The Vignoli Dynasty
A list of all the Heads of the current imperial Dynasty on February 2227.
Anastasia I (circa 1050 – 28 August 1104)
Founder of the dynasty. She was adopted as daughter and heir of Duchess Matilda of Tuscany, who had never been able to carry a child of her own. Despite the fact that the Catholic society mostly excluded women from rule, Anastasia came out as an extremely wily and intelligent individual, capable of conquering the hearts of all the major vassals of the Duchess and even the favor of Pope Alexander II, who recognized her as an extremely pious woman and supported her ascension when Matilda died of tuberculosis on May 1066.
Anastasia even earned the recognition of Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, who accepted her as a vassal. Anastasia would then marry the second son of William the Conqueror right after the Norman duke had conquered England, establishing the first ties of the dynasty with the island.
During her rule, she would manage to bring most of Northern Italy under her control, convincing Henry IV to recognize her as Vice-queen of Italy and make it a hereditary title.
She would partake personally in the First Crusade, being the only King to actually take part in it, and her army would distinguish not only for playing a major part in the final conquest of Jerusalem, but also because the Queen would be the only crusader to oppose the massacre of civilians, even clashing with the retinue of Godfrey of Bouillon.
In 1101, Anastasia was crowned by Pope Gregory IV after she successfully mediated a new accord between the two clashing powers. The day of her coronation, July 12th, is considered an auspicious day by the members of the Vignoli family.
She died on August 28 1104. On July 1107 she was officially sanctified by the Catholic Church.
Federico I (1081 – 10 July 1116)
Third-born of Anastasia, Federico had actually been named after the first son of the Queen, who had died shortly before his birth from Rabies.
Differently from his mother, Federico was not happy at all with the status of the Kingdom of Italy inside the Empire, especially recriminating the fact that, despite being by large the biggest member kingdom, and arguably having a larger power base than the Emperor himself, the King of Italy was cut off from the imperial Diet and had not been elevated to be an Elector. He also studied some Classics and the history of the Roman Empire, which stoked in him a primordial sense of Italian nationalism.
In 1108, Federico declared that Italy would leave the Empire for good. Emperor Henry V mustered an army, but this was practically annihilated at the battle of San Martino. On May 10th 1110, the Peace of Graz recognized the independence of Italy.
Almost immediately, Federico launched a conquest of the various duchies of Southern Italy, and in 1112 he arrived at the ancient Hellenic temple of Lentini, in Sicily. Here, he gathered his most important vassals and after much convincing and negotiations, the King proclaimed the creation of Neo-Hellenism in 1114, launching a rapid conquest of Latium.
On June 14 1114, Federico declared the creation of the Empire of Italia, with Rome as its capital and the creation of the Capitoline Concordat. 1115 he would also sponsor the creation of the Myrmidons, a counterpart to the Catholic's holy orders of knights.
To his own surprise, Federico found a vast support for his new religion among the population, especially many women who welcomed their newfound equality of rights.
He died of cancer on July 10th 1116.
Lucia I (January 22 1106 – February 14 1158)
Firstborn of Federico, Lucia would become one of the longest reigning Heads of the family. She was only ten years old when the crown passed on to her, yet she was already an ambitious girl and she had inherited the riches of her father and a loyal bureaucratic machine. Her army took care of some religious rebellions that took place after the death of Federico and lasted until 1124.
Lucia honored the policy of religious tolerance of her father, granting an amnesty to all the Catholics who had revolted and making deals with the Italian Bishops that allowed them to keep their power among their communities, in exchange for them never instigating revolts ever again.
After turning 16, she took a lover knight as a secondary consort, and in 1124 she even managed to marry William II, King of England, a marriage that would result in a daughter and a son of the King, thus placing some pawns in the dynastic game and strengthening the ties between the two Houses.
The long reign of Lucia saw the conversion of the Apostolic Palace in Rome into the first foundation of the Imperial Citadel, the seat of power of the Vignoli dynasty to this day. During her time, the Stoica Intelligentsia, an important Hellenistic intellectual society, was founded and the Capitoline Concordat would create the concept of the Great Holy Wars as a counter to the Crusades and the Jihads.
Lucia took part in the first of these Wars by conquering Egypt in 1126 after a year-long war against the Fatimids. This was the start of six decades of Hellenistic rule over the north-African region.
In 1137, Lucia conquered Sardinia and Corsica from the HRE. Two years later, her firstborn Federico turned 16 and the Empress made him Duke of Lombardy, combining two marriages for him. One of them was a matrilineal marriage with the daughter of the Duke of Hohenzollern.
In 1147, the first son of King William, Hubert, assassinated his father and took the throne, feeling threatened by the siblings his father had sired with the Empress. He tried to have them stripped of their titles and killed, but with the support of Lucia, Prince George would come out victorious and became King, establishing an alliance with the Empire.
After a familial dispute with the Queen of Navarre, Lucia would defeat the latter and establish the first Kingdom of Aragon in 1153 as a tributary state, meaning that it was mostly independent, thus involving the Empire in the struggle for Iberia that would go on for centuries.
Federico II (August 20 1123 – April 5 1166)
Federico II ascended to the throne as a mature man with an already adult son. His reign was short, as he died after falling from his horse only 8 years into his rule. He is still credited for helping the family of his second wife, Irmeltrude of the Hohenzollern, conquer the lands of Brandenburg, occupied by the Teutonic Order, and assigning it to the second child he had with Irmeltrude: Wilhelm.
He also used Egypt as a bridge to establish relations with China and the Song Dynasty.
Guglielmo I (March 3 1153 – August 15 1174)
Seeing the growing dissent among the Egyptian branch of the family, Guglielmo decided to grant the independence of the reign in his first act as Emperor. This is most likely due to the extremely pacifist and pragmatic personality of the Emperor, who was much more interested in theology than in politics.
He pursued a policy of 'good neighboring' with the Christian kingdoms of Europe, an attitude that these monarchs accepted gladly, given that Italia was the only state in Europe with a standing army at the time.
He also accepted the conversion to Christianity of his nephew Sancho of Aragon, who brought the Iberian Kingdom on the side of the Reconquista.
Guglielmo would die of dysentery.
Marco I (September 8 1170 – November 2 1223)
Marco had become heir only because his older brother had died, his elder sister suffered from mental deficit and his second elder sister was stillborn. Since he came on the throne at the age of 4, Italia would see a period of regency led by the Duchess of Tuscany and the Imperial Council, which gathered all the nobles of the realm.
In 1185, just as Marco was about to become of age by the Italian law, the Sunni Caliphate launched a jihad against Egypt. The Italian army was preparing to go rescue their religious brethren when the news came that Queen Bianca had launched a botched offensive and had been captured, ending the war immediately. Egypt was lost, but the mark left by the Hellenic Italians would not vanish so easily.
Marco's goal for his entire life was to reassert the role of his realm over the Mediterranean after this defeat, so he turned his attention toward the fractured Iberian peninsula. Making a temporary alliance with the Christian kings of the north, Marco launched the Second Great Holy War in 1186 against the Almohad Sultanate, which controlled most of the center and south of the peninsula and had its base in Morocco. Despite defeating the Muslim army on the field and conquering several cities, Marco had to hastily return to Italy after Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa launched a war to restore the Pope in Rome and conquer Northern Italy.
For the first time, the Germans inflicted several defeats upon the pagans, reaching a few km from Rome, but were eventually defeated at the decisive Battle of Narni, where Barbarossa was captured and forced to abandon his holy war. After this victory, Marco returned to Iberia and caused the collapse of the Almohad rule in Iberia by 1191, fragmenting the south of the peninsula with several duchies and an Andalusian Governatorate.
In 1202, Pope Innocent III called another crusade for Italy, but Marco deployed an army of 40.000 men-at-arms. Even for the HRE this would have been impossible, and this show of strength, combined with a long series of religious and political reasons, meant that the crusade was redirected against the Byzantine Empire, culminating with the sack of Constantinople in 1204.
Marco spent the rest of his reign by creating coastal fortifications against Berber raiders, building several temples that earned him the nickname 'Pious', and by suppressing a revolt of the Duke of Abruzzi, substituting him with his daughter Claudia dei Vignoli. He died just when whispers of a new threat from the Far East had started circulating in the Mediterranean.
Guglielmo II (May 4 1192 – July 6 1243)
Beset by a frail constitution, Guglielmo still managed to rule for 20 years. Except for the Third Great Holy War (1232 - 1234), which brought the conquest of the lands between the Gulf of Sfax and the one of Cyrenaica, his reign was mostly peaceful, and it was only broken by the arrival of the Mongol Horde from the steppes of the East.
Guglielmo sent an army to help his brother-in-law, the King of Hungary Béla IV, and the Italian army inflicted the only defeat that the Mongols ever suffered from a European army at the Battle of the Tibisco, where the Mongol cavalry was drawn into a trap and encircled.
This battle arguably prevented the Mongols from ever pushing beyond the Carpathians, though it is still debated whether this battle occurred in the context of a Mongol conquest or a simple raid.
Federico III (December 26 1210 – December 18 1268)
Being only the second son of Guglielmo, Federico was still chosen as the heir. After all, at age 33 he was already known around the whole of Europe and Mediterranean world as 'Stupor Mundi' by the intellectuals. Federico was marked by an acute intelligence, charisma and an insatiable curiosity about the world.
He had to fight another attempt by the Holy Roman Emperor, Otto V, to reconquer Italy (1247 -1249), and even if the war ended in an Italian victory, Federico lost his most beloved sister, Giacinta, at the battle of Como. This traumatic event brought him to choose Minerva, the Goddess of Wisdom, as his patron deity, and Federico spent the rest of his reign doing exactly what the name of his protector implied.
Under his patronage, the great observatory on Mount Navegna was built, and he himself was particularly interested in astronomy. In 1260, after years of studies, Federico published a book where he proved that Earth was not the center of the universe, but rather part of a much greater universe. This theory caused great debate among Hellenic scholars, while the Catholic Church tried to prevent its diffusion in the rest of Europe, but it would go on to inspire great minds like Copernicus and Galileo Galilei in the upcoming centuries.
In 1251, after arranging a marriage for one of his half-brothers with the daughter of the fledgling King of Portugal, Federico involved his army into another phase of the Reconquista, which brought to the expansion of Portugal from the simple town of Porto all the way south to Lisbon and Algarve. It also granted Italia the strategic Rock of Gibraltar.
The latter years of Federico's reign were marked by the creation of the first Medical University in Rome and by the construction of a great network of hospitals all along the peninsula, by the creation of modular trebuchets and by a first codification of the Italian language.
Federico IV (March 9 1234 – September 10 1299)
If Federico III was admired in all of Europe for his love of knowledge, Federico IV would become the most feared man in the Christian courts. He is, to this day, the only Head of the Vignoli family to be a follower of Mars, and he had served in the Myrmidons for a few years before becoming heir.
His first act was to declare the Fourth Great Holy War (1272 - 1275) against England. By that point, the House of Normandy had a legitimate claim on the throne of Italia, and Federico decided that this could not be allowed to continue, thus he invaded. With a logistical skill that only a veteran commander would be able to show, his army first conquered the duchy of Normandy, then used the port of Rouen to stage an invasion of the island.
The army of King Reginald was crushed two times, and the King hid in the countryside for two years before Federico convinced the nobles of the realm to switch sides and declare their allegiance to him, in exchange for keeping all their titles and privileges, including the right to stay Catholic.
Federico put his sister Amalia on the throne and had her marry matrilineally with a minor noble, ensuring that the main branch of the family would keep the title. He then rushed back to Italy, where the Christian Emperor was attempting to use the absence of his Hellenic counterpart to at least take the mountain passes in the Alps. Federico beat him easily and conquered the South Tirol.
In 1282, the Emperor led a lightning war against the HRE that conquered the Rhone Valley. The Christian kings formed a coalition that attacked Italia in 1285, but once again Federico crushed their armies one by one.
In the following years, he kept pushing into France, conquering Aquitaine and the entire South, reaching for the Atlantic coast. Other religious leagues were unable to stop him. Luckily for the Christians, the Emperor was found dead in his bed on September 10 1299, likely from a heart failure.
Marco II (August 11 1258 – May 29 1305)
Marco is mostly remembered for his unshackled love for women. When he ascended to the throne he already had four wives and several mistresses. His Council was formed almost entirely of women who, although capable, were believed to be among his love interest.
Yet, Marco was also the epitome of an Eminence in Shadow: he had built a deep web of spies and informants that allowed him to know every little secrets of the nobles in his reign. He certainly used this knowledge to keep them in line, but also to uncover their illicit traffics and destroy thieves' guilds and smugglers.
He also proved to be a decent administrator, so much that his reign was marked by a long peace and prosperity for the entire realm.
Anastasia II (April 13 1299 – February 5 1336)
It is speculated that Marco chose his first daughter as heir just because he really liked women, but it is undeniable that Anastasia really took from the ancestor she took her name from: already at age 16, she had proven to be extremely talented in all matters of statehood and was loved by the great vassals.
In 1308, believing that the ascension of a woman was a sign of weakness, for some reason, the byzantine Emperor Joseph I, having just finished the reunification of his Empire after the destruction caused the Fourth Crusade, decided to gamble and invaded Italy. His army put Lecce under siege, but Anastasia promptly mustered her army and marched against the Byzantines, defeating them after a battle that lasted for five days and which saw the Roman army decimated. Joseph retreated back to the Balkans, but Anastasia decided to counterattack and the war dragged on.
In this conflict, Anastasia would inadvertently cause the final decline of the Byzantine Empire when she financed a little Turkish Sultan on the Anatolian Coast named Osman. This chief allied with the Empress and used this opportunity to conquer several cities in Anatolia, and when Joseph finally decided to sue for peace, in 1311, the Byzantine army was too weak to counterattack. Even if Anastasia only asked for reparations and didn't take any land, the Byzantines would never recover from this disaster.
Anastasia now turned her attention toward managing her Empire and she patronized many artists and literates at court. In particular, she also became friends with Dante Alighieri, whose greatest work, the Divina Commedia, would become the basis for the Italian language and also define the composition of the Hellenic afterlife.
In 1321 she intervened on the side of the Christians after the Sultan of Morocco had made significant gains in southern Iberia, threatening to retake Gibraltar, too. The combined arms of Hellenists and Christians stopped the enemy onslaught at the battle of Alicante.
In 1326, after suffering multiple raids from french vassals and knights into the duchies of Lione and Marseille, Anastasia sent a formal protest to King Louis IV, asking him to stop these incursions. Louis replied with extreme arrogance, calling Anastasia a 'pagan wench' and that she and all polytheists deserved nothing less.
In response, the Empress declared war, starting the series of conflicts that would become known as the Hundred Years' War (1326 - 1451). This phase ended with a victory of the Empire, which forced the french King to cede the city of Calais to the English crown.
In 1333, Anastasia launched the last Great Holy War, aiming it toward Andalusia. This choice was dictated by the sudden rise of the Osman Sultanate in the east, which had recently invaded mainland Europe and conquered several byzantine holdings in Greece, though they didn't manage to take Constantinople.
Before launching the war, Anastasia had called up several great Christian monarchs to a meeting in Milan and managed to convince them that Islam was the major threat to both of them and that Hellenists and Christians needed to cooperate in order to push the Muslims back beyond Gibraltar and the Bosporus. This meeting is believed to be the start of the normalizing relations between Christianity and Neo-Hellenism, while Islam would remain extremely hostile to the pagan religion for centuries to come.
So while the Christians prepared a crusade against the Ottomans, the Hellenists launched their offensive against the Andalusian sultanate. On July 29 1334, the Muslims were decisively defeated and would be relegated to a small strip of land in southern Iberia called the Emirate of Granada.
It was the last political and military masterpiece of Anastasia, as she contracted malaria and died not even two years later.
Federico V (October 7 1303 – January 7 1339)
Federico is considered the greatest stain on the history of the dynasty. It's not even clear how he managed to be designated as heir, for the moment he took the throne, he started a massive purge of anyone he considered a threat, including his half-brothers. He had several nobles arrested or executed, crushed a peasant revolt in a particularly violent way and he is suspected of killing his cousin, King Henry of England. He even had his first wife killed in 1338 after discovering that she had an affair with a courtier, even if Neo-Hellenism doesn't condemn polyamory.
It was no surprise for anyone when he got assassinated and the throne passed to his only son.
Federico VI (April 19 1332 – December 15 1374)
Despite his young age and the unrest caused by his father, Federico's hold on the throne was saved by the fruits of all his predecessors' work: the Vignoli dynasty occupied most of the important regions of Italy and the family banded together to support the new Emperor, granting him protection and the education necessary for him to become a worthy ruler. The Council even led a conquest of Athens and Thessaly from the decaying Byzantines, creating a few independent duchies and giving the island of Eubea to the Myrmidons.
Federico didn't have a particular calling or grand vision for the future of his realm, but he did embrace his duties without falter. Before his coming of age he had arranged a marriage with the Queen of England Matilda.
And it was a good thing he did, for the year of him turning 16, Europe and Italy were invested by the Black Plague. While the peninsula was hit just as badly as the rest of the world, the grand network of hospitals created by Federico III and expanded on by his successors arguably saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Cities were evacuated to limit the spread of the disease and the court was temporarily moved to Bologna once the plague had subsided there and instead reached Rome.
Federico gave a huge financial support to the hospitals and the medical research, to the point that a student of the Medical University of Rome, Tommasina de Zorzi, theorized for the first time that the disease was connected to the rats, which were also suffering from the Plague.
On March 1353, when the plague had mostly disappeared from the peninsula, Federico and Matilda had their first child: Benedetta. Then, on New Year's Eve 1354 the Emperor returned to Rome, where he was welcomed as a hero for his efforts in favor of the people.
However, on July of that same year, the King of France Louis VIII started another phase of the Hundred Years' War by attacking the region of Picardie, which had fallen under the control of the English crown shortly before the arrival of the Plague.
At the battle of Sancerre, March 10 1356, the imperial army was defeated and Matilda was mortally wounded, leaving the throne to Benedetta.
The rest of Federico's reign would be mostly spent in a long back-and-forth in France, and while Picardie was lost, in 1365 the Italians would manage to secure the entirety of Aquitaine again and in 1367 a new truce was signed.
In 1369, for the first time, the Hellenists became the target of the Christian Reconquista in Iberia, for King Alfonso III of Aragon tried to conquer the Balearic Islands, held by Italia, however he was quickly defeated.
He would then go back home and dedicate himself to the hobby of hunting until his death.
Benedetta I (September 30 1353 – January 10 1392)
Being already Queen of England, Benedetta ascended to the imperial throne and reformed the Empire to finally integrate the island into her reign. After brokering an accord with the English and Italian nobles, she proclaimed the creation of the Anglo-Italic Union, the first centralized state in Western Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire, with a Parliament and a greatly expanded Council that granted an equal share of power to the nobles of both realms.
She then set her eyes on conquering all of France, starting a new campaign 1382 while the rest of Christian Europe was busy with another crusade against the Ottomans. Despite a few setbacks, the campaign was a success, and the region of Guascony fell under the control of the Union, cutting off France from the Atlantic entirely and creating a territorial continuity from the Alps to Normandy.
Other expeditions were successful but they never managed to secure more territory, though they did weaken the French Kingdom.
Benedetta would go back to stabilize her new Union and ensure peace.
Federico VII (February 14 1370 – February 20 1422)
Federico had ambitions. Ambitions to finally submit the entire France and make the Union the prospected overlord of all Western Europe. For this reason, in 1407, after expanding the army for years, he launched a grand invasion, with his trusted sister Anastasia as his second-in-command, the Emperor would have to face the intervention of the HRE, Denmark, Castile, Aragon and Hungary on the side of the French.
It was a long phase of war, made mostly of sieges and retreats as neither side sought a decisive battle. Until October 25 1415, where the great battle of Azincourt took place. Federico and Anastasia managed to trick the Christians into attacking through muddy fields, and while the Italian pikemen kept the enemy cavalry at bay, the English longbows decimated the rest of the army. Despite facing an army of 60.000 with only 40.000, the Hellenists came out victorious in a decisive battle.
Federico thus moved to siege the city of Orléans, in order to effectively split France in two, but he was killed by an arrow as he led an assault against one of the outer outposts, and the war came to a halt.
Federico VIII (July 3 1392 – April 4 1430)
This Federico is remembered only because he was the only child of his father, and thus came to rule despite having no talent whatsoever. He named his aunt Anastasia the Marshall of the Empire and let her manage the realm to continue the war in France.
However, during his reign, in France rose the figure of Joan of Arc, which started the most iconic phase of the Hundred Years' War: that of the confrontation between Anastasia, the 'Steel Princess' and Joan, the 'Maiden'.
In 1429, Joan defeated an imperial army at the battle of Patay and Anastasia responded by starting a campaign to take Paris. During the siege, on April 8 1431, the two women set out to fight each other in a legendary duel that saw Joan winning and killing Anastasia, but being mortally wounded herself, she died a few days later.
Federico IX (October 24 1426 – March 6 1469)
Federico had ascended to the throne while the war in France was raging. When news came of his grand-aunt's death, the Parliament decided that the war had already cost enough to the Union and that it was impossible to completely submit France. There were also more pressing matters in the East, so in the following truce of 1432, the nobles decided to withdraw, returning Picardie to France. Before Federico came of age, the French would also reconquer some ports on the Atlantic.
Federico had been chosen as heir even if he was only the fifth child, because at a very young age he had shown a great intellect, and many hoped that he would be the reincarnation of his third name's ancestor. Indeed, Federico grew up to be a great philosopher-king, but he was also impulsive in the matters of state, as he started another war with France in 1447 in a hasty manner. This costed the Union Normandy and Marseille, losing everything in between. Only Calais remained in the hands of the Union.
This war also distracted him from the real threat in the East: in 1451, while the Hundred Years' War was coming to an end, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II finally conquered Constantinople after a long siege. Federico had wanted to help the city, but only a handful of Genoan and Venetian volunteers made their way to the Theodosian Walls.
Still, after the fall of the city, Federico invited many byzantine refugees and scholars to Italy, resettling them into many villages that had lost much manpower in the last conflict with France and the scholars brought with them invaluable copies of the ancient philosophers.
At the same time, reeling from his defeat, Federico recognized some critical weakness in the Union Army, and from 1455 he started a massive reform. He centered this reform around the quality of the army, abolishing the old system where nobility gave rank: now every peasant could start as a simple soldier and end up being the Marshall of the Empire after a successful career. Every form of nepotism in the Army would have earned both the offender and the protege a dishonorable discharge.
Federico also formalized the creation of a standing Navy to protect England from any invasion and secure the Mediterranean. Finally, he created the Imperial Guard, where the candidates had to have at least 5 years of service and had to pass a harsh examination.
He also embraced fully the diffusion of firearms, seeing the benefit of a weapon that could easily transform masses of peasants into soldiers after a few months of training.
Federico granted also a greater degree of autonomy to England, effectively making it a semi-independent state with a model that would, centuries later, inspire the Dominions.
To test his new army, Federico launched an invasion of the petty kingdoms of Ireland in 1467, overwhelming all of them in just 11 months and bringing the other island of Britannia under the Union. The Emperor had barely the time to grant the Irish equal rights as citizens of the Union before he died of a fever.
Guglielmo III (March 17 1447 – August 4 1489)
The reign of Guglielmo III started with the French Succession War (1469-1474). King Louis XII had died without heirs and his crown was to be passed to his cousin, the King of Castile, Juan III. Ironically, Federico IX had previously guaranteed Castile against the dynastic pretenses of the French King. When Juan took the French crown, Poland and Lithuania contested the succession and declared war. Castile called the Union to fulfill its obligations and Guglielmo was forced to abide, not wanting to go back on the duties of his nation.
Still, the Italians didn't invest much in the war. They did, however, moved against Poland in 1473 to test the new artillery regiments that Guglielmo had introduced. The cannons were not very precise yet, but the deployment of entire batteries were enough to crumble the morale of their enemies.
In 1474, Poland and Lithuania gave up and recognized the union, however this lasted very shortly, since France was much more powerful and the nobles were not happy at how the Castilian crown was trying to curtail their power in favor of the Spaniards. In 1475 the nobles launched an insurrection and Guglielmo gave them weapons and money, thus guaranteeing the return of France's independence in 1477.
After waging a war against the ever-growing Sultanate of Tunis, which had unified the coasts of Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, Guglielmo put a temporary stop to the Barbary raids on the Italian coasts and fragmented North Africa, removing what he perceived as a threat.
He then spent the rest of his reign by fully embracing the Humanist and Renaissance movements, sponsoring artistic and scientific schools. Even though he lost a few border territories to Austria and France in the latest years of reign, he is still credited for laying the foundations of the following Exploration Age.
Guglielmo IV (September 3 1472 – January 17 1517)
Having served in the Imperial Navy before ascending the throne, Guglielmo IV was a naval enthusiast. He made huge public investments in ports, dockyards and new navigation technologies, culminating in the financing of Cristoforo Colombo's journey through the Atlantic that led to the discovery of the Americas in 1496.
The following year, however, Guglielmo had to focus on the Balkans, involving his nation in its first conflict against the Ottomans in an attempt to defend Serbia and Belgrade. The allied armies were overcome by the more disciplined and numerous Ottoman army, but the Navy of the Union gained a huge victory in the Battle of the Strait of Otranto on December 6 1499. Despite this, the Ottomans still conquered Serbia and took Belgrade from Hungary, setting the Danube as their new border.
After the end of the war, Guglielmo wasted no time in financing the first colonial expedition on the new continent in order to establish outposts and make contact with the local populations. This led to the creation of a colony in Panama, where the colonists had the order to try and coexist with the locals, slowly drawing them in the colony and integrating them as citizens. This was the moment that decided the model that would be followed by all his successors.
Guglielmo's last triumph was to draw Scotland inside the diplomatic sphere of the Union once and for all, by tricking France into declaring war in 1516. Scotland was allied to both countries, but since France was the aggressor, King James IV entered war on the side of the Union, thus breaking the centuries-long alliance with France, and preparing the future entrance of Scotland inside the Union.
Guglielmo then died while leading the siege of Lione, without leaving children behind.
Lorenzo I (January 1 1478 – March 25 1533)
Known as the 'Magnificent', Lorenzo was one of Guglielmo's brothers and his most trusted advisor. He also had several children, unlike his brother, which made him a perfect successor. Lorenzo carried on the war against France, which ended in 1517. Lorenzo didn't ask for huge reparations and only forced France to cede the few territories it had beyond the Pyrenees to the new Kingdom of Spain, allied of the Union.
Spain itself had also started to send explorers and the infamous conquistadors in the Americas, already engaging wars against the local empires, an approach that worsened the relations between the two Mediterranean powers.
For his part, Lorenzo maintained his brother's and father's policy of patronizing arts and sciences, with the clear goal of making Italy a 'Beacon of Civilization'; he instituted the Italian Parliament, severely curtailing the power of the nobility by giving representation to the burghers; he also sponsored the exploration of the coasts of Africa, of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and the creation of commercial outposts like Cape Colony, or Ivoria.
Lorenzo also instituted the Treccani Academy in Italy and the Oxford University in England, both of which had the specific task of codifying the two languages.
Also, when in 1521 the Protestant Reformation started in Germany, Lorenzo used this chance to foment the creation of a new Church in England, one that would be loyal to the Emperor and not the Pope.
After a brief war against Switzerland and Austria, Lorenzo annexed part of the former into the Union. This show of weakness of the Hapsburg, combined with religious unrest, led to the revolt of the Netherlands.
Lorenzo finally made a personal tour of the colonies in Western Africa and declared the foundation of the Kingdom of Ivoria, by putting a local chief in power. By granting it several liberties and autonomy, the Kingdom would expand on its own and would always remain loyal to the Union.
Federico X (June 29 1512 – January 3 1561)
Federico was only considered a mediocre man by his teachers, but it can't be denied that he still performed quite well, given the fact that his entire reign would be marked by wars waged by foreign powers where he was always capable of managing the resources and people of the Union to an effective defense.
The first war was between the Ottomans. It ended with the Turks conquering Rhodes and Crete from the Myrmidons, but their fleet was eventually annihilated at the Battle of Blue Cave when it attempted to land an army on Malta. The Myrmidons were resettled on Malta, but made vassals of the Union.
From 1552 to 1555, the Union was targeted by the last Crusade: a huge Catholic coalition made by Austria, France, several principalities of the Holy Roman Empire and even Spain, which had by now broken the alliance with the Union. Despite major losses, the Union still managed to score another victory, forcing the disbanding of the Christian coalition and demanding huge reparations from its enemies.
Internally, Federico concluded the integration of Switzerland and continued the friendly colonization of Northern America, establishing formal diplomatic relations with the Iroquois Confederacy and the Pequot. This new colonies saw a mixed origin from Italy and England.
Marco III (March 15 1531 – March 21 1578)
Already 30-years-old, Marco had been eyeing the recent expansion of the Ottoman Empire, which had now conquered all of Croatia and Bosnia and reduced Hungary to its vassal at the expense of Austria. The latter was also being attacked by Poland-Lithuania for the control of Silesia.
Marco wanted to keep Austria as a bulwark against the Ottomans, so, in order to divert the attention of the Poles, he invaded Switzerland, an ally of the Commonwealth. On November 2 1565, the Treaty of Zurich decided the annexation of the whole Swiss Confederation to the Union and the renouncing of Poland-Lithuania to Silesia.
However, this conflict prompted many Christian rulers to create another coalition, including the same Austria in favor of which Marco had started his last war.
The 'War of the Augusta League' (1566-1572) saw the Union fighting for its very life, as Northern Italy was overrun at one point, only for the Italians to push out the invaders under the leadership of General Eugenia Zennetti. Meanwhile, the recently reformed Royal Navy and Army of England took over several Dutch and Spanish colonies all around the world, including the colony of New Amsterdam, which was then renamed New York.
The war was long and hard, but the Union still came out on top thanks to the superior quality of its army and even a slight advantage in military technology.
Another perk of this conflict was the fact that Scotland had fulfilled its obligations and had fought side-by-side with the Union, reinforcing the sense of unity between the Scots and the Union, and leading to the formal entrance of the Kingdom into the Union as an autonomous state, but still sworn to the Emperor. The Union Act was signed on November 15 1575, and the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was proclaimed, with the Head of the Vignoli Dynasty as its overlord.
Lorenzo II (June 15 1565 – May 30 1589)
Lorenzo came of age five years after his father's death, and his entire reign would be dedicated to stopping the Ottoman expansion. He formalized a defensive alliance with Austria in 1484, just a year before the truce between the Hapsburg and the Ottomans ran its course and Constantinople launched a new campaign to take Vienna.
Lorenzo didn't waste any time and mobilized the entire strength of his Empire to defend the Hapsburg. The Army had undergone a severe overhaul in tactics, formations and doctrine. The General Staff of the Union came up with a plan that included attacking along the dalmatian coast, striking deep into the Balkans while the Ottoman army was busy in the siege of Vienna. Meanwhile, the two Navies of the Union defeated the Ottoman one and became the uncontested masters of the Mediterranean, even going up the Bosporus and bombarding the outer fortresses of Constantinople. Then, on October 26 1586, the allied forces achieved a resounding victory over the Ottoman army near Eisenstadt.
The war eventually ended with the cession of Istria to Austria and a clear proof that the Ottomans were not invincible. However, Lorenzo had been wounded during the war, and an infection caused his death.
Federico XI (January 28 1580 – March 28 1625)
Given his young age at the death of his father, Federico's first period as Emperor was marked by the regency of his mother, Angelica Caccianemici. The Regent conquered Tunisia and also negotiated the lease of the port of Kumari in India, giving the Union a stock in the commerce of spices. She then stepped down voluntarily, remaining a trusted advisor to her son.
However, in the first year of his reign, he had to face a sudden invasion of Malta and Sicily from Spain, causing a conflict that convinced even the French to give it a go. While the latter were soundly defeated, the former had clearly planned this war for a while and the General Staff in Rome wasn't ready to react properly. This resulted in the loss of Southern Italy in 1603.
Federico would spend the following years by heavily investing in the standardization of calibers, the creation of the first carbines and updated cavalry formations. Luckily for him, Spain was then involved in the 'Ten Years' War' (1607-1617) that severely weakened it. On 1614, Federico launched his counterattack, and this war ended in a complete victory for the Union, returning all the lost territories.
Federico would spend the rest of his reign by getting involved into the politics of the Indian continent and also by witnessing the discovery of the Australian continent.
Marco IV (March 9 1600 – April 24 1647)
The reign of Marco IV was marked out by his marriage with a Tunisian noblewoman and his relentless colonial expansion. Contrary to the rest of his dynasty, he seemed to believe that the Hellenic civilization was a superior one, and the natives in the Americas or Australia had to fully embrace it if they wanted to be integrated.
Still, the colonial expansion remained mostly peaceful. In 1632, both Italians and British founded the first colonies in Australia.
Marco also introduced the first standard uniforms of the Union armies.
Anastasia III (August 10 1625 – April 27 1656)
Known as the 'Moorish' for her skin color, Anastasia quickly rose to prominence among the children of Marco for her energetic behavior and her incredible skill at charming everyone with her incredible wit, knowledge and beauty. She was also notorious for not respecting court etiquette at all, often wearing fur clothing as if she was about to set out for a quest in the wilderness.
Despite this, she never underestimated her duties as one of the most powerful rulers in the world. She would go on to fight alongside the Christians against another Ottoman invasion, in the war that saw a mostly Catholic fleet achieve a great tactical victory at the famous Battle of Lepanto. The Ottomans tried once again to take Vienna, but this time their army suffered an even more catastrophic defeat at the hands of the Coalition in 1650, starting a counteroffensive that saw Austria conquer most of Hungary, Croatia and push all the way to Belgrade until 1652.
Benedetta II (October 7 1644 – June 2 1696)
Benedetta is credited for conquering a foothold in Canada after a war with France and for waging another war with the Ottomans that ended in the liberation of Greece and the establishment of a new Greek Kingdom, vassal of the Union, in 1669.
After her coronation as Queen of England, she elevate the United Kingdom to the status of Empire, earning the support of the people and the nobles as this granted them full equality with the Italians.
She also expanded the influence of the Union in India after the collapse of the Bahmanis Sultanate.
Lucia II (June 23 1672 – October 18 1715)
The reign of Lucia saw almost immediately the start of the War of Spanish Succession, which would rock the entirety of Europe, but since the Union remained neutral, it became a safe haven for refugees and many bright minds who sought to continue their work in a country that would not only grant them peace, but also a salary for doing the thinking.
This brought another explosion in the medical field. The profession of Medic was officially recognized and sanctioned by the State. The rule of Lucia saw a general increase in the quality of life for the entire Union, even in the remote colonies.
She also gave her full support to the growing abolitionist movement, because despite the Union being incredibly inclusive, compared to the other countries of the world, slavery for non-citizens was still legal. In particular, the loyal Kingdom of Ivoria still had the tradition of raiding neighboring tribes and selling the prisoners as slaves, many of which went to the American colonies, where manpower was needed by the big landholders, and to other European powers.
Lorenzo III (October 12 1691 – March 13 1727)
Lorenzo is remembered both for a great military victory and for almost causing the destruction of the Union.
His first act as ruler was to declare war on the Ottomans with the full might of the Union and a well-planned offensive that took the forces of the Sultan by storm. From the bases in Greece, the Unionist armies advanced toward the Balkans and even sacked Constantinople on 1717, capturing the Sultan and forcing him to liberate Albania, cede Thessaly, Macedonia and several Aegean islands to Greece and pay an exorbitant reparation.
Despite this success, Lorenzo is criticized for being extremely stubborn and for not tolerating any form of dissent. He cracked down on the growing movement of the Enlightenment and eventually declared war on Austria in 1723, starting the 'Five Years' War'.
To counter this aggression, the whole of Europe came to the help of Austria, if anything to put down the pagan Empire once and for all.
The Italian army managed to win some battles, but it wasn't enough to turn the odds that were stacked against them. At least the Royal Army managed to conquer the whole of Canada from the French, but by 1723 the whole of Northern Italy had fallen to the allies. Even if Lorenzo managed to conclude separate armistices with Spain and Austria, the French and their allies might have just continued their march on Rome if Lorenzo hadn't died at the battle of Poggibonsi.
Alessandro I (May 61708 – August 23 1757)
Alessandro understood that it was useless to continue the war, but while he decided to take time with Austria, ceding the region of Veneto and the Tyrol to the Empress Maria-Theresa, he wasn't going to give up Milan and the Piedmont to the French. With the latter already exhausted from the defeats in the colonies, Alessandro mustered an army from every corner of the Empire and launched a campaign that eventually reconquered Milan and defeated the French for good, forcing them to give up their colonial ambitions in America and India but also ceding the island of Corsica, signing the Treaty of Rome on March 24 1728.
The Emperor then wasted no time in directing the efforts to rebuild the devastated lands of Northern Italy. He gave full citizenship rights to the French speakers of Canada and he would eventually abolish slavery entirely, but only in the European territories of the Union, as he didn't want to upset the King of Ivoria or the slaveholders in the American colonies.
Alessandro is described as the incarnation of an Enlightened Monarch, for he completely reversed the repressive policies of his father, granting the freedom of speech and press, but also bolstering the armed forces as he intended to retake Veneto.
Such opportunity came in 1737, when Frederick II of Prussia, a close friend of the Vignoli family, started the First Silesian War against Austria. The Union joined the war and easily reconquered all lost land.
The reign of Alessandro would also see the Union annexing the southern coast of India, integrating it with a seat on the Parliament and a locally-raised army.
Federico XII (October 28 1742 – January 16 1801)
Federico's quite long reign saw the Union involved in the Seven Years' War, again on the side of Prussia. And while the Union managed to expand its territory overseas, the victory came at a huge financial cost. In particular, Great Britain had expanded the colonies under its jurisdiction in the Americas, but it found itself unable to pay for their maintenance.
While Italy was able to contain its debt crisis, Federico authorized the British parliament to levy taxes on the Thirteen Colonies, which by now were under London's control. The colonies lamented that they weren't going to be taxed without a seat in the Parliament, but the British denied their requests.
The situation escalated until the colonists formed their own assembly and a militia, culminating in 1775 with the start of the American War of Independence.
The European powers who had been defeated in the Seven Years' War saw an opportunity for some payback and supported the revolt. The war ended in a disastrous defeat for the Union, who recognized the independence of the United States of America in the Treaty of Paris of 1782, but the Union still maintained Canada as a territory.
This war also led to the start of the French Revolution in 1789. At first, Federico wasn't opposed to the Revolution, and even established diplomatic relations with the new Government, saying that it was fine so long as France became a Constitutional Monarchy. But when the period of Terror started, and Louis XVI was beheaded, the mood in the Union turned completely.
Federico was the main contributor of the First Coalition that sought to destroy the new French Republic, but the Italians found themselves a formidable adversary: General Napoleon Bonaparte, who inflicted resounding defeats to the Imperial and the Austrian armies. Napoleon conquered the entirety of Northern Italy, and then signed a separate peace with Austria, allowing them to take over Veneto once again.
Napoleon was eventually stopped at the gates of Rome in December 1796, but the damage was done and Federico decided to flee with his court to London, leaving the entirety of Northern Italy and Tuscany in French hands.
Despite this, none of the imperial subjects even considered to rebel: the British people welcomed the Emperor and his family with great enthusiasm and swore to put down the Revolution.
George I (January 5 1779 – December 12 1820)
Nicknamed 'the English', George had seemingly had a fascination for English culture ever since he was a kid. He wasn't the first choice as heir, but when the court was forced to move there, his father saw fit making him the successor in order to guarantee the support of the British people. The gamble paid off, and the British Empire would spend the next fourteen years being the main adversary of Napoleon's France, even though it took the Russian Winter to weaken the French Emperor enough to defeat him.
George then participated personally in the Congress of Vienna, where he convinced all the other European powers to force Austria to return Veneto, as keeping it would have implicitly meant to recognize the French revolutionary government. He did have to let France have the regions of Savoy, though.
The decade of absence had also weakened Italy severely, especially in the South, where the phenomenon of the Mafia started to take roots. The colonies in India had all been transferred under British control, and so now the two main components of the Union were actually equal in power.
The last years of George's reign saw the start of the Industrial Revolution, favored by the many public works that the Emperor sponsored to bring back the economy of Italy to the levels preceding the invasion.
Guglielmo V (October 14 1800 – August 22 1826)
The short reign of Guglielmo was marked by a significant improvement of the economy, India coming under the total influence of the Union and by a great effort to try and eradicate the Mafia, which only led to his assassination during a visit in Palermo.
Federico XIII (March 28 1801 – June 15 1837)
Brother of Guglielmo V, Federico was far from being a ruler: he had even considered withdrawing from the line of succession, but his brother's sudden death forced him to take the throne. He still delegated most of his duties to the Government and the Parliaments. He didn't continue the fight against the Mafia, leaving Southern Italy in a disadvantageous position, but the Industrial Revolution still took a solid hold in the North of the country and in Great Britain.
More than him, the real person wielding the authority of the throne was an ambition wife of Federico: Donatella Gervasi. She directed the efforts of the Union to destabilize the Ottoman Empire and exploiting it to support a revolt and the creation of an independent Egyptian Sultanate.
Donatella also foresaw possible problems in the Mesoamerican colony, and so convinced the Parliament to grant it the independence on 1835.
Federico XIV (August 12 1780 – April 27 1857)
Since Federico's children were all too young, and it wasn't possible to determine who would be best suited to be candidate, the family gathered and decided to put his uncle of the same name on the throne as a form or regency.
Federico XIV made sure his grand-nephews all received the best education and personally took part in their tutoring.
During his reign he tried again to eradicate the Mafia, failing just like his nephews did, but he is also remembered for making fair laws and for having the Constitution of 1840 written by the Parliament. This document granted universal suffrage for every citizen, male and female, with secret ballot; it also instituted the separation of powers, including the definition of roles between the Monarch and the Parliament.
He then finally abdicated On February 2 1841, designating his grand-niece as heir.
Benedetta III (February 20 1820 – November 7 1866)
She would go on to be remembered as 'the Great'. Benedetta was full of energies and set on making the Union the most powerful nation on Earth. For this, after the Monarchist Party won the elections of 1845, she started an interventionist economic policy to sustain strategic industries, she made school compulsory up to the age of 14 and wrote the first laws that defended the rights of workers.
But she also started several wars all around the globe against technologically backward civilizations, expanding the territories of the Union in South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt. She concluded the total submission of India and Burma, all while she made sure that the 'Concert of Europe' prevented another major war in the continent.
She would force China to open up to trade after the two 'Opium Wars' and also establish relations with Japan in 1858.
1848 was an eventful year for all of Europe, but for the Union, the revolts were scarce and were quickly crushed. Benedetta used the new atmosphere in Europe to sustain the Suffragettes in the rest of the continent.
She also spoke loudly against slavery, making sure that every traffic in the Union of this kind was completely eradicated, and also becoming a vocal critic of the United States, who still retained slavery despite calling themselves a 'beacon of freedom'.
During the American Civil War, Benedetta retained neutrality, at first, but when President Abraham Lincoln officially abolished slavery and made it a constitutional right, the Empress threw her support at Washington.
Benedetta also sponsored the building of the Suez Canal.
In 1862, an anarchist shot her during a visit in Ferrara. The Empress survived, while the assassin was lynched by the crowd. This didn't deter Benedetta from starting a World Tour two years later.
She visited all the courts in Europe, expressing support to Chancellor Otto von Bismarck for his project of uniting all of Germany; she then reached the United States, where she was extremely disappointed in seeing that the former black slaves were still treated as second-class citizens. Her opinion would largely echo through the public opinion of the Union, leaving always a certain distrust between the two countries.
The final stop on her Grand Tour was Japan, where she left a huge impression on Emperor Meiji and started a cordial relationship between Japan and the Union.
Federico XV (March 9 1852 – September 22 1891)
Fourth child of Benedetta, he was also the only to go past the age of 5. Federico had been nurtured by his overprotective mother and was thus fairly timid, preferring to leave matters of government to his Advisors and the Government.
On the other hand, this also meant that the Union refrained from going to war against anyone. The only major territorial change was in 1888, when the Sultan of Egypt, Mustafa, died and in his testament left his Kingdom to the Union. Egypt was thus integrated into the state and given the usual rights reserved for any different culture inside the Union.
While his time was marked by grand discoveries like the combustion engine, a great advancement in the electrification of Europe, and the flourishing of grand artistic movements, Federico's reign also had to deal with the growing phenomenon of Nationalism, which put a severe strain on the multicultural Union. Nonetheless, the Emperor and his collaborators managed to always keep any major unrest from ever springing into open rebellion.
Guglielmo VI (April 18 1876 – March 4 1892)
Guglielmo reigned for just one year, as a cancer prematurely took him away. However, his work brought the Boers Republic in Southern Africa to join the newly created Union of South Africa without the use of force. He didn't have the time, however, to convince the Afrikaaner population to slowly get rid of their racist behavior.
Federico XVI (July 20 1874 – June 12 1901)
Elder brother of Guglielmo, he had been initially discarded because of his arrogance and excessive willingness to defend his position without compromise. Luckily for the Government, he was also easy to fool, and would spend most of his reign watching from the sidelines as his nation kept growing, the Dominions of Australia and New Zealand were created and the first World's Fair was hosted in Rome.
Lorenzo IV (February 2 1877 – August 19 1937)
Third son of Federico XV who took the throne as regent until 1905 because of the young age of his eldest brother was still 13, at the time. Lorenzo spent his time making visits all around the territories of the Union and sponsoring the great botanic gardens in Bologna, Birmingham and Darwin.
Federico XVII (January 12 1892 – August 24 1927)
Beyond leading the Union in the turmoil of what would become the First World War and the years after, Federico is mostly remembered for creating the 'Imperial Conference', a permanent Diet of all the territories of the Union that would later lead to the creation of a superstate.
Another major point of his policies was to seek a final reconciliation with the Catholic population still left in Italy, so in 1907 he signed the Conciliatory Pacts with Pope Pious IX, granting him and his court the small Vatican City and finally putting an end to centuries of hostility between Catholicism and Neo-Hellenism.
He is also remembered for taking part in the First Balkan War of 1911-1912, where the Union led a decisive campaign against the Ottomans alongside Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania. Constantinople came under control of the Federation and the Turks were completely driven out of Europe, but their Empire still held on to power until the defeat in World War One.
Federico would also prevent a coup by Fascist theorist and leader Benito Mussolini, by personally taking the head of his troops and firing against the March on Rome, forcing Mussolini to flee Italy and seek shelter in Switzerland. He would then go on and be the first Head of State to recognize the Soviet Union.
Federico XVIII (May 19 1905 – November 6 1940)
Federico followed his father's policy of contrasting Fascism in every way, but his efforts were hampered by the Grand Financial Crisis, which severely weakened the Union's economy and in the other European countries laid the ground for the rise of extremist groups.
In particular, Mussolini's ideas found fertile ground in the other European countries, where Nationalism was already rooted, and were racked by the consequences of the Great War: Germany, the great loser of the war, saw the rise of Nazism in 1933 with Adolf Hitler; France, a victor of the war but where the social and economical situation was explosive, a Fascist movement named 'National Front' took power, putting Jean-Baptiste Valler as leader in 1935.
The two major European countries found themselves quickly aligned to reshape the continent as they saw fit, and were both keen on destroying both the communist Soviet Union in the east, and the plutocratic Union in Italy.
However, even among all the crises and difficulties, Federico still managed to reach an astonishing achievement: the creation of the Imperial Federation in 1938, after the Imperial Conference of the previous year had seen all the Dominions and vassal states agree to the formation of the superstate.
And shit state would see its greatest challenge yet, as the new Paris-Berlin Axis was pushing toward a redefinition of the European borders. First with the annexation of Austria to Germany in 1937; then the annexation of the Sudetenland; the intervention of France on the side of the Spanish Nationalists and so on.
Federico pushed hard for a greater intervention of the Federation to preserve the peace and contain the Fascists, but he was constantly halted by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who intended to avoid another Great War at any cost. Still, Federico managed to convince the Government to undergo a serious rearmament and modernization of the Armed Forces.
Eventually, no amount of appeasement stopped Germany from invading Poland on September 1 1939. The Federation entered on the side of Poland, but it quickly became clear that against the combined strength of France and Germany there was little the Federation could do.
Even worse, after Poland fell under the Blitzkrieg, the Axis launched a major offensive on Italy. While the French performed poorly, the new German tactics took the Imperial army unprepared and the Panzer Divisions steamrolled through.
Federico understood that it was impossible to defend the peninsula and thus issued his final order: the complete evacuation of the surviving imperial Army toward the North African holdings, Greece and Sardinia. His order saved 80% of the Army from destruction, but then the Emperor refused to leave Rome, choosing to send away his family, abdicating in favor of his brother and finally perishing at the battle of the Imperial Citadel, after a siege that lasted two weeks.
Guglielmo VII (March 15 1909 – May 7 1945)
Guglielmo was already an Admiral when he received the crown. He immediately made sure to transfer his nephews and sister-in-law in England and swore to continue the fight. The sacrifice of his brother had galvanized the entire population of the Federation, and the war support among the population rose to unprecedented levels.
Guglielmo also exploited the voluntary resign of Chamberlain to appoint the monarchist Winston Churchill as Prime Minister, and Churchill threw his full support to the war effort, with the Emperor personally overseeing the global operations.
The Federation decided to focus first on the french colonies in Africa, Asia and even the Caribbeans. There, the undisputed control of the seas played a vital role in isolating said colonies so that the federal armies could invade and overrun them.
All the while, Mussolini had been put in power in Italy, forming the Italian Social Republic. Although he had very low popular support, the bases in Sicily were enough to supply the Axis forces in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. In fact, the years between 1940-1943 saw the Federation mostly fighting there and in the Balkans, where Yugoslavia was invaded by all its neighbors when they joined the Axis, but they were unable to break the defensive lines at tha Albanian and Greek borders. The Germans attempted to take Constantinople at the end of 1940, but they failed and the front stabilized.
The situation became much more optimistic in 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the Axis powers declared war on the USA as part of their Tripartite Pact. The Soviet Union, which had been attacked that same year, managed to repel the Axis at the gates of Moscow.
Slowly but steadily, the Federation and its allies pushed back. After taking all of Northern Africa, on July 1943, federal forces launched multiple amphibious assaults that retook the Southern half of Italy, including Rome.
After this success, Federico started working with Roosevelt and Stalin to lay the foundations of the United Nations and establish the borders that would define the world after the war.
On June 1944, the Western Allies launched an amphibious invasion of France, taking the fascist forces by surprise in Normandy and quickly advancing toward Paris. Valler's government, already unpopular for the huge failures of the war, fell and a provisional government declared their allegiance to the Federation.
From there on, Guglielmo went on to personally fight on the fields of Europe, until his forces reached Berlin. Unfortunately, he was shot by a sniper during the final assault on the Reichstag. He had just the time to see the yellow flag with the bicep eagle fly over the Reichstag before dying.
Federico XIX (September 8 1939 – May 22 1995)
The eldest son of Federico XVIII would be crowned only in 1955. The new Federico was a prudent man, who was well aware of the new era the world found itself in after the atomic bombs on Japan and the arms race between the US and the USSR.
Federico sought to make the Federation an alternative. Even though the new Federation, which now integrated France, the Benelux and Germany all the way to the Oder river (the territories beyond the river were ceded to Poland after World War Two), was part of NATO, Federico knew that it had to find a way to coexist with its Communist neighbors.
Some of the African colonies were not satisfied with their status in the Federation. Rather than causing more colonial wars, Federico accepted their requests and started a process of decolonization, guiding the newborn states. In South Africa, a coup by the Afrikaaner minority of 1947 set up a segregationist government that declared independence, the Federation only responded with sanctions. In India, the Muslim majority along the Indus decided to go their separate way and formed Pakistan.
Federico would criticize the american involvement in Vietnam, and his policy of co-existence reached their peak in the 1970s when a member of the Federal Communist Party, Enrico Berlinguer, was elected Prime Minister and the two figures still worked side-by-side despite their ideologies being theoretically antagonist.
He would also severely limit the atomic arsenal of the Federation in an attempt to convince the other two major global powers to lower the tension of their confrontation.
The only major conflict the Federation would fight under his reign was the 'Horn War' of 1971, when the Empire of Ethiopia invaded Eritrea, a former colony of the Federation but that was still allied to it. The Federation quickly intervened and easily defeated the obsolete Ethiopian army, paving the way for a communist coup that would remove the Negus.
In fact, the Federation would eventually manage to become the nation to which the peoples of the Third World would look for help and protection, when they weren't plunged into a civil war by the intrigues of the two major actors of the Cold War, which would eventually end with the fall of the Soviet Union.
When all the communist regimes in Europe fell, Federico certainly exploited the opportunity. By 1991, the Iberian states and the Scandinavian ones (except Finland) had already elected to become part of the Federation. Now, the Emperor pushed for the creation of a European Union that would help the now free nations of Eastern Europe to rebuild and create functional democracies.
Not everything in this transition was peaceful, though. Particularly, Yugoslavia fractured in the most violent way possible through a series of civil wars that brought back ethnic cleansing on a scale never seen in Europe since the Holocaust. In 1994, the Federal government decided to put an end to this and officially intervened on the side of Bosnia, and with a lightning campaign the federal army took Belgrade, forcing Serbia to renounce any claim on the other Balkan republics and making Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro, thus creating a continuity between the territories in Western Europe and Greece.
Marco V (April 15 1968 – May 19 2020)
Marco is considered to be the major error in the reign of his father: Federico allowed the Parliament to choose the heir, and Marco was chosen because he wasn't interested in politics and had little determination.
But even though Marco would indeed spend most of his reign on the sideline and let the political class to introduce Neo-liberalism in the Federation, starting a huge impoverishment of the masses, the Emperor did take one major decision behind the Parliament's back: he secretly sent his first son to be a part of the new Project Legionnaire, the program of the Federal Army to create a super-soldier.
Marco is also generally looked down upon for making his nation, the biggest in the world, basically a puppet of the United States, not opposing the unlawful war in Iraq of 2003, or plunging Libya into civil war in 2011.
Still, when he abdicated on July 12 2015, the day of his son's 18th birthday, his legacy would be remembered as the man who created the greatest Emperor of the dynasty.
Federico XX (July 12 1997 – March 9 2142)
After already making a name for himself by destroying the Taliban between 2012 and 2013, Federico was revealed to the world as the Crown Prince of Marco, as until then he had lived as the adopted son of two Imperial Guards under the name Attilio Lente.
When Federico was finally allowed into the Imperial Citadel, even though he had been informed of his legacy since he was 6 and he already had a good relationship with his younger sisters and brother, he didn't waste time getting involved into politics.
Already in those years, he manifested his dream of unifying all of mankind under the rule of the Federation, stating that it was time to start the Space Age. He became quickly popular as the political class of the Federation had become a literal cesspool of corruption and the parties squabbled over petty disputes instead of doing anything for the declining state of the Federation.
He would go on and serve with the Army during the Second Korean War of 2014, where not only he became a psionic, but he also convinced the unified Korea and even Japan to seek membership as Sister-Nations of the Federation.
As stated, Federico became Emperor when his father, to the surprise of everybody, abdicated while delivering a speech at the birthday party of his son. At the elections of 2016, the Monarchist Party got an astonishing 72% of the votes, and Federico made sure to use it.
First of all, he attacked the entire system of Neo-Liberalism, stating the evidence that it was only a system where a small financial oligarchy (mostly american) was siphoning all the wealth of the world into their hands. Federico put once again the state at the center of the economy, investing heavily into welfare and public works.
Already a year after the start of the monarchist government, the GDP registered a growth of 10,4%, something that hadn't be seen since the crisis of 2008.
In response to his reforms, the CIA backed an attempt to assassinate him in 2018, and when the plot was uncovered, Federico could use this as an excuse to have his nation leave NATO, and thanks to the influence the Federation had in the EU, he convinced all the other members to form a new alliance that basically dissolved NATO.
Federico then started a massive campaign to help developing countries. In particular he aligned with China in the search of a new global order based on diplomacy and a total overhaul of the United Nations. He also managed to broker a peace to the Ukrainian Crisis in 2020, where his wife, Karin Nymenko, daughter of a Russian father and Ukrainian mother, and Legionnaire herself, gave a huge contribution. He also managed to defeat the Mafia.
But his greatest trial came in 2025. When he and other powerful psionics started having visions of an invasion from the skies. The First Covenant War against the army of slaves of a race called Elders lasted until 2026, when the land invasion of the aliens was crushed by the combined armies of the reformed UN near the Baikal Lake.
After this trial, where the Federation had showed to be the only nation capable of facing the aliens alone, the other countries saw the writing on the wall and decided to negotiate their entrance into the Federation, thus making Federico the first Emperor of Mankind on January 1 2028.
On 2030, another Covenant fleet appeared on the skies of Earth, but this time a Turian exploration vessel also made contact with the Humans. Federico and his people thus learned that the Covenant were only a faction in a grand galaxy full of different species, and that they were also the enemies of the Citadel Council.
After helping the explorers escape with the promise of bringing help, the Federation kept resisting until the Council could muster a fleet that came to Earth's rescue, destroying the invasion forces on February 7 2031.
Humanity thus entered the Space Age, immediately seeking membership on the Citadel. Federico would have to face one last challenge to his rule: a few mega-corporations that had acquired unparalleled wealth and influence seemed about to bring back an economic system that favored them. Federico gave them a huge territory in the South-West of the United States, where they were left to sabotage each other until the Federation was ready to absorb the territory in 2077.
Federico would go on to reign for a grand total of 127 years. During this time, he would have to fight the Elders another time, bringing them to extinction. However, his unnaturally long lifespan, mostly given by his huge psionic power, meant that he also saw all his friends and family die. Even his firstborn, Marco, died of old age before him, and his second son died in a car accident.
Eventually, Federico designated his great-grandnephew Lorenzo as heir. His last years were mostly spent waiting death, as Federico was literally the last of his generation still around, which made him develop some apathy, and finding solace only in tutoring his heir.
Today, we know that he received a vision about the arrival of the Reapers that he passed to Lorenzo right before his death.
Lorenzo V (May 12 2093 – November 20 2186)
Lorenzo took seriously the vision received from his great-grandfather, and for his entire reign he spent every resource he had into looking for the threat announced by it. Even if his secrecy and expansion of the military worsened relations with the Council, it is undeniable that Lorenzo's preparations helped the Federation prepare for the devastation that would come with the Reapers.
When Commander John Shepard confirmed the existence of the Reapers thanks to a Prothean beacon on Eden Prime, Lorenzo immediately gave Shepard all the help and resources he needed, even making the Citadel Council induct the Commander as a Spectre. At the Battle of the Citadel of 2183, the federal fleet saved the Council and a series of new weapons proved decisive to destroy the Sovereign, which had so easily obliterated the defense fleet of the station.
When Shepard was killed, Lorenzo didn't give up and even accepted to cooperate with Cerberus in order to bring him back and fight the Collectors, while he tasked his only daughter, Benedetta, to keep investigating anything that could help delay the invasion of the Reapers while the Federation finished the construction of the super-dreadnought Sentinel.
When the invasion eventually arrived in 2186, the Reapers annihilated the Batarian Hegemony, a rival of the Federation, and then went straight to Earth, but were taken by surprise by the super-dreadnought that used weapons tested on the Sovereign. The first attack was easily repelled, and the Federation launched its fleets to help the other species as much as possible.
Lorenzo's research had also brought his field teams to uncover the Crucible, and by 2186, the super-weapon was halfway ready. All it needed was a component named Catalyst, which Shepard eventually found.
In the midst of the war, the Reapers at one point managed to break through Earth's defenses and overcome the British Isles, and it was exactly there where they brought the Citadel when they captured it, as the station itself was the Catalyst.
Thanks to Shepard, who had managed to gather all species around the banner of the Federation, Lorenzo led the final assault against the Reapers. It was a brutal confrontation that took place mostly in London, but then the allied forces conquered a space elevator of the Reapers that led directly inside the Citadel.
It was at this point that the Emperor ordered all forces to stop, saying that only he would take the elevator and leaving the throne to his daughter.
Nobody knows what happened next. The Emperor was last seen entering the elevator followed only by Ryuku Moritada, his bodyguard and closest friend. When the Crucible was activated, it released a huge energy field that destroyed the Citadel, but also took control of the Reapers, turning them from relentless exterminating machines into the Guardians.
Benedetta IV (May 25 2154 – October 21 2226)
Benedetta had spent her infancy and early adulthood helping his father preparing for the war against the Reapers. Yet, when the dust settled, she proved to be a worthy addition to the 'Good Emperors' that preceded her. Benedetta worked tirelessly to make sure the galaxy could bounce back and become as peaceful and prosperous as never before. The brief war with the Reapers had brought massive changes: the Krogans had been cured from the Genophage, Quarian and Geth were living peacefully on Rannoch and now the Reapers roamed the galaxy as benevolent gardeners of the universe.
Using her popularity and the now unparalleled influence that the Federation had on the other species, she convinced all the former members of the Citadel to band together and join the state, making it the uncontested superpower of the galaxy.
Her rule has been defined as a real Golden Age, where the Federation embarked on large-scale exploration of the stars, encountering new species. Some friendly, others not. The brief conflict with the Tambaran has been a victory for the Federation, but the aliens remained hostile.
The Golden Age came to an end in 2220, when a wormhole at the edge of the galaxy appeared turned out to be a portal that linked two extreme points between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy. Unfortunately, from beyond the portal came a war fleet of the Galactic Empire, which invaded the colony of Hìlios without any warning or provocation.
The answer of the Federation had been swift, and Benedetta has managed the war quite well, making contact with the Rebellion and finding out that a Legionnaire, Jordan Bridger, had already been through that wormhole twenty years before by accident.
