Frederick Dormanchau
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Frederick Dormanchau was the founder of the current nation of Dormanchau, which was named after him posthumously. Born in 1921 to two political activist parents in the Queendom of Morgravia, Frederick was brought up to be instilled with values of equal rights and free government. Morgravia was not an oppressive country, but its government resented the presence of dissent and was accused of being prejuidiced against homosexuals and foreigners. The Dormanchau family itself immigrated from the nearby nation of Schezarade, after a devastating economic depression and Marxist revolt.
In 1936, Frederick's parents were killed in an automobile accident that was left uninvestigated by the Morgravian police. He and his friends believed the accident to be a ploy for his parent's assasinations, as they were outspoken critics of the government in Schezarade and were fugitives there. Frederick inherited his parent's fortune earned from the Queen of Morgravia as payment for humanitarian service. Immediately, he decided that he would sell his parent's old home and journey across the continent, looking for oppressed souls, to begin his own nation. He saved the money for whatever preparations he would have to take to build this new country, and he set out with only his parent's automobile and whatever supplies he would need.
Carrying his parent's name with him, Frederick spoke to large groups of people over the course of the next three years. Soon he had his own following of people who carried the same values as he. When criticized by some pundits for "taking advantage of the masses," he replied that he was only "Freeing them from the prison imposed on them by the state." Though he was very young, he showed amazing wisdom and intelligence, and from 1937 to 1940 he studied at the most prestigious institute in all of Guern, the Academy for Humankind in the Morgravian city of Chesenster. After he graduated, he and his great army of followers, now split up into groups led by different leaders akin to Dormanchau and his beliefs, marched on the only country they had not entered, Schezarade. Upon crossing the border, the Schezar army seized Frederick and imprisoned him.
For four years, Frederick's followers dwindled in Schezarade until he was released by the country's new ruler, Sigurd Faelix. Frederick had had a vision while imprisoned that had told him to put out a call for people to go on a great voyage to Imperial Crescentia, just across the ocean from Guern. He and his followers spread the news, and soon 3 million people disembarked from Guern in a mass fleet. This was called the "Exodus of the 3 Million." The journey was difficult. Many ships were captured by foreign navies, and others died of sickness and disease on board the cramped vessels.
Frederick, while in prison, had contracted a weakened immune system and had been growing steadily weaker since his release. Though he was only 26, Frederick looked as though he was fifty, thin, frail, sallow, and hollow. Four months after his twenty sixth birthday, Frederick contracted a high fever that was untreatable by his ship's doctors. He died on the 21st, exactly five months after his birthday, after hovering in a grave state. His last words were to continue on without him, and he named one of his younger leaders and proteges, Sumner Coy, as his successor.
