Hazael Buller

**Hazael** **Buller** (November 31, 1970 - March 29, 2020) was a clergyman in Bovido Has who served as both the Emperor and Archbishop of the radical Christian nation officially between August 14, 2018 and March 31, 2020, although he took office immediately after the death of Michael Ezra in early 2018 meaning that he reigned as the *de-facto* leader of the nation up until his official conformation in January 2019 and thus most historians record his rule as being from May 14, 2018 - March 29, 2020, followed by three days of posthumous rule as the remaining Bovido leaders attempted to figure out who would take power.

Dedicated to Bovido Has with his life, Hazael Buller was a powerful minister within the government of Archbishop-Emperor Michael Ezra and positioned himself to become Ezra's succession after the death and state funeral of Archbishop Ezra in the summer of 2018. Under his leadership, Buller perused a Second Thaw in relations with the Libirachi Empire, forming a close bond with President Nathan Jackson which lasted until Jackson's deposition in September 2019, and the successive regime in the Libirachi Empire led by Laura Fox began to return to the harsh rhetoric of before the thaw, undoing Buller's largest international policy successes.

As a devout member of the Holy Clergy of Bovido Has, Hazael Buller led the nation of Bovido Has in its stagnating years and actively attempted to reform the corrupt and failing political and military system with widespread and systematic changes to the upheld institutions of the nation, such as allowing the Persian Republic to cede from the empire in 2018 in order to better focus soldiers and clergy members on the core issues such as a stagnant economy, a weakening grip on the populations of south east Asia and a failing war in Egypt. The son of former Bovido Emperor Hagreev Buller, Buller became known as the "princeling" within members of the upper echelons of the regime who distained the reformative nature of the incoming administration.

Remembered as one of the last leaders of Bovido Has in its initial form, the death of Hazael Buller in March 2020 ultimately led to the collapse of his nation through the Has Wars which were fought as a result, as well as the ultimate defection of Justus Obadiah following his death in order to create the state of Obadiah Has. The last in a stagnant line of Emperor-Archbishops, Buller's successor Damal Clod would ultimately be confined to the title of Emperor as part of a power sharing agreement in order to pacify Buller's ally Syli Dean, a mistake which led in turn to the Invasion of Belitung and the Siege of Makassar, followed by the collapse of the nation into fractions. In spite of this, Buller's premiership remained as one of the highest ranking in recent history, although far below that of Michael Ezra and above that of both Damal Clod and Syli Dean in public opinion.

## History

Born in 1970 in the capital of Bovido Has, Makassar, Hazael Buller was the son of former Emperor Hagreev Buller, who ruled during the aftermath of the Purba crisis in the 1980s in order to keep the peace between the Purba fractions and the Clergy establishment for a period of reconstruction following a bitter civil war. Having joined the clergy in 1984 at the traditional age of 14, Buller was subjected to 15 years of hyper-Christian further education and in 1999, Buller hosted his first congregation in Burma Has having only just graduated from the Makassar Academy. During the early 2000s, Hazael Buller began to rise up through the ranks of the Clergy, thanks to his family friendship with the Emperor-Archbishop Michael Ezra, as well as his "princeling" status as the son of a former emperor, and in 2010 he was appointed Emirate of Belitung, with a promotion to Arch-emirate of Bovido Has in 2015. Presiding over the controversial updating of the Final Testament in 2016, Buller began to make enemies within the upper echelons of the Clergy, and when he became the Lord's Chief Diplomat in late 2017, these enemies had him stranded in the wildlands of the Libirachi Empire's Chinese provinces, shooting his plane down using members of the Nameless to down the plane above the Libirachi wilderness, sparking a minor diplomatic crisis and a widespread search and rescue program to find the Bovido priest. After a hurried extradition following his discovery in a Libirachi village in the province of Tibet, Buller returned to find himself the new leader of Bovido Has after Michael Ezra's heart attack in August 2018.

## Reign

 Grand Council Members

Quickly rounding up his rivals in the clergy in the first of a series of purges that would come to define Buller's rule, Hazael cemented his rule across the nation following the death of Michael Ezra, and began converting the extremist nation into a military dictatorship preaching from a revised version of the Bible whilst also embarking on a Second Thaw with the Libirachi Empire. With the military at the centre of his rule, Hazael began to place invasions higher up a list of priorities. As Buller began to assert himself in office, Bovido Has began a new program of expansion into Egypt, but met harsh resistance from the the Egyptian Islamic Brotherhood , and their African campaign was halted. In 2020, the regime suffered catastrophic losses during the Hǔnluàn's attacks on Asian nations following their expulsion from the Libirachi Empire in January 2020, while the formerly strong boarders of the nation came under siege from outside forces. In an attempt to regain stability, Hazael called a meeting of the N20 in Makassar, but at 13:34 PM on 29th March 2020, Archbishop Hazael Buller the Rightful and the Libirachi Ambassador to Makassar were both killed by an explosion in the armed one-off Toyota Century Royal car which the Archbishop and Emperor designated for official state duties. Archbishop Buller and Bail Ordain were on their way to the N20 conference on international relations (held between the nations of Asia, Oceania, Eastern Europe and Northern Africa), when the bomb detonated as the car pulled up outside the Makassar Government Building, killing the pair, 7 security guards, the driver and bodyguard in the car, and 17 members of the global press who were filming the car as it detonated. The talks were immediately cancelled, while the Bovido Has official investigation found that the car had traces of a Libirachi TC-5555 explosive, implicating the Libirachi Imperial Army in the assassination. Enraged by the suggestion, Xi Jimping (President of the Libirachi Empire) demanded that Bovido Has released the "true" findings of the investigation, declaring it preposterous that the Libirachi Empire would assassinate the Head of State of its closest ally. Attempts to fix the issue by independent peacekeepers were rebuffed, and the newly appointed Emperor Damal Clod began publicly accusing the Empire of an unprovoked assault on the Bovido. As such, Xi Jimping resorted to his last option; the Libirachi Empire declared war on Bovido Has at 09:30 AM (local time) on the 1st April 2020, and Bovido Has responded at 10:10 AM (local time) the same day.

## Legacy

As the last true Emperor-Archbishop of Bovido Has, Hazael Buller ended a 211 year tradition with his death on March 29, 2020 and in doing so plunged his nation into a period of deep instability, leaving the members of his Grand Council to fight it out for the top spot, ultimately resulting in a split within the nation with Justus Obadiah and Nathaniel Eli defecting to form Obadiah Has, whilst Damal Clod and Syli Dean forged a power sharing agreement with Clod taking the throne as emperor and Dean assuming the office of Archbishop. Not only did the death of Buller leave a power vacuum, but the ambiguous nature of the death and the fact that the assassination attempt also killed off a politician that had been causing the new Libirachi regime some political trouble led the Bovido Hassian leadership to presume that the attack was Libirachi in origin, whilst the Libirachi Empire resisted the calls and took offence at the immediate blame and declared war on Bovido Has, a war in which the nation was perilously unsuited to fight at the best of times, with outdated equipment being used in all parts of the army, but with the defection of approximately half the army and the political instability at the top of the nation, the Has Wars would turn into a bloodbath for Bovido Has and ultimately with the subsequent Invasion of Belitung, Siege of Makassar and the Invasion of Japan, Bovido Has crumbled into a failed state, splintering into fractions and would only be re-united some 8 years later under the leadership of Anton Ujung.

 April 3, 1983 - May 14, 2018
 April 3, 1983 - May 14, 2018