Trauerqual

Trauerqual (トラオクヴァール, Toraokuvaaru) is the current Zent and ruler of Yurgenschmidt. He is the father of the three current princes, Sigiswald, Anastasius, and Hildebrand.

Zent Trauerqual has silver hair with tinges of blue, closely resembling his youngest son, while his facial features are closer to his middle son Anastasius. When Rozemyne met him, he looked exhausted and sleep-deprived, as if he was constantly overworked and substituted lack of sleep with copious use of rejuvenation potions.

Zent Trauerqual has a considerably higher tolerance for lacking etiquette in his conversation partners than his son Anastasius and the majority of his retainers, as was demonstrated by him allowing Rozemyne of Ehrenfest to speak far more directly than usual in royal circles without rebuking her, even when his own son and his retainers spoke out against the perceived disrespect.

Born as the fifth prince, in his youth Trauerqual was raised to become a vassal to whichever of his brothers would eventually succeed the king, rather than participate in the competition for succession himself.

The prince that was chosen as the successor was the second prince. By the time their father died, he had already finished the transcription of his own Grutrissheit. However, almost immediately after the previous king's death, the second prince also died. In the subsequent power vacuum, the first and third prince started a fierce competition for the throne which eventually boiled over into open warfare, and thus the civil war broke out.

The third prince managed to defeat and kill his elder brother, but was soon after killed by an assassin sent by the first prince shortly before their final battle. With the two contenders for the throne gone, a new conflict broke out between the fourth and fifth princes, with most of the former first prince's allies siding with the fourth and the former faction of the third going over to the fifth prince.

In this second part of the civil war, Trauerqual's faction came out on top, in no small part thanks to the alliance with Klassenberg. Following his victory, Trauerqual was crowned to be the new Zent.

Despite his complete victory, his ascension to the throne was still not unopposed. Due to him failing to fulfill the qualification set down in the bible and thus failing to gain the god's divine mandate, many in the Sovereignty temple initially opposed his coronation, but ultimately relented due to there simply being no other suitable candidate to hold the position.

Due to the civil war, the transcription of the Grutrissheit owned by Trauerqual's father, which was supposed to be passed to the next king was lost, alongside the second prince's bible. Usually in such a case, it is the new Zent's duty to make a new transcription from the one made by the first king, but since its location is currently unknown, King Trauerqual has so far been unable to fulfill this duty.

Furthermore, with the candidates raised to potentially become king and the previous king all being dead, it is likely that many secrets passed down from the king orally have been lost.

This, alongside the bitterness over an unqualified royal becoming king, is what gave rise to the movement of the biblical fanaticism.

Following his victory and coronation, the new king imprisoned his older brother and initially only enacted small-scale punishments on his enemies, despite massive pressure from his allies for harsh and wide-reaching measures against their enemies.

Emboldened by the belief that Trauerqual would be unwilling to commit to mass-executions, the duchy of Werkerstock conspired to have the new king assassinated and install the fourth prince on the throne. At some point, a group of rebels also kidnapped Trauerqual's daughter in an attempt to blackmail him into abdicating in favor of his brother.

Faced with these actions, the king eventually gave in to the pressure of his allies and thus a far-reaching and brutal purge was enacted throughout the entire country, leading to the dissolution of several of the defeated duchies and the mass execution of a large number of nobles. Among those sentenced to death was anyone who had supported the first or fourth princes or had a claim to the throne, as well as others seen as disloyal. Without a Grutrissheit, the duchy borders could not be redrawn, so the affected territory was only put under the management of the Sovereignty or neighboring duchies loyal to the king.

This purge was not limited to just members of the losing faction, but also affected the winning duchies and those that remained neutral throughout the conflict.

This purge even claimed the lives of people who were not implicated in any act of disloyalty, but just had the misfortune to have a family relation with one of the nobles labelled as a traitor, even if they were part of a duchy that had supported the king during the war. One such example was the second wife of Aub Ahrensbach, who was executed due to being the little sister of Aub Werkerstock, despite being innocent herself and her husband fighting alongside the prince in the civil war.

To make matters worse for many duchies, the Sovereignty tried to fill the gaps in their noble ranks by calling nobles from the duchies to the Sovereignty, leaving many duchies drained of even more manpower and mana than the purge itself already did. This can be felt particularly strongly in the various temples, since they lost personnel three times: Once from the purge, once from the sovereign temple calling the best and mana-richest priests to the heart of the country, and finally from the duchies recalling those they sent to the temple to noble society.

Originally, the king planned to have Anastasius fill the role of overseer at the Royal Academy in the terms following his graduation, but due to being given lordship over Sovereignty lands, Anastasius became very occupied with filling the land and its magic tools with mana. After much debate, the king decides that this was too important to interrupt and thus reluctantly chose his third son, the just recently baptized Hildebrand, to oversee the next term at the Royal Academy. While it is unprecedented for a child to take up official duties before their debut at Archduke's Conference following their baptism, the current situation left the king with no other viable choice than to rely on the young boy.

At the Interduchy Tournament following Rozemyne's second Royal Academy term, a group of rebels led by former Werkerstock nobles launched an attack on the royal family utilizing several ternisbefallen. They unleashed the mana-absorbing feybeasts in the arena with the students and in the ensuing chaos launched themselves at the king and his family. The attackers were so fanatical that some of them even launched suicide attacks, either by blowing themselves up, or by willingly feeding themselves to the rampaging feybeasts to power them up.

Despite their efforts, no member of the royal family sustained serious injury. However, there were many injured and even several dead among the students.

When he speaks with his son Hildebrand about his situation, he sounds as if he never wanted to be king - a position for which he was never educated - and would be entirely willing to hand over the position to one of his sons, should they come into possession of the lost Grutrissheit and prove themselves to be a proper king candidate.

The next time Rozemyne sees the king at the award ceremony, he looks a lot better, clearly having been greatly assisted by the mana the students provided to the Sovereignty and being healed by Rozemyne.

After an incident at the Dedication Whirl in which a magic circle briefly flickered to life underneath Lady Detlinde of Ahrensbach, the Sovereign High Bishop announces that the circle in question is part of the selection process for the position of zent and that his conclusion is that Detlinde is a viable candidate. Despite the misgivings of pretty much every noble not of Ahrensbach, Trauerqual states that, should she obtain the Grutrissheit, he would readily cede the throne to her. Privately, he has no confidence in her abilities or temperament, but believes very strongly that the Grutrissheit is a necessity for the ruler. He also seems to have quite some faith in Ferdinand, apparently believing that even with Detlinde's shortcomings, with him at her side it will still work out somehow.


 * Cambridge Online Dictionary