Balanar Three
Balanar Dabrian III was a poor emperor who did little to prevent the Imperium’s slide toward the Interregnum, and may have accelerated that slide.
Thrust Into Power
Balanar’s mother, the Empress Serema chafed under the Grand Reforms, and sought a way to free the Imperium from what she saw as the choking restrictions the Imperial Congress imposed on her family. Her first son, Ivan, would giver her an answer.
Ivan was very handsome, and his political acumen reminds many historians of his namesake, the great Ivan Dabrian. He began at an early age to lobby for a return to the great Golden Age of that other Ivan. His mother made sure to have plenty of “spiritual” confirmation of this outcome through donations to many Kuberian organizations.
However, the Congress was not about to see this happen, regardless of how many of its daughters Ivan seduced (politically or otherwise). They increased pressure dramatically on Serema. Forcing her to name her second, and almost totally ignored, son as her heir.
Left Alone
After Serema passed, Balanar rose to the throne, hoping for his brother’s help and advice along the way. And for a few years, he had it. Ivan would then develop a painful stomach condition that drew him out of public life, and a year later to suicide.
Balanar fell into a frightened state. While noted as the Emperor with the highest number of decrees per year of rule, he seems to have retreated from decision-making almost entirely. He readily agreed with almost anyone who came to him with a suggestion and decreed it. Often he gave contradictory decrees within weeks of each other, sending provincial and system governments into chaos.
The Imperial Congress did what it could to rein him in, and strangled the Imperial seat even more.
Into Shadow
Realizing that his frivolous decisions were putting his own life at risk, Balanar made the rather curageous decision of appointing his own nephew his regent and retreating from public life. Balanar spent 12 years in this refuge before his regent could take the throne as Jubal III.