Alexey I

Alexey I, King of Motherland, was a weak, ineffectual leader who largely relied upon his wife to keep the peace in their perpetually troubled country.

Born Alexey Vladimirovich Ivanov in 123, he spent much of his youth locked in tallest tower of the castle at Watersmeet. A feral yeti was terrorizing the countryside in those days, and the streets of the city itself were so lawless that the queen constantly fretted over the life of the young prince.

Confined to the tower, Alexey’s only amusements were the books his mother brought to him from the library and a counting game he invented:

Once upon a time, when the prince was but a wee lad, he invented a counting game. Locked in the tower by himself, it was left to the boy to conjure his own amusements. And that was how he came to make a sport of betting on the lives of his father’s huntsmen.

“How long will this one last?” the prince asked himself each time. “And what about this one? How long will he live before the trees make him their supper?”

On the eve of his thirteenth birthday, Alexey met Gretel der Jäger—the famous huntress and witch killer who would finally rid Motherland of the yeti menace. This coincided with The Great Abdication Movement and Gretel’s success against the yeti led Alexey’s father to betroth the prince to the huntress. The marriage would have to wait until Alexey was 18, but Gretel agreed.

After Alexey and Gretel married in 141, Alexey was crowned as the second King of Motherland. He had no idea what he was doing, having had no exposure to the world for the first thirteen years of his life, so he leaned heavily on Gretel—at least at the beginning. Eventually, he began to think he was getting the hang of ruling—he wasn’t, but he thought he was—and he started to try and doing things himself for a couple of decades. Not coincidentally, this period, which ended only with Alexey’s untimely death in 180, was marked by an increase in lawlessness throughout the kingdom.

Fortunately for Alexey and for Motherland, his wife and son took it upon themselves to venture out each night to try and clean up their husband/father’s messes. But that is a story for another time.