Matters of Succession
To my children, sons and daughters of Ashla, beloved by God and inheritors of all Essonia, I write to you now from the depths of a church at the farthest reaches of our realm. It is a small place, though it burns with love and care, its services to the people great and its clergy wholly unpolitical. Here, I have found a tenderness my heart has been reaching toward for many years. After retaking the holy lands and seeing the will of God brought to fruition, I have found the wounds carved into my very soul by the service too great.
It is my great and terrible regret to inform you, my beloved subjects, that I am not long for this world. Many of you have likely noticed my absence in recent years, and now I must tell you the truth. My heart is failing, and my mind has begun to dull. I no longer possess the energy and sharpness of mind required to govern our great empire, and so I have left the Kaiserreich in the capable hands of our Prime Minister, Grand Mashal, and the will of our Cardinal, the prime representative of the will of the Goddess on this mortal plane, hallowed be his name. Their service has been exemplary and a seat in empyrean alongside the Ashla's greatest champions most certainly awaits them, but a kingdom ordained by God must be led by a monarch so too ordained.
A kingdom as the goddess has willed it, and as I understand it, is an extension of family. Once we were bound by our shared Essonian heritage, and then our unity broken and reforged within the sea of blood shed in the Ashla's name. At the head of that family stands a father, and below him his subjects, whom he loves as his own children and exists solely to serve as ordained by all-mighty God.
To you, I have always sought to be that father. To love you as my own. To guide our people through the darkness and prepare the realm for the return of Ashla to this world and the coming of her paradise. In this venture, I have given everything I have ever held dear, both great loves and my own blood both. It is because of this service that I ask that you forgive me for my weakness of late. I cannot be the father you need any longer.
But what is a family without a patriarch?
This is a question that has plagued me as of late. In my service, I have forsaken marriage and mortal lusts. The question of marriage has often been brought up by my advisers, but truly my only great loves are that of Ession, and that of the Ashla. My heart belongs to both ladies and there has never been room for another, whether I wished it or otherwise.
Thus, we reach the question of succession. I have fathered no children within sanctified marriage. Following the laws of Primogeniture, that would place my nephew, Mikhail Grayson, as first heir to the Kaissereich. His is a strong claim, his blood that of my sister's, pure Essonian stock and raised in the Ashlan faith. That being said, I have communed with the Goddess in my time here in church with each waking hour.
She has gifted me with visions, and in such visions, I have seen his path is not that of kingship. I cannot deprive him of the destiny set before him by God, leaving a sole claimant to my title.
Word has spread of my bastard, Lothaire. I will not deny his parentage - when I was a boy, during the days of the Dominion of Ession, the child was fathered with one of my advisers. I sent him to the officer corps to live a life of purpose with the expectation of marriage in my later years, though that has not come to pass.
I will not lie, I do not know the boy, but he does not possess the temperament, or the training required to become king, let alone kaiser. I would publicly advise Prince Lothaire to rescind his claim to the throne and return to his duties as an officer, as well as advise the bishops that chose to uplift a claimant without my knowledge to remember their stations lest they find themselves lacking an occupation.
I will be calling a council in the short months to come, and we will decide then as to who shall be named heir. For the time being, things shall continue as they have been under the wise leadership of my small council.
Federalization VS Monarchy
In my youth, I made my intentions for Ession and her peoples quite known. You will recall the Grayson Imperium, once the seat of Ashlan power in the heart of the galaxy. I had intended to federalize that system into something of a republic united by the Ashlan Church, however events kept such a thing from occurring. Our destiny was home, not on the throne of foreigners.
Now we stand at the precipice. The Holy Lands have been reclaimed in full, the Sith virus expunged from our homelands. Young boys and girls attend church in temples of God raised upon the graves of Sith Lords on Dromund Kass. Our great task is finished, and my time draws to a close.
Thus, the question; do we retain the imperial system or embrace a looser form of federation? In my younger days, more ideal times, I believed wholeheartedly in the cause of unfettered democracy. In my great age I still hold that ideal close to my heart, though my view on it has been far more tempered by wisdom, and I will try to explain my views as plainly as possible.
The most basic building block of society is family. Without family, there is nothing to care for beyond ourselves, and thus only self-centered anarchy will follow. From families grow clans, and from those clans come communities, and even further still the people. Eventually you have a nation, and from that point the nation becomes a living thing just as the people within it. The path forward for that nation can be good or ill, depending on the people that make it up. The nation, just as a family needs a patriarch or matriarch, and as a man needs his father, requires a guiding hand. One whose interests are wholly intertwined with its health and happiness.
That man would be the king.
In elective democracy functioning on a galactic scale, one tends to vote in an official for his local polity. That official then bands with other officials to vote in a higher official for the greater polity. That greater official then works alongside other greater officials to form a party, The party then debates with itself, either with beliefs or resources, as to which of its greatest officials should serve as the mother or father of the nation, and battles other parties for votes. This final official then serves anywhere from four to ten years, generally speaking, before the process repeats itself on and on again.
This system's intentions are noble and fair: to represent the people's wishes on a regular basis and elect officials based on merit rather than systems of nepotism. Unfortunately, in my experience of seeing this system in practice in traditionally mercantile societies such as that of the core, they breed socialites rather than governors. One very well may be elected for their abilities alone, but so often are the highest positions of power obtained by those with the greatest guile and largest pool of resources irregardless of their abilities or intentions. The fate of the official is not permanently tied to the state, nor is that of their children, and so they are prone to making selfish decisions. Often too do they lack any guiding principles beyond the vainest consumerism and need for recognition. The righteousness of their decisions is of no consequence.
It is for such reasons that my family struck out from the Old Republic during the dark ages to found the Kingdom of Ession in the Sith heartland. It is for such reasons that the Grayson line has guarded greater Essonia for six hundred generations, and it is why I now stand against my early plans of federalization. The monarchy must be maintained if the peoples of the Ashla are to remain as one. A single father to guide his billions of children toward the holy path.
That being said, should the father betray his children and embrace tyranny, then it is the duty of the people to overthrow him, and if his crimes prove too great, to see him killed so that they may not be repeated. Let this be a statement to the people: should any of my line betray you, or worse still, betray the faith, it is your greatest charge to see him undone, lest you damn yourselves to the will of the Bogan.
Soon we will find a new father for you that will stand when I am gone, all I ask is your patience.
The Changing Axis of Power
Our position as the defenders of the Tingel Arm, the Stygian Caldera, the holy world of Ossus, Wyl, and all of Greater Essonia demands that we take heed of our neighbors. The threat of the Maw is not yet extinguished and yet war is brewing between our allies to the west. It is no secret that our peoples are heavily intertwined with both The Empire and the Galactic Alliance.
The first seat of the Ashlan church can still be found on Coruscant, and nearly a billion Essonians yet call the core home. The New Jedi Order that defends it, descended from my students and other heroes that have been friends to the faith. We have fought alongside them against the Sith, and arguably the issue of the Maw itself is of our own make. I am publicly acknowledging Darth Solipsis's true identity of Kaigann Fossk as being the same Kaigann Fossk that served in the Ession Reformation and received training at the hands of my own father. I do not accept responsibility for his actions, or his ability to infiltrate the government of the Galactic Alliance, but their problem is our problem, whether Solipsis is truly dead or not.
As to The Empire, they have served as our longtime allies against all of our foes. They were the first to recognize us as a nation, the first to treat with us, the first to call themselves our allies and bleed alongside us. They do not share our Jedi heritage nor our faith, and yet they stood as bulwarks against the Sith menace while we licked our wounds and prepared. Without The Empire as it once was, I have serious doubts we would have defeated the Sith so swiftly. Beyond that, our peoples are as intertwined as those within the alliance. Many among our highest stations have intermarried with the nobility of The Empire, I know well that Cardinal Demici's own niece serves among the Imperial Knights, and if such is the case there must be countless other international families hailing from both our peoples.
It is because of these reasons that I would urge neutrality. The Ashlans are descendants of the Jedi Knights, we are the evolution of their beliefs and it is only that they have not yet come to understand our great revelations that they do not join us. In the generations to come, we will be as one people, as the Ashla predicted centuries ago. To raise our weapons against them would be to cause another schism the likes of which shattered the old order into what it is now. We must be absolutely certain of their corruption and their flirtation with heresy if we are ever to entertain the idea of raising our blades against them.
Furthermore, while I do not rescind my claim to the throne of Coruscant, I believe that day will come democratically and in great time. To subdue the core would be to war with our own people; we must win over their hearts, or they will forever see the Ashla as a foreign influence.
As to the imperials, I would not be hasty to sever the ties that I would consider to be quite deep between us. They have not shown us any ill will, and while their rule is a pagan one and their leaders have not acknowledged the Ashla's love for them, I have faith that in time Her great works will stir their hearts. It is it through love and service that the great powers of these many worlds will come to accept the truth of the Ashla. When that time comes, and the emperors of the galaxy kneel before God and proclaim their love for Her, there will be no further need for conquest, for we will be as one kingdom united under one great Queen.
Sainthoods
I wish to announce the Sainthood of Jedi Master Wyatt Morga. I have felt his death upon the winds, and my prayers confirmed as much to me. I do not know how he perished, but Wyatt was a man of great character and a fierce indomitable spirit. He fought alongside me during the darkest days of our wars with the Sith, suffering terribly for it in his service to others and to the Ashla. We disagreed on doctrine, but there is little doubt in my heart that he performed the plans set out for him at birth to their fullest expectations, believer or not.
Wyatt went on to help form the Jedi Order as we know it today within the Galactic Alliance. His death is a great loss.
In addition, I am granting sainthood to Jedi Master Ryv Karis. Ryv was as a son to me. He was a kind, generous, self-sacrificing paragon of all we could ever hope to be. His was a life of sin before the Ashla willed our meeting, and through her light, he was redeemed and became one of the best of us. He was the greatest example of a man: a man that could rise from terror and horror to become someone the men and women of Greater Essonia might aspire to become.
He died saving Tython, one of our holiest places, and helped to end the threat of Solipsis once and for all. He was my greatest pride, and though he was not of my blood, were I to have it my way he would be alive here with me to serve as heir to the entire Ashlan Kaiserreich, so holy was his soul. I loved you Ryv, the people of Ession loved you, and I fear I cannot linger much longer in this world knowing that you have passed before me. How terrible is it for a son to pass before his father. What cruel fate.
Closing Remarks
I reach a twilight my children. Mine has been a long, painful, and beautiful life. Soon I will leave you at a juncture, and I have faith that you will choose the right path. I will be taking brief audiences with private individuals that reach out to me, but otherwise I will refrain from further public appearances for the sake of my health into the announcement of my successor. Herrlechkeet un d'Räich, Herrlechkeet un d'Gëttin, Herrlechkeet fir grouss Essonia!
