Knowledge is an important resource and weapon. These words were spoken to me by my great friend and brother, King Alphonse Galimani, known as Alphonse ‘The Great’ to us worthy subjects but also known throughout Europe as Alphonse the Just. My brother was a cruel man when cruelty was called for. He effectively meted out his punishments in the most diligent of ways as well. But this cruelty was never unleashed on a poor soul unless they truly deserved it. My brother was the king Orleans and Germany needed. His father was struck low by bad humors, a nasty, disgustingly wet cough which took him quite suddenly. There my brother was, a child of seven with the weight of two crowns and a war upon his head in 1162 when he was elected to lead, our mother took over as Regent. How the nobles resented an Irish girl leading two great French kingdoms, yet they acquiesced.
Why do I write this history of the Galimani? My great king and brother always spoke of
le sorte de Galimani, in fact Le Maison de Galimani lived their lives with this overshadowing spectre above their heads. King Alphonse spoke as though the Galimani had to be stronger and persevere since the Lord Himself seemed to have cursed their line. The passage of the Orlenais crown from father to son was a precarious thing and had only happened through his lineage, what I shall term the “Alphonsian Kings,” as they were descended from King Alphonse the Blind when he was elected King of Orleans at the end of the year 1150. With the Kingdom of Orleans so precarious, with the most noble Galimani in the realm chosen to lead after the passing of the former king, my brother gave me a simple enough task when we were alone out in the fields of Bethune one day.
You shall keep our knowledge, dear brother. You were born a bastard, but my brother. How I wish you were my true blood. Our mother’s infidelity was not through our own fault. But the sins of our mother must be atoned for. I now judge your bastard birth: Though low, you are noble in my eyes. To the world you are now Guilheim d’Arny. You will walk with the Galimani kings as their shadow, recording and keeping our knowledge, for it is great and vast. I fear for your safety from the rogues of France and the Empire though. Yet the knowledge you keep is important dear brother. You will be our scribe, our Keeper of Knowledge.
But the task was not simple. King Alphonse stipulated he would keep my progeny as best he could and would instruct all of his successors to do the same for their need of a great store of knowledge was too great to disregard when a new kinsman sat on the throne. Yet this protection came with a cost. He would make sure the d’Arny’s never held titles.
For you are a bastard, and you must atone for our mother’s whoring ways. A cruel man, but, in its own way, his judgement was fair and deserved in his own mind.
The year was 1162 and Alphonse had inherited two kingdoms which were fighting a war for the bountiful County of Artois. Our mother successfully persecuted the war, which came to an end two years later. The county title was easily won as the count was in open revolt against his liege, the King of Frisia.
1164 furthermore saw the call to arms by His Holiness, Pope Gelasius II, for a third crusade for the lands of Jerusalem.
Our mother persuaded the council to forgo the crusade based on her research of past wrongs brought upon our realm by the hated kings of France whenever our levies were called to the Lord’s battlefield. Though the councilors sought to overrule her, my brother innocently heeded to her decision.
Matters progressed peacefully in Alphonse’s realm for two years until the eleven year old king was studying the kingdom’s ledgers and found that gold was unaccounted for. The boy king and his mother summoned Steward Ebbon into his presence while he was holding court and questioned the man about the inconsistencies with the numbers. The mayor’s knees and voice trembled, so it is told, when brought before the throne and he begged forgiveness for his sinful greediness. He implored the king to be just, that he had kept all of the missing gold safe for his town’s use when the need would arise and told him he would bring all of the missing gold back to his majesty. The boon was tremendous, more than anyone in the realm could believe had gone missing.
The new found wealth of the Galimani, a hallmark of the family if you were to read all accounts of their ancestors, was put to good use building up the chateaux and towns within the realm.
A noble wrote to me of an anecdote of my brother just before his coming of age. King Alphonse decided to put on a Royal Feast in 1169 for all of his vassals in order that he may begin to know them better. All the Dukes, Counts, Barons, Mayors, and Bishops of the realm came to Orleans for the raucous event. Musicians were hired and acrobats. Yet it was the lilithine body of Baron Valeran’s daughter which caught his eye. The king, at an age of ten and four, sought to establish his just authority upon the young girl and, by this noble’s account, had his way with the girl not quite out of earshot of the entire party. After the...activities... the girl’s father confronted the young king but rightly could say nothing. Just as the man began to question Alphonse’s actions he withered at the look he was given from his liege and humbly groveled away from his presence.
1171 saw Alphonse celebrate his coming of age by announcing that Orleans would finally join the Crusade for Jerusalem, still ongoing after seven years. He then married Duchess Katherijne of Gelre, a pure political move with the desire to drive a knife into the Kingdom of Frisia to further take land from the Dutch.
His ambition to fight the heathens in Jerusalem were squandered when Emperor Raymound summoned Alphonse to join his armies on the Island of Corsica where he was waging war against the Byzantines for the island’s holdings. My brother had to sit facing the old Greek foe as his armies laid siege to the Moslem’s holdings in the Holy Land.
After a year in Corsica the Emperor finally released my brother from his martial obligations and he took the first ship to Arsuf (which his armies had laid siege to) and joined his men, a crusader king like his grandfather before him.
He traveled in high spirits as Queen Katherijne (whom had joined him in Corsica for a time) had given him word that she was pregnant. He also felt at peace as he finally married off our mother to the Duke of Koln, sending away “our w-hore mother,” (as he was apt to comment whenever speaking of her) from his realm.
A year later he received news that his queen had borne a son, whom she had named Ogier, in honor of her deceased father-in-law. The child immediately became the heir to the Duchy of Gelre upon his birth, a fact my brother reveled in, so I’m told.
When questioning the men that fought with my brother in the Holy Land, they spoke of how, for a time, Alphonse saw his work as a holy calling from God. He became zealous with righteous condemnation for his Moslem foe and began praying to the Lord before every skirmish. Yet this zeal soon faded as the crusade and the battles wore on. After three years fighting and besieging the heathen lands, Alphonse brought his men back to Arsuf and sailed for our shores. His commanders spoke of how he grew tired of the lack of exigency from the knightly orders and kings for defeating the Moslems and had more important matters demanding his attention. Upon his arrival back in Orleans he set about reorganizing his cabinet with the brightest minds he could find within his kingdoms.
However my brother had not solely focused on his heathen enemy while in the Holy Land but had established claims to the rest of the Duchy of Flanders. 1176 saw the opening of hostilities between the independent young duke of Flanders as Alphonse lashed out to bring the Frisian lands into his realm.
While the battlefield had never been kind to the Galimani kings, Alphonse had learned a great deal in the Holy Lands and his bravery at the Battle of Poperinge became legend in every hovel, tavern, and court in the realm.
Two years later, Alphonse wrested the control of Yperen and Brugge away from Diederick Douweszoon and re-established the Duchy of Flanders as an Orleanais title. The inhabitants of Yperen were deeply grateful as they almost immediately took on the mores and habits of their new French nobles.[1]
Yet 1179 saw doubt begin to creep into the royal family as Queen Katherijne became pregnant again. Alphonse had visited her from time to time during the campaign but he swore he was riddled with doubt if the child was really his.
The handmaiden he eventually persuaded to discover the truth of the matter returned with no evidence (as she told me later on in her life) whereupon my brother employed even more servants to discover the truth. These servants as well returned with nothing suspicious to report. The King, ever vigilant against the evils of lust due to our mother, then confronted the queen directly whence she flatly denied every accusation he threw at her and stormed out of the room. Later in the year Alphonse Galimani was born.
No major events occurred in the two kingdoms for seven more years. Then, in 1186, after two decades and a year (and two Popes), Pope Lando II declared the Crusade for Jerusalem to be over and granted the Kingdom of Jerusalem to Hochmeister Gualtari of the Teutonic Order as ruler.
The year also saw my brother put forth his rightful claim on the County of Mainz against the Duke of Franconia for his German lands. While the duke was vastly outmatched, King Alphonse found the same cold death as had befell many of his ancestors.
The nobles elected Othon Galimani, a grandson to King Valeran II, as the next King of Orleans. But the German nobles, who were not of the Galimani dynasty, supported my nephew, King Ogier, as their liege. The two crowns had become separated for the first time.
Shortly after his coronation, I was summoned to King Othon’s chambers. He had in his hand a letter, well faded and abused with age. The king told me of its contents, a powerful missive imploring Othon to appeal to his sense of reason and to retain me in my former position that my brother had established for me. I was relieved when my liege accepted his predecessors argument. Whereupon I was asked to return at the end of the day with all I had gathered from my time with Alphonse.
I came back to him with writings from various bishops and mayors on stories of my brother as well as early writings which were included previously in this tome. King Othon was overjoyed and asked me to continue my work and accompany him from that point forward. He also began to consult with me on how best to keep the material I was accumulating.
The king soon had a messenger arrive from Julich who brought “good tidings” from Emperor Raymound. The letter informed King Othon the Emperor had decided to press the de jure claim for the County of Gent against the Frisian king. The king was grateful that his brother-in-law understood the Galimani’s as a better ally than a bitter enemy.
The next year Prince Gaucelin was born to our aging king, who was forty and nine, and his wife Peronelle. What happiness Peronelle had in life. A lowborn commoner first lucky enough to have married into the Galimani dynasty and now a queen of the realm and mother to a prince.
I was always near the king but it wasn’t until 1188 that I began to see that Othon saw me as more than just another servant in his employ. That year he asked me to become the guardian for Mathilde Galimani, the daughter of Baron Ogier Galimani of Montfort-l’Amaury.
At that time my first wife, Princess Sophie Nibelunging, daughter of Emperor Orson Nibelunging (how I had risen from being born a bastard to an Irish queen) had already given birth to my darling little Yolande who was two years old. I knew that Mathilde would be a terrific influence on my young daughter and, of course, I could not refuse such a gesture from my liege.
Later that year, after a series of trials between dukes and mayors, King Othon began to be looked upon as both a king with a great sense of justice and a truly ambitious man for his handling of the trials. No longer content to let the Council make his decisions, Othon began to judiciously prescribe judgements and proclaim decrees for the betterment of Orleans.
1189 was a year of great celebration as both wars ended in victories for the king. First the County of Gent became controlled by Othon and then, as the cold winds began to blow, Mainz was torn from the child Balduin’s grasp.
King Othon then received summons from Emperor Raymound to become the Imperial Steward, a position our king readily accepted. Under Othon’s direction the imperial coffers and storehouses began to overflow with gold and grain and a formal proclamation was issued by Emperor Raymound extolling House Galimani and King Othon for his efforts in implementing effective means for taxing the land that burdened no one but were fairly implemented.
Yet the ambition of King Othon became too much in the end. By 1194 my liege had drawn up claims on a small county held by the Mahmudid Sultan in the Duchy of Toulouse. The word Carcassonne became a word hushed in many a tavern as a curse in 1195. For you see, King Othon indeed commanded a grand army to press his claim in 1194. But the Moslems were not trivial foes. Othon had not been to the Holy Land and he was not prepared for the kind of ruthlessness they displayed on the field of battle.
With allies streaming to his banner and anchored by two papal boons, he lashed out at Badshah Siddray.[2] Yet it was a fool’s war. The Badshah had recovered fully from his conquest in 1183 and sent wave after wave of ten thousand strong armies against our own force. Our aged king was battered and beaten and immediately surrendered to Siddray under humiliating terms, and a tribute of 1154 gold coins. Our kingdom, it appeared, was ruined.
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Sarrazina looked up from the tablet balanced on her knees. “Jerrome,” or whomever he was, gave her a somewhat mirthful smile. “I am confused.”
“Mademoiselle, what could you be confused about?” the enigmatic man replied.
“Why are we reading this? This information has never been published before. Why are you sharing this with us?”
What the hell is going on! she honestly wanted to scream as they drove through the countryside of Orleans. The limo was waiting for the three of them after they were brusquely lead out of the Vault. Their laborers were gone when they had exited the ruins and others had taken their place. In her quick estimation before being herded outside, it seemed they were preparing to reconstruct the roof of the Vault. That they were being treated this, humanely, was something Sarrazina was still trying to understand.
“These writings, they are a treasure of information on the Galimani’s. But it also contains the origin of your...organization. Why? Why have we not had one bullet apiece put into our heads and then tossed out into the countryside…or...or into the river?”
“Zina…” Perrigan said with an exasperated groan beside her.
“Why do I want you to read it?” Jerrome laughed out loud. “Mademoiselle, you must learn it,” his eyes focused and the mirth was gone from his face. “You
must learn it all.”
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[1] Quickest cultural change I ever saw. From Dutch to French in one year.
[2] Immediately requesting money from a pope after I declared my Holy War netted me 754 gold, he died a short time thereafter and I requested more money from the next pope, which gave me another 750 gold. Boo-yah!