Duchess Neri

Duchess Neri is the current monarch of the Grand Duchy of Granvilia. She rose to power in the country despite being born of very minor nobility in Cernoigy, the capitol of the island of Mitford.

## Background

Mitford is a large island just off the coast of Granvilia. Until 1999, it was a colony of Fusor, who sold it to Granvilia as a measure to help pay reparations to Bauern after the Fusor Coup. Granvilia let Mitford exist as a puppet state until 2005, when it invaded its' own island due to reports of an impending rebellion. The island was fully annexed just in time for Neri to be born a full Granvilian citizen.

## Early Life

Neri grew up with her home city under military occupation. While she developed a hatred for the invading forces of Granvilia, her father embraced them; this led to several years of conflict between the two. At the age of ten, Neri's family grew tired of her rebellious nature and shipper her off to military school in Granvilia's capital, Thogent.

Neri excelled in military school despite constant bullying and racism against her. However, her success in education was unable to push past the rampant nepotism present in Granvilia's military command structure: Instead of receiving the rank of Lieutenant Colonel for graduating at the top of her class, the tradition of the time, she was made a Captain and had to serve as second in command under a heavily overweight and sexist Major for several months.

### Darmigny Invasion

In 2024, the province of Darmingny invaded the Central province of Granvilia. Spies from Central had discovered the invasion was coming, and Neri's battalion was stationed in the area expected to be hit first. However, no intelligence about the surprise invasion had been given to battalion leadership. In the first hour of the battle, all of Neri's immediate superiors were killed and the commanding officer was captured, leaving Neri as the only leadership available. Despite heavy assaults by the King Squadron of Faium pilots, Neri led her battalion to hold the offensive line until the Army of the Reserve could arrive as backup. Although other units had advanced past Neri's location, the location she held was critical for the Army of the Reserve to launch their counteroffensive without exposing a flank to enemy units.

#### Syllean War

by 2026, diplomatic relations between Central province and the northwest Syllean province had broken down. Central drew up military plans for a two-pronged invasion, one by land across the isthmus between Central and Syllean, and one across the sea launched from the Central-controlled island, Suit. The current leader of Central, Duchess Ximon, recognized that competent military leaders were in short supply, and that while the amphibious invasion was technically a side-show to the land invasion, Ximon needed the amphibious one to succeed at least initially for the entire plan to work. Because of her previous success, Neri was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General and given special permission to act as a Major General while leading the Stalwart Division in this amphibious invasion.

To everyone's surprise, Neri turned her side-show invasion into the main show. Lieutenant Generals Ontus and Rian were met with a stalemate crossing the isthmus, largely because Syllean had believed the amphibious invasion was a bluff. Neri had also disobeyed orders and chosen a different landing site - she landed south of the city of Raurum on the peninsula rather than east of the city on the broad coasts. This meant that opposing ground forces would need to launch their own amphibious assault to attack her flanks, which never occurred, and since no Faium pilots had been committed to defense in that area there was nothing to prevent Neri from capturing Raurum and establishing a well-defended beach head. The only thing in her way from advancing on Syllean's capitol Laugus was their reserve army of non-professional soldiers.

Traditionally, a division such as Neri's would have waited for further orders to come from higher up the chain of command, but this would have given Syllean enough time to reassign Faium pilots from the main battle to her location. Knowing this to be the case, Neri ordered her troops to march towards Laugus on only two days' rest, which was unheard of for an officer of her rank, but the success in taking Raurum along with Neri's willingness to personally get involved in the actual fighting inspired the soldiers to follow orders despite reservations. Despite being outnumbered by as much as five to one, Neri defeated the Syllean reserve army by splitting it into two parts: a disorganized mass of untrained recruits and a small corps of professionals that also contained the command structure. Neri's soldiers captured these commanding officers, and the recruits were routed shortly after. Laugus was completely exposed, and Syllean had to open negotiations with Neri for a ceasefire.

Instead of waiting for a diplomatic detachment from Central, Neri took control of peace talks herself. Syllean ended up losing the entire isthmus area and agreed to recognize the political power of Duchess Ximon in their province. Upon her return to Central, Neri was heralded as a hero of the nation. However, acting under the fear that Neri would be developing power-hungry ideas, the government officially promoted her to General of the Fourth Army and sent her to take command of said army, which was currently in Aulesia attempting to fight up the Luryfield River.

## Revolution in Granvilia

The people in Central province were unhappy with Neri being reassigned as far away as possible. Granvilia was the last nation of Foreuvo to still be a hereditary monarchy and attempts to impose any sort of limits on the duchess or draft a constitution in the last 20 years had failed. The effective banishment of Neri, someone who may have been able to rally public support to hold a coup against Ximon, was the final straw in many peoples' eyes. Revolutionaries began closing in on Thogent in large numbers, and though they were unarmed, they knew exactly where to get weapons: an infamous prison in the city outskirts, The Zentus.

Ximon had informants keeping her in the loop of the mob's movements. When she learned they were moving towards The Zentus, she sent a messenger telling the governor of the prison to hold them off as long as possible. However, by this time, the revolutionaries had reportedly already mounted his head on a pike to parade through the city on their advance towards the castle. Communications between Ximon and military officers broke down due to her insistence of waiting for replies rather than trusting messengers to get their job, allowing the revolutionaries to surround the castle. Lieutenant General Rian attempted to lead a counterattack by taking command of the 5th Royal Battalion, but he failed to penetrate their defensive line. Ximon surrendered after this and was forced to sign a treaty giving legislative powers to the revolutionaries.

Meanwhile in Aulesia, General Neri had pushed the frontline twice as far as any commander before her. However, she was splitting her time between orchestrating fantastic battles and studying the ancient architecture of the area with a team of scholars she had brought. This was partly out of genuine curiosity but also because she knew any land gains this far away from Granvilia were impossible to maintain a hold of. When news of the revolution reached Neri, she negotiated a conditional surrender with Aulesian leadership whereby she would be allowed to leave with her entire army so long as all pillaged cultural artifacts and artwork were returned.

By the time Neri arrived back at Central, a year had passed since her departure - The government was in shambles, Ximon was officially confined to her own castle but also missing, and the Legislative Assembly was executing anyone they suspected of not supporting the revolution without trials. By pure coincidence, Neri arrived 100 miles away from Thogent at the wrong port, exactly where Ximon was attempting to flee the country. Neri was unconvinced by the cover story of Ximon's entourage and arrested the Duchess, taking her back to Thogent.

Upon arriving back at the capitol, Neri was again hailed as a national hero for both getting Granvilia out of the war with Aulesia and capturing Ximon as she was escaping. Sensing blood in the political waters, Neri began to get power hungry ideas, and hatched a plan. She quickly relieved the revolutionary militia and stationed her own troops both throughout the city and around Ximon's castle, where she reconfined the duchess to house arrest. Immediately after this, Neri convinced the Legislative Assembly that Lieutenant General Ontus had plotted a counter-revolution and had soldiers in place to arrest the entire revolutionary leadership, and they all willingly filed into a two-story courthouse outside city limits surrounded by Neri's soldiers.

With all political opposition trapped in buildings, Neri went to Ximon and told her that the only way she could protect Ximon was if the duchess willingly transferred her title as duchess to Neri, who would then use it to revoke the power of the Legislative Assembly. Critically, Neri never promised to return the title to Ximon. A public ceremony where Neri would be crowned was planned for the next day. However, Neri immediately went to the Legislative Assembly and laid down the law - they were surrounded by soldiers personally loyal to her, they had not formed a legitimate government in her absence, and she considered them traitors to Granvilia. Having no other option, the Assembly begrudgingly gave Neri the power to draft the constitution by which the duchess would be held accountable.

Neri reportedly spent the entire night taking the incomplete constitution the Legislative Assembly already had but never ratified and made dozens of adjustments, at one point ordering her assistants to wake her up every thirty minutes. The constitution originally split the power of Head of State among three Consuls, but after Neri's "reforms", all the power really belonged to the First Consul, which would now by definition be the Duchess. At noon on March 30th, 2027, General Neri was crowned Duchess Neri. At the same ceremony, the new Duchess announced, read out, and ratified the new Granvilia Constitution, to the dismay of the now former Legislative Assembly and the massive cheering of the crowd. Granvilia was now a constitutional monarchy with a famous war hero as the monarch, but Neri knew her work was not yet done.

## Conquering Darmigny

Neri assigned her sister, Fadi, as her puppet Governor of the province of Syllean, under the treaty that required them to recognize the Duchess' power. Despite being an islander like Neri, Fadi was widely accepted as governor due to sharing her name with a legendary priestess from the province. Relations between Central and Syllean improved dramatically over the next several months.

However, Neri was now focused on the problem of Darmigny being just as ready to invade Central now as they had been when she began her military career. Making the matter worse was that Neri did not yet have the loyalty of Central's military Faium pilots - since the entire revolution had been an internal affair, no Faium squadrons had been called for combat within Thogent or needed to take sides. However, Darmigny contained the plurality of Granvilia's Faium pilots, and if Neri were to attempt to conquer them militarily, she needed to be able to command Central's Faium forces.

To prove herself, Neri tracked down the Faium squadron with the worst reputation within Central or Syllean, Joker Squadron. She made them directly report to her and shipped them off for training by former Retsnaz pilots in Bauern. After two months, they returned as one of the most skilled squadrons in Granvilia. To prove their new skills, Neri sent them to attack the Marco Fortress near the border with Darmigny, which was where King Squadron was currently stationed. Joker managed to destroy the fortress without any support and killed two members of King, forcing the survivors to retreat. As she had hoped, the success gained Neri the loyalty of Central's Faium pilots, and the population began calling for her to invade Darmingy and finish unifying the island.

However, Neri instead met Darmingy's governor Borisi II in secret talks. Neri had been receiving information from spies that Aulesia was preparing to launch new military campaigns in Foreuvo, and feared that they may make a retaliatory strike against Granvilia for her own campaign in Aulesia. Borisi, however, was hearing none of it and threatened to burn Thogent to the ground in retaliation for Marco Fortess.

In an incredible stroke of luck, an alternative plan landed in Neri's lap. A letter from Fadi arrived, and it detailed that Borisi's son had been doting on her for several months. Neri again smelled political blood in the water and immediately headed toward Syllean to meet with Borisi III. She manipulated him into revealing that he was the head of a large faction within Darmingy which could potentially overthrow his father if they were given some outside help. Borisi III was hesitant at first, but he eventually agreed to this in exchange for Fadi's hand in marriage, which Neri would arrange.

Borisi III returned to Darmingy and began rallying his faction. Two months later, Neri sent the combined armies of Central and Syllean to "invade" the compromised Darmingy and met little resistance. Borisi II was furious and began executing citizens he believed were traitorous without trials - this had the opposite effect as intended, and turned more of the population to support Borisi III instead of the governor. By the time Neri's army was approaching Darmingy's capital, support for Borisi II was at an all-time low, and his son's faction had basically already occupied the city. Neri offered Borisi a peaceful surrender on the term that he willingly give up his position to his son, but this was rejected. However, this rejection was leaked to the public, and a stampede of civilians stormed the governor's mansion, executing Borisi II before either Neri or his own son even had a chance. With Darmingy "conquered", Fadi and Borisi III married in June of 2029, and Neri declared Granvilia a unified Grand Duchy in early July.