Ophesia
Of historical figures, Ophesia is most often compared with Cleopatra of Egypt. As the Egyptian queen seduced Caesar and Mark Antony, Ophesia seduced first the Spanish conquistador sent to take here kingdom, and then the Spanish court. Her rise was based significantly on luck. Married to the pederast king Anuk Axe, it was her intelligence and wit at a young age that first enflamed his perverted lust. She endured for some years a life of morbid horror (later giving her name to a fad of obscene novels and plays several centuries later, the so-called Ophesian stories popular among the lower classes in Europe, Laurentia and Pinzonia). However, in this time she made a large number of allies, in the courts and military. Anuk Axe's famed paranoid jealousy led him to create an order of warriors for the sole intention of protected the queen. These trained warriors, eunuchs to a man, became personally loyal to the queen. When, in 1512, smallpox finally reached the Equayor proper and decimated the Syuda empire, the queen survived her illness even as her husband and bulk of her family members died around her. The throne would have gone to the king's unstable and coddled younger brother, but the Queen's Guard were able to secure control of the city. Ophesia became aware of the troubles to the south and realised the plagues were somehow related to the strange people who were said to have conquered the Muskogean kingdoms. Spies and traders brought intelligence north, including a copy of their religious text. When the Spanish arrived with a host of Giwegian, Megakwaxakan, Sauxese and Fegan auxiliaries, they found their approach unimpeded once they entered the Equayor river.
Upon reaching the capital, the Spanish found themselves welcomed by the populace and a queen who knew they were coming. She was greeted them in the Masaguay trade language, and then some words of Spanish. Her plans were dashed by the Lower Megalopotamian auxiliaries, who despite the welcome decided to take the opportunity for revenge upon their Syuda tormenters. As they began to riot, the Queen and her retinue were taken by force by the Spanish. The Queen's Men fought back against the Lower Megalopotamians, but obeyed their instructions not to harm the Spanish. The queen was taken to the south, but treated well. There was a great debate among the Spanish over the legitimacy of this action, and as the Queen professed a conversion to Christianity this cause many rumours of a massacre of newly converted Syuda Christians by the Megalopotamians. Queen Ophesia stepped into a role as a Pinzonian Prester John. She remained, a hostage in a gilded cage, in Iqala for years as the Spanish debated, and blood flowed in the Equayor as Anuk Axe II's forces were scattered by the Spanish and the Lower Megalopotamians. Eventually, she came to Spain itself for an audience with the King Philip. She brought a large retinue, including her alleged daughter, a young girl named Adagadei. There, her command of Spanish and her conversion to Christianity made her allies, and she became to be treated as a royal guest more than a hostage.
Adagadei is the subject of much scholarly interest, as there is a strong argument that she was not the daughter of Ophesia, or even of Syuda descent. Her pale skin and resistance to disease suggests mixed blood. Some scholars claim her to be the Juanan descendant of a Spanish rogue and a Masaguay slave girl, adopted by Ophesia during her captivity as her own children succumbed to the pox. This theory is controversial, for what happened with the girl. Proclaimed as a Christian of royal blood, she was married to Philip's son Ferdinand in a controversial ceremony that secured both Hapsburg control of the Equayor while allowing the Syuda empire to remain, in theory, politically intact. When Ophesia finally died of measles in 1523, succession passed straight to Ferdinand, though this displeased some in Spanish Masaguay and America it was supported by the King.
There remained, however, the fact that Anuk Axe II remained at large in the east of Equayor. His armies fell apart however, and he was last seen in 1524. He is assumed to have died an ignoble death, but the ambiguity was to be the cause of political problems in Equayor for years to come. Stories of his survival, in a supernatural form, or that he fathered children to whom the Syuda succession rightfully belongs, became popular legends in Equayor, though they would not achieve their strongest resonance for centuries to come. For the time being, Equayor was now Hapsburg, but the legacy of the Syuda empire was secure from enemies old and new.
