King Beles

Beles Citad was a ruler of Citad and is the son of Queen Aristan and prince Sargon. 
== King ==
King Beles came to power relatively late in his life, his mother only abdicating when Beles was in his forties. When his reign began, he was already married to Baroness Kina, a noblewoman from Knil.
In the first year of his reign he earned a reputation for being a benevolent, yet severely unlucky king, as during his reign many unfortunate events took place. A severe famine took place in the north of his country due to a drought, a water dispute with Piras became a war, and the northern orc communities of his kingdom were under siege from barbarian camps.
Worse still, his daughter Anagalshu was kidnapped while he was on his way to quell the different disputes and battles. Upon hearing this he left the battlefield to his commanders, leading to a drop of morale in his troops and the loss of northern territories. The orcs, feeling abandoned vowed revenge and began a crusade against the kingdom of Citad.
==The Famine==
In the second year of King Beles’s reign, a record drought caused severe shortages of grain in the northern territories of Citad. Unwilling to purchase grain from outside the kingdom, the King sends out expeditionary forces to find arable lands to “bring back its bounty in fruits”. This naturally fails, and when cities threaten to secede from the kingdom he caves and buys vast quantities of grain from Piras, the Freelands and Knil.
==The water dispute==
When Piras learns that Beles has bought grain from the Freelands, its historic enemy, the Underlord creates and embargo and cuts of the rivers that supply water to Citad.
Beles himself came to the Underlord to demand explanations. The Underlord, who was not a kindly dispositioned man, attempted to capture and ransom the king who foolishly came to his stronghold. However in a brazen show of tactical acumen, Knil forces disguised as Beles’s guard invaded the castle and Beles escaped. Meanwhile the Minotaur guard and Gnome conscripts took to freeing the water sources in the Piras mountains. The conflict eventually elevated into the northern siege.
==The northern siege==
The northern siege, or the invasion of Citad was a battle between the kingdoms of Piras, Knil, Citad and the Freelands.
Following the standstill of the land forces of the four nations, Piras being near impregnable at this point in history. The country of Piras was slowly breaking under the siege, until their allies, mercenary troops from the micro nations of the east, charged and paralyzed any reinforcements from Knil and the Freelands.
Despite these efforts, Citad was in a good strategic position, with Beles’s army capturing many key areas in Piras, this was however stopped when King Beles’s four year old daughter Anagalshu was kidnapped.
==Princess Anagalshu’s kidnapping by the Thief King==
When the news reached King Beles, he immediately sought to find out who was responsible for his daughters capture. He abandoned the front (which his orc forces would resent bitterly), and returned to his castle of Unifiers Grace. At his arrival he had his entire personnel flogged for their incompetence. He then retreated from the war, signing a peace treaty with the Underlord, which Knil and the Freelands did not, and publicly condemned Citad.
King Beles, now allied with the Underlord, went on a quasi rampage, interrogating any Pirates they could find for clues to his daughter's whereabouts.
Eventually the King would entrust the rule of his kingdom (even during the Orc crusade), for the next fifteen years searching for his daughter.
His adventures would take him far and wide, even to Fluxus, but without hope. He would then return to his castle, making his peace by cruelly suppressing the now fully fledged orc crusade.
==Orc Crusade==
The crusade was originally formed by the Orc regiments that fought with king Beles as revenge for the water dispute and the later invasion of their communities by barbarians. The movement fed on the general discontent of many of the original tribes, and found their leader in the charismatic Fer Drogg, a veteran in the war against Piras.
Quickly the revolt turned into a revolution, the revolution turned into a crusade dedicated to destroying anything with the crest of Citad and the Traitor King Beles.
Two years into the crusade however, when the movement felt confident enough to take the capital city and place Drogg on the throne, the King returned, and as a way to expunge his sorrow over the loss of his daughter, he “almost gleefully” butchered the crusaders.
After a solid month of bloodshed, the king addressed a speech explaining his absence, which quelled some of the dissent. He also emptied the coffers and spent carelessly to turn public opinion in his favor. This is seen as a trait he shared with his mother, in order to gain public support they both craved. King Beles wrote to his mother often after she left for the tri country area, but she seldom answered.
==Late life==
As he reached old age, a twenty three year old Anagalshu was returned to the king accompanied by a Pirate nobleman, Arrol and a newborn babe, Gashan. The king was overwhelmed by her return, but did not take kindly to Arrol, who he interrogated mercilessly for information, but refused to believe his mother responsible. Arrol eventually died of his interrogation, and Beles married his daughter to Flean, a Border Prince, in exchange for a handsome dowry.
King Beles later spun a tale that it was Flean who had kidnapped his daughter and given her a child in order to preserve her dignity. The tale became the classic romantic tale, and Flean’s namesake, the Thief King.
Beles died with a daughter who detested him, and never fully recovered from his actions against Arrol.
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