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Ruadh Aldric

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Ruadh I
King of Ransenar
Reign 1711 AN to III.1752 AN
Coronation 1711 AN, Goldfield
Predecessor Position established
Successor Cosgrach I
Lord Protector of Ransenar 1673 AN to 1711 AN
Spouse Éibhleann of Teldrin
Issue
  • Cosgrach I
  • Prince Bréanainn, Count of Teldrin
  • Princess Sorcha
Royal house House of Aldric
Father Nóe Aldric
Mother Sorcha Ní Bhraonáin
Born 1654 AN
Zolt, Goldshire
Died III.1752 AN (aged approximately 98)
Goldfield

Ruadh Aldric (1654 AN to III.1752 AN), who reigned as Ruadh I, was the first King of Ransenar and the founder of its reigning House of Aldric. He held power in the Kingdom of Ransenar for seventy-nine years, first as Regent and Lord Protector from 1673 AN and then as King from 1711 AN until his death. On his accession he took the title of Szodan within the Benacian Union.

Ruadh was the younger half-brother of Hartmut Aldric, Duke of Calezi, the Steward of Shireroth and namesake of Aldricism, from whom the House of Aldric takes its name although it does not descend from him. The Steward died without issue in 1667 AN, and the royal line runs instead through Ruadh, the son of Nóe Aldric by a second marriage. After the collapse of Shirerithian authority in the Kalirion Fracture, Ruadh carried the Goldshirian party machine of the Imperial Democratic Party into the northwest of Benacia, where the Ransenari Congress proclaimed the Kingdom of Ransenar in 1673 AN and appointed him to govern during the minority of the figurehead queen Kaiseress Salome. When Ransenar acceded to the Benacian Union in 1711 AN under the Treaty of Goldfield, the Congress raised him to the throne as its first native king.

Early life

Ruadh Aldric was born in 1654 AN at Zolt in Goldshire, one of the historic counties of the Imperial Republic of Shireroth, the son of Nóe Aldric and his second wife, Sorcha Ní Bhraonáin. The Aldrics were an untitled landholding family whose estate at Zolt had passed to Nóe, and whose household was shaped by the Alexandrian tutor Georgio Ducruet, credited in family tradition with instilling industry and perseverance as the values the Aldrics claimed for their own.[1]

More than four decades separated Ruadh from his half-brother Hartmut, the child of Nóe's first marriage to Cristin Ní Fionnghalaigh. Hartmut was already a rising figure in Shireroth at the time of Ruadh's birth, and within a few years he served as Regent and then Steward of the Imperial Republic, leading the Imperial Democratic Party and the doctrine that took his name. Hartmut was assassinated at Brookshire in 1667 AN, when Ruadh was thirteen, and left no children; the dukedom of Calezi became extinct at his death. The eminence of the Steward, and the homage the later dynasty paid to his memory, left the royal house long associated with a man from whom it did not descend.

Rise in Ransenar

Ruadh's passage from the heir of a Goldshirian party machine to the founding king of a new state spanned close to forty years, across a regency held for a child queen, a protectorate exercised in his own right, and the severance of the Ransenari crown from its Shirerithian origin.

Regency and protectorate

Hartmut's death coincided with the Kalirion Fracture, the disintegration of central authority across the Imperial Republic of Shireroth. In Goldshire the surviving apparatus of the Imperial Democratic Party, the machine that Sean O'Callaghan had built from 1659 AN and turned to support Hartmut's stewardship, passed to the young Ruadh, becoming the political spine of a new state as Goldshirian society reorganized itself in the northwest of Benacia.[2]

The Ransenari Congress proclaimed the Kingdom of Ransenar in 1673 AN through the Proclamation of Goldshire Hamlet, a founding declaration Ruadh signed alongside O'Callaghan and Willihard Cason. The infant Kaiseress Salome was declared Queen as a figurehead, styled Duchess of Goldfield and Guardian of Goldshire, and Ruadh was appointed Regent and Lord Protector to govern during her minority. The founding instrument, the first of the Ransenari Royal Decrees, also created for him the hereditary countship of Teldrin, confined to his heirs and successors, and established the Palace of Termarth at Goldfield as the seat from which the young Regent conducted the business of the new kingdom.[3] O'Callaghan served as the first Lord Chief Steward, the head of government answerable to the Congress, and directed the administration while Ruadh held the crown's authority in trust.

Ruadh took an active part in governing the protectorate. In 1677 AN the Territorial Organization Act divided the kingdom initially into the five counties of Ran, Elsenar, Lunaris, Syrelwynn, and Holwinn together with a special capital district at Goldfield, and brought the Verionist population of Elsenar within the Ransenari state through the settlement known as Operation Salvation.[4] Two further counties, Monty Crisco and East Caverden, were added by 1679 AN, bringing the kingdom to seven.[5] During the financial crisis of 1680 AN the Lord Chief Steward carried a rescue package of distressed-asset purchases, agricultural relief, and a moratorium on foreclosures, and abandoned the peg of the Ransenari erb to the Sovereign Avak; Ruadh backed the measures in the Congress.[6] As Lord Protector he also acted in the kingdom's external affairs, signing the Treaty of Friendship with Chryse that opened the organic produce of Elsenar to Chrysean markets and joined the two states through Salome's parallel dignity as Exarch of Chryse.[7] Ransenar was represented at ceremonies across the wider Benacian world by its Lord Protector in person, who attended the investiture of Jeremiah Avon-El as Szodan of the Unified Governorates at Merensk in 1678 AN and the funeral of Kaiser Ayreon IV in the Valley of Mors in 1685 AN.[8]

The regency was clouded by the sale of honors known as the cash-for-peerages scandal of 1682 AN and 1683 AN. Ruadh was questioned as a witness in the resulting inquiry in 1684 AN but was neither arrested nor named as a person of interest, and the affair fell instead on O'Callaghan, who resigned the following year.[9] He was succeeded as Lord Chief Steward by Willihard Cason. As Salome came of age the regency lapsed, and Ruadh continued to govern the kingdom as Lord Protector.

Severance and the offer of the crown

Over the decades that followed, the Ransenari Congress moved to detach the crown of Ransenar from the House of Ayreon-Kalirion, to which the figurehead Salome belonged, and to settle it on a resident sovereign. The question of who should reign was canvassed for years. A survey of candidates in 1703 AN weighed Manco Capac I of Nouvelle Alexandrie, Nathan III of Natopia, and Francis Joseph IV of Alexandria alongside Ruadh himself. The crown was later offered beyond Ransenar to Vadoma I of Western Natopia and again to Francis Joseph IV and Manco Capac I, all of whom declined or drew no support.[10] No consensus formed around any foreign prince, and opinion gathered instead on the Lord Protector, extending into parts of the republican opposition. The Severance of the Throne Act and the Succession to the Throne Act were adopted in 1706 AN, granting the throne and crown to Ruadh Aldric, his heirs, and his successors, and were timed to take effect when Ransenar entered the Benacian Union.[11]

Reign

Ruadh reigned as King of Ransenar for forty-one years, from the kingdom's accession to the Benacian Union in 1711 AN to his death in III.1752 AN. His kingship opened with Ransenar's entry into the Union and its terms, and later encompassed the Shiro-Benacian War and its aftermath.

Accession

Ransenar acceded to the Benacian Union in 1711 AN under the Treaty of Goldfield, and the succession statutes took effect at the same moment, so that Ruadh entered the Union already a king. He was crowned Ruadh I at the accession ceremony held at Goldfield, attended by his son Crown Prince Cosgrach, by the Lord Chief Steward Willihard Cason, and by the Union's Szodan of Benacia, Daniyal ibn Daniyal.[12] At the accession Ruadh was nominated to the Order of the Red Hand, placed in the first class of its service division rather than among the sovereigns, a distinction that marked Ransenar as a kingdom incorporated into the Union rather than a foreign crown allied to it.[13]

The new dynasty presented itself again the following year at the Goldfield Naval Review, held on 12.II.1712 AN in Aureate Bay to the west of Goldshire Hamlet. The review marked the farewell of the Ransenari Navy, whose ships passed under Union command as the Eastern Fleet of the Maritime Forces of the Benacian Union.[14]

King and Szodan

Within Ransenar, Ruadh reigned as King and, in the vocabulary the kingdom shared with the wider Benacian Union, as Szodan and President of the Civil Executive; the office was distinct from that of the Szodan of Benacia, who stood at the head of the Union. The royal role was largely ceremonial, and the executive government of the kingdom was conducted by the Lord Chief Steward commanding a majority in the Ransenari Congress. The crown retained formal prerogatives, exercised through numbered Royal Decrees that carried the force of law. The legal foundation of the monarchy was fixed by the Throne and Crown of Ransenar Act, which established the Royal Household of Ransenar, the Throne Trust, and the office of Crown Jeweler.[15]

The kingship Ruadh held was that of a constituent kingdom of the Union rather than an independent state. Foreign relations, the armed forces, the currency, and the instruments of subjecthood were reserved to the Benacian Union, and the accession of each King of Ransenar was subject to confirmation by the First Consul, who could withhold it only on defined constitutional grounds.[16]

Later reign

After the settlement of the accession, Ruadh's reign was a long period of ceremonial continuity, in which the record of government belonged to the Lord Chief Steward and the Ransenari Congress rather than to the Crown. The principal external event of the reign was the Shiro-Benacian War, fought from 1733 AN to 1741 AN, in which Ransenar took part as a member of the Benacian Union under the direction of the Szodan of Benacia.[17] Ruadh, an octogenarian by the war's outbreak, remained on the throne through the fighting and the reconstruction that followed.

Death and succession

Ruadh I died in III.1752 AN at approximately ninety-eight years of age. He was succeeded by his eldest son, who reigned as Cosgrach I and appointed Eamon Brannigan as Lord Chief Steward on his accession.[18]

Legacy

Ruadh's accession established the House of Aldric as a royal house, and the line has held the Ransenari throne without interruption since 1711 AN.[19] The dynasty took its name not from Ruadh but from his half-brother the Steward, and Ransenari usage has frequently conflated the reigning house with the childless Hartmut. The reigning line has renewed that homage by design, most visibly in the name of the heir apparent, Crown Prince Hartmut. The countship of Teldrin that Ruadh had carried as Lord Protector became the honor of a cadet branch, the Aldrics of Teldrin descended from his second son Prince Bréanainn, while the heir to the throne took the title Prince of Elsenar instead.

Titles and styles

Ruadh held the countship of Teldrin from the foundation of the kingdom, governing as Regent during Salome's minority and as Lord Protector thereafter, and took the royal style on his accession in 1711 AN.

  • 1673 AN to 1711 AN: Count of Teldrin, Regent and Lord Protector of Ransenar
  • 1711 AN to III.1752 AN: King of Ransenar, Szodan of the Realm, President of the Civil Executive

Family

Ruadh married Éibhleann of Teldrin, a Ransenari noblewoman of the county whose countship he held. She died around 1741 AN, some eleven years before the King. Three of their children lived to adulthood.[20]

  • Cosgrach I (born around 1690 AN), who succeeded his father as King of Ransenar.
  • Prince Bréanainn Aldric, Count of Teldrin (born around 1694 AN), founder of the cadet branch of the Aldrics of Teldrin.
  • Princess Sorcha Aldric (born around 1697 AN), who married Fearghal, Lord Captain of the Three Ports.

See also

References

  1. ^ Hartmut Aldric; House of Aldric; Goldshire and Ransenar, ShireWiki.
  2. ^ Imperial Democratic Party (Ransenar).
  3. ^ Ransenar Royal Decree I.
  4. ^ Ransenar Royal Decree XIII.
  5. ^ Administrative divisions of Ransenar.
  6. ^ Imperial Democratic Party (Ransenar).
  7. ^ Treaty between Chryse and Ransenar.
  8. ^ Investiture of Jeremiah Avon-El; Funeral of Kaiser Ayreon IV.
  9. ^ 1682-1683 AN cash for peerages scandal.
  10. ^ NBC Newsfeed/1703; Accession of Ransenar to the Benacian Union.
  11. ^ Accession of Ransenar to the Benacian Union.
  12. ^ Ransenari ceremony of accession to Benacian Union, 1711.
  13. ^ Order of the Red Hand.
  14. ^ Goldfield Naval Review of 1712.
  15. ^ Ransenar; Imperial Democratic Party (Ransenar).
  16. ^ Treaty of Goldfield; Benacian Union.
  17. ^ Streïur uis Faïren.
  18. ^ Ransenar.
  19. ^ House of Aldric.
  20. ^ House of Aldric; Captaincy of the Three Ports.
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