History of house of Gergely

(from written notes following brain-diarrhea of Bramadan's)

Gergely -- originally Gargelani, were a family of note under Theogeni, having risen to dukedom 600-700 years ago. Back then they were fairly warlike lords, with a seat at Hyrcolon, one of the small duchies in the NE of the Stagyre plane.

Throughout the years the family had kept its pulse on some of the most revolutionary conflicts besetting the Empire, appearing as signatories of nearly two dozen historical treaties, and being the rulers, in turn, of five different duchies and a herzegovina. The family's history is thus nigh impossible to tell without incorporating it into a brief history of the Empire, dating back to the First Succession Crisis.

First Succession Crisis (year?)
In the wake of yet another flare in the enduring rivalry between the city bureaucrats and the land-owning nobility, Daffy Duck (AKA Mad Eunuch), a brilliant and equally ruthleTHTH black water fowl rose to power through treachery and assassination. First to suffer were his rivals in the Small Council, Miskoltz bureaucrats most of them, but then Peteros moved onto the land-owning magnates.

The Mad Eunuch did make a mistake to start with one of the major Stagyr houses -- had he not done so, the whole affair may have gone by without any involvement from the imperial family. However, the blame was laid on the Emperor when particularly highly-poised heads started to roll. And so, at some point the Emperor was also assassinated, by one Katherine of Kalatos, the only daughter of one of the noblemen killed by Mad Eunuch (This will probably need to be changed too, my guess is she would have been one of the concubines of the feeble-minded Theogenes nephew?).

The Emperor left behind him a 17-year old daughter, and an infant son, which primed the situation for a succession crisis. The smal council, headed by Mad Eunuch, promoted the idea of a democratic rule of the Council until the infant came of age. The land-owners, (who were increasingly dominated by Magyr nobility at the time) were unhappy with the idea that a suckling babe rule the empire, and instead insisted that their own champion, the impressive Matias Horogi marry the Emperor's daughter and thus continue the imperial line.

The Compromise
The conflict lasted for a decade, not abating even following the assassination of the Horogi's prospective bride. The Stagyre bureaucracy had a time-proven strategy of dealing with the discontent of the land-owners: every time the buggers presented any kind of united front, one had to only wait a few years, until in-fighting inevitably started anew. And so, a worthy rival to Matias Horogi finally emerged, in the form of one Bela Koroly, a Magyr duke from far east, in Pec. Initiated by Bela Koroly (and, by some accounts, by house Gergely also -- they certainly were one of the first signatories) was a compromise. According to the document, the land-owners would recognize the young emperor (who was 11 by that time), and agree to Horogi's exile, provided Mad Eunuch's head was to be delivered to them, and provided that Bela Koroly's daughter Margolia were to be married to the emperor once he became of age.

The aforementioned compromise solved very little, except that most of the large scale killing had stopped within a few years of its signing. In keeping with the nature of compromises, nobody was happy. The land magnates bought themselves a respite but fundamentally found their position even weaker than it previously was. Meanwhile, the bureaucrats found themselves without their most prominent leader, and immediately went on to fight amongst themselves to establish who among them will be running things.

The least liked party in all of this were Gergely, who were not liked by the Stagyre for their close association with the Korolys, and were at the same time disliked by former Horogi supporters. (Koroly's role in that was meanwhile easily overlooked, as Bela was rich, handsome and most importantly as Magyr as Magyr come). And so, the family had given up their estate and moved in search of friendlier neighbours -- the first of what is to be many such moves. Their new domain was a much humbler place called Bulim, in the southeast of the Stagyre plane, on the borders of the Magyr Pusta, sharing their lands with other Stagyre similarly "exiled". There the family awaited better times all the while trying to put in place some sort of accord between the magnates and the bureaucrats.

The head of the Gergely family at the time was not too keen on the new place, and was also much more inclined to be a politician than a horse rancher -- and so during that time the family spent more time in Miskoltz than ever before. In fact, despite the fact that Gergely were careful to keep close ties with Bela Koroly, they became much closer to their Stagyre roots than they have been for many generations. That, and they did nothing to gain the favor of those proud Magyr families (the likes of Chervez and Esthawan), who were pushed west for not being progressive enough to make space for the exiled Stagyre dukes.

Basil the Good
Five years later, the realm gets a Theogeni emperor, crowned at 16 as Basil the First. The newly crowned Basil had quite a few issues to deal with, foremost of them being the bride he was handed. Margolia, although certainly not lacking Koroly's good looks, was nonetheless self-centered and arrogant, over a decade his senior, and too keen on carrying on adulterous liaisons that did not stop after her wedding. However, by far the worst of her qualities was that she came pre-packaged with the most insufferable father-in-law that a young emperor could ever wish for.

Bela Koroly was, by the most charitable accounts, an overbearing man. Immediately after the compromise and despite the fact that he had publicly renounced any claim to the throne, Bela moved to Miskoltz and had taken place on the Council, to help guide the young Emperor until the boy comes of age. He had poked his head into everything, fought with the bureaucrats, openly patronized the Emperor, and made as much show as he could at being the one running things -- and was in no hurry to give that behaviour up after the coronation.

And thus, Basil had figured that if he were to be the master of his own bed, let alone the Empire, that he had to get rid of his wife, and especially his father-in-law, and preferrably a few of the head bureaucrats -- all not easy tasks. That said, most everyone around Basil had forgotten by that time what it is like to have an energetic Theogeni on the throne. For years to follow, Basil expertly played a dangerous game of trying to assert his power, against the more experienced and resourceful Koroly.

Finally, after having secured some of the most important regiments in the army, the 21-year-old Basil publicly divorced his wife on the grounds of adultery, proclaiming her two daughters Illona and Kornelia as issues of adulterous liaisons, and beheading a couple of Markgrafs for sleeping with the empress to further make a point. He then shipped Margolia and the girls back to Pec, to her father's family. Bela was naturally enraged, but wasted no time and arranges the marriage of Kornelia to his grandson Matias Istvan, not balking at the fact that they were first cousins, and also that they were, respectively, 3 and 6 years old at the time; a fact that would prove to be important a generation later.

For the following decade continues a political struggle between three parties: the mostly Magyr magnates, headed by the Korolies, who are by now viewed as entirely natural candidates for the throne; the Stagyre bureaucrats, who by now have realized that they like the new emperor even less than the Korolies; and finally Basil himself. It's unclear how he managed to survive past the age of 30, as not a month went by without an assassination attempt on the Emperor -- but it's safe to say that he gave as generously as he got. And so, in time, he managed to amass a fully credible faction of his own, consisting primarily of Stagire nobles -- particularly those with foresight and a firm belief that someone of the blood might bring the Empire back to the golden age of Theogeni emperors.

Gergely were wise enough not to bite the Koroly hand that fed them, but Basil tempted them with a particularly juicy bait: a Herzogship of the vast frontier district in the northwest where significant military operations were planned. And thus were the family removed from Miskoltz for a generation, filling the family coffers with profitable invasions -- another painful blow for the Korolys, who lost one of their very few non-Magyr supporters in Miskoltz.

Despite the furious political struggle waged in the imperial upper crust, the regular folk in the Empire enjoyed relative peace and prosperity; for as much as their absentee landlords were eager to kill each other off, they neglected to sack each other's cities and burn each other's fields. Thus, despite all the Koroly propaganda, Basil is to this day remembered as Basil The Good.

Constantin II (The Usurper)
Even though Basil's divorce had succeeded in ridding him of his wife (though not so much of his father-in-law), the Emperor never married again. Some say it was because Margolia soured women for him in general, others claim that he had a commoner lover to whom he had sworn fidelity; there are even rumours that Basil preferred men --- but the fact remained that following him disowning two of Margolia's daughters, Basil had no natural heirs.

To solve this issue, Basil had adopted a baby, which according to him was the bastard grandson of one Theophane, who was herself a daughter of Vallis IV (Basil's grand-uncle). The Korolys, of course, called major shenanigans, but all the papers were surprisingly in order, and Basil was by that time sufficiently entrenched in his position that Bela could not go into open rebellion.

In fact, Gergely were able to produce letters claiming that before her death, Theophane was a guest of the family, and had an affair with a young officer named Philo Stratopoulos, and had a male child, Stanos Stratopoulos, who was raised as a knight in the Gergely service. Stanos had since married Countess Althea Kastellanos, a rich relative of Gergely. Clearly, the offspring of that marriage was thus of divine blood (albeit via the maternal line). It was based on these papers, signed cheerfully by the Gergely, that the baby was deemed Theogenes enough to be adopted by Basil as heir to the throne.

Basil went on to raise and educate the child to be a proper philosopher king, in the great tradition of Theogenes. The boy was crowned Constantin The Second on his 16th birthday, and placed to rule at Basil's side as a joint ruler. A gentle and intelligent youth, Constantin was both superbly educated and well-informed, and would have made a decent emperor in more peaceful times. Unfortunately, peaceful was not on the menu...

Second Succession Crisis (year?)
For a few years following Constantine's coronation, things were more or less quiet. The Korolys were still nursing a grudge, but since Bela Koroly's death that seemed to had gone down from a boil to a simmer. Ambroz Gergely fought a successful war in the northwest