Eirikir Bloodaxe

Born ~370 WK, Crowned 407, Died 421.

Eirikir Jarlsen, called the Bloodaxe was a Norden chieftain and warlord whose forces overran a significant part of the northern and western area of the Western Kingdom during the reign of Albert Wencelas.

In 402, shortly after the death of Albert, his son Frederick Aladar, now the Western King, made a peace treaty with Eirikir, enobling him as Jarl Nordmarch, granting him the lands (that he already occupied), and sealing the arrangement with the hand in marriage of the king's young daughter Petronilla. In return Eirikir swore to protect the Kingdom against the northerners, and converted to the faith of the Unified Western Church.

When Frederick's son and heir Albert Branden died on campaign in 405 without heirs it left Eirikir second in line to the throne after the previous king's youngest son Fulk.

Frederick Aladar died in battle in the late summer of 407, and before news reached Prince Fulk -- but after the news had reached Eirikir, many claimed -- the young prince died unexpectedly in a "hunting accident". Fulk had no heirs at the time (although later it became known that his wife was pregnant at the time of the accident, and was hurried to safety in the south where she gave birth to Branden Joachim).

Eirikir ascended the throne in fall of 407, despite considerable opposition from many of the kingdom's nobles, and began a decade and a half of oppressive rule. He ruthlessly destroyed those who had opposed him and set to rooting out what he saw as decadence and decay in the kingdom, putting northerners into many positions of power within the court and the church to assist in this.

Petronilla died giving birth to her 12th child in 418 as underground opposition to her husband's bloody rule grew steadily stronger.

In 421 Eirikir contracted some form of disease that no healer could cure and subsequently died, mad and raving, the throne passing to his son Sigurd Eirikirsen, barely 18.