Don Carlos

Don Carlos de Calatrava the Puissant, U.K. the Proud, (700-799) became Alcade of the Port of Destiny in 729 when his father Don Francisco (640-799) & his stepmother inherited the Marquisate of Calatrava. About 775 Don Carlos secretly became a greater summoner (possibly with the connivance of Cardinal Juan de Fuca?). This was not strictly illegal, since the control of demons is perhaps morally distinct from demon-worship.

In 791 — with the involuntary help of a guild party, a foreign army, San Ferdinand III, & the voluntary help of 2 demons — Don Carlos deposed his ailing father & proclaimed himself Duke of Destiny, effectively disinheriting the guild-member Don Jon Fenris, husband of Carlos's half-sister Donna Leonora di Vargas (b. 770).

Don Carlos's domestic popularity increased as a result of uninterrupted trade & military successes.

Highlights include:

• Alliance with Azuria against the Lunar Empire
• Discovery & conquest of Terra Nova
• Treaty with Alfheim (Destiny was appointed Agent for the all the lands to the West of the Elvish Isles)
• Final & total victory over the Alman jarls
• Neutrality & gross profiteering during the Alusian Baronies Wars
• Eastern naval victories against the Slaver raids
• Suppression of disaffected or insufficiently loyal Destinians

Carlos was anointed the first King of Destiny in 795. But in the late 790s, the tide turned. Perceived disasters were:

• Peace in the Western Kingdom
• Economic collapse & revolution in Plaz'toro
• Resistance & reversals in the West cause domestic rumours & fears of a Chiliastic invasion by Terranovan Drow, etc
• Treaty of San Juan with the Calamar (militarily essential) is followed by Alfheim's renunciation of their treaty & the vice-regal authority (politically inevitable)
• Food & material are successfully hoarded against the chance of a future siege of Destiny, but the exorbitant cost (the nominal value of stock-piled resources alone is more than 300 million sp.) almost destroys the Destinian economy & strains relations with friendly & bribed allies
• The Destinian abjuration of the Treaty of San Juan, necessary to avoid elvish back-lash, is a political disaster domestically because no "True Destinian" ever admits error or apologises, he is always proud of his honour (consequences be damned)
• Carlos is assassinated near the [Secret] Gold-mines on Alba Longa, almost certainly by a guild party, possibly hired by Aryan di Ebola or by Margraf Diego von Mittelmark.