Foreword,

Some readers may find the following time jump disconcerting, if they have been reading sequentially. Thus far I have created the illusion that all facts and knowledge have been available to me but here it is unavoidable that I provide the context of understanding. While the following tome will indeed cover the Jeameaux Rebellion, I have elected to tell it through the framing device that all of Vassermark learned of it.

Namely, it will be told–with footnotes, annotations, clarifications, and so on–as it was told on the most auspicious night of the Harvest Festival, 755 CC, Hearth’s Bay.

I have chosen this because it, in effect, is more real than reality. Few even at the time remembered the specifics of this action or that. Who lived and who died where was being lost to time for all but the highest nobility, the key players as they were. To the people of Vassermark, the foreign wars were nothing more than the reports sent back, authenticated or not. At times, trophies and prisoners arrived in the capital to be paraded around fo morale, but it was not as if the people could sit in their homes and watch the bloody melees play out. Indeed, even if they could have, I doubt they would have. War in real time is a terribly boring affair and the common people are easily distracted.

The Harvest Festival was in effect the night that the consequences of the war were made real. It was the report from the army to the merchants, to the home nobility, and to the foreign nationals present.

History is a tale told by the survivors, which has one meaning in the context of war but another in the context of economics. Hundreds of accounts, both private and public, were transcribed after that night and sent to the far corners of the world. Each had their own perspective, their own misunderstandings and lies. In aggregate, many facts can be reconciled with each other, but there is an even more interesting way to analyze the accounts.

Those that survived 756 and those that did not. What were the opinions of the men of action and how did they change? Did they act in full embrace of the truth or did they have their eyes blinded by ideology?

Given the immense complexity of the events of 756, I must take lengths to introduce the new actors before they play their part. For the curious, I will endeavor to include a genealogy that escaped the fires as an appendix.

But, this is still the story of the Jeameaux Rebellion, of the greatest knight the middle kingdoms ever produced. A forsaken paladin that turned his blade against the future emperor.