
The most common depiction follows the Sunset Records, which describe Lourdus at this point of his unlife as one whose "soul[2] was muted by tragedy", having seen his long-time companion die by his own blade; his heart as closed off as the Red Land as administers. The Eternal Viscount would mostly be a silent supporter of The First, distancing himself from strife and handling logistics and burial rites for the Valeriists.
The Brothers Viscount are nominally servants of The-Eunarchy, with Lourdus sitting on the barren deserts of the Red Land, while the Brother Viscount sits on the fertile Black Land in the south. Together, their lands form the core of [East Fabrique]. In reality, Lourdus very rarely interacted with The-Eunarchy, the Afterlife far removed from the capital in [West Fabrique]. This would cause many headaches for The-Eunarchy, who opted to make deals with the Brother Viscount instead. Bylon would remain independent of Eunarchial influence, not even having an envoy or slavery on the island. [3]
The Sunset Records are scant during the interim period before The Flight to Bylon. However, Eunarchial propaganda constantly lambasts the dead for not moving exactly as The-Eunarchy wishes. Often belittling the Viscount-Eternal as a 'coward' and mocking his position as a 'surrendered servant'. If Lourdus was displeased with The Eunarchy, the Eternal Viscount hid his displeasure well, with only those passed into the Afterlife privy to his thoughts.
The Afterlife
"Everyone dies, brother. You, me, none escape the End." - Lourdus Sunset
Unlike the Brother Viscount who believes himself to have achieved immortality, Lourdus prepared feverishly for his own mortality, raising an army of mummified servants. Busying himself with funerary rites, Lourdus put the burial and passing of the dead as his priority. Those raised by his manifest are called the "Afterlife".
In the years after [Moonfall], the Viscount Sunset acts as a bulwark for The Eunarchy, repelling rebellions which inevitably needed to pass through the now undead controlled Red Land, preserving the integrity of East Fabrique for the other Brother Viscount. In O.E 784, Viscount Sunset participates in his sole offensive outside of the Red Land, marching his undead troops towards the Silveryn Mountains, defeating the Graven Cult.
The ranks of the Afterlife swell with each failed rebellion he puts down, reaching its zenith when Lourdus silently absorbs part of the Graven Cult. The Eternal Viscount would conceal his growing might in the desert valleys of the Red Land, leaving only mummified servants and two of the [Aspects of the Afterlife] on Bylon Island, the last stop for all rebellions against The-Eunarchy. To Eunarchial visitors, Bylon is a "lifeless and sterile place, overcome with the heavy scent of embalming perfumes".
Ending The-Eunarchy
Thinkers of the Olden times are thus flummoxed by Lourdus Sunset's betrayal of The-Eunarchy, siding with The First and her vastly inferior base of support. While popular Vespana notion is that Lourdus was won over by The First, looking from the future, the Sunset family's defection was only a matter of time.
One reason that has been ignored for many years is that the Lord Sunset was never on The-Eunarchy's side in the first place. Bylon was granted full sovereignty as part of the pact guaranteeing non-interference between the dead and living. The rebellions that Lord Sunset crushed were ostensibly treading on his territory, even his forward assault on the Graven Cult came from the angle that they were treading on his magickal territory of necromancy. Finally, the dead never raised The-Eunarchy's flag even once, instead opting for the incomplete "Twelve-Spoke Sun". Each time Lourdus 'aided' The-Eunarchy, The-Eunarchy always came out weaker despite paper victories.
It did not help that The-Eunarchy frequently debased the deceased, the old eating and defiling the corpses of the young; or that official propaganda painted Lourdus and by extension the Afterlife as weak and brittle skeletal figures, easily overcome by the grey robes of The-Eunarchy. Oración's image would also be dragged through the mud after her death, with Eunarchial propaganda portraying her as a whorish woman who made deals with daemons if it gave her power.
One more conspiratorial angle states that Lourdus never forgave The-Eunarchy for dismembering him, nor for forcing him to slay Oración. He would always bear a grudge due to his "petty, vengeful, and narrow-minded" nature. Despite her treacherous faults, the sorceress Oración still put him back together and journeyed for a long time with him. Not being able to conduct a proper burial for her ate at his "Ba", a resentment that he carried for twelve years before the fulfillment of the [Oración Prophecy]. There is little evidence to support this view except for internal Eunarchial records found after the war. It is most likely a case of The-Eunarchy self-devouring their narratives about Lourdus and Oración and a product of Eunarchial paranoia.
Last Word
"For twelve years, the Lord Sunset would wait.
He would wait for the child born under red skies.
The child would appear at the turning of the wheel,
fair of skin and and bearing a crown of gold."
Whatever his reasons for defection, the Lord Protector accurately surmised Lourdus' position and made his patronage of The First a priority. Without the patronage of the Bylonic Afterlife, it is unlikely that the Lord Protector's [Fabrique Collapse] strategy would have succeeded.
[1] According to legend, forty-two pieces. Becoming fearful of the Lord of Afterlife's vengeance, they hid the remnants of his body throughout the New Continent. These remnants would be brought back into unlife by the Sorceress of the Beginning.
[2] The Sunset Afterlife do not believe in the 'soul' per se, as modern Vespana understands it, instead opting for an 'concept' called 'Ba' to represent the personality of those in the Afterlife's care. See the works of Great Alchemist Hirumi for more details.
[3] Slavery was immensely unprofitable in the Red Land, since only the dead remained there. It was far more profitable to use the Black Land as a jumping off point into the remnants of [Heroine Alliance] territory in the south.
