Chavenac Interlude

King Gustav, esteemed ruler of the illustrious House Chavenac, slid out of bed and put on his morning slippers. Luckily for him, today was a slow day without much of anything on the docket. He’d need to be cutting the ribbon of a newly-constructed starport hangar, but that would be later. For now, he could relax, enjoy a hot mug of coffee, black, and watch the sunrise over planet Chevac.

The sight of the sun cresting the horizon reminded him of the stars. Once again, King Gustav turned his thoughts to the Kingdom. Against the odds, House Chavenac stood strong in the galaxy, by itself, for itself. With its hard-earned sovereignty, House Chavenac had gained power and spent it wisely. While their cousins abroad wrestled with unproductive frontiers, polluting industries, and the dozens of inefficiencies that came through decentralized rule, House Chavenac kept control. Every planet in the Kingdom was prosperous, every subject content.

Every noble in House Chavenac knew their place and there were no lesser houses to threaten the royal dynasty. Left alone, the Kingdom would continue to prosper and progress toward the faraway ideal of utopia. Oh, but the Kingdom would never be left alone. Their cousins, the Empire, were arrogant beyond reckoning, convinced that they and they alone were worthy inheritors to the legacy of old Earth.

As if the memory of Mankind’s cradle was the property of whoever held a satellite in the shattered ruin’s orbit. King Gustav resented them. Their entitlement, their fixation on dominance and tolerance of intrigues. There was a reason the so-called “Eternal” Empire had gone through twenty ruling dynasties, and that was that its structure was fundamentally flawed! The Kingdom’s founder, the legendary Lionel the Bold, foresaw this and by his indomitable will, forged a future for his own house, by his own house.

The Chevanac Kingdom had won its sovereignty through tears and blood, and had kept it over the centuries through more of the same. Supposedly, a handful of noble houses in the Empire tried to make a bid themselves. The Tripartite Entente… Doomed to failure, by King Gustav’s estimate, too scattered, too ambitious, but he wished them well. Once he received word of House Rothsford’s fate, he poured a libation of wine and hired a few professional mourners to publicly weep in his stead.

This was the traditional procedure for such things, but now that the Empire had won its civil war, the monarch knew it was only a matter of time before they looked farther afield. They would see the prosperity of his life’s work, and the loathsome brutes would lust for it. In most circumstances, this would be little concern, but House Heinrich…

That was a concern. He recalled the news of the Emperor Alphonse’s rebellion against the opulence of House Vonduul. His uprising was by all rights doomed, like most were, but he did the impossible, time and again, and seized Mars by his own hands. Not only that, he won the peace. He was a brilliant statesman, currying the favour of the Empire’s great houses and guiding the masses under him.

When he heard news of Alphonse’s fate, Gustav poured a libation and wept himself. The second generation of House Heinrich built on their predecessors, its reign growing stronger and stabler still. In their bloodline was the stuff legends were made of, and if House Chavenac was to endure, it must make ready to fight.

Already, assassins had been caught trying to infiltrate his court and rumours of them creeping into the Kingdom’s underbelly reached his ears, though precious little could be done to find them. This was a mistake by House Heinrich. It was dangerous to throw their bloodline’s lot in with Nightshayd. Mere generations ago, they were House Vonduul’s most dedicated servants and kept the whole of the Empire’s aristocracy cringing in fear. Did they truly think the cutthroats were so swift to forget their roots? Surely, they knew of the kinstrife…

House Nightshayd lacked all honour, lacked all discipline of spirit. They were noble in name only, and he spat on them. Far better was the martial chivalry of House Arthen, the beautiful machines of House Soluton... Both were close to House Heinrich, on a trajectory to join their strengths together. This would only deepen now that the Tripartite had been crushed and the Empire’s internal affairs settled.

King Gustav feared that a new war for independence was inevitable. It was a regrettable necessity, to fight such men as House Heinrich, but House Chavenac stood proud and by Lionel’s glorious example, would bend the knee to none other. The worlds of Chavenac Kingdom were not so numerous as the “Eternal” Empire, but they were stalwart and unbeknownst to their enemy, in the Lost Reaches, friends had been found. Of a type. Granted, they were odd and nauseating to his aristocratic sensibilities, at best, but desperate times make for strange bedfellows, and for the knights of Chavenac, there were desperate times ahead.