Xandru Farrugia-Falzon

King Xandru V is the current king of Erisia.

## Stats

* Date of Birth: 1861
* Character Stats
	+ Appearance: 4
	+ Charisma: 6
	+ Intelligence: 5
	+ Physical: 2
	+ Wisdom: 5
* Major Character Flaw: Shouts at people when he's angry.
* Minor Character Flaw: Responds to people without thinking it through.
* Weird Hobby: Absolutely adored playing tin soldiers with his four sons.  Now has a larger collection than any of them, and is waiting for grandsons to play tin soldiers with again.

## Stories

**How I Met Your Mother, Erisian Edition**

*(As told by King Xandru V)*

### Part I

How I met your mother?  Well, that's quite a story.  She was a mail-order bride from Arkadyetsiya.  One day, back in 1880, I was reading the newspaper and saw an advertisement.  It said "Brides! Brides!  Brides!  Good hygiene, able to read, cooks acceptable blini."  On a lark, I paid the twenty pound fee.  Two weeks later, I got a crate from Arkadyetsiya and unpacked it to find a very attractive blonde who was reading a book, smelled very nice, and had absolutely no idea how to cook blini.  And that, kids, is how I met your mother.

### Part II

How I met your mother?  You know, that's quite an interesting tale.  It was 1880, and my father sent me on safari with some friends to Kijana in order to hunt the mystical white gorilla.  I got separated from the others and accidentally wandered over the border into Orsetto.  I sought shelter from the storms in an abandoned pagan temple.  Instead, I discovered a beautiful naked woman tied to an obsidian altar, surrounded by chanting natives who planned to sacrifice her to their dark snake god, Asmodeus.  After I slew the giant snake with my cavalry sword, I grabbed her and we escaped from the angry tribe, swinging on a rope over a vast chasm.  As we reached safety on the other side, she looked up at me with adoring eyes, tucked her hair behind her ear, and said-

Actually, you're still too young for that part.  But that's how I met your mother.

### Part III

You want me to tell you again about how I met your mother?  Well, that's quite a funny story.

Back in 1880, we'd just had the first telephone line installed in San Gakmu, and there were only sixty telephones in the entire country.  It was all very novel.  One day, the telephone in the palace rang, and I picked it up; but there was no one there.

So I buzzed the operator and asked to speak to whoever called us; since it might have been important.  The operator immediately sent my call through to another number.  A girl's voice answered the phone, and I asked why she'd called the palace.

"I didn't call anyone," the girl said.  "Let alone the palace."

"The operator said you'd called us," I replied.

"Well I didn't," she replied.  "I definitely did not call the palace, since there's absolutely no one there who's worth talking to."

I was somewhat annoyed, and asked "Well, what about Prince Xandru?  He's at the palace.  Is HE worth talking to?"

She laughed at me.  "Not at all.  He looks about as dull as it's possible to be while still breathing."

I told her I ought to make her come down to say that to my face.

She responded "If you're really at the palace, and if you're really Prince Xandru, then you ought to send some guards to my house to arrest me, and I'll tell you to your face that you look as dull as you can possibly be while still breathing."  Then she hung up on me.

So I called the guards to go arrest her and bring her to the palace.

And that, children, is how I met your mother.

### Part IV

How did I meet your mother?  Believe it or not, that's quite a story!  I'd wanted to get married for quite some time, but as the scriptures say - "A woman of valor, who can find?"  One day I travelled to the cathedral at San Stiefnu, where the saint reportedly prayed to God for forty days and nights for the salvation of Erisia, after which the Archangel Azrael appeared and slew all of our enemies.  I knelt at the altar, praying and fasting for forty minutes.  Suddenly, Azrael appeared to me and said "Xandru, God has heard your pious prayers.  Therefore, I bring to thee three holy maidens in answer to your fervent request.  Choose one to be your wife."

And lo, there stood before me the first woman in a robe of radiant gold, with dark brown hair like the finest wood.  She said to me, "If you shouldst chooseth me, every evening I shalt turn your blood to fire, and wherever we go, men will look on you and say 'that's one lucky so-and-so'."

Then lo, there stood before me the second maiden, in silver armour, with a shield crusted with diamonds, with her red hair coiled in a crowning braid.  She said to me, "If you shouldst chooseth me, I shalt crush your enemies and make Erisia the greatest kingdom in all the world."

And finally, lo, there stood before me the third maiden, dressed in a frilly lavendar gown, with thick glasses, and her blond hair in cheerful curls.  "If you shouldst chooseth me, I shalt stick my ice-cold hands on your neck at odd hours of the night, complain about long railway rides, and occasionally ask if some random piece of clothing makes me look fat; but I shalt laugh at your jokes and ensure Erisia has one of the best national libraries in the world."

And that, children, is how I met your mother.

### Part V

Tell you about how I met your mother?  I suppose I can tell you that story.  You see, back in 1880, I went to visit the Guani Islands.  On the way there, a fierce storm came up and I was swept overboard by a wave.  As I struggled in the water, a beautiful mermaid pulled me down to her home on the reef, where she wove a net of bubbles together so I could breathe.

...what?  Yes, of course she was wearing something.  It was, um, perfectly modest and why is that important?

Anyway, where was I?  Oh yes.  For three days and three nights, she imprisoned me there, demanding stories of the world above the waves which, as you might guess, was quite mysterious to her kind.  I asked her to deliver me back to shore, but for three days and three nights, she refused.  Finally, I offered to bring her ashore with me and make her a princess.  She said that if she went ashore, she'd lose her magic and become human, but that she wouldn't mind as long as she got to be a princess.

And that's how I met your mother.

### Part VI

How I met your mother?  Well, kids, that's quite a story.  It was 1880, and there was a bicycle craze in Erisia.  You could hardly go anywhere in San Gakmu without meeting several dozen cyclists on their Pennyfarthings - the ones with the giant front wheel - rolling around every which way in the street.

Now, I was still eighteen - barely - and had an 1878 Irbah, a very nice cycle for its day, I think we still have it in a shed somewhere around the Palace.  I'd conned my father into giving me permission to ride out on the streets, leaving through the back gate of the palace so that nobody saw me, taking along only a single bodyguard.  We'd ride down to the stone mole on the harbor, buy sticky-rolls from a street hawker, and watch the ships coming into or leaving San Gakmu Port.

In order to please my father and the bodyguard, I dressed rather like a middle-class chap, and we took all sorts of different roads to vary our routine.  One day we were riding through a residential neighborhood - my bodyguard was in front - and came up to a street-corner with rather poor visibility.

As we reached the corner, a beautiful girl on a brand-new Sajf safety bicycle came from the cross-street.  My bodyguard, being very alert and nimble, managed to get out of the way, but I clipped her rear wheel, and we both spilled on the ground; fortunately not a nasty fall for either of us, although I got mud on my jacket.

We both stood up, and I apologized profusely to her for the accident, blaming my own carelessness, and so on.  I asked if there was anything I could do to make things right, but she laughed it off and said "No, no, I don't mind at all, you're a dear handsome fellow" and then turned bright red when she realized what she'd said.

I thought to myself that she was also rather attractive, but I couldn't figure out what to say, and instead said the first thing which came to mind, which was "I'd like to take you to dinner at the Palace tonight."  She laughed and said "if you ask my father first, I'll dine with you wherever you like."  And as my bodyguard stood there with the most terrified expression on his face, I said "of course I'll ask his permission, let's go talk to him now."

So we walked one street over to her father's bicycle shop, where he built and sold bicycles; he was the first man in San Gakmu to build and sell safety bicycles, you know.  She told me her name was Rozarja, and I told her my name was Xandru, and we chatted merrily by the time we reached the shop and found her father behind the counter.

He looked at me, gave his fiercest scowl, and made a show of things.  "You'll have her back before midnight, of course - if you make her cry, why then I will make you cry, I have some friends from my days in the Army," and so on and so forth.  He also scowled at the mud on my jacket, and sternly told me that he didn't like a young man coming by to see his daughter with mud on his jacket, but sighed that she was seventeen and was probably going to do what she liked anyway.

Since I was already rather entranced by her, I agreed happily to all his terms, and promised to pick her up at six - which only left her two hours to prepare, by the way, as she constantly reminds me.

Now I left and rode back to the palace.  We actually had a state dinner that night to socialize with, I believe, the new Celtican ambassador.  I asked to use the official carriage, but since it was in use I ended up borrowing a calash from the Minister of the Interior to pick her up.  When I arrived, she was still getting ready, and Rozarja's father took a rather disdainful sniff at the carriage, and asked if it was borrowed.  I admitted, in all due honestly, that it was in fact borrowed, which gave him enough satisfaction that he smirked at me.  I, of course, had developed a horrible case of nerves, and stood there like a jittery lump, so much so that I threw up in an inconspicuous place in the flower-bed when her father wasn't looking.

She eventually came down the stairs looking like something from a painting.  You know, of course, that she grew up middle class, so she had a very nice lavendar dress she kept for holidays, and a fetching hat borrowed from her older sister, and a little silver bracelet her mother loaned her.

We were running late, then, so I hastily handed her up into the calash and told the coachman to drive like the devil - which he didn't, thank the saints!  We sat there chatting, both of us so nervous that we barely noticed the time fly by.  She completely missed that we'd ACTUALLY gone to the palace until we were on the front stairs, whereupon she looked at me and said "I thought you spoke in jest to suggest dining at the palace; how did you arrange this?"

Now, because I was young and stupid as a brick, I didn't realize that never in any of our discussions had I mentioned that I was a Farrugia-Falzon; neither she nor her father had connected the various details.  So I simply laughed as if it was a joke, and replied that "my mother told me to show up and not slide on the bannisters."

Because we arrived slightly late, most of the guests had already moved to the dining room; we had about fifty or so, as I recall.  The chamberlain asked Rozarja what title to announce her with, and she simply said her name: Rozarja Sultana.  And our poor chamberlain, bless him, got confused thinking that her surname of Sultana was a foreign noble title; I barely realized it and set him straight before he announced her as the Sultana of Anitkabir, which would have been a horrible mistake.  So as we entered the dining room, he announced me as "Crown Prince Xandru Farrugia-Falzon, and Dame Rozarja Sultana."

And when she heard that, she just stopped dead in her tracks, with everyone in the dining room looking at us, and said in a mildly horrified voice, "Oh my dear sweet fluffy Saint Antanasia, WHAT did they just call you?"

And that, children, is how I met your mother.