Owyn Arranis

**Emperor Owyn Arranis** (8 Summertide 852 – 20 Harvestide 1020) was Emperor of Ovaicaea from 979 to his death. His reign followed that of his sister, Rowan I Zallae, and he was the third emperor of the House of Hafwen, being the son and second child of founding Empress Arya Andraste. Prior to his ascent to the throne, he was a lawyer and jurist in the nascent Imperial civil service, and a diplomat who helped establish the peace treaty with Gestrin in 927 at the end of the Gestrin War. Upon taking the throne on his sister's abdication, he adopted the Lunaran name *Arranis*, meaning "golden scroll-maker", as the second part of his reign name.

Owyn's reign saw the growth the Empire's population and increasing urbanization, and the diversification of the Ovaicaean economy, but also saw increased tensions both at home and abroad as several local crises intensified. By the time of his death, these crisis all exploded more-or-less simultaneously, resulting in The Anarchy, a more than five-year period of civil war and rampant disease, famine, and devastation. He is largely seen now as a benign but ineffectual ruler, whose concern with outward peace and respecting tradition blinded him to considerable structural problems in the Empire.

## Early life

Owyn Hafwen was born on 8 Summertide, 852, ten years after the end of the Second Orc War, to Empress Arya Andraste and her husband, Prince Consort Ricardo Davion. His older sister Rowan was born in 842, and his younger brother Llewelyn was born in 859. He was raised in the Imperial capital of Doranelle, ensconced within the nascent court life of the young empire. While his sister chose a military career when she came of age in 860, Owyn was a studious young man and frequently spent hours in the imperial library. He was privately educated, and dabbled in areas of knowledge ranging from grammar, music theory, rhetoric, astronomy, mathematics, natural history, theology, alchemy, and medicine; he came to learn a dozen languages, and practiced in several schools of magic, including abjuration, theurgy, and enchantment. Most of all, he became learned in both civil and canon law.

As he came of age, he pursued a higher education at the Imperial Univerity of Rivoli in Eldunari, graduating as a doctor of law in 878, studying heavily under elven professor Florus Drusilius. He began a legal career in the imperial district courts, arguing as a state prosecutor from the 880s onward. In 905, he was chosen to be a jurist in the Imperial Territorial Court of the South, presiding over civil cases involving Tudesco, Visclovia, Walhia, Baia and Alam, as well as southern Eldunari and the Confessor State. Despite the position's difficulties and caseload, he became renowned for his efficiency and wisdom, and rendered important decisions that greatly impacted imperial jurisprudence. When the princes of Getha, Walhia, and Alam died in the war in 924, King Aedward of Tudesco sought Owyn's advice in negotiating the Pragmatic Sanction that declared his son Aedmund as heir to the now-heirless neighboring kingdoms.

In 927, he was brought in by the Imperial diplomatic service to advise on the peace treaty ending the Gestrin War. He ended up negotiating significantly for the Imperials, alongside Mother Confessor St Verbena, and securing a separate treaty of accession with Tethar that saw the rump state of that kingdom joining the New Empire as a member state. He spent over a year studying with the Confessors at the Abbey after a pilgrimage, having access to their ancient library. In 929, his mother died and his sister Rowan ascended the throne; under her, he was retained by the Imperial diplomatic service for twenty years. He served as the resident imperial envoy in Tethar, then as Ambassador to Mocryae; in this role, he was primarily responsible for negotiating Mocryae's accession in 939. From 940 to 950, he served overseas as Ambassador to Gestrin.

In 950, he was appointed a councilor of state and made part of Empress Rowan's privy council, an institution that developed during her reign. Rowan was vigorous in enforcing imperial authority, using the army to intervene in feuds within the constituent kingdoms, and Owyn's advice was crucial in giving her a legal basis for her interventions. In 970, he was invested as Grand Chancellor of the Empire, keeper of the imperial seal and having responsibility for imperial diplomacy and correspondence. Rowan had no surviving children, and spent the last years of her reign acting to ensure her brother's election to succeed her when she sought to retire after fifty years, fulfilling a promise made on her election day.

## Reign

Owyn was elected Emperor on 22 Summertide 979, the day after his sister formally abdicated. He was crowned auspiciously in a ceremony at the start of Holy Week just after 30 Deepwinter. He was anointed jointly by the Archdruid of Balendor, the Mother Confessor, and the five Hierophants of the Temples (that of the West, South, East, North, and Doranelle), crowned by the Grand Justiciar of the Empire, and received the homage of the imperial estates.

Early in his reign, he contended with instability to the south; the Gastrinian chief minister Orestes' mismanagement provoked the collapse of western trade routes, and poverty led to cross-border banditry and slavecatching along the southern frontier. Attempts to use the Imperial legions to secure the border were inconsistent and focused on Mocryae, which caused resentment among the Tethari clans and royal government. In 995, the Imperial Army was mobilized to respond to a new crisis in the east, as Orcish tribes launched raids across the border, pillaging towns and sacking less-defended forts. Several legions were sent east, and were backed up by a feudal levy called by the Emperor, engaging in a counter-offensive into Ucral and Dafruca; for the next fifteen years, nobles of the several Imperial estates periodically sent knights and soldiers to support the legions. This was controversial, both because it turned into a long war of attrition, and because of a legal dispute with the Imperial Assembly over Owyn's authority to deploy troops without a formal declaration of war. During this same time, Gestrin stabilized under their new *majordomo* Brekakt VII, and deployed thousands of soldiers in its eastern region to contend with rebellion and orcish raids, presenting a strategic threat to Ovaicaea that required stationing more legions in the east during the 1010s.

Internally, other crises loomed. Tethar's resentment over neglect by the Imperial government turned into open discussion to secede from the Empire, exacerbated by continued banditry and lawlessness in the desert country. This was in part complicated by the legal privileges given to the Free and Imperial City of Sumrana, the so-called "Arena City" with its famed colosseum, which was allowed to engage in the slave trade under the limited form of indentured servitude, which many now see as having spurred some of the slave-taking raids in Tethar. Owyn did nothing to adjust the city's peculiar liberties, and only occasionally used the Vehmic Court to pursue action against Imperial citizens engaged in the slave trade. Owyn was increasingly concerned with feudal matters; in Lithuar, Duke Frederick de Wilde made claims against King Stefan VII, petitioning the Imperial Courts for recognition of Imperial immediacy, and fomented revolts in provinces against royal authority; and in Tolossia, King Roderic II began confiscating lands from unruly nobles, provoking minor feudal wars despite attempts by Owyn and by the Confessor Order to broker truces.

By 1019, the cold war between the elven tribes in Skyshroud took a turn towards heating up, with skirmishes breaking out between wood elf and moon elf settlers in the northwest, and the virtual secession of the sun elf citadels from kingdom under their leader Lord Raibyr. It is now suspected that Gestrin's foreign intelligence service was conveying payments in gold to the elven clans in order to foment instability in Skyshroud. The northern kingdom commanded extensive resources of iron and coal, all necessary for producing steel for the Imperial legions; further, Skyshroud's standing army was the largest in the Empire, and Skyshroudian warriors were among the fiercest recruits into the Imperial legions. Owyn sought to secure strategic access to iron, coal, steel, and soldiers, in a late bid to strengthen his rule and authority. To this end, he brokered a dynastic marriage between his third son Prince Ambrose Hafwen and the Crown Princess of Skyshroud, Iliana de Cortez. This may have inflamed tensions between Duke Frederick de Wilde and the Imperial government, as Duke de Wilde had been publicly courting the hand of Princess Iliana, and may have been a motivation for his filing suit in the Imperial Chamber Court to recognize his legitimate right to the Lithuari throne in early 1020.