History of Queen Genevieve part 1: Successor to ruins

As day broke over the ruins of the capital, there was a silence. The sort of silence that only comes after riots and death. Large swathes of the city had been burned to the ground. People wandered the city, searching for lost love ones or picking through the bodies for smoke blackened belongings. The revolution was over and the royal families rule would never be challenged again, but King Arnauld and the princes, Benoit and Fabien, were amongst those slain.

In response to this, the league of the divine blade, passed the mantle of the crown to the only heir that remained, the young Genevieve. After her coronation, as Genevieve looked out from her palace, at the guards repairing the castle gate, over the soldiers carrying bodies from the streets, she knew that a new and greater Capital city would rise and with it a new and greater Kalos.

39 days after the riots, 39 days after the fire and the chaos, the first bricks were set on what would stand for 200 years, as the greatest cathedral in the world. Where the old Arch-Deus had been collapsed and been gutted by flames just a few scant weeks earlier, a cathedral 1000 times more magnificent began to rise. Treasure from across the country was brought to adorn its walls and pay it workers. The city as a whole united to reconstruct what they had destroyed and as the walls of cathedral began to rise, Genevieve set to work on her next great project. The reformation of Kalos.

Upon coming to power, Genevieve leapt into a flurry of action, nearly un-paralleled in history. She reformed every aspect of Kalos, trying to fix centuries of bureaucracy and neglect. But she wouldn’t do it alone, she elevated a cast of some of the most diligent, most talented people in the history of Kalos to attack all the things she saw wrong with the empire.

To start, Genevieve was a big spender. She wanted to build up the military, increase infrastructure, create monumental public works and throw lavish games. But to do all this, she needed coin and one of the problems that Kalos had always struggled with was tax collection. The rich would avoid their taxes and the poor couldn’t pay and this wouldn’t fly for Genevieve. To correct this, she brought her new Chancellor, Edel.

Edel completely reformed the tax collection system. She moved tax collection out of the hands of local officials. She crushed corruption within the ranks of tax collectors and imprisoned people until they paid their taxes. Edel ran a very clean tax collection system, even when the temptation was there for her to pocket some of the tax for her personal gain. She was inspired by the young queen’s enthusiasm and incredible dreams of a grander Kalos, so she kept loyal to her queen and kept the system fair.

With money Genevieve needed taken care of, she then moved on to the legal code. For centuries, laws had been added, changed and overturned without anyone collating them, rationalising them or putting them in any way that wasn’t contradictory. Most of the older laws didn’t even make sense. This lead to the legal system becoming clogged, corruption was rampant and justice through the courts was not attainable by most people. Genevieve planned to end this and so she brought in Juste.

Juste was one of the finest legal minds of all time. In 14 months, he untangled centuries of Kalos law and had a new law code ready to publish. Next she compressed 1500 books of legal decisions down to a mere 50 book set, making the law comprehensible and approachable. With Genevieve’s help, he then had these books ruled to supersede all previous legal decisions, meaning that all lawyers and judges were working from the same law. He rounded out these incredible feats by writing an accessible textbook for all future lawyers to learn from, which stands that today’s civil law stands on. Like Edel, the temptation to corruption was present for Juste. In his case people would offer massive bribes for him to change laws, but Genevieve had not only risen him to league status but had allowed the works he had slaved over for months become the official law code of Kalos. The queen had given him much of her faith and trust with these act and Juste decided that he wouldn’t be able to look himself in the mirror if he did so.

With the herculean task of restructuring the law system now safely in hands of the only person that could take on such a task, Genevieve finally turned her eyes to military. Genevieve dreamed of reconquering the areas taken by the shadow alliance during the revolt, of reuniting and revitalising her lands. She dreamed of restoring Kalos to its glory. However Kalos were still weak after the revolution and fears abound that an old enemy of Unova would come take whatever was left. Before Genevieve could retake her country, she must face its old enemy. By her side, she had one of the most brilliant military commanders ever known, a man named Aloys. Even when they were children together in the courts, Genevieve could see this man’s brilliance and by the time he was 25, he was commander of the east. To talk about Aloys, one must talk about the battle of Sintara. Aloys was told to get whatever men he could and stop the Unova army at all costs. If they crossed through Sintara, then they could strike the capital. Envoys were sent to try a barter for peace, but the Unova king was having none of it. Reports came in about the strength of the unova army. An army 50,000 men strong. Aloys looks to his own men, standing on the walls of his border fort. 25,000 men.

Aloys wanted to hole up, to fight behind these walls, it was their only chance against a force this massive but he knew if he did that, the unovan army would just go around him. Behind him were just farmers in their fields and priests in their churches. Aloys had only one option, stop them here, so he prepared to fight. A messenger came up from the unovan army, carry a note. It was from the enemy commander, it read:

Prepare me a bath, for tomorrow I will bathe in this fortress.

Aloys ordered his men to dig.

The next day the armies lined up for battle. The massive unovan army, with infantry in the middle and the famed king-slayers on the wings. The Kalosian army lined up across from them, with their infantry anchoring the centre of a massive trench they had dug on Aloys’ command, with heavy cavalry on the wings, light cavalry in reserves and small group of mercenaries hidden behind a hill. The unovan cavalry charged. The wings were a roaring mass of horses and men, but the centre, the infantry holding the Kalosian centre, just stood there behind their trench. The unovan commander faltered, even with his massive numbers he didn’t want to charge his men into that trench. His cavalry were doing well though, he would let them win the day. Once they routed the Kalosian cavalry, they could circle behind the infantry and negate Aloys’ improvised defence. With that, the Unovan army pinned their own infantry, giving up their massive number advantage. Then just as the cavalry melee was seeing the unovans winning, the mercenaries sprang from their hiding place. All of sudden the unovan right flank was in disarray, they were fleeing. There was still time to rally them though and the left flank was still doing well, they had pushed the Kalosians nearly the edge of walls of Sintara, but the rest of army was still where had begun. There was a massive gap between the king-slayers who were chasing the cavalry and the infantry that had never moved. The Unovan’s had chased the Kalosians back so far, that they were now behind enemy lines and their infantry was way too far back to support them. The Kalosian cavalry reserve charged, the main cavalry rallied and the king-slayers were surrounded. Discipline fell apart, each man tried to fight his way out but one-by-one they were cut down. Now the Kalosians, with the only cavalry left on the field, knew it was their turn to cut the Unovan’s down. No Unovan commander would bathe in Sintara that day.

A grand meeting was called between the unovan monarchy and Genevieve. As the unovans entered the throne room, Genevieve stood from her throne and said:

"You thought you could take advantage of us from our weakness. You thought that because we are weakened, you could revive an ancient war. Whether or not these were your reasons is not relevant, but all it shows me is how petty you are. As I and my general have shown, even when beaten down, Kalos will not go down without a fight. As we showed you, even when facing what looks impossible, we will still stand and we will have victory. I hold in my hands both peace and war, and after our demonstration, I dare you to chose war."

While the victory had shocked the unovans, the sincerity in this young queen's voice was awe-inspiring. Fearing more defeats would come, Unova swiftly agreed to Genevieve's conditions for peace and swiftly retreated back to their own borders. Kalos would have to pay the price for the battles, but with large new lands now under Kalos rule, the country turned into the Kalosian Empire. With the borders to the east of her now much larger empire secure, Genevieve turned her eyes to the west, to reconquer the parts of her homeland that were lost.