Vesuvia Caesar

**NOTE: This is not a canon novel character :)**

Her Imperial Excellency

Annia (Sister)

Verania (Sister)

Augustus (Brother)

Drusus (Brother)

Lucretia (Sister)

Gallus (Brother)

Thespasian (Ex-Husband)

Germanicus (Son)

Aurelia (Daughter) †

Flavonia (Daughter)

Valentinian (Son)

Constantine (Unborn Son) †

Hirtius I (Brother-In-Law)

Hirtius II (Nephew)

Alliana Pacorus (Sister-In-Law)

Viria (Niece)

Alexia Caesar-Orleans (Niece)

Francoise Orleans (Brother-In-Law)

Lettonian Executive Branch (1945-)

Imperatoria (1945-)

**Vesuvia Sabiniana Caesar** has been the Imperatoria of Lettonia since 1945, the Supreme Commander of the Legions since 1945 and one of the country's most important figureheads. She has made many accomplishments in her decade long reign over the country as its absolute monarch. She has marked the way for groundbreaking religious and social reforms, saw territorial conquests undertaken, and the shaking up and establishment of Lettonia as a major player in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

## Early Life (1926-1942)

### An Ordinary Child

Vesuvia Sabiniana Caesar was born on December 18, 1926 in Nicomedia, Lettonia. She was the oldest of seven children of Legate Varus Caesar and his wife Varia. The family was middle class due to Varus's rank in the Imperial Legions, and was a close friend of the Imperator. However, Vesuvia did not see much of her father for the first few years of her life. In 1927, the Foederatis (Lettonian Fascists) staged a march on Nova Roma, the capital city. Despite being driven back from the capital, the Foederatis openly declared war on the Lettonian Government, beginning the Lettonian Civil War.

Since her father was a high ranking officer, Vesuvia saw little of him throughout the civil war as he quashed Foederatis resistance throughout Asia Minor. In fact, the family was forced to flee their home in Nicomedia for Sinope as a Foederati Army attempted to lay siege to it in 1930. In 1931, however, her life would change as word spread like a wildfire across the realm: The Imperator had died without an heir, and Varus, the highest ranking commander of the Legions, with Asia Minor secured under his grip, marched on the capital, and took it without casualties. To prevail with monarchism and stability, an emergency royal council had crowned Varus imperator on September 17, 1931. Vesuvia Sabiniana Caesar overnight went from an ordinary five year old girl to the crown princess of Lettonia.

### Heir Apparent

Suddenly being the heir apparent took a strange adjustment period. Her father crushed the civil war by the beginning of 1932, and then came the most abrupt period of her childhood. Before 1932, Vesuvia was an only child-and she quite liked it that way. Over the next six years, Vesuvia didn't just lose only child status, but became the eldest of seven children. The changes and lack of her mother's attention made her a tough little girl, though she began trying to spend much more time with her father which didn't go well either. While the Lettonians had begun growing to trust their new emperor, who juggled the rule of law, military business and justice reforms, Vesuvia was in private school dealing with mathematics and Latin Language Arts. Vesuvia has remarked that she didn't spend much quality time with either of her parents, which left an impression on her.

As she became a teenager, she had become enthralled with diplomacy, politics and history, and threw herself into her studies. However, by now, Europe had erupted into war once again following the German Invasion of Poland. Due to Lettonia's marketing as a safe haven for Jews, Roma's and Gypsies, as well as the Caesar family being Jewish themselves, they were already a marked enemy on the list of Adolf Hitler. Benito Mussolini as well was eager to try his hand at snatching Greece-their occupation of Albania had caused much protest by Lettonia in the League of Nations-though this did little.

#### The Second World War: Part I

In October of 1940, Italy took the Lettonian Legions by surprise by launching an invasion into Greece. The Italians advanced all the way to Ioannina before supplies and conditions deteriorated for the invasion. Vesuvia during this time read newspapers and listened to radio reports frequently, and her teenage mind became enamored with the idea of the military further. While she read books and wrote essays for school, she cheered when the Lettonian army drove the Italian invaders back across the border into Albania, then pursued into the occupied country. They pushed north to Milot, and took Tirana before in April 1941, the Germans invaded and crushed Yugoslavia in a week... but they didn't stop at Yugoslavia. The Wehrmacht punched into Greece, driving the Legions back. Despite waging a fighting retreat, the Lettonian people were shocked that the advance didn't halt until the Legions fell back to the line of heavy fortifications between Preveza and Volos. In the East they pushed to the gates of Nova Roma, and Vesuvia and the royal family began fearing for their safety. The first German bombs began falling shortly after. However, Varus chose to stay while the rest of the family left for their estate in Sinope to keep the city in good working order, and lead the defense himself. Vesuvia, admiring her father as usual, boldly declared her intentions to stay in the capital with him.

She was in Sinope five days later.

She was annoyed as she watched hundreds of thousands of young men go off to fight, to die in the fields of Greece, or the streets of Nova Roma or Thessalonica which was under siege. She wanted to help, but she was stuck writing essays for boring teachers in Sinope. Her friends were stuck in Nova Roma, and she couldn't reach them. The crown principissa was frustrated beyond all belief.

She couldn't bear to see the Germans almost take Nova Roma, only to get stopped because they couldn't cross the Bosporus. She couldn't bear to see the Greek fields stained with her brothers blood. She wanted to help... she wanted to *fight.*

So in December 1942, just after her sixteenth birthday, she slipped past the guards and made a break from the estate. She was caught, and grounded, though she refused to tell her mother why she left. Her second attempt just a week later also resulted in failure, and now three guards were posted outside her room at all times. She was clever, and she planned her next escape for over a month. On January 26, she sprang her plan. She waited for the guards to fall asleep, then jumped into the laundry chute in her room, which she managed to fit her tiny slender body into. She slid into a large laundry basket, which a staff member who she had bribed brought her to the staff quarters, where she was then able to use old secret passages to escape to freedom.

## The Royal Legionary (1943-1945)

### The Second World War: Part II 'The Soldier Princess'

Her family didn't notice she was missing until the following morning, by which point she had already made her way to the nearest recruitment station. The men there struggled between allowing the 5'2, 16 year old into service, as she didn't fit any of the physical qualifications, nor the age requirement. But the war effort was desperate, and worse exceptions had been made for the sake of stopping the German and Italian onslaught. Plus, she had a totally not forged note from her father, the emperor, which gave his totally legitimate approval for her joining the Legions. This part, while confusing the officers as to why he would do this, was accepted, as they didn't dare question a direct statement that supposedly came from Varus Caesar himself. So Vesuvia was in. She trained from January to April of 1943, and while it was rigorous and brutal, she made it through. She fought to receive the same treatment as her male counterparts from both the male soldiers and officers during this time, though she did receive a bit of a free pass given she was the emperor's daughter.

Vesuvia first saw active combat in Greece, specifically at Karpenissi in Central Greece. By this time, Varus had become aware of his daughters actions, and personally visited her maniple in Greece to lecture her and bring her home. But something strange occurred when he saw her, dressed as a soldier, wearing a galea ferro, standing tall and proud with the other soldiers he felt an odd sense of... pride. Vesuvia defended her actions and position ferociously, not as rebellion but as doing her duty to her country. By the end of a very long (several hour) long argument and debate, the emperor formally granted her the right to fight-but made preparations for her sister Annia to take the position of heir apparent if Vesuvia were to die in combat.

##### In The Bloody Fields of Greece

Her first engagement was shortly after-and it was the shock of a lifetime for the young legionary. She nearly got her head blown off by a howitzer, shredded apart by a German machine gun, and was forced to kill a man by stabbing him with her bayonet. But she kept on fighting. Shortly after she met Hadrian Parolus, another young soldier who she soon developed a romantic attraction for. She became very accustomed to wearing a gas mask, as the Legions used chlorine gas frequently against the Germans. She found herself in numerous suicidal charges, nasty battles against a determined German foe. Then when Italy surrendered, and the Germans turned on their ally, and worked to disarm them, the Legions hit them with everything they had. Vesuvia endured days without sleep and hardly any food and water as the Lettonians advanced across northern Greece in the most successful offensive since they had retreated two years prior. Their advance dragged to a halt once more at Ioannina, and they were bogged down once more in the brutal war. But they had given the Germans a scare, that was for sure. The 1943 Summer Offensive had seen Vesuvia distinguish herself, and earn two medals of honor from her superiors.

The war continued on as the Lettonians slowly whittled down the German lines, and in late 1943 to early 1944, the Lettonian Legions launched Operation 'Bloodhound'. This offensive lasted into April of 1944... and saw the Lettonian forces drive the Germans and their allies out of Lettonian lands forever-they even occupied a small portion of Albania, which the Soviet Union and its Albanian puppet government would accept as legitimate compensation. She earned another medal of honor from participating in the winter offensive and for rescuing several soldiers under fire. By now, Lettonian propaganda and news circulated news of the crown principissa fighting against the fascist menace to drum up support for the Caesar Dynasty and keep morale high, and garner recruitment.

But with the war for Lettonia seemingly over by spring of 1944, as the Germans were running from Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, what were they to do? Their American, British and French allies requested 5,000 Lettonian soldiers be transferred to the United Kingdom for future operations in France. Vesuvia volunteered to go to the UK and it prompted mass volunteering, so much so that the High Command needed to reject over 8,000 additional volunteers-and they sent 7,000 men to the UK instead of just 5,000.

##### The Bloody Fields of France

So that's where Vesuvia found herself on June 6, 1944, storming Omaha Beach with her brothers in arms, and American allies. The fighting was some of the worst the princess had ever seen, but her presence raised their morale. They slugged their way forward across the beach for hours that day, and Vesuvia saw dozens of her close friends ruthlessly gunned down by machine gun fire, or blown up by howitzers. This included her now secret partner, Hadrian, who she saw get shot in the head after briefly moving out of cover. She herself would be nearly killed when a man stepped on a mine five feet from her, and the shrapnel from the blast tore her left hand clean off. But she kept pushing, and by the end of that afternoon, her brothers in arms and herself were clearing German bunkers, which was the most desperate part of the fighting. Vesuvia recalls using the butt of her rifle as a club, and using grenades in close quarters combat-and a few times where she needed to use her rifle as a vice to strangle an enemy soldier to death. By the end of the day, the beaches were secured, and the following day, Vesuvia was promoted to Centurion, and received a prosthetic hand replacement soon after to help her return to the field.

With the Lettonian Foreign Legion in France (LFLF) at her back, she fought through France, helping to push back the Germans further into France. In August, she partook in the victory parade through Paris, due to her efforts. While her efforts throughout the rest of 1944 are hard to detail, she cooperated with her allies and took part in numerous engagements, all the way up into Belgium. By now, Lettonia had committed aircraft and armor to the Western Front, with the Balkans secured, and rebuilding underway.

She fought in the Battle of the Bulge, commanding a relief force to break through the German lines and rescue a band of encircled Lettonian and American soldiers. (No not Bastogne, another incident). For this, she earned an audience with General George S. Patton, a man and general whom she personally admired greatly. Patton was impressed to see an eighteen year old girl fighting with such valor and intense pride, and for so long without stopping.

Vesuvia would be one of the first Lettonian soldiers to cross into Germany, and was nearly killed again when her troops secured as bridgehead across the Rhine a couple of months later. The High Command attempted to once again promote the young centurion, but she refused the promotion, desiring to remain in the same company she had been fighting with since 1943. By the time Adolf Hitler committed suicide and Germany surrendered, the Allies had stopped their advance, and the war was over. She remained in Europe for a little while longer, though she would return home in July of 1945, receiving a heroes welcome. On July 27, 1945, she would be honorably discharged from the Legions, and bid farewell to her comrades and brothers in arms. She remains close friends with the men of her century to this day.

### The Death of Varus

However, Vesuvia did not have much time to reacclimate and recover. See, due to the stress of the war, Varus has developed a drinking problem-combined with his poor eating habits and intense stress was a powder keg waiting to explode. Sure enough, on October 3, 1945, while getting up from the dinner table, Varus dropped his wine glass, clutched his chest, and dropped dead of sudden cardiac arrest.

Without warning, Vesuvia was now Imperatoria of Lettonia.

## Imperatoria of The East (1945-51)

Right from the get go, the unprepared Vesuvia established an administration and council, and accepted all of the current governors and politicians submission to the Phoenix Throne. She quickly outlined several goals for her reign, and what she hoped to accomplish, with the limited foresight she had.

### Rebuilding

She worked on strengthening the military, and rebuilding the economy with aid from the American Marshall Plan. She led the Empire in joining the United Nations in 1947-something she regrets to this day. She revised some of her father's reconstruction plan, and put lots of money and aid into rebuilding Thrace and Northern Greece. However this came at the cost of extracting additional resources from East Numidia and utilizing cheap labor from the colony to make the process quicker and smoother. However, her initiatives worked, and by 1951, most of the country's infrastructure had been repaired and strengthened, and the military was developing new technology rapidly.

### A Wife and Mother

After the war, Vesuvia developed a romantic relationship with a former soldier named Thespasian Caspian. The two quickly fell in love, and married in late 1946, just before Vesuvia's 20th birthday. The pair would have four living children together, Germanicus (1947), Aurelia and Flavonia (1948) and Valentinian (1950). Though a fifth child set to be born in 1952, named preemptively as Constantine would result in an accidental miscarriage, which still haunts the young Imperatoria to this day. After this, Thespasian began a secret affair with a member of her personal staff, which she wouldn't become aware of until 1955.

## The 1950s (1951-)

### Foreign Policy

Vesuvia was staunchly anti-communist and anti-socialist and anti-democratic, however, the West supported Lettonia far more than the East, and as such, Lettonia's foreign policy smoothly clicked into place with that of the Western Allies. She increased hostility to the Soviet Union and the United Eastern Bloc (UEB) by banning them access to the Bosporus in 1952, as well as finally applying and being accepted into the Seattle Amsterdam Treaty Organisation later that same year. However, Vesuvia had plans for a certain problematic country to the East of the empire... Kurdistan.

Vesuvia and the Lettonian government and military held personal animosity towards the Kurds, as they had stabbed them in the back in the past, and seized territory from the Empire when it was at its weakest. As stated in this 1952 quote:

> *"The only thing Lettonians hate more than Kurds is communists,"*
>
>

Meanwhile, the East Numidian colony was starting to get fired up with protests for independence from the Arab, Muslim population, while the Roman population sought to maintain Nova Roma's hegemony over the land. Vesuvia would increase troop presence in the region to maintain stability, and for a while this worked, however the time of colonialism was rapidly dying and everyone in Nova Roma knew it. So negotiations began with the Numidian Republican Front (NRF), the National Front Party (NFP) and the Roman Unity Party (RUP) on the future status of the region.

#### Kurdistan Crisis

In early 1953, Vesuvia orchestrated a deal with Iraqi president Hassan Al-Bakr, regarding the Kurdish Question. They agreed to deal with the Kurdish menace together, liberate their Syrian lands, Hatay and several other desired provinces. Iraq would begin its border skirmishes with Kurdistan in March, though Lettonia remained neutral for the time being, while mobilizing quietly. In June, they demanded Kurdistan cede Hatay and Osmaniyye to the empire, in exchange for support against Iraq, which was part of the plan. The Kurds refused, and Lettonia closed the borders with the nation. A few weeks later, it was claimed that Kurdish troops had attacked Legionaries on the border, which Vesuvia proclaimed as the 'final straw'. 6 hours later, Lettonia declared war on Kurdistan and invaded.

##### War In Kurdistan

The Invasion of Kurdistan dragged on, with the U.S giving Lettonia a deadline to finish its war. Hatay was falling by August, but Lettonia kept pushing, aiding their Iraqi allies in their struggle. But the Kurds, supplied by Lettonia's very own western allies, fought on relentlessly. Casualties piled up, and the deadline approached. The Kurds were bitter to defend their land, despite the closing in of the Iraqi forces from the south. But the Lettonians missed the deadlines, and the sanctions began. This prompted High Command to initiate a final prepped operation to end the war. Creatively named once more, Operation 'Liquid Lungs' was launched in January of 1954, and saw Lettonian forces pummel Kurdish forces with more chemical weapons then they had on the Germans, combined with artillery and air strikes. Lettonia was ejected from SATO. Kurdish lines collapsed, and this, combined with Operation 'Silent Night' crippled the Kurdish war effort, as they retreated quickly, but in a disorganized fashion. They tried to stage a last minute defense of their capital, Amed, but it fell on February 24, 1954, and Kurdistan was forced to sue for peace, and sign a humiliating peace treaty which saw it driven back far into the corner of Anatolia, surrounded by two hostile powers and the Soviet Union. Despite being kicked out of SATO, the Romans cheered their commanders on, and between April and June of 1954, the Roman/Lettonian commanders in the war were granted the first Roman triumphs since the times of Flavius Belisarius, nearly 1500 years prior. Roman pride swells once more through the people of Lettonia, and their strength returned.

### Lettonia: A Friend of South America

In 1953, Lettonia joined the South American countries of Rojugal and Gran Colombia in founding the Bolivarian Anti-Socialist Treaty (BAT), which saw Lettonia ban any and all communist/socialist parties, and later banning symbolism. It has been ranked since that point that Lettonia is one of the top 5 countries to oppose socialism and communism across the globe. Along with being a founding loyal member of BAT, Vesuvia has formed a personal friendship with Gran Colombian President Carlos Diego Chalbaud, affectionately referred to by her son Germanicus who struggles to pronounce his name 'President Chadbaud'. The same is said for president João Lemos of Rojugal, and his wife Esperanza. The latter of which bonded with Vesuvia during her pregnancy and the two shared many stories and gifts during the time. In early 1955, Vesuvia proclaimed Gran Colombia and Rojugal 'Amicus of Lettoniae' or Friends of Lettonia.

### The Caesar-Orleans Brotherhood

When the French throne was restored, Lettonia was one of the first to recognize King Henri VI's throne and the change. Since then, Lettonia and France have grown very close politically and diplomatically, with Vesuvia considering Henri a close personal friend. Of course, she is not aware of French volunteers fighting alongside the Kurds, but that is a story for another time. In 1954, they arranged a marriage between crown prince Françoise and Principissa Lucretia, one of Vesuvia's younger siblings. This personal union has only strengthened the bond between Paris and Nova Roma.

### Lettonia and the State of Israel: Heritage Above All

Given Vesuvia and her family is Jewish, and 28% of the Lettonian population is recognized as Jewish, Lettonia was one of the most fervent supporters of Zionism and the foundation of Israel. When this was done with the strange two state solution in 1948, Lettonia immediately recognized both Palestine and Israel. However, as relations deteriorated in the early 1950s between Israel and the Arabs, Lettonia ensured a guarantee of independence and sovereignty to protect Israel.

When Egypt invaded the Sinai in 1954, Lettonia dispatched 70,000 hardcore Legionary volunteers to Israel to fend off the invasion. Despite losing Sinai, many Lettonians consider the fact that Israel stands independent still, and with Jerusalem nonetheless as a victory in and of itself.

### The Ultimate Betrayal

After a very amicable state visit to Rojugal in late 1955, Vesuvia returned home to find Thespasian in the act of sleeping with his mistress. A horrified and heartbroken Vesuvia would throw him out of the palace, and immediately sort out an annulment of the marriage. Despite the act of divorce being illegal, being seen as immoral, Vesuvia managed to convince the Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch to personally foresee the matter. While she has explained to her children that their father simply "did something very bad" it will be for them to learn at a later date. The children are likely to still have a warm relationship with their father despite the divorce.