Katapan of Lacre

This article contains information that has been retconned by more recent development, and will be updated in future.

Katapan Siluve (Lacrean ⰍⰀⰕⰀⰒⰡⰐ ⰞⰀⰎⰙⰂ, Katapān Šalōv; 1768–1849, Vaestic years 1:351–2:74), sometimes styled the Cruel (Lacrean ⰍⰅⰄⰠⰅⰕⰎⰅⰐ ⰍⰀⰕⰀⰒⰡⰐ, Keḍetlen Katapān, literally 'merciless'), was the second emperor of the Sixth Chotarian Empire. Katapan assumed the throne, very much unexpectedly. In 1790 in the wake of the death of his grandfather and predecessor, Oktar I; his 59-year rule, until 1849, was by a substantial distance the longest of any man who ruled over Lacre or its antecedent states in recorded history – and, indeed, unequalled in modern Outer Joriscia.

Katapan
Chotarian Emperor
Reign	1790–1849 (V 2:13–74)
Predecessor	Oktar I
Successor	Oktar II
Born	19 Ediface 1768 (V 1:351:2:27) Kozrat, Lacre
Died	20 Nollonger 1849 (V 2:74:5:52)
Dynasty	Oktarid
Father	Oktar II “the Young” Matilchy

Early life

Katapan was born on 19 October 1768 (V 1:351:2:27) within the imperial palace in Kozrat, the Lacrean capital; he was the eldest of four children born to the then imperial crown prince, Oktar II Matolchy (“Oktar the Young”, as he was usually styled to distinguish him from the emperor), and his wife Vira Galosfary, the daughter of a lesser noble house in the north country (modern Partia).

Questions over Katapan’s suitability for the throne had to be very dramatically shelved as the short-lived imperial house was thrown into turmoil by two deaths – one drawn-out and expected, the other sudden and brutal. The declining health of the emperor had seen the crown prince drawn in greater degree into affairs of state than might usually have been expected – perhaps, by itself, a concern when the empire was threatened from without as Terophan sought to reassert the rights of its ruler, Krasimir II, under the title of Emperor of the Vesnites to which he laid claim. However, while Oktar the Young did not lack for intelligence, he was inexperienced and frequently too naïve in his dealings with the court chamberlain Bura-Yarodar Gurany, who effectively ran the imperial government. Gurany had drastically overreached his authority in offering military support to Azophin, another opponent of Terophan, while the crown prince, concerned over the state of the war, was attempting to pull Gurany back under closer control. However, Prince Oktar was killed in late December 1789, while returning to the palace from an apportation, by what was apparently a deranged bystander. The killer was himself cut down by the prince’s guards, and was claimed as a Terophatic tool by Gurany.

The younger king

With the emperor unable to function due to his chronic illness, Katapan, at just 22 years old, was thrown without warning into the role of head of state and war-commander. Gurany’s culpability in the prince’s death has been suspected by historians, and he may have felt that Katapan would be more manipulable. In the first few months, leading up to the death of the emperor in the following summer, this may have, indeed, been the case; the most likely cause of any friction – an adverse turn in the war agaiust Terophan – never really came about. Attempts to draw Azophin into the war failed, and with fighting in Lefdim occupying a good part of their forces, Axopol was unable to bring sufficient force to bear in any one location and was driven backwards.

Given time, the Lacrean army – then regarded, man for man, as probably the most capable in Outer Joriscia – could have prevailed. However, the course of the war was upended by events in Azophin, where the identification of Borovest Neritsy as a viable heir to the Neritsovid throne unleashed a wave of Cathedralist fervour across the region, which panicked rulers and officials in Lacre, Terophan and Azophin alike. Current disputes aside, they reasoned, Great Neritsia was dead, and dead it would stay. Faltering momentum saw the war peter out during 1790, with the pretentiously-named “Everlasting Peace” agreement of the following year largely putting a new gloss of paint on the pre-war position.

Katapan, who had had little involvement in the war strategy, felt justified in his prowess as a planner; Gurany made the error of seeking to feed into the emperor’s delusions, and Katapan’s insistence on forcing himself into the deliberations of more capable strategists would be a regular concern for the Lacrean command into the future.

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In 1807, faced with a resurgent Azophin under Ostrobor IV, Katapan sent an expeditionary force under Myit Gedry to topple the emperor and replace him with a Lacrean puppet, Borodar Alevy. The Five Winter War, as it came to be known, proved disastrous for Lacre; Gedry's forces were totally routed and the general himself taken prisoner; by late 1808 an Azophine force had overrun northern Seter. Katapan's attempts to reverse the tide of the war through several changes of military leadership failed totally; by 1811 Lacre had been totally defeated and he was forced to accept the humiliating Treaty of Bes Nadsha, losing significant amounts of territory for Lacre. As a result of these defeats, Katapan became convinced that the decline of Lacre's military strength was due to espionage and treachery, and he began what became a lifelong project of spying on ever larger numbers of his subjects, expanding the Bureau of Censuses and Records into Outer Joriscia's most elaborate secret police. In 1816, he appointed the infamous Dumit Mashagary as head of the Bureau. Further military defeats – most prominent among them the Sisters' War – only encouraged his efforts.

In 1836, the Great Peninsular War began, and Katapan ordered Lacrean troops into the fray in a desperate attempt to re-establish its local dominance. Although Lacrean troops saw some initial successes in Azophine territories in the Joriscian Lowlands, when the Terophite invasion of central Lacre began in 1838 their position was totally reversed and by the middle of that year Katapan had been forced to flee in the face of the Terophatic advance, taking up residence first in Laukuna and then, following the First Laukuna Rising and the Lutoborian campaigns in the north of Zemay, in Lesser Pestul. Mashagary – who had succeeded in surviving the paranoia of his master and many court intrigues for twenty years – failed to evacuate the city and was dismembered by a mob on the streets of Kozrat having been pulled from his carriage. Katapan became essentially a monarch-in-exile, and did not return to Lacre until 1844, when most of the occupying forces had already withdrawn. His victorious entry into Kozrat at the head of the Laukun Guard – whose establishment began a long tradition of Zemayan bodyguards for Lacrean monarchs – led one commentator to remark bitterly that the 'Lions of Chotar had been trampled by the dogs of Zemay'. Although Katapan was initially kept busy by the demands of re-establishing his power and was somewhat cautious until the signing of the Treaty of Tharamann, the announcement of a lasting peace allowed Katapan to begin a purge directed at those whom he considered responsible for his defeats, beginning mass executions, particularly of Lacrean Rasheem and the notables of the westernmost provinces, who he considered particularly suspect because of their connections to Terophan. This purge – the Four Bloody Summers – was curtailed by his death in 1849, which was rumoured to be the result of poisoning.