Kharan II

**Kharan II**, **Kharan the Last** (551-596 AGV) was an emperor of the Harkanalis dynasty, son to Tudhan IV, father to Marasa II. He ruled from 570 AGV, coming into age during a flourishing economy. He was the one to finish the conquest of Hadašham, apart from some minor western areas both uninteresting and worthless. For once the entire coast of the subcontinent stand under his ruler, but later the Wild woods in the west were given up, due to the regional turbulences.

Both his father and mother gave great care to provide their only son with the best education. Kharan was well off in military matters, he liked to read philosophy alongside belles-lettres, the same time being a supreme fencer. He was told to had looked like his father, would he have been free of malaises. Towering above six feets with strong, muscular built, broad shoulder and buffed arms, he have had a commanding aura.

Kharan II was the last in the long line of soldier-emperors who subjugated tribe after tribe, chiefdom after chiefdom until the entire subcontinent became beholden to the Hadašhim. He added western Tantorel, the Wild woods, the Egiten and the Damar archipelagos, as well the westernmost areas of the Ore Mountains to the empire during several campaign between 575-582 and 583-594 respectively. His forces were later recalled to the Red Šyul in the north, and to the Zaab river in the south, both heavy to pass, such fulfilling the age-old desire originating from Harko I to have natural borders. Originally, he intended to conquer all areas up to the western seas and beyond, but the costs and the distance from the capital made him reconsider. While out on campaigns her mother ruled for him, although not much praise went to the due place as long she have been doing it. Only after the empress mother had retired, came the problems alight alongside the immense vacuum the woman left behind.

Despite considerable archivements in enlarging the empire, his rule is judged much more because of the succession crysis that happened at the end. His loyalty to his chosen one Inara, coupled with his banal and early death led to the most severe state of emergency in imperial times. Many see the later part of his reign, especially from 490 onwards the focal period in which the later woes of the empire started.

Empress Inara was of humble birth, but a caring, extremely beautiful and sharp-minded person in whom Kharan have found great joy. Even the start of the relation was illegal. Commoners were not unknown as imperial consorts, falling in love was permitted for the emperors. However bride-nappings were not, but exactly this was what he has ordered his men to do. Apart from the onset, Inara turned out to have problems carrying the fetuses to term. Albeit she had been relative young, only twenty nine when his husband died she had already suffered three miscarriages, despite all-round assistance from the best doctors and nurses of the empire. Kharan was several times urged both by his mother and by his advisors to marry before taking Inara as spouse, all in vain.

When he did so at the age of 35, it seemed to be a futile effort. The empress mother knew well that the problems weren't lying in her son, because he had no problem impregnating several palace maids in the past. She urged him after the third miscarriage of her daughter-in-law to divorce with immediate effect and remarry a more capable wife threatening him with retirement from all state matters when his son refused. Kharan, ignorant to the extent his mother was involved in upkeeping order behind the curtain, choosed Inara. Dowager empress Ittaristaš was a lady of her word, she refused from that moment to be associated with the administration refusing to seal any document before leaving the capital some three days later in the winter of 490. At first everything continued as before, but the civil services started to unravel below the surface, due to the missing cornerstone that has kept them in place before. She never spoke to his son ever again, not even did she answer his letters, isolated herself at large from the politics before she died some two years later. Some mutter during her funeral services, that this was also a the burial of the empire. Changes for imperial succession seemed bleaker than ever, as the empress was now unable even to conceive.

The next pregnancy came some five years later, announced a mere three days before Kharan slipped from his saddle while dismounting and crashing his head against the stone pavement. He died in the afternoon what was kept a secret from her spouse instead telling the story of a lenghty, gradually worsening condition to Inara, so that she has more time to stomach the unluck.

A meagre candlelight of hope in the all-encompassing darkness was the renewed pregnancy of the empress, but seeing the prior examples, many had given up on her, and searched after another possible candidates. The orhana kulum seemed a suitable choice, as he was the uncle of the late emperor, who was forced to renounce his born rights on shaky grounds with lawless threats. He also had offsprings, albeit only granchildren, both of his sons having died prior, who could have continued the imperial bloodline. Over time this party was coopted, forced into submission or they simply gave up after seeing the increased popularity of the pregnant empress-widow Seven months have passed, the empress did not miscarry, she delivered a healthy boy at full term. The Empire was celebrating, only the royal palace was occupied by baleful shadows.

The first suffet started to harrass the exhausted now-dowager empress with demands for their services. She fought back, both fearing for her and her sons life, and leaning on the šurghans she initiated reforms to replace the former bureucracy by a new one. This process initially went well, but it was inherently fallible to abuses. For a period of time the new military-civil government secured the imperial houses survival. Imminent dangers were averted, administration was stabilised around the realm. Old-school bureucrats, all but omnipotent between the retirement of dowager queen Faile and the reforms, have disappeared.

Lasting memory wasn't left by Kharans life, as he has planned it but by his sudden departure. Disorder had he both accumulated and left for her wife neither prepared, nor trained for such a task. Apart from some mines in the Ore Mountains, already under indirect control of Kartam, no place of value has he conquered. Tantorel was turned into an imperial province, Karamrost was built, and has been well maintained ever since, although the countryside was burnt at least four times around it during the Deluge.

More important was, that this last great ruler did not secure his succession while he could, despite best advice causing unprecedented uproar in the meantime. Celebrated during his days as a worthy follower or earlier conquerors, he is regarded by later generations as a weak-willed man unable of discipline, who failed to upkeep the prosperity from his much more talented father. No one can say whether the ill fate of the could have been avoided by skillfull management, but most educated persons agree that the foundations of the imperial deluge were laid by a bon vivant too occupied to fulfill his most important task, and by her spouse dragged into a titanic storm against her will, as much a victim of the circumstances as an architect of newer, more dangerous structures.