Qasaarai V

Qasaarai V (b. 544 SR, d. c. 618 SR) was the first son and successor of the Savirai Emperor Khatai I and his wife, the proclaimed Fourth Aitah Aelona, and the eleventh and last Emperor of the Dual Empire. After his father was assassinated on campaign, Qasaarai nearly lost his life several times, finding refuge among the tribes in the Face of the Moon before assembling an army to retake his throne, and securing the entirety of the fractious Dual Empire. After this, he reigned for a time in relative peace, with only a minor southern campaign against the Opulensi Empire intruding on what was an otherwise prosperous time. 
This brief halycon period was ended by Qasaarai's ultimately disastrous decision to intervene on the side of the Aitahists in the War of the Ashen Throne. Aitahist forces destroyed the Gallatene army at Sundown Moors and drove all the way to Gallasa itself, where they burned the city and the High Ward. Until this point the Savirai expedition had been both stunningly successful and relatively cheap, as Qasaarai had nearly brought the Gallatenes to their knees in a single campaign. The key point was the 'nearly', though, and with a massive Karapeshai expedition rushing to the rescue of their Maninist allies Qasaarai elected not to risk marching on Sirasona and finishing the war. Qasaarai retreated into Selessan rather than face the combined Gallatene-Karapeshai force in the field, burning as he went. It was at this point that Qasaarai made his fateful mistake. Rather than take his victory and leave the Gallatenes to their destroyed country, he decided to push on once the Karapeshai withdrew to deal with the enormous Moti invasion of their southern provinces; Qasaarai was determined to achieve what his father could not and add Tarena, if not all of Gallat, to the Dual Empire. The Karapeshai had given the Gallatenes, under dynamic new leadership, breathing room, and when Qasaarai marched west again to finish the job he ran into the brick wall of Altaro Javan and the huge new army of the Halyrate. Costly and pointless stalemate ensued for a decade, gradually draining the Dual Empire's resources and eroding Qasaarai's political capital, and ultimately creating the conditions that permitted Javan's Peregrination. That stunningly ambitious campaign destroyed the Dual Empire's elite centers, crushed Qasaarai's personal prestige and power, and brought the Empire to its knees. Qasaarai himself seems to have met his end somewhere in the western Face of the Moon in the course of an ill-fated attempt to restore his hold on the center of the Empire, though his ultimate fate was never conclusively determined. With him died the united Dual Empire: although pretenders rose and officers and nobles continued to fight in the name of the Empire, there would never again be a universally recognized Dual Emperor. 
Category:People
Category:Savirai