Fragment of the Gorieada

[Translator’s Note: The loose pages that would come to comprise the “Fragments of the Gorieada” were found hidden beneath floorboards in Gottlesfont Priory, northeast of Skingrad city, in the days of the Longhouse Emperors, and were only recently acquired by the Imperial Geographical Society for translation from it’s old Nedic language, a feat that has taken considerable time and effort, and is still ongoing. They seem to be a heretical history of the life of little-known Emperor Gorieus, who ruled Cyrodiil in the early First Era.]

Fragment 1, "Mother's Shame"

...for, knowing the risk her Glory-crowned babe bore unto her, and fearing the same fate as her mother and the Blessed Paravant, the One-Horned Empress denied herself affection, and denied her Empire a successor, throughout most of her turbulent yet successful reign. For the first time since the Covenant, the Sacred Bloodline was reduced to a single Heiress, the minotaur having forgotten the wisdoms of Morihaus and diluted their Esha-blood to little more than an inuring blessing. Finally, as the illustrious queen began to feel her age creeping into her bones, she relented to the pleadings of her High Prelate and her people, and took a consort (a very handsome and, some say, scandalously young Colovian prince). Soon enough, she was blessed (and, she silently prayed, not cursed) with a flowering seed in her belly. The conception was celebrated across the land, uniting both Nibenese and Colovian in cheer under the careful eye of the somber priests charged with organizing the celebrations, though the Empress herself increasingly felt only dread. As her term reached it’s end, Ami-El took to her personal chambers in the White Tower, where she would glower at the Ruby of Kings, as yet unwilling to yield herself to it’s sanguine glow, attended by a small flock of nervous young ladies and a few priests to read aloud prayers of Proper-Life and the Inflexible Doctrines. When her labors came, she prayed fervently to the Paravant to see her through, and she believed throughout the entire affair that, though it was the most painful, horrible experience she had ever endured, the Slave-Queen was lending her Divine aid. But when the midwife gasped sharply as the babe emerged, Ami-El knew the truth. Each lady in attendance was shocked, though each tried desperately to hide it, save the Empress herself, who began to cry gentle tears when the child was placed in her arms. Not only was it a boy, so much less fit for the Ruby Throne; but her boy was born the first Emperor without the blessed horns of Morihaus-Breath-of-Kyne. Her own unwillingness to fulfill her destiny had, she was certain, unwittingly greatly changed the destiny of her prince, and it was a curse from Blessed Alessia herself. This dreadful suspicion would haunt the last Glory-Crowned Empress to the very end of her days...