Maximilian I of Castadilla
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| Maximilian I | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duke of XXX and XXX Count of XXX | |||||
 Maximilian in 2013 | |||||
| Castadillaan Emperor | |||||
| Reign | 21 May 1976 – present | ||||
| Predecessor | Philip I | ||||
| Heir apparent | None (Elective monarchy) | ||||
| Prime Ministers | Fernando Pascual Nicolas Torres Raul Quintero Fidel de la Pena Augusto Ortega Hugo Castillo Francisco Carvalho | ||||
| Born | 16 May 1940 (Age 94) Wheatley, Bryceland, Alstin | ||||
| Spouse | Princess XXX ( m. 1978) | ||||
| Issue Detail | |||||
| |||||
| House | de Bruce | ||||
| Father | Patton de Bruce | ||||
| Mother | Gladys Wilcox | ||||
| Religion | Chantrist (1940-1976) Catholic (Ænglish Use; 1976-present) | ||||
Maximilian I (Marion Delmar Lynwood Nevil de Bruce; born 16 May 1940) is Castadillaan Emperor. In accordance with the Constitution of Castadilla, as emperor, he is head of state, but with very little executive power, meaning that he does not perform many of the duties normally accorded to a head of state, such as the formal appointment of the prime minister, signing of on legislation, and being commander-in-chief of the nation's military (as it is a separate title for the chief executive). The constitution limits the emperor to ceremonial functions and, among other things, to be regularly informed of affairs of state. As head of House de Bruce, Maximilian has also been able to make a number of decisions of the titles and positions of its members.
Despite the highly ceremonial nature of the imperial office, Maximilian is still considered to be among the most powerful people in Castadilla, having been designated Commmander-in-Chief since 1996, thus also making him the nation's chief executive. Before then, the commander-in-chief was indirectly-elected by the Congress of the Commons, but these days the commander-in-chief is designated on the day of the Imperial Coronation, which is to be held at least ten months after a King in Vallos has been elected.
The future Maximilian I was born in Wheatley, capital city of the Alstinian province of Bryceland, being the eldest child of Patton de Bruce, and Gladys Wilcox. Patton's date and place of birth was unknown at the time beyond the fact that he had held two ducal titles which he had bestowed upon Maximilian when his son was made emperor; it was later revealed in 1972 that he was born in Urcea in the year 1913, and Gladys was born in the province of Felicia in the year 1918. Maximilian was educated in the Alstinian public school system, despite his father's insistence that he be educated in a private boarding school. It was during this time that Maximilian had developed a keen interest in science, particularly in the relatively nascent field of computer science. After graduating from high school in 1958, he began to attend the Altman Institute of Technology (AIT) where he would get his Ph.D. in computer science in 1966, but not before designing a game on an analog computer that could simulate trajectories with wind resistance, the final result being Electro-Ping-Pong in 1959.
After graduation, Maximilian went on to become a socialite for a brief time before marrying Dulcibella Sherburne in 1968. The couple would have eleven children from 1970 until 1980, the eldest of which being James. In 1976, Maximilian was unexpectedly elected as the emperor of the newly-unified Delepasia on the basis that he was, unknowingly, the most direct and able descendent of Mauricio Delepas. He and his family were quickly sent to Santa Maria and he was soon coronated a few months later. Initially a powerless head of state of an authoritarian regime, he soon became the predominant force in Castadillaan politics roughly two decades later. According to a poll conducted in 2030, Maximilian enjoys high approval ratings.
Early life
He was born Marion Delmar Lynwood Nevil de Bruce on 16 May 1940 in Wheatley, Bryceland in Alstin, as the eldest son of Patton de Bruce (1913-2007) and Gladys Wilcox (1918-2019). He has six younger siblings, Gilbert (born 1945), Marjorie (born 1951), Robert (born 1952), William (born 1955), Milton (born 1957), and Irene (born 1963). His father had ran away from his home country of Urcea in 1930 to avoid an arranged marriage his own father had set up, and soon settled in Alstin in 1932, eventually marrying Gladys in 1938. Gladys, however, has roots in Alstin dating back to before the declaration of the United Republic in 1688.
Growing up, Marion was educated in the Alstinian public school system at the insistence of his mother in opposition to his father's initial idea of sending him off to a private boarding school in Levantia. During his time in the school system, he formed great interest in the then-relatively nascent field of computer science. It was because of this interest that he would end up attending the Altman Institute of Technology (AIT) where he would design an early video game using the institute's analog computer upon finding out that it could simulate trajectories with wind resistance. The final product was the 1959 game Electro-Ping-Pong. His undergraduate studies would end in 1962, and he spent the next four years working on his Ph.D. thesis, which would net him a Ph.D. in computer science in 1966.
He spent the next two years travelling the world as a socialite, mostly to Levantia, mainland Sarpedon, and XXX. He soon became fluent in Burgoignesc, Caphiric Latin, Julian Ænglish, Pelaxian, and Urcean in addition to his native Blairian Ænglish. In 1968, he got married to Dulcibella Sherburne, a schoolteacher from Cecelia. The marriage sparked outrage from his father Patton despite himself ironically running away from Urcea just to avoid marrying someone he did not love, a fact that Marion would soon point out when Patton revealed his true past in 1972.
Reign (1976-present)
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Ascension (1976-77)
In late 1976, Marion was unexpectedly elected as the emperor of the newly-unified Delepasia. The committee which had chosen him was looking through the descendants of Mauricio Delepas, the man who discovered what is now Castadilla. Initially, the committee searched exclusively through unbroken male-line descendants only to come up with either dead ends or elderly childless descendants (most notably Paulo Delepas (1876-1979)), and so they broadened their scope to go through any female-based lines. This led to them tracing the lineage through the son of Mauricio's great-granddaughter who married into the de Bruces and down towards Marion, who had never known that he was a direct descendant of Mauricio himself.
Upon this discovery, he and his family were sent to the Delepasian capital of Santa Maria. Due to him being the inaugural emperor, Marion's reign's start date was retroactively placed on 21 May 1976, the date when the Delepasian Commonwealth was officially formed. In preparation for his coronation, the nation's commander-in-chief, Francisco de Costa, suggested that Marion should take on a regnal name, mostly out of fear that an Emperor with the name Marion would be a source of ridicule. The soon-to-be coronated emperor went with the regnal name Maximilian I, which was announced at his coronation in 1977.
Early reign (1977-94)
As emperor, Maximilian initially held no executive power, nor even reserve power on paper. He was a ceremonial monarch whose role was to serve as a symbol of unity and nothing more, he was not even designated as the chief executive of state. As such, he spent much of his time tending to his hobby, that being building a new computer from scratch. Maximilian preferred staying in the nation's secondary imperial palaces; he had never spent a night at the official imperial residence, El Escorial de Gama, which he had dubbed "a decadent frivolity that would be better off demolished and repurposed into a national mall than serve as a worthy imperial residence".
In the 1980s, Maximilian began to push the limits of what little he could do as emperor, most notably in attempting to override prime minister Fernando Pascual's recommendations, which most notably included the preliminary designs for the 1990 series of Peseta coinage which were to be revealed in 1987, and the nation's top-level domain of .cs (Pascual wanted .de). Each time he overrode the prime minister, this had caused some tension between the monarchy and the Estado Social regime. Pascual had even wrote in his diary that he should have chosen Paulo Delepas if he had known that Maximilian was going to be this much of a nuisance.
After Pascual was incapacitated after a stroke and was replaced with Nicola Torres, Maximilian became more and more difficult with the Estado Social regime, often barging into Magisterial Council meetings to suggest reforms that would necessitate having to dismantle the Estado Social, and in one notable incident in 1991, a proposal to give the emperor the Residence of the Edifier, which was and still is the official residence of the Commander-in-Chief. By 1992, Torres and de Costa had considered declaring the emperor unfit to rule for a week just to get some peace and quiet. As political and social tensions grew, so did the sheer annoyance that came from Maximilian's antics.
Velvet Revolution (1994-97)
On 30 April 1994, left-wing military officers, urged on by the unpopularity of the highly costly Loaland campaigns and recent decrees which promoted militia leaders into full-on officers, performed a coup against the Estado Social now known as the Velvet Revolution. The deposing and subsequent exiling of Torres and de Costa allowed for a series of provisional governments to be put in place. It was during these provisional governments that Maximilian, who had thrown his support in favour of the coup, slowly gained more and more power, becoming the provisional commander-in-chief pending the designation of a permanent commander-in-chief. The instability of these provisional governments had prevented the designation of a permanent commander-in-chief, and so Maximilian continued to serve as such. The Constitution of Castadilla would change how the commander-in-chief would be designated and who would serve as acting commander-in-chief. As such, the new Constitution cemented Maximilian's role as commander-in-chief, endowing him with great executive authority.
During the attempted far-left coup in late 1995, Maximilian declared a state of emergency and sent loyal velvetine commandos led by Colonel Raimundo Carrillo to seize the city of Santa Maria from the coup plotters. The emperor's decisiveness helped to further cement his role as the nation's commander-in-chief as well as ensuring that the office would forever remain in the hands of the imperial family even in situations where the emperor is incapacitated. The provisional government would continue to run Castadilla until the new constitutional magisterial council led by Francisco Carvalho was sworn in on 20 January 1997, bringing an end to the period of revolutionary chaos brought forth by the advent of the Velvet Revolution.
Post-revolutionary Castadilla (1997-present)
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After the return to constitutional government in 1997, Maximilian was far more cooperative with the Magisterial Council than he was during the Estado Social era. As Commander-in-Chief, he has only ever used his executive powers at the advice of the Prime Minister, preferring to let the government do the governing rather than himself. As a bonus for being the nation's chief executive, Maximilian was allowed to make use of the more refined Residence of the Edifier as his official residence rather than the more decadent El Escorial de Gama, which he has only used for very few occasions and to place certain guests into when he does not particularly like them under the pretense of "showing off" the sheer luxury of the palace.
In his later years, he has slowly deferred his executive powers to his eldest son the Grand Prince Imperial, wanting to instead focus more on his hobbies. However, he still personally attends Magisterial Council meetings, he continues to answer his own mail, and he has personally attended certain celebratory milestones such as his Golden Jubilee in 2026 and the 530th anniversary of Delepas's discovery of Los Rumas in 2027. He is currently one of the oldest living heads of state in the world at the age of 94, and he has made no plans to abdicate or to appoint an acting commander-in-chief or acting regent.
Personal life
On 23 December 1968, he married Dulcibella Sherburne (1940-1977), much to the initial chagrin of his father Patton. They had eight children: Jaime, Grand Prince Imperial, Grand Prince Constantino, Grand Prince Ambrosio, Grand Prince Juan Carlos, Grand Prince Edgardo, Grand Prince Alfonso, Grand Prince Luis, Grand Prince Joaquin. The marriage lasted for nine years before Dulcabela's untimely death shortly after the birth of Grand Prince Joaquin. Since 1978, he is currently married to Empress XXX (Reminder: ask Metzetta for a new princess; Hanyeon will probably be given to the Grand Duke in Lucrecia). The couple has had three children together: Grand Prince Lorenzo, Grand Prince Rainerio, and Grand Prince Valeriano. The two remain married to this day, having spent over 60 years together and counting.
Maximilian is a devout Chantrist much like the vast majority of Alstin, and is currently a member of a Catholic personal ordinariate designed to integrate Chantrist and other Ænglican adherents into the Latin Church. Despite this, he is an outspoken supporter of the separation of church and state, believing that the state has no business in meddling in the affairs of organised religion. Politically, he has been very private on the matter, though some have speculated that he may carry some socialist sympathies based on his conduct during the Velvet Revolution. Others, however, have stated that the emperor supported the revolution in the name of democracy and the rule of law, not in the name of a specific ideology. However, he has made his social stances quite clear, mostly on things such as LGBT rights, racial issues in Castadilla, and the importance of eternal vigilance against democratic backsliding.
He is an avid proponent of nuclear energy as an alternative source of mass energy.
Although publicly his name is Maximilian, those close to him such as friends and family still refer to him by his real name Marion.
Titles, styles and honours
- 16 May 1940 - 21 May 1976: Mister Marion Delmar Lynwood Nevil de Bruce
- 21 May 1976 - 11 March 1977: His Most Royal Highness The King in Vallos
- 11 March 1977 - present: His Imperial Majesty The Castadillaan Emperor
The emperor's official title is "His Imperial Majesty Maximilian, First of his Name, in Name of the People, Castadillaan Emperor, Viceroy of Los Rumas, King in Vallos, Archduke of XXX, Duke of XXX and XXX, Protector of the Taineans, Custóir of the Estate of the XXX, Sovereign of the House de Bruce, Sovereign of the Knights of St. Brendan and the Legion of Honour, Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Armed Forces"