Aldran The Holy’s eulogy of his father Benethos The Monster
My father was a great man. From his humble beginnings as lord of the paps he used cunning and dilligence to build his holdings until the paps became one of the most unassailable castles in the realms. I’m getting some looks now so yes that diligence and cunning mostly took the form of kidnapping the children of pirates and selling them back to their families. His methods are a bit suspect but you can’t deny he was clever.
His reputation as a military genius is well earned. His military strategies, using the navy to outmanuever enemy forces and overwhelm smaller forces before they could consolidate will be studied for years to come. Stop- stop coughing please! Yes, it’s true that those manuevers were most commonly used in the five separate occasions the crown tried to imprison and execute him that ultimately ended in his seizing of the title Lord Paramount.
He cut an impressive figure wading into battle with our ancestral valyrian steel sword. That artifact has of course been in our family since he kidnapped the son of one of our allies during war time and then stole it from him. He did love that sword my father, also the fine sport of dueling. He challenged every King he could reach by raven. He was somewhat unclear on the rules, he often kept fighting as his opponents were trying to yield. One of his quirks. He just… He loved stabbing kings my father. He loved dueling so much that when he couldn’t duel a king he’d duel their wives or children. I remember when he tried to duel the ruler of Dorne and she refused because she was a 72 year old woman suffering from cancer, he challenged Stannis Baratheon instead who of course was fatally stabbed and then reborn as an undead monstrosity that is still frightening people in the stormlands. Dueled a lot of women and teenagers my father...
He had many passions actually, he had so much love to give. Speaking of, I would to thank my eleven- wait fourteen? When did…? Well I’d like to thank my half brothers and sisters for making the time to be here as well as my brother/nephews and sister/nieces. And thanks especially to Egon, who was not on great terms with our father because of the whole… helping my mother murder his mother in an attempt at reconciliation that failed when he seduced Egon’s wife- anyway thanks Egon.
He was also a great fan of diplomacy. He carefully studied the relationships between people all over the kingdoms, he could tell you who was whose son, brother, lover, ally etc. This was mostly from spending hours looking over genealogies trying to figure out why specific people wanted him dead. He also sent many, many insulting letters to the lords of the Iron Islands. We don’t really have a motive for that one, he just did it.
But the important thing to remember is that he had a good heart. He gave numerous gifts to the church, though perhaps motivated by a desire to avoid a third excommunication his donations did a lot of good. When he saw the tyranny faced by the lesser lords of Redford he took up arms and fought against their oppressor despite having nothing to gain. Now I must confess that was somewhat undercut by the fact he killed and ate that tyrant. We were all surprised by that, he just… he just did it.
Oh! We looked through his journals and we can definitively say that the rumors of him being an occultist who practiced the dark arts and sacrificed children were false. Well... I mean they were false when they were made. A few years later he did apparently join an occult society where he practiced the dark arts and did sacrifice a child. But the accusations were still false when people made them so that… that counts for something.
He wasn’t all bad is what I’m saying. He was never involved in an assassination. An odd number of his enemies died of snakebites and explosions but there is still no evidence he had any part of it. We also ran the numbers, contrary to popular belief he has not disfigured more Valemen than than the grey plague. More lords, but not more peasants. That’s a positive.
Okay this isn’t going well. Look, I know you’re all here to try and steal his head- just do it in an orderly fashion this is a holy place.
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Topic: Crusader Kings 2 is released. (Read 2117348 times)