I think the most interesting about the imperial line tree is that Lucia Ursinia was made empress at 9; which makes me think that her mother, Ursa Galeria, probably got assassinated, especially since Ursa was only 30 when she died.
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Lucia herself probably was assassinated, given her death at 42.
And Titusâ mother dying a year after giving birth to him.
There is a lot of instability in the family tree, and few people (if any) making it to 60.
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Tristitia: 530-552
God damnit.
Me too, man, me too. My heart hoped, against all odds. Alas, such is the nature of Iudian politics.
Titusâ father also died in the same year, so Iâm 75/25 to both of them being assasinated/executed. Maybe it was Scillaâs mother Isuara who ordered the deed. Also, a lack of parental affection (or just parents) explains Titusâ childish behaviour â being deprived of mom and dad while you are 1 year old sure seems like a recipe for personality issues.
99% that @AahznSkeeve is right about Luciaâs crowning at 9, but I would also take other possibilities for Ursaâs death, such as disease or death on the battlefield. Considering her daughter Lucia was only 9 years old at the time of her motherâs death we can also safely say the latter had a regency.
Rather baseless assumption on my part, but I have a nagging feeling that Luciaâs reign was the last one we could call stable. From Isuara, and considering the Twit that is her daughter Scilla, all went downhill.
I heavily doubt the Galerii also have some genetic disease that could justify their rather short lives, since we see Scillaâs sister Leta and her branch of the family being fine and dandy. @Aeternitas is right, this family tree reads like âTry to Survive Challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)â.
I would like to congratulate Leta for winning the Galerii Try to Survive Challenge and actually have all her children alive. Considering she was Scillaâs sister that is no small feat, and especially that she reached 60 years of age. I do stand by my earlier theory that she helped Julia overthrow her sister â she did seem like the scheming sort during the wedding, after all. Iâm looking forward to seeing her again.
Almost missed this one. OKAY, I can still hope/cope about Tristitia. GODS OF FLASHBACKS, HEAR MY PLEA!
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As much as I would love for Tristitia to still be alive, @Oreven, I think that the tree shows confirmed deaths and we have the option to add more to the list. Definitely want to see a complete Tristitia redemption in the flashbacks, though. Although maybe not. Since she clearly doesnât seem capable of making a run for the throne herself, the likely cause of her death was assassination by someone who did. Her sisters probably donât view her as a threat, but someone who isnât familiar with her timidity might. Someone like Julia. I would hate to have one of the flashbacks deal with Julia eliminating the last alternate claimant to the throne, especially if Tristitia has a change of heart.
An even darker possibility is the likely assassination of Aiteâs six-year-old daughter Victoria, Scillaâs only grandchild. Nobody would seriously consider assassinating a kindergartner as a rival for power, and thus it must have been done to eliminate potential heirs of the old dynasty. Both of Aiteâs siblings and and Aite herself would benefit from an impressionable young heir, who given the lack of elder cousins would likely have been the next Empress after Invidia or Aite. Therefore, the only contender who benefits from her death is Julia, who needs her gone to secure her own rule. I really donât want to see Julia order a child killed for her personal gain. Note that Victoriaâs father is still alive, which means we might be seeing him in the story.
Leaving aside all that assassination talk, I think Leta is a fascinating character. She came of age in a failing dynasty of selfish machinations and likely sororicide. Going by blood, she should have been next in line to the throne after her sister, and I think she would have done a better job. Unfortunately, the string of bad empresses was one too long for her to get a chance. If Scilla hadnât burned so much goodwill for the Galerii, she might have been in a better position. Fortunately, however, Leta is wise enough to comprehend her bad hand and jump on the winning train. I wonder if one of the endings will be to install her on the throne and rule with her, either informally or in a political marriage (since she is not an RO).
But overall, I think this is a picture of the decline of the Galerii dynasty. The initial shock was Ursaâs early death, followed by some recovered stability during Luciaâs regency and reign, followed by Isuaraâs accession to the throne. Note that Scillaâs older sister and her husband were killed two years before Isuara herself died. This seems to me like Scilla saw her motherâs declining health and realized she only needed to kill one person to be Empress, and she had to do it quick. Ultimate conspiracy plot twist here is that Titusâ father sacrificed himself to save Titus, since Alcinder should not have been a target but Titus might have been.
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The list of dead Galerii is incomplete, we can help by expanding it!
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Damn you @Aeternitas, bringing reason to my delusional arguments.
I would be really surprised if Julia didnât kill them. As our lovely author stated quite a few times, and the character herself showed, Julia is a flawed character. Iâm certain that you and most of our fellow readers agree with me when I say that Julia is the embodiment of Ruthlessness. She wants something, she will have it (Canadu). She feels wronged, she will seek vengeance (Galeria). Thereâs no ifâs or butâs. Unlike Twit Galeria, however, she has self-control (and a high stat of subterfuge), so her wrath is guided by reason.
Any ambitious, vengeful and ruthless person with a head on their shoulders will see that the daughter and grandaughter of the Empress you just assasinated are potential threats. Maybe not now, and perhaps not by their own will. But sooner or later, some other general or senator can use their legitimacy as a weapon against an usurper like Julia.
So, to give your reign as little opposition as possible, you have to get rid of the variables. One might be a harmless young lady and the other a 6 year old girl, but hey, Iudian politics give no quarter, especially when you want the highest office possible. Also, it doesnât hurt that they share blood with the one who humiliated you so much (good job Galeria).
My exact idea too. I do wonder how is her relationship with Consentia, since they do seem to be of a similar temperament. Maybe they plot together and will have an increased role in a Consetia path. Or she has her own agenda.
Iblin of Hadat sure doesnât sound Iudian. Most likely his was a political marriage with the purpose of befriending/detering/vasalising whatever polity he came from. Who knows, maybe he is an acquaintace/friend of Darius, since they are rather high-ranking individuals from a foreign land.
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Oh, I have no doubt Julia had them killed. I just donât want to have to see it, or, as Juliaâs personal fixer, have to deal with it myself. Really throws a moral dilemma into my âloyal servant of a coup-empowered autocratâ play style, and Iâd rather just not, you know? Where is the perfectly ethical, entirely blameless, amoral Julia playthrough that requires no collateral damage or hard decisions? 
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Fellow Loyal Prefects, all aboard the Julia Murder Train! THERE ARE NO REFUNDS. Morality is abandoned upon embarking.
As a fellow loyal servant of a coup-empowered autocrat, I get you perfectly. Truth be told, I find myself ratherâŚuneasy about the potential murder of a child by the one the Prefect loves and serves. Shocking, I know. Imagine if the Prefect gets to witness the murder of Tristitia and Victoria. Holy Sweet Gaia, that will hurt.
Unfortunately for my moral wellbeing, I love loyalty in fiction. The âMy Master, Right or Wrongâ trope is one of my favourites, especially if it is applied to characters as fascinating as Julia. A Prefect torn between duty towards the Empire and love towards the Empress is such a drama-ridden story.
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My mc: What is this thing called morality?? A type of wine or some such? ignores mass murders and massacres by his Empress without even blinking
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Prefect: âI would never simp for a bloodthirsty warlord.â
Julia: âPrefect, I need you to throw all these infants in the wood chipper, now.â
Prefect: âYes, my empress!â
Same here. Itâs not often I play this type of character but here in this game it feels so natural, and complex enough that there are so many possible reason to play a prefect that is loyal to a fault.
Personally I adore the âLoveâ one, because it feels so strange, so weird in a world like this. In the middle of this rotten, corrupted and decadent empire, where everyone manipulates and takes advantage of each other, how could someoneâs motivation be so simple as âbecause I love her.â It feels fascinating to me. Like, I genuinely think a lot of the characters wouldnât even believe a prefect that admits that, or think theyâre either stupid or insane if they do believe that to be true.
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We are the Empressâ right hand, and her personal fixer. If she needs an assassination of someone that high-profile, we are definitely involved at a deep level. Weâll be making contact with and paying the assassins, balancing the books, and ensuring nothing leaks to the public. I wouldnât doubt it if thereâs a scene where Tristitia comes to us to beg for her life and weâre forced to deny her. Iâll admit itâs rather dark, but Iâm a little paranoid about the gameâs direction right now. A late imperial game about the twisted machinations of power cannot consist solely of managing resources, hugging our illicit daughter and having midnight strolls with our paramour. Something is coming.
I still think this is my favorite part of the game. The banality of evil and how easy it is to fall into the trap of doing this sort of thing is so beautifully portrayed. We have ordered the deaths of thousands, killed and tortured innocents, and made grand decisions that determine the lives of potentially millions of people. We can choose to make those decisions in the interest of a ruthless tyrant, and still convince ourselves that weâre a good person, because weâre serving the state and/or our lover. If Julia and the Prefect existed today, weâd be bashing them left and right in the press. Theyâd probably be under UN sanctions. But from our detached position, it feels like the right thing to do. Itâs one of the best portrayals Iâve seen on how good people can commit atrocities once they ascend to high office.
And for your second point about love â in the midst of such self-delusion, is love not the greatest delusion of all?
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Thatâs what is so great about it, honestly. There are no higher ideals, like âRestoring the Republicâ. âBringing peace to the Empireâ. Or even self-centered ones like âBecome the power behind the throneâ, âUsurp the Throneâ etc. Itâs just the Prefect loving Julia and putting her (and hopefully Augusta too) above anything or anyone else.
Related to my love of the loyalty trope, I also have a great weakness to characters that are single-minded towards one goal/person to the point of seeming insane. When everyone else around them says they are being unreasonable, insane or wrong, the character just doesnât care. Only the goal, or person, matters. Anything and anyone else are secondary.
Okay, Iâll stop.
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The last one is only because sheâd be the first to tell you what she did in Canadu.
Though my favorite motivation is actually duty instead of love. Of course, I love Julia as much as the next Prefect. But thereâs such a delightfully subversive sense of honor in being loyal to the Iudian Empire instead of the more self-interested âI love the girlâ. Thereâs a twisted thrill in supporting institutions that youâve spent your life serving almost out of inertia. Itâs what they pay you for, right? Through him, the state almost passively perpetuates itself. Itâs just the laws and the state, and they just are. Theyâve never had to justify their existence to the Prefect.
My prefect doesnât like corruption and prefers order and stability, but heâs never really thought about how that order and stability is being achieved. He doesnât see how his institutions are actually operating and what they do with the power he ensures they have. He moves legions by imperial decree and reallocates resources without thinking about the villagers or the ground-level picture. He thinks about numbers and grand strategy, where each asset would best serve Iudia. But what does it mean to have a well-functioning imperial state? What does it mean to try to maximize efficiency and âstabilityâ of a state like Iudia? What does it mean to move a legion north to âdeal withâ rebellion?
And when he does so, and the traumatized legionaries need support and the pillaged lands need reconstruction, he deftly sees a problem and moves to solve it, like a mechanic fixing a car, not thinking about how this truly came about, the exploitation and the repression that the state was built on. When helping the Empire means hurting people, he doesnât see it, and thus doesnât comprehend it. Heâs too detached and too shortsighted, like a doctor treating an exposure wound on a homeless patient and not realizing the root cause isnât sun exposure but a lack of housing. Philosophy isnât his department.
If youâre heard of the train game where youâre trying to optimize a rail network only to find out at the end itâs the trains feeding people to the concentration camps, thatâs sort of the idea of my Prefect. He sees Iudia almost like a game. Not in attitude, because itâs what he cares about most, but in terms of mechanics. He sees statistics to be optimized, not realizing what the consequences are for the common people upon that optimization. And when he is forced to see, like at Cadanu, he quickly rationalizes it away. He still considers himself a good person, the sort that would pay for your stagecoach if you forgot your coin purse. It entirely eludes him that by allowing the foederati to camp out in the stagecoach driverâs town, heâs forcing him to work away from his family and reduce his standards of living to poverty levels. The history books would judge him cruel, but it would utterly baffle the Prefect.
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Apparently someone here likes Yanderes
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I can definitely see why someone would think that (the character from my pfp is sometimes also classified as such). However, the kind of love I cherish so much in fiction is not of that sort.
For me, the average yandere character is rather meh or even distasteful. I find their obsession with someone to be of a selfish nature, and âoverwhelming selfishness in matters of loveâ is a character trait I donât find very much enjoyable â basically, yanderes are solipsistic. Self-centered characters can work very well by themselves, when they focus on a goal. But throwing utterly self-centered persons in a relationship is not particularly enjoyable. After all, itâs all about them, not the other person.
Now, what if we remove the selfishness from the equation? We are left with a character completely in love with someone else, who would prioritise them above everything, including themselves. Theirs would a selfless love, based upon a thought process that many would describe as âinsaneâ. What sane person would not be concerned by their own well-being? Not your usual one.
And thatâs what I love about such characters. Your usual selfless character would be a classic âheroâ. But the in-love-to-the-point-of-madness selfless character canât be described as good. They can do good deeds, of course, but far more often than not they would commit what we would consider to be evil. All for the one they love. Single-minded and incomprehensible to any normal human being. Absolutely fascinating, at least to me.
TLDR I like insane characters that give, not take. Can the Prefect be one such person? I sure will try my best.
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Hey, still holding out hope we can smuggle her out in a crate bound for somewhere nice this time of year somehow.
Literally my prefectâs only life goal. Canât a prefect dream damn it?! 
In this case, I play the Prefect more as completely self-aware of Juliaâs flaws and possible insanity.
And working very hard to keep that from being a problem, every decision, every move made to keep the empress and her empire together, to raise a strong, cunning but compassionate Co-Empress to succeed her, who would have both of her parentsâ (titus doesnât count) qualities.
All the more doomed such endeavor when it feels as if the decay of the empire has reached its terminal state.
Any Prefect that wouldnât burn the empire down themselves for Augusta is UNWORTHY!
I echo that sentiment, Iâve never had the fascination for yanderes some people seem to have.
I donât think theyâre interesting characters and they veer into territory that manages to be both extremely uncomfortable and frustrating at the same time.
I have a similar vision to yours. The insanity isnât really a goal in itself to me, and more a byproduct of the nearly fanatical devotion of this prefect for the Empress. But otherwise I agree on all accounts.
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Of course my prefect is loyal to the Empress, but I would say he doesnât fully trust her, just as she doesnât fully trust him. He a skeptic of the church and when Julia says the Goddess communicates with her, thinks she is lying and picks the âcarefully avoid the topicâ response.
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CHAPTER III UPDATE
Total Word Count: 186,287 (156,802 w/o code)
Average Playthrough Length: 58,960
I did not think I would have the update done so soon after my last post, but thatâs what happens when you end up getting the day off haha. Again, thank you all for the feedback and comments, I greatly appreciate the responses Iâve received here on the forum. Itâs been a wonderful encouragement to have while writing, that much is for certain.
Chapters I & II Changelog:
Iâve made numerous grammatical adjustments to names and nouns across the story to reflect proper Latin gendering. Iâve also changed up the variables behind Augustaâs personality to reflect greater reactivity, instead of being solely based off Trust & Willfulness, now there are three variables which reflect how Augusta is reacting to the MCâs actions and lessons. Iâve also changed up the wedding scene to introduce two characters who will become important later on.
Chapter III Changelog:
It exists now! The first two chapters served to introduce the characters and the world, set all sorts of basic variables that are important to the overall direction of the story. Now, the plot thickens. There are a couple important mechanical elements which I hope I implemented correctly, please let me know if the code didnât work properly and the like, of course. From here, events will start to really escalate until we hit the explosive conclusion to Act I at the end of Chapter V, which I hope to finish by the end of summer, a goal I appear (fingers crossed!) well on track to meet.
To give yâall a sense of my plan, Iâm following an outline where Iâve already written out the overall story structure, though I often come up with things as Iâm writing as well. I plan for Act I to take place as Chapters I-V, Act II as Chapters VI-X, and finally Act III as Chapters XI-XIV with an Epilogue depending on your ending. I plan for this to be a standalone story, with no sequels.
As always, please point out any errors, typos, odd spacing, bits that donât work, bits you especially liked, that sort of thing. Thank you!
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Didnât there used to be a choice to say that Augusta was our daugther?
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There still should be that option at the end of the Yard or Library scenes. Is that not there?
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