Preparing for the King's wedding took much longer than it took to arrange for Callum and Rayla's one. This was because the two kingdoms had first to agree on how to organize the nation that would be born from the union of Katolis and Duren: Would legislation have been standardized or would a kind of federation have been created? It was decided, in the end, to keep the codes of laws separated: in fact, creating a single legal corpus would have taken years and years of work, time that Ezran and Aanya could not afford to lose. Legal standardization would only take place a century and a half later, during the reign of Sarai III.

Regulatory inconsistencies were resolved by drawing up a Supreme Charter, in which were written the fundamental principles that the subjects of both nations should follow: the freedom of movement of citizens between the two nations, equality of rights between humans and elves, freedom of worship... and the total abolition of dark magic. The latter paragraph was strongly desired by Queen Aanya, despite the concerns of Ezran and Callum: it must be said, however, that most of the dark magicians of Katolis had already fled to Neolandia, and that by now enough elven wizards had moved into the kingdom to take their place.

The Supreme Charter, masterpiece son of the collaboration of Lord Nissem and Kanun, the First Jurist of Duren, is rightly considered a great innovation from the legal point of view. At the time, however, it raised many concerns, especially among the Elves who little understood the importance that humans gave to written laws. "Humans spend years writing laws they don't respect, instead of following traditions like us Elves. And say that their life is so short!" It seems it was the comment of an Earthblood dignitary visiting Katolis.

And all this only for the legal aspect: not to mention the problem of the merger of the two armies, or the equally important one of the currency (it took years and three different reforms to finally standardize the coin).

Eventually, however, the work of the jurists ended, and the ceremony could take place.

It was not a festive moment as the marriage of the king's brother had been: mourning for the fallen of the Battle of the Sand was still fresh. On the other hand, it was a much more solemn event.

For the occasion, the capital of Katolis was filled with Durenian notables: it had been decided that the royal couple would reside at the Rock of Katolis, because Katolis was the largest and most populous of the two kingdoms. The complaints of the Durenian nobles, who feared being relegated to a peripheral role, were allayed by granting Duren the right to govern himself with his own council subordinate only to the sovereign.

Given the scale of the event, the entire ceremony did not take place in the castle, but in the main square of the city, opposite the temple of Justice protector of the Kings, whose construction Lady Opeli had so much encouraged.

On March 19, 1241, before the eyes of the entire capital's population, King Ezran married Queen Aanya of Duren, in a ceremony officiated by two priests, one Durenian and one Katolean, according to the new liturgy that had been written for the wedding of Rayla and Callum almost a year earlier. After the bride and groom had pronounced their vows, and placed their seals on the Supreme Charter, Aanya crowned Ezran King of Duren, and was crowned by him Queen of Katolis, amid the ovations of the people.

The ceremony, however, was not yet over.

In front of ten thousand bewildered looks, the priests placed on the head of the two suzerains a third crown, which skillful goldsmiths had manufactured in great secrecy and in record time following the orders of Queen Aanya. The entire continent muttered when Opeli ordered the crowd to kneel before "His Majesty Ezran and his consort Aanya, by the grace of the gods King and Queen of Katolis and Duren, Emperors of the West."

To us moderns this change of title may seem negligible, but it implied a radical change in what had been the Katolean policy over the past seventy years.

What we modern translate as "Emperor" in the Katolean language of the Ezran era literally meant "Supreme Lord" or "Great King". It did not mean only ruler of two kingdoms: in that case the simple royal title would have sufficed.

When he was crowned emperor, Ezran automatically placed himself in a legally superior position to all other human kings. It meant not only that the rulers of Neolandia, Del Bar, and Evemere were inferior to him, but it also implicitly admitted that they should submit to his rule. A king rules a nation, but the power of the emperors extends ideally over the whole world.

Even the royal symbols changed accordingly, due in large part to the attention to detail of Lady Opeli. A new banner joined the scarlet one of Katolis and the blue one of Duren. The new imperial coat of arms showed a black two-headed phoenix in gold field: the left head bore the crown of Duren, the right the one of Katolis.

The reactions of the rest of the continent to this news were varied. In Xadia no one actually realized the importance of the thing: the Elves were in fact accustomed to give themselves high-sounding names, and Elven rulers often changed their titles even several times a year, according to fashion, without their power undergoing changes for this. For example, Queen Janai's full title was "Her Radiance Janai, Golden Knight of Lux Aurea, Lady of the Golden City, Blessed by the Sun, Queen of the Sunfire Elves, Daughter of the Light and Guardian of the Sun Forge, She who defends the Borders of Xadia."

Rayla, who came from Xadia, felt the same way. To Callum, who feared that Ezran had acted too rashly, she used to reply: "It's just a word. If I called Ezran by the name of bird, would he grow wings?"

In Neolandia, howewer, the threat did not escape anyone, although many underestimated it. Taleq writes:

"I was having dinner with the King when a messenger brought the news. I almost choked on a piece of stuffed quail from the surprise. Ilehas reassured me: "They fight with words because they have nothing else, my friend. They are just trying to frighten us". But he did not succeed in stifling my concern. We magicians know well that words possess great power."

At Del Bar, Prince Vigimer was the first to contact Ezran to congratulate him. He was told of Sigmond's attempts to ally with Neoland, and needed to find his own allies.

The queen of Evemere, for her part, sent rich wedding gifts, but referring to Ezran only as "King of Katolis and Duren".

That the imperial coronation had been planned by Aanya for a long time is well known. Many argue that she was driven only by the lust for power: it is undeniable that with that marriage she suddenly found herself at the head of the largest nation that had ever existed west of the Breach. But it must be considered that the young queen paid dearly for this new position: not only was she now forced to share power with her husband, but she also had to sacrifice much of her pride by moving to Katolis, in fact delegating her homeland to a subordinate role. Probably, Aanya was genuinely convinced that the good of her kingdom could only be achieved by strengthening central power.

It's been harder for historians to try to figure out how much responsibility Ezran had in all this. The King of Katolis had been until now a mild and decidedly not expansionist ruler, and such a change gave rise to the most unlikely theories. Some have come to think that Ezran had remained completely unaware of the thing until the crown was placed on his head: this is a suggestive hypothesis, but not credible. Such an act certainly could not have been planned without Ezran knowing of it in some way: after all, it was Opeli who organized the ceremony, and her blind loyalty to the young king is well known.

Why, then, did Ezran accept Aanya's terms? What changed his mind?

Although I am convinced that this will forever remain one of the great mysteries of history, there are two explanations that seem more capable to provide answers on what happened.

The first is that so far Ezran had always been able to count on Amaya, the most skillful general Katolis has had in centuries. With her death, however, Ezran began to have doubts about the loyalty of the army, and the attempt on his life that he had suffered certainly did not help to reassure him. Aanya, on the other hand, could count on the full support of her soldiers. It may therefore be that Ezran decided to accept Aanya's terms for fear that his men would turn against him otherwise.

The second hypothesis may seem silly by comparison, but my research has convinced me that it deserves to be taken into consideration:

Ezran could have fallen victim to love.