Alexey III

Alexey the Reluctant, King of Motherland, was a tragic figure in the history of his country and the purgatorial paradise of Eden. He never wanted to be king, told his parents as much, sought for years for a legal option to abdicate his responsibility in favor of one of his younger sister, and eventually resorted to suicide—seeing it as the only option to escape the burdens that fate and his ancestry had thrust upon him.

Born in 202, Alexey was the second son of King Vladimir II. For much of his youth, the shy Alexey felt safe in the knowledge that he would never have to rule. His older brother, Vladimir the Young, was first in line behind their father and was a strapping, charismatic figure. There was no reason to believe he would die young, but that’s just what happened. And then, from age 15 on, Alexey had to reckon with the knowledge that one day he would have to take a throne he did not want and that scared him immensely.

This fear was not helped by witnessing his passive, conflict-averse grandmother struggle throughout her reign. Alexey had much in common with Queen Catherine, and her troubles did not bode well. Almost immediately, Alexey began looking for ways to shirk his responsibility when it came time. And yet, there were no legal options. In the aftermath of the The Great Abdication Movement, Alexey I had been pressured by his domineering mother into signing a law which would keep him and his descendants safe from the fate of his father. The law stated that it was the will of the sister goddesses themselves that the Ivanov family rule Motherland, and that the rules for succession were divine and immutable.

In 239, at age 37 and despite decades of saying he did not want the crown, Alexey was crowned anyway. Though he did his best to make it work for a short while, relying heavily on his younger sister Nicola, Alexey soon sank into a deep depression. On the first anniversary of his coronation, he made a pledge to himself that if he could not find a way out before the second anniversary then he would take his own life. But despite engaging in increasingly more reckless behavior, despite passing laws designed to make him as unpopular as one of the False Kings just so that the people would clamor for his removal, nothing worked. And so, on the second anniversary of his coronation, Alexey the Reluctant threw himself from the tallest tower in the castle at Watersmeet and drowned in the rushing waters of the Bü‘ükopo Oadü.