Fēṇe

Fēṇe Lovadi
First Servitor
In office 1512–1520
Universal Prophet (heretical)
In office 1516–1520
Personal details
Born	1470
Died	1520
Religion	Vaestism

Fēṇe Lovadi (Lacrean: Lovadi Fēṇe; 1470–1520) was a Bīrō politician who held the post of First Servitor of Araṇmezọ̄ and Revelator of the Combination of Lacre from 1512 to her death in 1520 during the sack of her home city. In 1516 she had herself elected and acclaimed Universal Prophet of Vaestdom, making her one of only two women (along with Aramita during the Wars of Heresy) to ever be formally inducted into that position. Among Vesnites she is remembered as a heresiarch and false Prophetess, a historic role that has largely led to her other achievements being forgotten.

Early life and exile

Fēṇe was the youngest daughter of Derēk Lovadi, one of the charismatic leaders of the Granary Faction during the War of Knowledge that wracked Low Lacre in the later 15th century and a major protagonist in the purge of non-Vesnites that made Araṇmezọ̄ a stronghold of Vaestism. In 1481, when she was only eleven years old, her father was assassinated, and she and the rest of the Lovadi household were sent into exile in Zekelvār (High Lacre) as part of a reconciliation agreement between the city's various factions. During the late 1490s – and despite her relative youth – she was able to use her oratorical talents and her father's fame to establish herself as one of the leaders of the faction in exile, a process much assisted by the ongoing imprisonment or disabling punishments visited on senior members. In 1496 figures in the Eastern Pyramid faction at Araṇmezọ̄ attempted to engineer the return of the Granary Faction as part of anti-Imperialist manoeuvres after Nerits's conquest of Tirfatsia, but the death of Tista Renēdi in 1497 scuppered this plan. Fēṇe was eventually allowed to take up residence in the city in 1504 after the Council of Shalovar had undermined the position of the Imperialists and after the last major co-conspirator in her father's murder, Velēk Abō, had died – but only after agreeing that she would be barred from office and from Combination.

Rise to power

This exclusion did not last long. Within a year the political situation in Araṇmezọ̄ had shifted dramatically, and Fēṇe was able to seek a legal ruling granting her the full rights of her status; she had in any case been admitted to several combinations in secret even before her re-entry into the city. She and the other former exiles initially positioned themselves as allies of the anti-Imperialist camp, who were hostile to the Shalovar settlement and had been closely associated with the anti-Desuetudinalist movement denouncing Mir Kairelis's resignation of the Prophecy. But the failure of the western Schools to revolt against Sobiebor I made this movement something of a damp squib, and between 1504 and 1509 the anti-Imperialists' position was considerably weakened, with only one avowed anti-Imperialist on the Gathering of Eight. By 1510, however, Sobiebor's attention was turning towards the Heghta Kingdom and High Lacre and the Shalovar settlement was rapidly degenerating into the so-called Bloody Vacancy. As Sobiebor's own army pushed inexorably eastwards and another military force under his nephew was deployed to nearby Argotea and laid siege to the Prysostaia itself, Araṇmezọ̄is panicked. At the head of a mob, Fēṇe and her allies were able to purge the Gathering; a year later Fēṇe had herself appointed First Servitor].

Servitorship and prophecy

In office Fēṇe pursued a grandiose anti-Imperialist policy. She sought by every means available to her to construct an anti-Neritsovid coalition in the east that could counterbalance the Emperors' genuine or imagined ambitions of universal hegemony. Having imprisoned or killed most of the thoroughgoing Imperialists in 1511 and with popular opinion violently against the Emperor and his Occidentalisers, she doubled down on her father's legacy, forging an alliance with the Mirokrai to the south and cultivating the Pseudolacrean lords of the interior. She used every tool at her disposal to bring the lesser cities bound to Araṇmezọ̄ through Combination and other formal ties into line, paying the Pseudolacrean warlord Dragodar to besiege Simras after it attempted to follow a middle course. By the third year of her tenure, these efforts looked as if they had been for nothing. But the younger Sobiebor's decision to have himself elected Universal Prophet in 1516 dramatically improved Fēṇe's position, turning much of Vaestdom decisively against the Empire while setting him against his uncle in the west. Emboldened, later that year Fēṇe took the fateful decision to have herself elected and acclaimed Universal Prophet, in which position she was soon recognised by Mirokrai and a string of Gergote Castellans.

Downfall

Although her bid for the Prophecy had begun well – rather than face her, the young Sobiebor took his army back across the Varudines into modern Azophin – it soon lost momentum. Ljubomir of Mirokrai was the only significant ruler to declare his prostration to her, and no other Standard-Bearer or political figure could be induced to join her. The refusal of the Castellan of Laukuna to provide his backing hamstrung her position in the north, an attempt to win the support of Great Doyotia was stymied by its hostility to Mirokrai, and her overtures to the dissident Neritsovid Scholarchate were received stone-facedly by the avowed Misogynists of the West. Moreover, her move was deeply unpopular with many in Araṇmezọ̄ itself and further afield in the subject cities. As long as the Prophet-Emperor was far away she was able to keep dissent under control. But when Vladimir Abory and Ostrodar Malenky marched east at the head of two Neritsovid armies, she was no longer able to hold her fragile coalition together. By late 1520 Araṇmezọ̄ stood alone. By playing once again on popular Vesnite feeling and desperately purging the opposition she was able to keep the city in her hands despite the forces now at the gates. But in Nollonger of that year Araṇmezọ̄ was betrayed and the enemy forced his way inside. Abory's troops sacked Araṇmezọ̄, and Fēṇe herself was killed in the fighting. Her body, or in some narratives her head, was presented to Sobiebor II two months later after being paraded through Lacre.