Berenike Garantia

Berenike Garantia (~858 - 883 AIC) was regent of the Holy Archadian Empire from 878 AIC to 883 AIC after the death of her father, Baldassare Velisario, and the disappearance of her older brother, Nicodemus Belisarius.

Early Life

Berenike was widely considered in her early life to be quiet and unambitious. When she heard of her father's death, she was asked, age 20, by Heraklios Cantacuzenos to act as regent until her brother, Nicodemus, arrived at the capital to accept his crown.

Reign

One of the first acts of the regency was to send the Imperial Guard to retrieve Nicodemus from Isthar. After the guards were defeated, Berenike blamed the captain, Alexeios Vatatzes, for the mistake. Since Nicodemus was now considered missing or dead, tradition dictated that the regent rule for three years before the next-in-line heir, her brother Cleon Belisarius, receives the throne. The Order of Saint Castor of Karden was almost immediately deployed to Haram to find Nicodemus. Hermann von Eleuburg led this expedition.

Many rejected the authority of the regency, seeing Berenike as a puppet. Notably the Consilium Basileii and Nicolovian nobles such as Vincenzo della Rovere who called her a usurper. Despite this opposition, the Consilium submitted to the regency.

After three years as regent, with the interregnum period coming to a close, the time to crown Cleon Belisarius as the emperor was nearing. She convinced her brother to hold the coronation in Garantinople and not Archadia, calling the latter a ruin. Noting the lack of a Heliarch, she conspired to have the cardinals elect Innocentius Aurelius, who, acting as the regents puppet, allowed the siblings to marry and co-rule.

She unsuccessfully ordered the arrest of Archon della Rovere for treason, after he threatened her, but later forgave him. She ordered the arrest of Heraklios Cantacuzenos for similar reasons and he was thrown into the cells underneath Garantinople.

The Consilium was called to Garantinople where they discussed the issue of Sotiranity. However, at the same time, the Emperor Cleon Belisarius was assassinated, possibly by the Consilium or the Empress herself. She again ordered the arrest of Archon della Rovere, who fled the city, and Joseph von Wallenstein. She also declared Sotiranity to be illegal in the empire. This led to the Curia of Urbs Archadia to declare their independence from the Empress and acknowledge the Edict of Vissegrad from her father, thus making Sotiranity legal throughout the empire, this being the starting point of the Imperial Civil War.

The war was a disaster for the Empress, with Garantinople standing alone against many of the provinces in the empire. With the Nicolovians and Archadians approaching from the north and the Haramites under the command of the Sayyid approaching from the south, the Empress barricaded herself in the palace. The Sayyid entered the palace after infiltrating the city with the help of Irulan Garantia and saw Berenike stab herself, dying in his arms.

It is widely considered that throughout her reign Berenike, being obsessed with power, was slowly lost her mind, seeing apparitions and experiencing bursts of outrage.