Emperor Athdus III

**Emperor Athdus III**, also popularly known as **Athdus the Great**, is the most famous Emperor of Nesaria. After swiftly bringing the multi-generational Nesarian War of Succession to a close, he led his armies to conquer approximately half of the entire continent of Inecuria, expanding the Nesarian Empire's borders more than any Emperor before or since. He additionally took up the role of the supreme commander of the eastern coalition forces during the War for the World, leading the coalition to victory in the Battle of Millions, the largest pre-modern battle in world history.

Often regarded as a military genius, an effective administrator and a merciful, tolerant ruler, he is widely believed to be the greatest Emperor the Empire ever had, and one of the greatest monarchs in world history. However, since his passing, it has become well-known that Athdus considered himself to be nothing of the sort, and was plagued by chronic depression, self-doubt and self-loathing for most of his life.

Although most non-Nesarians are reluctant to praise Athdus's imperialist ambitions and aggressive conquests, his leadership in the War for the World has made him adored across Inecuria for millennia. His crucial role in saving the continent - and by extension, the world - has led to him becoming venerated in numerous religious traditions. he is a saint to the Elvetans, the Limkas consider him the second Yokera, and he holds a saint-like position of respect in many other religions, even those which do not have the concept of sainthood. He has also been canonised as a saint by the Patriarchate of Inecuria, the branch of the Orthodox Church in the Empire, based on the two reports of visions of Athdus in heaven - though the canonisation of a pagan based on this limited evidence remains a controversial topic in the Church to this day.

Athdus is additionally venerated by the Asmocarians as a successor to the Kumukh Handughy, a title he gained through his marriage to Kugemukh Avemiri Simakha. As a consequence, all of his descendants must also be considered successors to the Kumukh Handughy, lending Imperial rule over Asmukhar strong legitimacy and maintaining Imperial control over a region that was otherwise notoriously resistant to foreign rule.

Athdus's marriage to Avemiri was initially considered strictly political by both parties. Athdus sought to win the allegiance of the Asmocarians through the marriage, as he was fully aware that Asmukhar was impossible to control in the long term through force of arms, due to the difficult logistical challenges the terrain presented. Avemiri's goals for the marriage are less clear in the contemporary sources, and there is great difference of opinion; some authors suggest that she intended to exploit her position as the Emperor's wife to grant Asmukhar as much autonomy as possible with the goal of eventual independence, other authors suggest that she shared Athdus's vision of a worldwide empire and used the marriage to secure Asmukhar's position within that empire, and a minority of contemporaries even suggest that Avemiri planned to assassinate Athdus and inherit the Emperorship for herself. However, all the contemporary sources are in full agreement that the two were already on friendly terms when they married, and their relationship soon grew into one of genuine love.

## Military Skill

Academia is generally in agreement with the popular conception of Emperor Athdus as the greatest military commander that Nesaria ever produced. While military historians do not often consider him to be especially tactically brilliant, his understanding of strategy, operations and logistics is widely viewed as far ahead of his contemporaries, both in Inecuria and in the rest of the world. His logistical innovations which permitted his otherwise ludicrously impractical campaigns are widely regarded as nothing short of genius, especially his widespread utilisation of mages for logistical purposes. The army he commanded is typically regarded as the greatest fighting force in the world at the time, winning almost every battle it took part in and always able to quickly rebound from its few defeats. Athdus is also considered by some historians to be a pioneer of psychological warfare, though there is debate amongst academics; some historians regard this as mostly accidental rather than an intentional development by Athdus.

However, Athdus certainly did not believe himself to be a military genius, frequently tormenting himself over every perceived mistake (whether real or imagined), and laying the blame on himself not only for every soldier he lost, but also everyone his army killed; Athdus genuinely viewed world conquest as a humanitarian effort to end future wars, and - somewhat hypocritically - thoroughly despised war and killing despite that being his field for roughly two decades. Though Athdus's peers considered his aversion to war ridiculous and self-defeating, modern historians have suggested that it was precisely Athdus's hatred of war that made him one of the greatest commanders in Inecurian history; the theory goes that his strong aversion to death and violence is what caused him to focus so heavily on operations and logistics over tactics, reasoning that superior organisation and manoeuvre could establish dominance and break the enemy's will without having to slaughter their forces in open battle. History, for the most part, proved him correct; Athdus experienced unprecedented success despite fighting relatively few battles, and both inflicted and suffered far less bloodshed than one might expect.

Athdus understood the crucial importance of logistics, of managing resources and manpower, and of keeping morale high not only on the battlefield but across campaigns that could last for years at a time. He understood the importance of manoeuvre on a strategic rather than merely tactical level, and knew to pick his battles carefully. He came to garner a reputation for pragmatism over pride; despite the complaints of battle-hungry nobles, he had no qualms about retreating when he found himself in an unfavourable situation, and always went to great lengths to ensure that he would only ever fight in a position he was satisfied with. To find out what those positions were, he employed a vast legion of surveyors and geographers who often used assistance from the locals, using superior Nesarian map-making techniques to his advantage. All things considered, Athdus was a commander who had an almost instinctual understanding of the "big picture", and - unlike many other commanders of his time, both ones he fought with and ones he fought against - he never let his focus on grand strategy be overcome by the desire for flashy decisive victories.

Athdus's strategic brilliance was crucial in his grand conquests, but it was even more important for his leadership in the War for the World; a man with such a masterful grasp of strategy and operations was exactly the type of character needed to command forces that were so vast in scale as to be beyond the comprehension of most contemporary states. Many historians, both ancient and modern, have argued that Athdus was the only leader of his time in Inecuria - perhaps in the entire world - who could have successfully organised the entire continent to supply the million-strong force that was brought to bear at the Battle of Millions.

## Mental State

Although only known to close friends during his life, Athdus' various psychological troubles became widespread knowledge amongst historians when his private journals were released to the libraries about a century after his death. Apparently since birth, Athdus had been plagued with cripplingly low self-esteem, and seemingly also a highly irregular sleep pattern. His contemporaries praised him for his great humility, but often failed to recognise that this was not so much out of conscious virtue as it was due to his steadily growing self-loathing, as he harshly berated himself over the most minor of failures and he consistently downplayed his many achievements, seemingly never believing himself worthy of them.

The bloody sacking of Onshi had a profound effect upon Athdus, creating the first cracks in his worldview that his wars of conquest were justified and noble, and when Onshi and later Ascaria were obliterated by the Cosmovores he fell into a deep depression and routinely implied or outright stated suicidal tendencies in his journals. He felt as though he had failed the world and did not deserve any of the good things in his life, and though he clearly had a strong desire to end his own life, he refused to abandon those who still followed him - especially not his wife - and he was determined to make sure that he would take as many Cosmovores as he could down with him. With the death of the Cosmovore Queen and the end of the War for the World, Athdus' mental state began to improve and he died peacefully of natural causes, but it is unlikely that his depression ever truly left him.

Some modern psychologists have diagnosed Athdus with impostor syndrome due to his symptoms of consistently downplaying his own achievements and hyper-focussing on his failures, and feeling as if he did not deserve anything he had. However, this diagnosis is disputed; though Athdus certainly felt those symptoms, there is no evidence to suggest that he doubted his own ability, which is the fundamental symptom of impostor syndrome. Athdus was aware that he was intelligent, well-educated and physically competent, and many scholars studying his journals have concluded that it was precisely his awareness of his own ability that caused his depression and self-loathing; it caused him to set his expectations of what he *should* be able to do impossibly high, and he then harshly chastised himself for inevitably failing to meet those expectations.

Athdus' persistent and steadily growing self-loathing caused him to consistently underestimate how much he was liked by others; he suspected that most of the friendliness others showed to him was merely a polite courtesy or moral obligation, and did not believe that he had any actual friends. That is not to say he was socially awkward, as he was never noted as such by his contemporaries, and his suspicion that nobody actually liked him did not cause him to be unfriendly, but it left him extremely reluctant to open up to others. This tendency in him was partially dispelled by Avemiri, as Athdus was well aware that she loved him (which, during his lowest points, was another source of self-loathing, as he felt unworthy of it), but it was not truly until the War for the World that Athdus realised his friends really were his friends and not just allies of convenience.