Ivan I of Valeria

His Imperial Majesty Ivan I of House Kalderis (1577-1646) was tsar of the Valerian Empire (1615-1646) and founded the Kaldrian Dynasty of emperors that would rule Magnus Valerius for nearly four hundred years. Ivan I also presided at the end of the Age of Many Tsars, which was left in the wake of the chaos caused by Rudolf IV.

Early Life

Ivan was born on March 20th, 1577 in Boyaragrad, the first son of Duke Ivan VII “Grozny” Kalderis of Angara and his wife, Valerie neè Krasnovich. The Kalderis family was a minor noble family which held little political sway; young Ivan was not destined to become powerful in any way from the time of his birth. Like many East Valerians, he was schooled in warfare and hunting very early in life at his family‘s estate in the town of Angara, and learned to ride a horse and shoot a bow before he was five years old. When he was six, he killed his first stag on a hunt with his father. Ivan would have many more siblings to be the role model of; his parents had seven more children who survived to adulthood, six of which were boys. Ivan was a proud son and honed his skills. By age ten, he was renowned in East Valeria for his horsemanship and vast knowledge of weaponry and military affairs, from shashka to bow to musket.

In 1599, when Ivan was twenty-two, Ivan wed to a young woman his parents luckily arranged for. This was Ivan’s foot in the door for power, for his bride was a descendant of Emperor Archibald V‘s only daughter, Paula; she was Teresa Letaeva, the granddaughter of Archibald V. Duke Ivan VII father fought hard to win her hand in marriage for his son; Luckily, Teresa and young Ivan fell in love, despite the fact that their relationship was arranged on the basis of power potential. Since the emperors at the time were of a Badenese house, the House von Plittersdorff, it was likely that they would not endure on the throne of a primarily Slavic empire (the Badenese and von Plittersdorffs were Germanic).

The chance for power eventually came. In 1603, Tsar Konrad died and left the throne to his son, who was crowned as Rudolf IV. Rudolf IV was a particularly unstable fellow, who wanted to split Baden into its own separate state from Magnus Valerius. He wanted to proclaim himself as a Kaiser rather than a Tsar, and heavily supported the use of Badenese German in all sorts of transactions. He eventually abdicated in 1611 and tried to separate Baden from Valeria in a revolt that would last several years. The Age of Many Tsars began, and Ivan, the young son, was poised to take the throne. He began gathering support for his ascension to the throne of the Grand Empire, for the Mandate of Heaven. His wife was his selling point, and of course, Ivan was a capable and accomplished individual.

Ivan and Ian II

Ivan’s progress was stalled however; his father was ill and dying in 1613, and he had to tend to him in his final days. He also had to make his father agree to give the title of Duke of Angara to his brother (Ivan VII’s second son), Yuri. When his father finally died on November 19th, 1613, Ivan grieved for months. He was indefinitely attached to him. Meanwhile, chaos ran rampant in Magnus Valerius as various usurpers tried to claim the throne and begin their own dynasties. Perhaps the most successful was Ian II, a noble from the Empire of the Shield. Tsar Ian II finally crushed the rebellion initiated by Rudolf IV and worked to bring stability to the empire and to reconstruct areas devastated by various peasant revolts and by Rudolf’s private, mercenary army. However, he was plagued by the fact that he was not a Valerian. Ivan created a personal contingent of soldiers and supporters in October 1615, and marched on Isangrad. Ian II, even before Ivan marched on the capital, knew he was not to last long and instructed his soldiers not to block any Valerian nobleman who wanted the throne. When Ivan enter the capital city, he was greeted with enthusiasm; the people put up no resistance to the bold, towering figure on top of a gray warhorse. He was hailed as a rightful heir to the much-loved monarchs from House Cambridge.

Ivan entered Ian’s private palace and asked kindly and cordially for his abdication; why Ivan did not use force against Ian (and why he did not kill Ian outright) is unknown. Perhaps Ivan had respect for this well-educated man; Ian after all crushed Rudolf IV, had him executed, and had all of Rudolf‘s supporters exiled, and Ian also initiated reconstruction of the nation. Others say that they made secret contact several months before; it was rumored that Ian met Ivan before in a pub on 1611 at the start of the Age of Many Tsars. Whatever the case, Ian abdicated without hesitation nor resistance. Ian gave the crown to Ivan after eleven months of rule. In return, Ivan rewarded Ian with a generous pension, and Ian was the only tsar (out of the Age of Many Tsars) to actually survive the strife. Ian lived handsomely for the rest of his days in a villa in Bragg Point, and his descendants are still an influential force in Valerian politics today.

Early Reign

Ivan was crowned as Tsar Ivan I on December 24th, 1615. His first act was essentially making the Christmas Festival in January a success by making sure his subjects had enough food (food was a major part of the Christmas Festival). He quickly took surpluses of grain and distributed to regions in the empire that were at risk of famine at the time; Rudolf IV’s revolt devastated the states of Deliyannes, Baden, Romanovna, Syl’Vana, and Konradia in particular, and their infrastructures were still being rebuilt. Ivan won the hearts of peasants quickly due to this act, and his reign was secured; he would preside over a peaceful, prosperous time period. Ivan established the Decree of Farms, in which he made it a priority to get the agriculture in the states devastated by the Age of Many Tsars back on track. He offered tax and goods subsidies to free peasants and free peasant farmers, and he tried his best to reduce the grasp of serfdom on Magnus Valerius (he ended up being unsuccessful). He also issued the Decree of Cities, in which he encouraged the development of cities in order to match the other nations in the region, who began urbanization efforts much earlier than Magnus Valerius. He improved city infrastructures, created funds for the development of city workshops and city expansion, and offered tax subsidies for free peasants who moved into the cities.

Due to his decrees, agriculture blossomed into a powerful economic force, especially in the states of Valeria and Romanovna, and with such high surpluses of food running around the empire, the population in Magnus Valerius boomed. The population of the empire went from around 42 million in 1615 to 60 million in 1640. Urbanization also took hold in the empire. Before his reign, the majority of people lived in small rural towns and communities (much like 17th and 18th century Russia) that rarely saw more than 5,000 souls living within such communities. With the increasing population due to his efforts to increase agriculture and urbanization, cities began to develop. Some already-existing cities developed even further:

• (Population in 1615) to (Population in 1640)
  • Isangrad: 220,000 to 560,000
  • Alexandria: 100,000 to 301,000
  • Baden: 66,000 to 210,000
  • Deliyannes: 40,800 to 186,400
  • Trikoupes: 35,900 to 142,300

Ivan and the Church

Ivan was a pious individual, but he disliked the clergy and the immense power they held within the Valerian Empire. Ivan lived through the chaos of the Age of Many Tsars and he blamed the Valerian Orthodox and Catholic Churches for inciting such a terrible period of history in which many people died. Archibald V was burned at the stake for being a protestant by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and his brother, Peter of Cambridge, was unable to take the throne; the Mandate of Heaven was entrusted into the Churches, and they were fit to grant it to whomever they choose. The Churches severed the Mandate of Heaven from the Cambridges, claiming that God had smitten the Cambridge family after Archibald‘s apparent Protestant heresy (and an assortment of trumped-up charges). They passed on the Mandate of Heaven to the von Plittersdorff family, who have reigned in the past with chaos often in the wake of their family’s withdrawal from power. Ivan believed that the church was a false interpretation of God’s wishes for the people of Valeria and tried to limit their power.

Ivan decried such a despicable act and signed in the Law of the Mandate in 1629, which stated that God chooses his monarch over Valeria, yet the Mandate of Heaven is guaranteed to the person who marries the eldest daughter of a last emperor if the emperor has no male heirs or to the person who the emperor designates as his heir. He also defined the Mandate as something the peasants could pass on if an inept ruler were to take the crown. Along with this act came the inclusion of a clause that allowed the tsar to ignore the church’s demands:

“Herein this law, the Emperor is defined as someone who answers to God but not the Patriarch nor the Council of Cardinals, for God’s true intentions cannot be interpreted through human beings, clergy or not, but only through The Book and His holy intervention.”

Emperor Ivan thus justified his position on the throne, and greatly reduced the power clergy had in Magnus Valerius. He gained even more popularity with commoners due to the Law of the Mandate. Ivan soon after confiscated a small amount property of the Valerian Orthodox Church and the Catholic Council of Cardinals under the guise of “freeing up land for the creation of crops for feeding the malnourished”; Ivan used such lands to appropriate the growth of surplus crops, but he was actually intending to free some of the clergy‘s serfs.

The churches were indefinitely embittered and enraged, and Orthodox Patriarch Yeufimei II (Eupheme II) called for the loyal Orthodox Christians to rise up and crush such a “heretical, Satanic king”. However, priests (who were not wealthy like the higher members of the clergy) counteracted the efforts of the heads of the churches. They asked for their parishioners to “believe in God’s glorious gift from heaven, Tsar Ivan I”. Priests, soldiers, craftsmen, and peasants alike embraced the emperor and his policies, and full-heartedly supported him. The churches soon gave up on trying to overthrow Ivan, although their disapproval of his actions would not dissipate until his last two years on the throne.

Personal Life

Ivan’s personal life was often concerned with his family, although Ivan gained a rather unsavory reputation for being a drinker. He took his first drink when he was seven years old, a shot of vodka that made him drunk. Ever since that first drink, he developed, as many of his descendants, a taste for alcohol. He frequented pubs and came across his allies and many friends within such establishments, often leaving drunk and stumbling back home. Even when he was tsar, he took the time to go out and drink at local bars, usually with friends and family. He was lovingly nicknamed the “Drinking Tsar” by his subjects, although Ivan was incredibly well composed and capable even when he was drunk.

Other than drinking, Ivan cared for his family, which made him proud. He gained respect amongst women of the empire for his egalitarian and fair treatment of his wife, and he was considered a model parent by several Valerian philosophers of the time. Ivan and his wife Teresa, married in 1599, had seven children together. They all reached adulthood, married, and had issue.

• Ivan's children with Teresa:
  • Princess Adrianna (1600-1672)
  • Princess Jeanne (1601-1673)
  • Basil III (1604-1671)
  • Princess Persephone (1607 - 1679)
  • Prince Yuri (1609-1687)
  • Princess Svetlana (1611-1668)
  • Princess Valerie (1614-1689)

Later Years and Death

As he progressed in age and through time, Ivan consolidated his gains and furthered his reforms for the country through its economy. In 1636, Ivan established paper currency and pressed for it to become the standard form of currency in Magnus Valerius. He made sure that his subsidies to encourage agriculture and the growth of cities were not being hindered by political corruption. Ivan also sent diplomatic overtures to other nations in the region, particularly Nova Venezia, whom he signed a trade agreement with. The Valerian-Venezian Trade Pact created a network of trade that was the groundwork for a more complex trade network among the Kuric and Gedonian Continents. Valerian merchants reached distant places such as Korea, India, and Persia, establishing new trade routes that enriched Magnus Valerius and strengthened the growing middle class.

In 1646, Ivan caught a serious cold that developed quickly into pneumonia. Ivan was sickly and could not manage much of the affairs of the empire in his last days. His day of reckoning finally came on October 11th, 1646, when he finally died of pneumonia. He lived to be sixty-nine years old, and reigned for almost thirty-one years. He is remembered in Magnus Valerius as one of the most successful rulers who established the able line of Kalderis monarchs and who lessened the grip of the church on the affairs of the nation.