Saber classed Servant, her true name is Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, the Fifth Roman Emperor.

Her appearance is that of a woman, five-foot-nothing at the most generous of estimates. Her eyes are emerald-green, long blonde bangs framing her pale face. The rest of her hair is pulled back in a braided bun nestled at the back of her head. A single errant curl of hair sticks out from her forehead like an antenna in defiance of gravity.

Agrippina the Younger wished for a male heir to place on the throne that she might pull his strings, but gave birth to a female heir instead, so she had to make-do. She went to great pains to convince the senate that Nero was Claudius’ trueborn male heir. Any sign of feminity Nero showed was simply written off as another quirk of hers.

    “How fascinating it is, the way men can delude themselves, is it not?”

Nero became Emperor within two months of her seventeenth birthday with little experience of government and use of power. Relying heavily on her teachers, Seneca the younger and Sextus Afranius Burrus — both experienced and intelligent men, she allowed them to weaken her mother’s control over her. She needed these two men to act as a father figure for her as she had always lacked a present father in his life.

She had no desire for the throne but that which her mother instilled in her. To that end she taught her how a ruler must behave. A ruler must brook no treachery within her own court. By the time Nero had her taken care of and assumed the throne, it was too ingrained.

    “There is no more appropriate way for me to speak than with the air of an emperor. We speak according to our parent’s expectations of us in childhood, and how we were raised. I have not been permitted to speak plainly since leaving childhood. And now, were I to revert to that manner of speaking, I would deny what I have become.”

Agrippina tried to control Nero with emotional manipulation, and poisoning — offering her antidote for the symptoms when they got bad and she had done well. When Nero began an affair with Claudia Acte, a former slave, and threatened to divorce Octavia, Agrippina advocated for Octavia and demanded that her daughter dismiss Acte. Although she and Octavia remained married, Nero began living openly with Acte as her wife in spite of her mother’s protests.

After several vain attempts to strangle Octavia, she divorced her on the ground of barrenness, and when the people took it ill and openly reproached her, she banished her besides; and finally she had her put to death on a charge of adultery that was so shameless and unfounded, that when all who were put to the torture maintained her innocence, she bribed his former preceptor Anicetus to make a pretended confession that he had violated her chastity by a stratagem.

When her mother saw she could no longer control Nero she supported Claudius’ son to overthrow her. Then when that failed, she had tried to have her killed with the poison. She dominated Nero’s early life and decisions until he cast her off. Five years into her reign, Nero had her murdered after multiple assassination attempts.

Nero’s reign had been going well in the years before Agrippina’s death. However, Nero’s “conduct became far more egregious” after her mother’s death. She spent exorbitant amounts of money on artistic pursuits and around 59 A.D., began to give public performances as a poet and lyre player, a significant breach of etiquette for a member of the ruling class.

    Nero’s rule is usually associated with tyranny and extravagance. Nero is aware that she was a tyrannical emperor who injured the lives of many and met an ugly end. She does not deny that is the truth of her rule, but she is not ashamed of it either.

Nero’s rule would have its share of bloodshed in places throughout the empire. In Britain, in A.D. 60, the Iceni Queen Boudicca rose in rebellion. Her husband, King Prasutagus, had made a deal with Claudius that would see him rule as a client-king. Upon his death in A.D. 59, the officials appointed by Nero ignored it, seizing Iceni land.

At first, Boudicca was successful, overrunning a number of Roman settlements and military units. Nero considered evacuating the island, but this proved unnecessary as the Roman commander on the island Gaius Suetonius Paulinus massed a force of 10,000 men and defeated Boudicca at the Battle of Watling Street.

When Burrus died and Seneca retired in the year 62 accusations of treason against Nero and the Senate began to surface, and Nero began to react harshly to any form of perceived disloyalty or criticism. One army commander was executed for badmouthing her at a party; another politician was exiled for writing a book that made negative remarks about the Senate. Other rivals were executed in the ensuing years, allowing Nero to reduce opposition and consolidate his power.

Nero’s construction projects were overly extravagant and the large number of expenditures under Nero left Italy “thoroughly exhausted by contributions of money”. The period was however riddled with deflation and Nero’s spending came in the form of public works projects and charity intended to ease economic troubles.

By 64, the scandalous nature of Nero’s artistic antics may have begun to cause controversy, but the public’s attention was diverted by the Great Fire.

In the wake of the Great Fire of Rome, Nero made a new urban development plan. In order to finance this project, Nero needed money and set about to get it however she pleased. She sold positions in public office to the highest bidder, increased taxes and took money from the temples. The cost to rebuild Rome was immense, requiring funds the state treasury did not have. Nero devalued the Roman currency for the first time in the Empire’s history.

    Calling herself an artist, Nero possesses an unique sense of beauty. She is attracted towards beautiful people, with a preference towards women. She loves anything so long it is beautiful, no matter what it is.

These new policies resulted in the Pisonian conspiracy, a plot formed in 65 by Gaius Calpurnius Piso, an aristocrat, along with knights, senators, poets and Nero’s former mentor, Seneca. They planned to assassinate Nero and crown Piso the ruler of Rome. The plan was discovered, however, and the leading conspirators, as well as many other wealthy Romans, were executed.

The conspiracy of Gaius Calpurnius Piso in AD 65 was a major turning point in Nero’s reign. The plot reflected the growing discontent among the ruling class of the Roman state with Nero’s increasingly despotic leadership, and as a result is a significant event on the road towards her eventual suicide and the chaos of the Year of Four Emperors which followed.

Gaius Calpurnius Piso, a leading Roman statesman, benefactor of literature, and orator, intended to have Nero assassinated, and replace her as Emperor through acclamation by the Praetorian Guard. The conspirators were said to have varying motives. Some wished to replace Nero with a better emperor, others wished to be free of emperors altogether, and restore a purely Republican form of government.

Right before the conspirators plot was put into motion a freedman named Milichus discovered the conspiracy and reported it to Nero’s secretary Epaphroditos. The plot promptly collapsed as many conspirators quickly gave up everything they knew. Nero ordered Piso, the philosopher and her former teacher Seneca, his nephew Lucan, and the satirist Petronius to commit suicide.

In AD 65 her marriage to Poppae Sabina ended. Having tried to gain a successor for the Julio-Claudian lineage by choosing a man worthy enough to get Poppae pregnant, she died from a miscarriage.

However in the year AD 66 she marries Statilia Messalina. Her first husband was the consul Marcus Julius Vestinus Atticus to whom she may have borne a son (who died in 88). Around 65, she became Nero’s mistress. After the death of Poppaea Sabina, Vestinus was forced to commit suicide in 66, so Nero could marry Statilia.

Later that year or in 67 he married Sporus, who was said to bear a remarkable resemblance to Poppaea. Nero had Sporus castrated, and during their marriage, Nero had Sporus appear in public as his wife wearing the regalia that was customary for Roman empresses. He then took Sporus to Greece and back to Rome, making Calvia Crispinilla serve as “mistress of wardrobe” to Sporus, epitropeia ten peri estheta.

Nero had earlier married another freedman, Pythagoras, who had played the role of Nero’s husband; now Sporus played the role of Nero’s wife.

In March 68, there was rebellion against Nero’s tax policies done by the governor Gaius Julius Vindex.He recruited another governor, Servius Sulpicius Galba, to join him and to declare himself emperor. While these forces were defeated and Galba was declared a public enemy, support for him increased, despite his categorization as a public enemy. Even Nero’s own bodyguards defected in support of Galba.

She was eventually driven out of her position during a revolt. Nero fled Rome with the intention of going to the port of Ostia and, from there, to take a fleet to one of the still-loyal eastern provinces. Nero abandoned the idea when some army officers openly refused to obey her commands.

Nero returned to Rome and spent the evening in the palace. When she called for a gladiator or anyone else adept with a sword to kill her, no one appeared. She cried, “Have I neither friend nor foe?” and ran out as if to throw herself into the Tiber.

Returning, Nero sought for some place where she could hide and collect her thoughts. Traveling in disguise, Nero and four loyal freedmen reached the villa, where Nero ordered them to dig a grave for her.

At this time, a courier arrived with a report that the Senate had declared Nero a public enemy and that it was their intention to execute her by beating her to death and that armed men had been sent to apprehend her for the act to take place in the Forum. The Senate actually was still reluctant and deliberating on the right course of action as Nero was the last member of the Julio-Claudian Family.

Indeed, most of the senators had served the imperial family all their lives and felt a sense of loyalty to the deified bloodline, if not to Nero herself. The men actually had the goal of returning Nero back to the Senate, where the Senate hoped to work out a compromise with the rebelling governors that would preserve Nero’s life, so that at least a future heir to the dynasty could be produced.

Nero, however, did not know this, and at the news brought by the courier, she prepared herself for suicide, pacing up and down muttering Qualis artifex pereo (“What an artist dies in me”).

Nero was convinced that her popular policies and her popularity with the people would protect her from being forced to abdicate the throne. However, the public was silent and they did nothing to protect her. She acknowledges that she had made an error in judgement in relying on the people. Still, Nero did not resent them, instead she was saddened by their lack of uproar.

She eventually decided to kill herself, though such an end was considered unsportsmanlike by her. She stopped herself many times, having cried about “how can such a magnificent artist disappear from this world?”, but as those who betrayed her closed in she quoted a line from Homer’s Iliad, “Hark, now strikes on my ear the trampling of swift-footed coursers!”, before finally stabbing her own throat with a knife.