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Chapter θ͵
θ͵

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Turkish auxiliaries commanded by Şehzade Suleiman, brother of Her Majesty, were first to breach the walls of Trebizond.

Who now remembers the grand city of the Komnenoi? That family has fled to the land of the Rus, leaving behind their possessions in the Pontic mountains. More war and terror, more lands for the Romans. More prestige for her empress.

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I am a tired woman.

Portrait of empress Helene still hangs in my office. Her eyes are cold, icy, she was a true majesty, taller than many men, and more beautiful than anyone in Constantinople, for a time.

I am a short woman, with average looks and fat legs. Paintings have made me pretty, but they lie.

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What year was it? I remember my youth with utmost accuracy, but as the years come and go I am starting to lose interest. It was after the fall of Trebizond, must have been. The third partition.

The Magyar nobility rose against the Roman garrisons, many of our troops were massacred. The king had no choice but to support the rebels, they would have killed him otherwise.

Roman forces in the Hungarian capital managed to hold their positions, and an army of 60 000 rushed to aid them. The rebels were put down and it is said that the Hungarian aristocracy ceased to exist in just one month.

Our army burned towns, looted cities and castles were torched with their inhabitants still inside. I cannot say how an army of civilized men descends into barbarism. It was called the rape of Hungary.

I forced Matthaios to sign an abdication treaty. The Kingdom of Hungary was no more.

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"In view of the necessity to abolish everything which could revive the memory of the existence of the Kingdom of Hungary, now that the annulment of this body politic has been effected ... the high contracting parties are agreed and undertake never to include in their titles ... the name or designation of the Kingdom of Hungary, which shall remain suppressed as from the present and forever ..."

Signed:
- Sophia II Palaiologina-Komnena, Empress of the Romans
- Frederick V von Hapsburg, Archduke of Austria, Rex in Germania
- Sigismund III von Hapsburg-Jagiellon, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania
- Vlad VI Basarab, Exarch of Dacia
- Matthaios Palaiologoz, former Apostolic King of Hungary

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I decided to never again wage war. Rome has had enough for one lifetime.

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Some years later:

My daughter-in-law and her descendants have come to meet me here in Prusa, and the silent palace is full of laughter once more.

My dreary son Constantine came up with an excuse. He holds a grudge against me, because I refuse to die and so allow him to be emperor. Sometimes I think what happened to that boy who held my hand as we walked behind the coffin of empress Helene and wondered why his father is laughing.

He idolizes the man he thinks is his father, and is certain that I am plotting to kill him, just like I murdered Andreas II..

So I let him be. His only accomplishment in life is his family, he has nine children.

Oh, how I enjoy watching them run and laugh and play. They are the only real award I have been given in this life. A blessing from God.

My favorite grandson is also my first. Alexios is seventeen, and the most handsome young man I have ever seen, clever and diligent, he will be a great emperor one day. If only he could inherit before his dull father.

That night I received a letter. I was sitting all alone, watching out of the windows and into the sea.

Your Majesty Sophia II

Sophia, do not send me away. I have to talk to You.
I have traveled from Macedonia to Thessaloniki and requested a permission to see you in Prusa. The permission was given on the condition that I travel incognito. I am sailing towards you. Please, let us speak when it suits You.

Matthaios

I lowered the letter. I felt remorse. Oh my love! He had attempted to save his country.

Time stopped, clocks stopped ticking and people stopped talking. Even nature itself was silent.

Matthaios Palaiologoz stood in the same room with me, for the first time in a decade. Windows were open towards the sea. I looked at him. He had dressed to please me, that much was certain.

His face was manly, but aged, eyes were tired. His posture had improved.

He took a few steps towards me and I went into the embrace of his strong arms. He was full of familiar strength and power. We looked at each other. An old man and an old woman. We kissed.

We were finally equal. His self-esteem was low after he was robbed of his kingship and country. I had my own pain and guilt.

We ate dinner alone, just the two of us. We were silent, it was as words would have broken our happiness.

The sea made us calm. I had embraced him once, then he was taken from me. I rejected him later as empress. Now I know that he is my one true love. I've had many lovers, some thirty years younger than me, yet this was love between two mature human beings, and there is nothing like it in the world.

I could have married him once, I was a widow. But two reigning monarchs cannot marry each other. Hungary doesn't exist anymore, but Rome does, and I cannot give away the power I've been given.

And now we are old. It's too late. This love of ours has the biggest obstacle in the world: power, and the responsibility it brings.

I said to him: "You came to me one last time before I die. You said that love is around us. Someday both of us shall have peace and silence."

This love compensates for many things, it is more than ruling, abundance in life, authority, passion, cruelty, envy, arrogance and deviousness.

He stayed in Prusa for three wonderful months. I felt like a wife with her loving husband.

"Who dictates the law of love?" he said. "the laws of feelings, the amount of love that is enough? Decades divided us, you and me. The will of our peoples separated us. But here we are, together."

I often think about fullness of life, losses I have suffered, the hate I carried with me. Sometimes, often, I loved. I don't know how much time I have left. For some reasons I have the love and loyalty of a great man. I wish I could take him with me. To where? I do not know when or where.

He is near me, and I am happy, full of life.

Too many mistakes, both as a woman and as a sovereign, it is too late to ask for forgiveness. I Sophia must explain myself in the Heavenly rose garden.

I regret, yet I love. What is Rome worth? Nothing. Everything.
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Sophia II Palaiologos, Empress of the Romans, passed away on the 16th of October 1612 at the age of 67, after a reign of 34 years.

"When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."
 
And thus, my friends, ends this journey, eight months and ten days after it began. (and quite conveniently on a release day of a new patch.)

Thank you all for reading and commenting my humble work. I do hope it has been entertaining or even educational. I certainly have learned a lot.

I feel sad about leaving all of this behind, but also quite relieved. :D I am very proud that I finished this, although I must say that many plans and story lines went unfulfilled.

Many new ideas a circling in my mind and I do hope to do something again in the future. (Maybe not something this massive though.:p)

Lastly, in case someone finds it interesting, I will upload a crude family tree I made to keep track on the imperial family (Warning, its very crude, because I made it only for myself.)

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It ends bittersweet how it began.

Indeed the way this ending harks back to the beginning, well it makes me smile a sad, contented little smile. Contented because I like such details, sad because this has come to an end. I have very much enjoyed your tale.
 
Well, that was sudden. I wasn't expecting it to end quite so soon.
 
It ends bittersweet how it began.

Indeed the way this ending harks back to the beginning, well it makes me smile a sad, contented little smile. Contented because I like such details, sad because this has come to an end. I have very much enjoyed your tale.

Thank you for your continued support and I wish this could have continued further.

Well, that was sudden. I wasn't expecting it to end quite so soon.

Yeah, well it was either this or just ending the story without conclusion. I haven't got much time currently to devote into video games, and I am also writing other things in my limited free time.

This combined with the troubles that a new patch always brings means I didn't really want to go on, because the quality of the story would have suffered. (+the new launcher has its own issues..)

I am sad that I couldn't explore Sophia's relationship with her son and his family, but these things happen.

Thanks for reading! :cool:
 
It has been a privilege to follow this story from start to end. Thank you so much for writing it! :)
 
All good things must sadly come to an end, it was a great read from start to finish all right. I'll be looking forward to any future AARs you might have in store. Also I noticed that as the last few chapters went on, the empress' confidants no longer made an appearance. Which means they died offscreen :(

Byzantium certainly has regained most of their territory at the height of Basil II's reign. That family tree was certainly intriguing since Constantine XII died just two years after his mother. I guess he only ruled briefly before courtly intrigue got to him.
 
Announcement
It has been a privilege to follow this story from start to end. Thank you so much for writing it! :)

Thank you for following!

Sophia did well by the Empire, even if in the end she became more like the previous empress than she'd want to admit. A shame she didn't get a chance to take Rome itself, but she looks pretty darn fed up with it all in that portrait :p

All in all a good read. Much appreciated.

Thank you, and indeed the eternal city remained out of her reach, but she did leave the empire in good condition for future conquests. ;)

That family tree was certainly intriguing since Constantine XII died just two years after his mother. I guess he only ruled briefly before courtly intrigue got to him.

One final nod to the inspiration behind this work: Catherine the Great. Her son Paul I didn't enjoy a long reign.


With that out of the way I have an announcement:

After further consideration, I don't think I'm ready to forget this project just yet. So I most likely will be redoing the entire thing next year, once the big European patch and DLC launches. (And the necessary mods have been updated.)

So stay on the lookout. In the meantime, I'm probably going to write the entire story down as a novel of some sort. That should allow me to develop other characters further and include more storylines.

Finally, this is by no means a promise that the rewrite will happen, but I'd certainly like to do it and hopefully it will be even better. :D
 
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This was a delight. Thank you for writing it.