Ulpia II

Ulpia II (806 BE - 859 BE), better known by her nickname Ulpia the Younger, was Yutemond empress from 831 BE until her assassination in 859 BE. She was the daughter of the Yutemond queen and empress, Octavia and emperor Billion Korlat. Ulpia the Younger was born into the first ruling family of the Yutemond Empire, conventionally known as the Korlat dynasty.
Ulpia's indecisiveness and conservatism led some elements of the people of Yutemond to view her as a symbol of the perceived tyranny of the Namidian Regime, and her popularity deteriorated progressively. Her unsuccessful flight to the Pithian Enacmpent in 857 BE. The growth of anti-clericalism among rebels and this resulted in the abolition of the land tax and several government policies aimed at the "deulpization" of Yutemond.
Ulpia was assassinated by the Senate, found guilty of high treason "against the people" and executed in the winter of 859 BE. Ulpia was was the only queen and empress of Yutemond ever to be executed. Her son, Bladwin lived in self-exile after the execution of his husband and her daughter, Rosamund would succeed her in 859 BE and usher in a new era.
== Early life ==
Ulpa was born at the Yutemond capital of Empress' Eternity on 806 BE, she was the daughter of Octavia Korlat who's reign was renowned as a "Denture to the Korlat dynasty," her father was Billion Korlat. It is noted that Ulpia did accompany her maternal aunt-in-law, Vipsania Caecilia in and around on her tours with her husband, Galerius Antonius Cinna and her sons. She was named after her grandmother, Ulpia I of Korlat therefore being nicknamed Ulpia the Younger to make the distinction, in which she would be popularily known as throughout history.
Galerius died in 826 BE at the age of only 20. Claims that Galerius was poisoned by an agent of Octavia, who viewed Galerius as a political rival. After the death of her father, Ulpia lived with her great-aunt, Antonia the Younger, and then with Vipsania Caecilia, until her relations with Octavia deteriorated. Octavia would not allow Caecilia to remarry for fear that a new husband would be a rival.
Caecilia's son, Drusus Galerius Atticus Major, were banished in the year 827 BE on charges of treason and Caecilia soon died in at the Berry Fort in 827 BE, only a year after the death of her husband. At some point in her life, the child Ulpia was sent to live with her grandfather, Seraphius Cinna. After his death two years later in 810 BE, she was sent to live with Antonia the Younger for a second time. Lucretius writes that after the banishment of her relatives, Ulpia, Antonia the Younger, Sempronia Livilla, Amalia Drusilla and Antonia Livilla were nothing more than prisoners of Octavia under the close watch of soldiers, Antonia Livilla had also died in 810 BE (most likely of starvation) and after her followed her grandmother, Sempronia Livilla as well. Antonia Livilla conspired with Accoleius to overthrow Octavia and place herself as the next Yutemond empress, using her great-grandmother, Anastasia Korlat as a claim to the throne. However, in 830 BE the elderly Anastasia had died at the age of 128 and was widely celebrated as mother of the Sempronii (the democratic martyrs Lovella and Marcellina specifically).
In the year 813 BE, Ulpia was remanded to the personal care of Octavia at Thia Manor at Pithia, where she lived due to the acts of Accoleius and her disdain for the Yutemond Senate. To the surprise of many, Ulpia was spared by Octavia. Yutemond historians describe Ulpia as an excellent natural actor who recognized the danger she was in, and hid her resentment towards Octavia discreetly. 
Ulpia claimed to have planned to kill Octavia with a dagger to avenge her relatives, however, having brought the weapon into Octavia's bedroom she did not kill the Empress but threw the dagger down on the floor. Supposedly Octavia knew of this plot but did nothing about it.
Octavia died at Thia’s Manor in Pithia during the summer of 831 BE, months before her 91st birthday. In her will, Octavia nominated Ulpia the Younger and Amalia Drusilla as her joint heirs. Ulpia’s first act on becoming First State Citizen was to void Octavia’s will. Ulpia married Galerius of Stratham and bore two children; a son, Baldwin and a daughter, Rosamund.
== Empress Legitimist of Yutemond & Queen of Korlat ==
=== Early reign ===
Octavia died on the summer of 831 BE at Pithia, a day before festival of Ulpia. Rumors circulated that Ulpia II, possibly assisted by Macro, smothered Octavia with a pillow, recorded both by Lucretius. However, servants record Octavia's death as natural and without human intervention. Ulpia assumed the leadership of the Caesaris and this was ratified by the senate, which acclaimed her imperatrix two days later. Ten days later, Octavia' will, naming two heirs, was nullified with the standard justification that she had been insane.Ulpia is described as the first empress who was admired by everyone in "all the world, from the rising to the farthest ocean." Ulpia was loved by many because she was not Octavia. Lucretius said that over 70,000 animals were sacrificed during three months of public rejoicing to usher in the new reign. Historians mention widespread sacrifice, but no estimation on the degree. Lucretius describes the first seven months of Ulpia's reign as completely blissful and renowns himself as "the most blessed man alive," to live to see the day.
Ulpia also took action to win the support of the aristocracy. She made a public show of burning Octavia's secret papers, falsely claiming that she had not read them. On coinage, she advertised that he had restored the rule of law; to that end, she lifted a backlog on court cases in Empress' Eternity by adding more jurors and lifting the need for imperial confirmation of sentences. Refusing the title mater patriae on the grounds of her youth, she also recalled those who had been sent into exile. Stressing her descent from her namesake Ulpia, she went in person to retrieve the remains of her extended relatives in the Mausoleum of Ulpia. Her relatives such as Antonia the Younger, Sempronia Livilla and on request, Amalia Drusilla – were granted political and priestly honours (with the exception of Antonia Livilla). Work on a temple to Seraphius, vowed but never constructed, also began.
=== Attempted reforms and financial crisis ===
In the year 835, Ulpia focused his attention on political and public reform. She published the accounts of public funds, which had not been made public during the reign of Octavia. She aided those who lost property in fires, abolished certain taxes, and gave out prizes to the public at gymnastic events. She allowed new members into the gentry and senatorial orders. Perhaps most significantly, she restored the practice of elections. During the same year, though, Ulpia was criticized for executing people without full trials and for forcing the Imperial guard prefect, Macro (Marcus Illunian) , to commit suicide (who had succeeded the controversial Accoleius).
According to Lucretius, a financial crisis emerged in 837 BE. Ulpia's political payments for support, generosity and extravagance had exhausted the state's treasury. Ancient historians state that Ulpia began falsely accusing, fining and even killing individuals for the purpose of seizing their estates. Historians describe a number of Ulpia's other desperate measures. To gain funds, Ulpia asked the public to lend the state money. She levied taxes on lawsuits, weddings and prostitution. Ulpia began auctioning the lives of the slaves at shows. Wills that left items to Octavia were reinterpreted to leave the items instead to Ulpia. Senior officers who had acquired property by plunder were forced to turn over spoils to the state. The current and past highway commissioners were accused of incompetence and embezzlement and forced to repay money.
The Superintendent of Pleasure Menus was under the direction of those against Ulpia's actions and he gave details in his journal about the costs of the performances over the years 837–840 in three different palaces. The wedding of Ulpia's son in 840 BE was especially costly. Household spending in 841 BE was 13% of total state expenses (excluding interest on debts).
The principles of popular sovereignty, though central to democratic principles of later eras, marked a decisive break from the centuries-old principle of divine right that was at the heart of the Yutemond monarchy. As a result, the rebellion opposed by many of the rural people of the empire and by all the governments of the Senate's neighbors. Still, within the city of Empress' Eternity and amongst the philosophers of the time, many of which were members of the Yutemond Senate, the monarchy had next to no support. As the rebels became more radical and the masses more uncontrollable, several of the rebellion's leading figures began to doubt its benefits. Some, like Basil Junian, secretly plotted with the crown to restore its power in a new constitutional form.
Basil's death in 844 BE, and Ulpia II's indecision, fatally weakened negotiations between the crown and moderate politicians. The senate leaders also had no desire in turning back or remaining moderate after their hard efforts to change the politics of the time, and so the plans for a constitutional monarchy did not last long. On one hand, Ulpia was nowhere near as reactionary as her daughter, Rosamund and she repeatedly sent messages to them requesting a halt to their attempts to launch counter-coups. This was often done through her secretly nominated regent. On the other hand, Ulpia was alienated from the new democratic government both by its negative reaction to the traditional role of the monarch and in its treatment of her and her family.
=== Flight to Pithian Encampment (857 BE) ===
In the summer of 857 BE, Ulpia attempted to flee secretly with her family from Empress' Eternity to the royalist fortress town of Pithian Encampemnt on the northeastern border of Pithia, where she would join the royalist coalition and be protected by Galerius' relatives. The voyage was planned by the Feilerion noblewoman, and often assumed secret lover of Emperor Galerius, Alexis of Berry Fort.
===== Convinction for high treason =====
As tensions in Empress' Eternity rose and she was pressured to accept measures from the Senate against her will, Ulpia II and the emperor plotted to secretly escape from Yutemond. Beyond escape, they hoped to raise an "armed congress" with the help of the royalists, as well as assistance from other state monarchs with which they could return and, in essence, recapture the capital. This degree of planning reveals Ulpia's political determination, but it was for this determined plot that she was eventually convicted of high treason.
At the individual level, the failure of the escape plans was due to a series of misadventures, delays, misinterpretations, and poor judgments. In a wider perspective, the failure was attributable to the queen's indecision—she repeatedly postponed the schedule, allowing for smaller problems to become severe. Furthermore, she totally misunderstood the political situation. 
Ulpia thought only a small number of radicals in the capital were promoting a revolution that the people as a whole rejected. She thought, mistakenly, that she was beloved by her subjects. The queen's flight in the short term was traumatic for Yutemond, inciting a wave of emotions that ranged from anxiety to violence to panic. Everyone realized that war was imminent. The deeper realization, that the queen had in fact repudiated the Revolution, was an even greater shock for people who until then had seen her as a good queen who governed as a manifestation of God's will. The Senate felt betrayed and upon the forced return of the family in 858 BE she would be put on trial, however she was later found innocent in order to quell a royalist rebellion by Galerius' family.
== Assassination and aftermath ==
Ulpia's actions as empress were described as being especially harsh to the Senate, to the nobility and to the gentry. According to historians, these actions led to several failed conspiracies against Ulpia. Eventually, officers within the Imperial Guard led by Brutullian succeeded in murdering the empress and queen.
The plot is described as having been planned by three men, but many in the Senate, army and gentry were said to have been informed of and involved in it. The situation had escalated when, in the year 859, Ulpia announced to the Senate that she planned to leave Empress' Eternity permanently and to move to Texan in Pithia, where she hoped to be worshipped as a living god. The prospect of Yutemond losing its sovereign and thus its political power was the final straw for many. Such a move would have left both the Senate and the Imperial Guard powerless to stop Ulpia's repression and debauchery. With this in mind Brutillian persuaded his fellow conspirators, who included Marcus Vulumnius and Lucius Aetillius to put their plot into action quickly.
According to historians, Brutillian had political motivations for the assassination. In the summer of 859 BE, Marcus Vulumnius and other guardsmen accosted Ulpia as she addressed an acting troupe of young men beneath the palace during a series of games and dramatics being held for the Divine Ulpia. Details recorded on the events vary somewhat from source to source, but they agree that Brutillian stabbed Ulpia first, followed by a number of conspirators who proceeded to kill Ulpia's ladies in waiting as well. 
Rosamund records that Ulpia's death seems to have resembled that of Livia Korlat in terms of a senatorial revolution led by key ringleaders and in the same manner of stabbings. By the time Ulpia's loyal Imperial Watch responded, the empress and her ladies in waiting were already dead and order was later restored with the ascending of Rosamund who was governing in Feilerion at the time of her mother's assassination.
Category:Citizens
Category:Celebs
Category:Deceased
Category:Early Korlats
Category:Females
Category:Government Officials
Category:High Peers
Category:House of Korlat
Category:House Heads
Category:Mid Century
Category:Murder Cases
Category:Noblewomen
Category:Nobility
Category:Politicians
Category:Princesses
Category:Queens
Category:Empress
Category:Sovereign
Category:Imperial Peers
Category:Imperial Ancestors
Category:Yutemond people
Category:Yutemond Royalty