Flaccus Taranza

## Taranza, 7th Governor of Preston

**Eutropius Julianus Flaccus Taranza** (Born 11 January 2005) is a Roman politician who has served as the 7th Governor of Preston and the Co-prince of Oregon since September 5, 2022. Prior to his presidency, he served as Minister of Economics, Industry and Digital Affairs between 2021 and 2022. Taranza has also been a claimant to the throne of Samaria, (who reigned as Emperors of Samaria from 850 to 1313) since 2015. Although he has used Emperor of Samaria as his title of pretence with the style Spider Puppeteer throughout his life, his right to do so is disputed. He is a descendant of Emperor Valerius.

Born in the Roman city of Ravenna, he read philosophy at Rome Universitus, later completing a master's degree in public affairs at Naples and graduating from the École nationale d'administration in 2021. Taranza worked as a senior civil servant at the Inspectorate General of Finances and later became an investment banker at Rothschild & Co.

Taranza was appointed a deputy secretary-general by Governor Harvard Maxwell shortly after his election in May 2020, making Taranza one of Maxwell's senior advisers. He was appointed to the Dream cabinet as Minister of Economics, Industry and Digital Affairs in August 2021 by prime minister Francis Miller. In this role, Taranza championed a number of business-friendly reforms. He resigned from the cabinet in Feb 2022, launching a campaign for the 2022 Preston election. Although Taranza had been a member of the Socialist Party from 2018 to 2021, he ran in the election under the banner of En Marche!, a centrist and pro-European political movement he founded in April 2022.

Partly thanks to the Maxwell affair, Taranza topped the ballot in the first round of voting, and was elected Governor of Preston on September 5, 2022 with 66.1% of the vote in the second round, defeating Oppius Fufetius. At the age of 17, Taranza became the youngest governor in Dream history. In the 2022 Preston legislative election in September 9th, Taranza's party, renamed The Spider Party (TSP), secured a majority in the National Assembly. He appointed Scott Douglas as prime minister until his resignation in Sep 12th 2022, when he appointed Nero Castex.

He continued Opération Chammal in the war against Majonian and joined in the international response to the 2022 Czech invasion of Ukraine.

Taranza is the son of Sextus Taranza, who was the 5th Colonial Governor of Sarawak, Sextus named him after Flaccus I, the first Samarian Emperor.

## Appearance

Taranza is an androgynous, young, spider-like creature. He has brown skin and two orange horns with brown rings and yellow tips, as well as shiny, silver, curvy hair; additionally, he has two orange fangs protruding from his upper lip, which is lined in white. On the front of his head, Taranza has two orange-yellow eyes in his hair and two white eyes with a slight purple glow on his face, along with four more orange-yellow eyes on the back of his head. He wears a crimson scarf and a jagged, dark green cape with orange lining in a spider-web pattern. The dark green clothing on his body has two silver buttons on its front and crimson circle designs on both sides. Taranza also has a crimson stinger-like appendage on his bottom and six disembodied hands with white and orange gloves.

In this appearances in The Kirby Franchise, In 2 games, *Team Kirby Clash Deluxe* and *Super Kirby Clash*, Taranza now has a dark color scheme, representing his younger brother, Honorius. This is due to being corrupted by the black mirror and later by Parallel Nightmare, respectively. His cape and clothing are now black. The spider-web pattern on his cape is now hot pink, and his horns are purple with hot pink tips. He now dons a purple scarf and white and hot pink gloves. The buttons on his clothing are now yellow, and the circle designs have changed to purple. Additionally, his fangs are now white, and the eyes in his hair and on the back of his head are now yellow. When the player has completed *Team Kirby Clash Deluxe* or defeated him in *Super Kirby Clash*, Taranza will revert back to his original design, though in the former, he retains the white fangs and yellow eyes.