A History of the Medes: Morihatha II, Part I

So I started this ages ago and lost steam (same old story). Thought I'd be better off finishing up a first section and going from there if there's some interest. Stuff gets a lot weirder in the second section.

History of the Medes: Morihatha II

By Marcio Hanus

Introduction

Though it has been less than a century since her demise, the life and times of Morihatha Mede have already fascinated historians. With her noted eccentricities, confused priorities, and outlandish experiments, the larger-than-life Empress is a colourful disruption in the steady business-like rule of her dynasty. Her victory in numerous political battles, her massive restructuring of the Imperial Bureaucracy, her unprecedented investment (in terms of gold and inspiration) in the Reman era, her dramatic flirtations with the metaphysical, her handling of the “Nibenean question” and her string of exotic suitors have left a mixed and fascinating legacy. Already speculation and confusion circulate in discussions of Morihatha’s reign, and if this legacy is not carefully examined and recorded the Empress is in danger of sliding into ahistorical myth.

To this end, this work will recount the key events of Morihatha’s reign. This is not a work of propaganda, or indeed an Imperial publication, but an independent work of history, aiming to provide some clarity on an already misunderstood period. Morihatha is, and will remain, a controversial figure, and this work aims not to promote any one interpretation of the Empress or her reign. Rather, issues will be considered in an unbiased fashion, as chronologically as possible.

In the interests of chronology and accessibility, we will begin our exploration with the beginning of Morihatha’s reign. The first section will seek to establish the roots of the Morihatha period and her earliest entanglements with the Elder Council and the Imperial mercantile bureaucracy. The second section will explore the Empress’ grand schemes – Extra-Tamrielica and the Nu Corrup project, as well as the mystery surrounding her Majesty’s Battlemage, [REDACTED]. The final section will address Morihatha’s foreign policy and diplomacy – most significantly her marriage and her handling of the rebellious South West.

Part I: Empress Ascendant: Morihatha’s Early Reign

The Birth of an Empress

Her Cyrodiilic Majesty and Imperial Splendour the Empress Morihatha II Mede, Blessed of Heaven, Empress, and Mother and Daughter of Emperors, Inspiration of Faith and Safeguard of Justice ^(All the Gods be with Her), as she preferred to be styled, was born on the fifth of Morning Star, 4E 59 among much celebration. Emperor Attrebus married Annaïg Hoïnart, the daughter of a minor Breton merchant noble of Black Marsh, in 4E 44. Empress-Consort Annaïg’s relatively low station and lack of significant connections cast considerable doubt on the union among the Cyrodiilic nobility and the Elder Council, who were, perhaps understandably, more keen that the then Crown Prince should use his marriage to secure the Dynasty and the Empire. However, with Titus I quietly unopposed, the marriage went ahead. But fears only mounted as the couple remained childless for fourteen years. Indeed, it is said (although difficult to confirm) that Titus I’s final words were a whispered prayer for grandchildren.

Thus the eventual birth of a child (even a daughter) allowed the Medes and their allies to breathe a sigh of relief. While the Empire was suffering under the financial burden of the Stormcrown Interregnum, the Umbriel Crisis, and the south western coups, few expenses were spared for the Princess’ birthday celebrations. Indeed, were it not for Morihatha’s coronation in 4E 85 the festivities would rank as the most spectacular of this era.

While many jumped to criticise the frivolous expenditure, history perhaps vindicated the celebrations. Following the Umbriel Crisis and the near-total devastation of Cheydinhal, eastern Nibenay was restive under the young Colovian dynasty. The construction of Nu Corrup was far from complete, and the Imperial city was bloated with refugees and their children. The argument could certainly be made that any expenditure outside of the reconstruction was wasted, and indeed it was made. But be that as it may the festival atmosphere of the Princess’ birth did much to subdue the population of Nibennium. The presentation of a Nibenean ancestor-silk to the imperial baby was a particularly popular ceremony.

The Death of an Emperor

In 4E 85, however, the birthday celebrations were to be entirely outstripped. In the winter of 4E 84, Emperor Attrebus fell suddenly ill. Imperial healers were at a loss, unable even to alleviate the Emperor’s symptoms. Theories abound on the cause of Attrebus’ death, ranging from poison, to magic, to extra-mundrial exposure, but to explore them is not the purpose of this work. The relevant details are that by Mid Year 4E 85, the Emperor was dead, and his consort ill with the same symptoms.

The young Morihatha hurried to arrange her coronation, perhaps sensing the danger of waiting. The festivals of her birth, Attrebus’ appeals to Nibenay, and the Nu Corrup project had gone a long way to assuage the discontent of traditionalist Nibeneans, but many were far from satisfied, and Morihatha’s position was weak. Physiologically Breton and culturally Colovian (in large part at least), Morihatha was seen very much as a foreigner, an unenviable position in so young a dynasty. Rumours circulated that certain elements in the Elder Council, led by Councillor Tartarus Atius, sought to install her bastard half-brother, Trentius, as emperor, only the first of many challengers to Morihatha’s reign.

Fortunately for the Empress to-be, Emperor Attrebus, purportedly ashamed of his youthful dalliances, had sent his only acknowledged bastard far from the capital as Governor of Northpoint. As a result, Morihatha and her allies were able to set a date for the coronation before word could even reach him of his father’s death. So rapid, in fact, was this coronation that it occurred before the Elder Council had even assembled to discuss the succession. She was crowned Morihatha II Mede on the twenty first of Mid Year, without the Elder Council’s approval. This was to be the first of many conflicts between Morihatha and her Elder Council, but it was at least one in which she proved victorious.

Councillor Atius, a known opponent of the Princess Morihatha, was dispatched by the Emperor on a mission to Bruma shortly after he fell ill, ensuring that the Councillor was not present in the capital at the time of the hasty coronation. It is of course dangerous to speculate, but Atius’ mission to Bruma, a mere infrastructure assessment little demanding the attention of an Elder Councillor, has been widely perceived as a plot by the Emperor to secure his daughter’s coronation. Certainly it had that effect. The politics of Titus I’s reign are largely beyond the scope of this text, but it is acknowledged historical fact that since his consolidation of power, the Elder Council had been thoroughly declawed, and lacked initiative and autonomy. As such, Atius was more or less the only member likely to coordinate a sufficiently swift response to block the coronation.

With their only promising ringleader on the back foot in Bruma, Morihatha’s opponents were essentially knocked aside by her rapid action, and by the time the Council met, she already wore the Red Dragon Crown. Nonetheless, Atius had returned (with, it was noted at the time, a considerably swollen household guard) and made public his intention to push for the coronation of Trentius, who by that time was making haste for Cyrodiil. The plot was cut short by Atius’ fatal fall from his Talos Plaza balcony, after which Council opposition quickly dissipated. Whispers that the Empress had had him assassinated were tacitly permitted to thrive in the City, and on the twenty fifth of Mid Year a cowed Elder Council confirmed (not quite unanimously) Morihatha’s succession. Even Trentius seemed to lose hope of taking the throne, halting his convoy in Wayrest and making no further contact with the Imperial City. For the time being, at least, Morihatha had emerged victorious.

Despite the essential hurry of the coronation, Morihatha ensured that her accession was announced with impressive pomp and ceremony. Far outstripping the expenditure of her birth celebrations, Morihatha arranged with astonishing speed for exotic foods, decorations, and music, as well as fantastically expensive garb and a crate of moths, to be released as the crown touched her brow. In a controversial move, the ascendant empress even made procession to the Septim-era dragonfires, mimicking the traditional act of lighting them by dropping red diamonds into the flames.

Morihatha and the Bureaucracy

The very day after her confirmation by the Elder Council Empress Morihatha embarked upon a project of bureaucratic reform. The efforts of her father and grandfather to promote harmony and coexistence in the empire (again, beyond the scope of this work) had built a teetering assortment of imperially-chartered bodies and councils, all ostensibly working together, but in fact in constant competition. The traditional Mede refusal to favour one group over its rivals (best evidenced in their handling of the Synod-College of Whispers conflict) meant that in areas from magical academia to sewage maintenance multiple bodies possessed almost identical charters, choking the imperial economy and bureaucracy with inefficiency and redundancy. This system, a departure from the Septim preference for monopoly, could perhaps have bred competition and performance, but cautious Mede legislation ensured it had the opposite effect. “Harmony codes” established under a Titus I wary of would-be merchant-lords during his early reign, forbade “unscrupulous competition” and seriously limited enterprise within the empire.

“The city shall take its medicine,” said Morihatha as she abolished the cornerstone of her grandfather’s domestic policy. Repealing these laws was one of her first actions as Empress, and the effects were immediate, unleashing a storm of bureaucratic backstabbing and mercantile espionage that her predecessors had kept nervously chained. Several chartered bodies were snuffed out in months - absorbed or crushed by better-positioned rivals with plots formulated decades earlier. Other rivalries lasted longer, even stabilising into functional business rivalries operating in unique niches.

In one famous incident, the so-called “Night of Spilt Dyes”, the 13th of Morning Star, 4E 83, no less than twenty people (merchants, guards, and bystanders) were killed when thugs employed by the Draninus Imports Company conducted a raid of Imperial Dyers’ Guild properties. There were calls for the arrest of Plutius “Coins” Draninus, who emerged as Cyrodiil’s pre-eminent dye magnate, but Morihatha stood firm by her medicine. All was fair, it seemed, in tearing apart the harmony codes.

At no other point in Morihatha’s reign was the Elder Council closer to supporting her than in the establishment of freer mercantile competition. Many key Elder Councillors were prominent merchants who, especially with their political power, stood to gain from the chaos of the post-harmony mercantile landscape. However, in this instance it was Morihatha who eventually picked the fight. The catalyst came when her close political ally, Antonin Vici, found himself in dire risk of losing his junior stake in the East Empire Company to two of his fellow Councilors, Trinculo Caro and Thendr Forkbeard. Caro, of the rebellious house of Leyawiin, was too tricky a target even for Morihatha – to have angered the southern port, never quite comfortable under Mede rule, would have been risky at best, and so Morihatha restrained herself to a single-minded pursuit of the Nord Forkbeard, destroying his business interests in Skyrim with arbitrary taxes, and tying his hands on the Cyrodiilic political stage by bending his schedule entirely to her will.

Perhaps taking a leaf from her father’s book, Morihatha had Councilor Forkbeard on constant and consecutive missions to the outer cities and to the provinces, even appointing him Special Imperial Consul to better justify his new travel obligations and to neutralise his objections with a prestigious (if entirely invented) title. So successful was Morihatha’s toying with Forkbeard that by all accounts he was never in the same city as his co-conspirator Caro for months, even years, at a time. Effectively crushing the man under an invented workload and cutting him off from his vital contacts, Morihatha strangled Forkbeard on the mercantile stage, until he no longer had the funds or physical stamina to continue to push Vici out of the Company. Most importantly, the Empress had won another victory over her Elder Council, demonstrating her power (and her prerogative) to dismiss and destroy troublesome councillors. The recipe proved so effective she replicated it in removing (and by some accounts driving to distraction) Councilors Praxis Wirich and Margo Ablutius.

Arguably the most significant of Morihatha’s bureaucratic reforms, however, was the final resolution of the Synod-College of Whispers conflict, which had raged since the dissolution of the Mages’ Guild following the Oblivion Crisis. With the harmony codes repealed, both organisations scrambled to enact long-formulated plans for dominance. With the mysterious acquisition of certain antique property deeds, the College of Whispers came close to seizing the Arcane University as its private property, but was somewhat surprisingly blocked by the Chantry of Mystara, a Nibenean mago-cult and minor player in the post-Guild competition. Chantry members produced their own documents invalidating the College’s probable forgeries and confirming that the University rested in the hands of the Empress. In hindsight, this was perhaps a poor move for the plucky Chantry, which unlike the College of Whispers was completely extinct by the time of Titus II’s ascension. In the end, of course it was the Synod who would triumph.

Free to compete as it pleased, the Synod embarked on a crusade to discredit the School of Mysticism, an academic mainstay of the College of Whispers and a School over which it held a near-monopoly. While the College fought tooth and nail to repudiate the criticisms of their School, Morihatha read each successive paper with apparent interest, finally announcing in her Ecumagickal Decree of the First of Rain’s Hand 4E 87 that the School of Mysticism would be dissolved and its spells reclassified by a council of mages.

This proved to be a devastating blow for the College of Whispers. Perceived as an Imperial declaration of preference for the Synod, the Decree had the effect of dissuading potential clients and applicants, and portraying the College as an outdated charlatan’s organisation. This reputation for poor scholarship stuck with impressive alacrity, and the Synod soon seized the unassailable position of prime magical body in Cyrodiil.

Whether the Empress was genuinely interested in or convinced by the claims of the Synod is uncertain. Some have argued that given her interest in the metaphysical, it is far from impossible that Morihatha was genuinely concerned with the state of arcane scholarship. However, if she was convinced, she was very firmly convinced, penalising the College of Whispers intensively. The first Ecumagickal Council of the 30th of Rain’s Hand, 4E 87, was hosted in the Nu Corrup Synod House, and the College was outnumbered in terms of both Seats and (quite massively) of Voting Representatives. It is possible, then, that Morihatha simply desired to cut down one or other of the squabbling factions and return to the functional monopoly of the Mages’ Guild in a more acceptably pluralistic Mede fashion.