Alexander Davion

Alexander Davion
Personal
Born	18 February 2507
Died	24 January 2600
Affiliation	House Davion
Profile
Title(s)	First Prince
Family
Parents	Edward Davion (father) Sondra Black (mother)
Spouse	Cynthia Varnay Veronique DuVall
Children	Vincent Davion Roger Davion Melinda Davion Henry Davion Louis Davion Veronica Davion Lawrence Davion

Alexander Simon Lucien Davion was the only child of Edward Davion and Sondra Black and the grandson of First Prince William Davion. Alexander was First Prince of the Federated Suns for most of the twenty-sixth century.

History

Early Life

Alexander Davion was the only child of Edward Davion, who had himself been the only child of First Prince William Davion. Through a combination of events, Alexander found himself named heir to the Federated Suns at the age of just five years old; by the time William Davion named Alexander as his heir shortly before dying of the Spotted Fever Plague, Edward Davion had already died in combat against the forces of the Capellan Confederation and Alexander's mother had died when her DropShip was destroyed off the world of Avigait. The Federated Suns High Council named five regents to oversee the Federated Suns until Alexander reached the age of majority; these regents included his aunts, Laura Davion and Cassandra Davion, Cassandra's husband David Varnay, and General Nikolai Rostov, Prince of the Terran March.

Unfortunately, the various regents proved to be more interested in furthering their own interests than they were in ruling the Federated Suns well; Alexander was kept as a hostage in all but name by Cassandra and David Varnay, and by 2525 Alexander was married to their daughter, Cynthia Varnay, as civil war erupted in the Federated Suns. Laura Davion battled the Varnays for control of the Federated Suns, while Alexander found himself threatened by a group of Capellan Confederation assassins whichDavid had allowed to act. A street battle ensued in Sekulmun, but thanks to Alexander's security team and the help of a group of Federated loyalists, they managed to escape from acptivity.

Later, Cynthia and their young son Vincent also escaped from their captors, only to end up having to fight a civil war against Laura Davion, the Varnays and Nikolai Rostov's son, Dmitri.

By the time a triumphant Alexander defeated all of the other claims to the throne and could rule a reunited Federated Suns the civil war had raged for thirteen years, and amongst the many casualties was Cynthia, killed by Dmitri Rostov.

Age of War

The civil war proved that Alexander was a mediocre military tactician, but he also proved to be a consummate political strategist; combined with his natural charm and negotiating skills, these qualities served him well during the civil war and conflicts with the Capellan Confederation and Free Worlds League. Having secured the throne of the Federated Suns after the civil war, Alexander made sweeping changes to the government and military of the Federated Suns which solidified his power base; these changes included dismantling the previous Federated Suns regions based around five principalities, and instead reorganizing the Suns into three Marches. As a part of replacing the old principalities he effectively transformed his nation's armed forces from five private armies, each loyal to the ruler of a principality, into a single, united military organization loyal to one leader - the First Prince. Alexander comprehensively restructured the administrative regions of the Federated Suns, creating not just the three Marches but also the system of Combat Regions and Polymorphous Defense Zones. Adding to these changes was the new command and control hierarchy Alexander created for his unified armed forces; Alexander created a dual chain of command which ensured that the noble responsible for exercising civil authority over a region was separate and distinct from the regional military commander, an AFFS Field Marshal, and it would be many years before the March Lords began holding both posts simultaneously.

Alexander was one of the last rulers to agree to the formation of the Star League; with the Federated Suns economy a shambles after the civil war - a shambles that the Free Worlds League secretly perpetuated - and the aggressive Draconis Combine continually eroding the strength of the Federated Suns, Alexander was determined that his realm would not join the Star League from a position of weakness. Ian Cameron finally convinced Alexander to join the League after years of negotiation by stipulating that in addition to access to advanced technologies and alliance with the Terran Hegemony, in the event of an attack on the Federated Suns by the Combine, the armed forces of the Star League would be committed to defending the Suns. Alexander Davion signed the New Avalon accords on 27 October 2567, making the Federated Suns the fifth nation to become a member state of the Star League.

Formation Of The Star League

Within the Star League council Alexander came under constant pressure from Hehiro Kurita, the Coordinator of the Draconis Combine, and Ursula Liao, Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation. Issues such as the ownership of those worlds that had been a part of the Chesterton Trade Federation were raised over and over again, with Ursula Liao trying various political and legal gambits to regain ownership of the various Chesterton worlds; meanwhile, Kurita took advantage of apparent weakness in the Federated Suns by trying to annex worlds and funding pirate groups raiding Suns' planets.

Alexander recognized that war was inevitable for the nascent Star League, and became one of the more hawkish members of the Star League council; with war being certain, he pushed hard for the invasion Taurian Concordat, a war that would serve the Federated Suns by expanding the borders of his nation and punishing the Concordat for being a persistent thorn in his side. Alexander's approach was based in pragmatism; the Federated Suns wouldn't be able to maximize the benefits of being a Star League member state and accommodate the mandated reductions in military strength with the Concordat present as a constant threat. In pushing for war, Alexander also acted on his personal belief that the best way of forging the Star League Defense Force would be through warfare, not training exercises.

This pragmatism extended into Alexander's contributions to the formation of the SLDF in 2571; Alexander contributed thirty-seven regiments of ground troops and twenty-three WarShips to the SLDF from the AFFS, and in doing so resolved a lot of internal AFFS problems. The units transferred to the SLDF represented the worst-trained, worst-equipped and most troublesome units in the AFFS; examples of the units transferred were half the Syrtis Fusiliers, all units that had sided against Alexander during the Civil War, along with the entire Terran Brigade, the once-proud organization of regiments that had guarded the former Terran March and which loathed Alexander for his dismantling of the March in the 2540s.

When Alexander later discovered that President Grigori Avellar of the Outworlds Alliance was using covert means to purchase arms, equipment and matériel for his crash armament program in the 2570s from companies in the Federated Suns this pragmatic, political side of his character led to Alexander neither exposing nor shutting down Avellar's effort. Instead, Alexander seized on an opportunity to frustrate Hehiro Kurita and Ian Cameron and improve his own position in the Star League council by entering into covert negotiations with the Alliance using his son Lawrence, negotiations that culminated in the Tancredi Accord, an agreement that would gain the Federated Suns a number of water-rich but undeveloped worlds from the Outworlds Alliance in exchange for arms, equipment, advisors and the services of a three-regiment strong BattleMech brigade that would gain both fame and notoriety as the quasi-mercenary Pitcairn Legion.

Reunification War

Alexander honored his commitment to the Star League, supplying considerable forces to the SLDF campaign against the Taurian Concordat; this included meeting Ian Cameron's request for additional forces to form an auxiliary corps to support the SLDF campaign, a corps which would be led by an AFFS officer but which would operate under command from the SLDF, a corps which Alexander formed from thirty-five assorted independent regiments and regiments drawn from the Syrtis Fusiliers and the Avalon Hussars. Alexander also honored his treaty with the Outworlds Alliance, with the Pitcairn Legion consistently defeating SLDF and DCMS forces in the Alliance and was directly responsible for seeing negotiations initiated between the Star League and the Outworlds Alliance that led to the Treaty of Cerberus, ending the war between the League and the Alliance.

The Reunification War also provided massive political challenges for Alexander Davion; one such challenge was the continual demands from Hehiro Kurita and General Amos Forlough that the Federated Suns and Alexander himself be tried for the actions of the Pitcairn Legion during Operation UNION HOLD. Another was the fallout from Alexander's order to exploit what his analysts assured him was a regional weakness in the Taurian Concordat, a weakness that was actually a well-laid trap named Case AMBER and which saw three-quarters of the Federated Suns navy destroyed in battle in the Tentativa system by the Concordat navy. Both Hehiro Kurita and Usula Liao seized on this humiliating public defeat as a political tool to use against Alexander within the Star League council, and both Alexander and the AFFS spent the entire Reunification War trying to compensate for this military disaster.

Alexander managed to turn some defeats into victories in the political arena; while the negative fallout from the debacle at Tentativa created numerous problems within the council for Alexander, in 2581 he used the military losses and the continued reports from the Star League commander of the task force invading the Taurian Concordat to argue that ships should be reallocated from the invasion of the Outworlds Alliance to the Davion auxiliary corps operating in the Concordat. Ian Cameron agreed and the campaign against the Outworlds Alliance promptly ground to a halt. In one play, Alexander had managed to obtain military ships to support his troops in the Concordat campaign whilst also sabotaging the efforts of Forlough in the Outworlds Alliance, assisting Davion's allies there and as a side effect likely saving the lives of countless Alliance civilians from death by orbital bombardment later in the war as Forlough's tactics became increasingly brutal.

Alexander also saw to the end of Forlough's career when he deployed the Pitcairn Legion as reinforcements for the Davion corps supporting the Star League campaign against the Taurian Concordat. Forlough had been removed from the Outworlds Alliance theater in 2584 and placed in charge of the Taurian Concordat war by Ian Cameron and the SLDF Commanding General, Carlos Lee. In sending the three regiments of the Pitcairn Legion as his contribution to support the assault on New Vandenberg, Alexander was sending a clear message to Forlough, who reacted in an entirely predictable fashion. His hostility towards Colonel Pitcairn and the Legion resulted in a tense standoff between the Star League and Federated Suns fleets orbiting New Vandenberg as Forlough issued orders for the immediate arrest and detention of the entire Legion. Forlough's demands led to the end of his military career in short order, as his tirades demanding the arrest and execution of Colonel Pitcairn and First Prince Alexander Davion combined with the cost of the Taurian campaign waged under Forlough's command made his position untenable.

As Ursula Liao continued to apply pressure on the Federated Suns to cede the Chesterton worlds to the Capellan Confederation during the Reunification War, she used the Star League's need for the Confederation in its war efforts to force Ian Cameron to back her agenda; six years of campaigning and lobbying through the Star League Council and various declarations failed in the face of Alexander's determination and anger, and Alexander brought the matter to a head in response to Liao's Resolution 081-32. By various means, Alexander persuaded Marik, Steiner and even Kurita to vote in his favor, defeating Resolution 081-32, and then immediately forced through Resolution 081-42, which prevented any Star League nation from reclaiming any world or territory lost before the formation of the Star League through use of Star League Council Resolutions. Having manipulated Kurita into supporting him in both votes in a display of political tactics and acumen to match Ian Cameron's own, Alexander had simultaneously undercut any future attempts by Ursula Liao to reclaim the Chesterton worlds, punished Cameron for his support of the Liao cause, and proved to every Star League Council member that the Federated Suns would not be easily manipulated or controlled. Whilst Ian Cameron raged in public in response to the defeat, his personal diaries indicate that he was impressed by Alexander's efforts.

Death and Aftermath

When Alexander died in 2600 he was the longest-serving ruler of the Federated Suns. Alexander had faded from public life before his death, as the strain of losing his two oldest sons in an accident and the stress of fighting first the Davion civil war and then the Reunification War took a heavy toll on him, with Alexander succumbing to a degenerative neural disorder that led to dementia. After Alexander's son Vincent died in 2596, Alexander named his grandson Ian as his heir; Ian's death at the hands of an assassin in 2599 could have plunged the Federated Suns into chaos, but in a brief period of lucidity Alexander named Ian's son Zane as his successor, and Zane duly became First Prince after Alexander's death.

According to the apocryphal German novel En Passant, Alexander Davion was in fact poisoned on orders of the Draconis Combine's mad Coordinator Leonard Kurita. The poison left no trace, and MIIO head Susan McEvedy, who discovered the body and managed to secure evidence of the poison in time, kept the fact that he was murdered secret to prevent a political destabilization. In the same book, his successor Zane Davion is described as Alexander's grandson (instead of great-grandson) and Alexander Davion's body was found on 4 July 2600.

Quotes

“	Pray God this is really the end of it all. No throne is worth what we've paid today.	”
	— Prince Alexander Davion, after the Battle of Robinson, 2540

“	"The legacy of tyranny transcends the ages like none other. That we stood fast against the evil does not make us heroes but simply redeems us in our childrens' eyes. Yet I weep for what we have done to this beautiful jewel [of a nation]."	”
	— First Prince Alexander Davion in an address to the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns, September 17, 2541

“	"We must disabuse ourselves of the notion of 'good' or 'evil' controlling us. No, instead it is we who control 'good' and 'evil'. Just as we are not slaves to fate but have a free reign to forge our own destiny, so too do we have a free hand to act as we would. Man is a noble creature. It is high time we start behaving like it."	”
	— First Prince Alexander Davion in an address to the citizens of the Federated Suns, December 31, 2541

“	I fear that some members of this Council are laboring under a misapprehension. For example, I often hear it said that Reynard never intended this or Simon would never have done that. My Lords, my name is Alexander, not Simon, Reynard, Paul or Lucien. I have fought for 13 years to bring an end to reign of terror that my two aunts imposed upon these Federated Suns. If you have not yet learned who I am, perhaps you should ask my MechWarriors. They have already shared the news with the Varnays and the Rostovs. After the Battle of Robinson, I swore that there would never again be civil war among us. If the actions I take contradict the sacred traditions of my forefathers, it is only because that oath means more to me than any famous remark from the annals of our history. I will have my way in this, my Lords, one way or another—as you may be sure that my aunt Laura or Prince David Varnay would have had their way if either one had survived to sit in this proud Chamber.	”
	— Prince Alexander Davion, from a speech before the High Council, 2541

“	No one man can rule Humanity, nor would any rational citizen welcome such a dictatorship if that man existed. The Star League gives us the best of both worlds—control over our own destiny, but with active help from our own kind in other realms. The Star League is not the path to dictatorship, as some critics tell us, but rather the road to the freedom, prosperity, and peace that Man has lacked for 5,000 years.	”
	— Prince Alexander Davion, from a Holovid address to the people of New Avalon, 2576

Bibliography

• En Passant (novel) (apocryphal)
• FedCom Civil War
• Handbook: House Davion
• Historical: Reunification War
• House Davion (The Federated Suns)
• Three White Roses (short story)