Let me just get the Galeriae lore down here:
Ursa was the founder of the Galeriae dynasty, a brilliant general who overthrew a succession of weak, puppetered empresses to seize control of Iudia and win a series of resounding victories against its enemies. However, she died of poison just after a long siege of the Pharian capital of Kanzak. The culprits were never proven…but Iudians blame the Pharians, of course.
She’s an idolized figure in Iudia to this day, with subsequent Galeriae holding tight onto her name (hence the common cogonomen of Ursinia) to claim that glory for themselves. Even Augusta sings her praises in Chapter V.
While Lucia (the Second/II) was a young ruler, where many other child Empresses have been overthrown and done away with, she had a competent Prefect of the State who managed the Empire and the recovery from Ursa’s many financially ruinous wars before stepping down into retirement and historical obscurity after Lucia II came of age.
Lucia II was an energetic ruler in matters of state, and well noted for the writing of famed philosophical tracts. She governed the Empire ably until dying of what many term the Lucian Plague, which swept through Kyro to a catastrophic effect.
Isuara is where the dynasty began to lose its footing. Isuara did not engage in major wars or major reforms, instead investing her focus into maintaining her status quo and retrenching the power of the Galeriae family throughout the Empire, leading to a spike in public corruption (this is one thing the Treasurer Prefect struggles to deal with as a result).
Perhaps most damming in the history books is her poor management of her children. Helena was her eldest and favorite, having grown pampered, spoiled and used to the position of presumptive heir, ever striving towards the throne. Scilla was the middle child, a gregarious and charismatic woman who broadly popular. Leta was the more quietly intellectual of the three, preferring scrolls and tomes to battle or soirees.
After an argument with her mother, Helena began to fear she would be replaced by the popular Scilla, or the cunning Leta. So she and her husband devised a plot to poison them both, leading to her sisters nearly dying. Leta’s recovery was far more complete than her elder sister, who was plagued by sickliness as a result for the rest of her life. Helena and her husband were caught out soon after, and with little choice Isuara had them both executed. Helena’s infant son, Titus, was adopted by Scilla in a public show of forgiveness and compassion.
For the remaining two years of her reign, Isuara retreated from the public eye and neglected duties of state, until she died of natural causes, leaving Scilla as her heir to usher in a new age of Iudia…
or at least, that’s how it all appeared. Leta was appointed Prefect, the youngest in Iudian history, and for the first decade of her rule Scilla was a beloved Empress, though how much was due to her own acumen or her sister’s is unclear to the histories. Over time, however, the tumor of bitter misanthropy, nursed by the deep and near-deadly betrayal of her sister, grew within her, and it was the birth of her twins that broke her for good.
She spent the years after playing sister against sister, telling each she was the elder and best fitted to rule. She demeaned Titus as a dull-witted fool and left him to his own devices, and used Tristitia as another neglected tool to divide her children against one another, which the twins responded by bulling their younger into compliance out of fear of her rising against them both. All to ensure that they all loathed each other more than their mother.
It was in this second decade of her more than thirty year reign that Scilla’s erratic and short sighted decision making infected governance despite Leta’s efforts, furthering purges of the bureaucracy, political cronyism, and weakening borders. She considered the Watch a threat and replaced them with Svekian mercenaries, who eventually deserted due to pay disputes and formed the Slaga gang in Kyro. And of course, the fateful wedding night between Julia and Titus.
Hopefully that about covers it!