List of Osterik Monarchs

Hauseger Dynasty
The Hauseger dynasty was founded by the mythical Hosig the Hammer, a legendary Lagrican warrior. Drawing their descent from Hosig, their crest bore [HERALDRY].

Adalger I
Adalger I (ruled 222—228 AC) was the first King of Ostera, having led and won the War of Erimmen Collapse. Often referred to in Alt-Lagrican folklore as "der Berfreier"—the liberator—he is accredited with the birth of the Osterik Kingdom and the fall of the wide-spanning Tsardom of Erimme. Yet the war was a hard-fought one, and Adalger I was too old to show any of the youthful prowess at governance that he had for military leadership, thus the majority of his reign was spent cowing the Lagrican magnates to support the eventual succession to his eldest son.

Adalger II
Adalger II (ruled 228—277 AC) was the second King of Ostera, and is renowned in Alt-Lagrican folklore as "der Konsolidierer"—the consolidator—for his long and effective reign in supplanting seditious elements in his father's kingdom, while firmly strengthening the realm's monarchic institution. Victorious in the First Lagrican Revolt and the Osterik War for Delsarte soon after his ascension, and later the First Chavani War, Adalger II solidified Ostera as viable state in southern Brivaea. He is also one of the few kings to live to old age, dying in his senior years of unidentified illness.

Sigismund I
Sigismund I (ruled 277—285) was the third King of Ostera, and the first whose succession was unplanned. After the tragic death of Adalger the Martyr, the eldest son of Adalger II, Sigismund was thrust into the role of heir-apparent. From then on, Sigismund underperformed the high expectations of his father, unable to meet the standard of a brilliant do-everything sovereign. In the economic and commercial booms of the age of Friedgar von Quersa, Sigismund was, though highly charitable, an incompetent steward of coin and vassal, disrupting the boons of the Lagrican boom and angering his magnates. By the end of his reign, Sigismund had traded vast wealth and power to the Conclave, weakening royal authority to its lowest point yet. He died of a sudden condition of the heart while administering the construction of Atriescher Church, himself already in advanced age when he received the crown.

Walfried I
Walfried I (ruled 287—300) was the fourth King of Ostera, and the first whose ascent to the crown was directly contested. In the Vornau Succession Crisis, the illegitimate Adalger the Gallant was lifted as the true claimant to Ostera whilst Walfried, the late Sigismund's cousin, was coronated by the Conclave. Though the fighting was brief, the conflict fiercely destabilized Lagrica's economy and aggravated political tensions beyond the point of return. Though Walfried was victorious, his reign was cursed in the aftermath. Even as he proved victorious in the Vulperan War and quashed the Eurenbach Peasant's Revolt, he was nearly deposed by the Fridau Conference, an empowered assembly of Lagrican magnates and commercial players. In the aftermath of his near-deposition, Walfried grew heavy-handed, bordering on tyrannical, with his aristocracy, endeavoring to return sovereign imperium through force and violence. He died naturally before this aim could be fully realized.

Volkmar I
Volkmar I (ruled 300—321) was the fifth King of Ostera, and the last of direct Hauseger descent. The son of the late king, Volkmar inherited his predecessor's rivals and lacked the resources to appease his father's allies. Accordingly, he handed away vast authority to the Conclave, permanently granting it the right to inaugurate incoming sovereigns or successors (largely as a bid to circumvent future depositions by magnates). He angered the budding Lagrican Patriciates when he restricted imports of woolen finery and sparked the Loceran-Osterik Dispute. He won the Basfelt Revolt, empowering the Conclave further by allowing it to establish bishoprics and preside over vast lands directly. Just as he seemed to be ramping up for expansions which might settle the issue of declining royal authority, he was murdered by Haralt the Iron Count, and left the world with no direct heirs apparent.

Sigismund II
Sigismund II (ruled 321—346) was the sixth King of Ostera, and the first not to be directly descended from Adalger I. He was raised by the Conclave as the father-in-law of his predecessor, and had already had a hand in the administration of the kingdom. His ascension seems to have been a compromise betwixt the aristocracy and clergy. Fortuitously, the Atriescher Church was completed in the first year of his reign, and in the following years, he won the Osterik War for Lautha, interfered in the Borsman Invasion of Nortan, and normalized trade relations with the Meridian League. Though much of his rule was spent settling the Craire Dispute, and he died naturally soon after it was solved, his reign is largely praised as highly stabilizing, and is for this reason commonly known as "der Problemlöser".

Otto I
Otto I (ruled 346—384) was the seventh King of Ostera, and the son of his predecessor. Affirmed by the Conclave, he arbitrated an end to the Borsman Invasion of Nortan, though left both factions dissatisfied and laid the groundwork for future Borsman hostilities. Otto followed in his father's footsteps, forming a coalition of Silumese cities headed by Arna to espouse Osterik interests in Silum. After the death of Arnaud the Allready, Otto interfered in the War of the Roundels, and later had to simultaneously defend Lagrica during the Seyyan Invasion of Lagrica, which was swiftly repelled, whereas the ongoing Chavais disaster seemed to drag on to an entrenched stalemate. As the region proved increasingly costly, Otto cut his losses and dismissed his allies there. He died of an unidentified illness, having largely returned many powers to the crown through a heavy focus on military involvement in the face of external threats—a strategy which would become synonymous with royal control.

Adalger III
Adalger III (ruled 384—386) was the eighth King of Ostera, and the firstborn of his predecessor. Affirmed by the Conclave, the royal household had hidden a severe condition which seemed to subside when he took the crown, but returned nearly immediately after, leaving him bedridden and sickly. This revelation bore the second Fridau Conference which challenged increasing ecclesiastical control of Etranon in demands dispatched to the king. Adalger died before he could fully answer to them.

Otto II
Otto II (ruled 386—392) was the ninth King of Ostera, and the first to receive Rites of Vespers. The heir-apparent to his sickly brother, Otto adeptly took command of a royal host of banners before his brother died, which guaranteed that his succession was uncontested by the dangerously empowered magnates. Almost immediately after taking the crown, he raised and marched a host in Chavais, ending the dispute with a series of large annexations. This ambitious conquest came just before he launched the Consolidation of Etranon. The year after, he was granted the right to declare the Second War of the Pantheon against the Borsi, and in the early phases of the conflict dominated the field, coming to occupy nearly all of greater Carran. War, however, broke out over the annexation of Chavais, manifesting in the War for the Inescutcheon. While on his way through the Drachenwald south, Otto was laid low by an arrow which festered, dying a week afterward. The Conclave granted him rites later in the Second Holy War, when the difficulty of his triumphs had been fully realized.

Walfried II
Walfried II (ruled 392—399) was the tenth King of Ostera, and historically one of the weakest. Having inherited the crown as a young boy, the son of the later-blessed Otto II, the Conclave was eager to guarantee that his line continued, and thusly established the Regency of Walfried II, which later became a notorious political body which nearly upset generations of cultivation of autocracy. Still a child, the Regency Council governed on his behalf and eventually, though not without bloody infighting, raised the First Versau Diet, a legally-backed revival of the Fridau Conferences. Elsewhere, local warlords propped up by Otto II split on their handling of the Inescutcheon War, prolonging it significantly. Though Walfried was rarely exposed to the public, it is said that just when he became to openly express reservations about the assembly, he died abruptly to undetermined causes, sparking the Elective Geniture Law, largely seen as the worst disaster to befall the decades of royal centralization, undoing meticulous government-planning which had started with Adalger II.

Frederick I
Frederick I (ruled 399—405) was the eleventh King of Ostera, and a highly controversial one. Born of the Aislinger family, a cadet of the extinct Hauseger line, he was selected by the First Versau Diet to succeed Walfried II, though the Conclave soon thereafter refuted his coronation and conferred to raise a separate claimant, which served as the opening for the Wars of the Cadets. Frederick had plans to solve the blazing Chavais crisis, but became embroiled in a civil war which resulted in his death at the hands of a rival, Alram the Ram.

Otto III
Otto III (ruled 405—407) was the twelfth King of Ostera, lifted by the Diet as the son of Frederick I. An all-too-familiar Regency Council was established for the young boy, but made no difference in what was a losing war against the Gauss family. By the swift end of it, he was imprisoned and left to rot while his realms were usurped.

Gottschalk I
Gottschalk I (ruled 407—421) was the thirteenth King of Ostera, coronated by the Conclave after the death of the de-jure king, his father Alram. He took power by force, usurping the crown from the boy-king Otto III. Nevertheless, the realm, as fractious as it had become, could not bear his levying efforts to repair the battered Chavais front, and the Diet actively hindered his aims. He did successfully intervene in the War of Lorefine Belligerence, and repositioned his efforts northward in the Second Holy War, replicating only a fragment of Otto II's success on that front before dying in battle.

Sigismund III
Sigismund III (ruled 421—428) was the fourteenth King of Ostera, coronated by the Conclave after the death of his father, the late king. His succession was predictably contested by the Diet, which issued the Ottonian Declarations. Accordingly, he forcibly disbanded the Diet and entered war with the Aislingers soon afterward, with remarkable preliminary success before his death at the hands of Lanfrank the Lionheart.

Otto III
Otto III (ruled again 428—468) was the twelfth King of Ostera, having usurped the crown in the final stage of the Wars of the Cadets. He reigned years earlier under a Regency Council as a mere child, having had his crown seized by Gauss claimants, yet as a grown man took his birthright back and won the war. Having fortuitously captured most of the Aislinger household, the former-and-again king seized the hand of a Gauss in marriage to end the generational dispute and merge their dual claims on the crown. The royal host, bolstered by discontented and cynical magnates, marched against Etranon in a bid to reform the Conclave, which resulted in Manegolt's Capitulation, a heavy blow to church autonomy. He then carried through with the Second Holy War as his own divine prerogative to reclaim the focal points of Carranite coastlands, establishing standing fortified retinues to keep Etranon under check and guard against future Borsi raiding. He solved the Chavais dispute by making major concessions, but was nevertheless lauded for shrewd diplomacy, and carried his string of successes over to Silum where he re-established the Meridian League, contractual to a permanent tie to the royal sovereignty of Ostera. He died of natural causes in advanced age.

Reginald I
Reginald I (ruled 468—505) was the fifteenth King of Ostera, and the grandson of Otto III, the first monarch to be of the joint Aislinger-Gauss dynasty which formed. Reginald, however, inherited an increasingly tenuous balance with the Conclave and the magnates, whereupon royal authority had become reliant on one or the other for its survival. Emmerich's Illumination destabilized the religious fabric of society, precipitating the Three Muxalin Schisms, a series of violent offshoots of the Pantheon which divided the church and aristocracy. Reginald saw in this an advantage, interfering heavily in the affairs of the Conclave, actions which seemed to, in a time of already polarized coalitions and economic turmoil, with famine looming formidably, provoke the later Schismatic Uprising, though he died of illness before he could witness the consequences. Scholars debate his designs, but most generally agree that the broad idea was to seize greater control by provoking a conflict which would only benefit royal autonomy. Nevertheless, his actions were perceived as tyrannical by the wider public and chastised by the clergy for generations, and for this reason he has received the alias "der Schwarze"—the Black.

Volkmar II
Volkmar II (ruled 505—526) was the sixteenth King of Ostera, the grandson of Reginald I. Nearly immediately upon succession, he was dragged into the theological conflict which his father sparked, following in his predecessor's footsteps and intervening on behalf of the Korbinian Sect. As the conflict drew into open war, Volkmar was severely injured in battle and never recovered, his administration governed by the regency of Guillaume d'Lauras, despised by the magnates and increasingly opposed to the Korbinians. Guillaume was ousted and Volkmar deposed by his younger brother in Volkmar's Deposition.

Sigismund IV
Sigismund IV (ruled 526—554) was the seventeeth King of Ostera, the brother of Volkmar II. Before seizing the throne from his bedridden brother, Sigismund was a holy warrior in the Third Holy War, having been granted vast colonial territories to oversee for the Conclave. After Volkmar's Deposition, Sigismund decisively won the Fadrean conflict and negotiated formal hegemony over Elissia. He spent much of his reign thereafter interfering in the Fieran-Ostician War before its victory led him to the opening stages of the Wars of the Passant. He died at the outset of the Scarlet Plague.

Reginald II
Reginald II (ruled 554—577) was the eighteenth King of Ostera, the son of Sigismund IV. He inherited the crown in the midst of an ongoing plague epidemic which laid low most of Lagrica, leading to widespread famine, economic distress, and leaving Ostera vulnerable to the Butrian Conflict and the War for Cathopica. These crises added up to a desperate measure by Reginald to restore the kingdom's order, and the opening of the Second Versau Diet, or what was intended to be a temporary conference of the nobility and clergy. Reginald's combined efforts ended the plague in years, however he was embroiled in increased tensions between the clergy and aristocrats, culminating in the events of the War of the Three Kings which led to his usurpation.

Leonhard I
Leonhard I (ruled 577—580) was the nineteenth King of Ostera, the brother of Reginald II. He usurped the crown in the War of the Three Kings, backed primarily by Guifre the Old and the Korbinians. Leonhard led a fractured kingdom, more of a coalition at the time, in the midst of open and violent civil war that eventually resulted in his death due to sustained injuries. During his short and constricted reign, large numbers of Chavani magnates established the Free League of Chavais, demolishing Osterik regional hegemony in the region.

Otto V
Otto V (ruled 580—592) was the twentieth King of Ostera, the son of Leonhard I. His inheritance was sponsored by the Conclave, but opposed by the Diet. Consequently, Otto swiftly cracked down on the noble conference after the War of the Three Kings lulled in a stalemate, prompting the Anhiers Declaration and the Liberant Lagrican Revolt. These conflicts continued throughout Otto's reign, up until he was mobbed and killed by peasantry just outside Versau.

Rainhilde I
Rainhilde I (ruled 592—595) was the first Queen of Ostera, the sister of Otto V. WIP