Stefan Amaris

File:Stefan Amaris.jpg

Stefan Amaris

Stefan Ukris Amaris (born 2717 – died 2779, aged 62 years) befriended and masterfully manipulated Richard Cameron, the young and vulnerable First Lord of the Star League. Betraying Richard, Stefan assassinated him and usurped his throne. He was later defeated and executed by Aleksandr Kerensky and entered historiography as Stefan the Usurper.

History

Richard Cameron's "friend"

Stefan Amaris was born in the Periphery and would become ruler of the Rim Worlds Republic. He realized that the minor-aged Richard Cameron was isolated, starving for friendship and attention, and therefore extremely vulnerable.

Stefan began to cultivate Richard's trust by sending him gifts and through simple flattery; he even renamed the capital of the Rim Worlds Republic, Apollo as Terra Prime to "honor Richard".

Through these means and by ostensibly supporting Richard's naïve political initiatives like Executive Order 156 Stefan became his closest friend and confidant.

He persuaded Richard to remove all SLDF forces from the Rim Worlds Republic and to hand their local bases and fortresses over to the Rim Worlds Republic Military. While the Houses started skirmishing on the verge of Richard's majority Stefan continued to expand his influence over Richard. In an act of revenge for slights cooked up by Amaris, Richard ordered all House armed forces to be disbanded. The Lords protested loudly, and even Kerensky, commander of the Star League Defense Force, stated that the order was illegal.

Furious, and convinced by Amaris that Kerensky and the House Lords were against him, Richard rescinded his order, becoming increasingly embittered.

Richard's Taxation Edict of 2763 further increased the financial burden of the Periphery, and caused great civil unrest. Faced with popular refusal, he ordered General Kerensky to the Periphery, which quickly erupted in open rebellion. Unknown to all Amaris was behind everything.

As more and more of the SLDF forces were required to fight the war in the Periphery, Stefan offered the services of his Rim Worlds forces. Despite the objections of (?), Richard accepted. A secret agreement between Richard Cameron and Stefan Amaris was signed in 2764; Stefan agreeing to lend his own troops to garrison the bases of the SLDF and to defend the Terran Hegemony if needed.

Following the secession of New Vandenberg and 17 other Periphery worlds in April 2765 an ever-increasing number of SLDF units, including Cameron household units, were deployed to the Periphery and by 2766, three-quarters of the Regular Army was deployed along the Periphery.

On Terra, a suspiciously large number of troops from Stefan's household guard replaced the SLDF units sent to New Vandenberg, eventually outnumbering the remaining SLDF units. All was set and ready for the impending coup d'etat.

Coup d'etat

On December 27 2766, Amaris seized his chance. He presented Richard Cameron with a ceremonial, jewel-encrusted laser pistol in the Star League High Council chamber, Unity City, Terra, and then shot him through the head.

At the same time Stefan's troops moved against Terra and the other worlds of the Terran Hegemony. On the first day, 95 of the 103 planets fell to the surprise attack.

Besides ordering the execution of every man, woman, and child with a drop of Cameron blood, Stefan also imprisoned Drago Kurita, the ambassador of the Draconis Combine .

The ambassador was a grand-nephew of Takiro Kurita, the Coordinator of the Draconis Combine, and therefore he and his family became valuable hostages; a means to pressure House Kurita.

In January 2767, Amaris proclaimed himself emperor. News of the coup did not reach general Aleksandr Kerensky until May of 2767 when Amaris re-established communications and tried to gain the general's loyalty and support.

“

General: I, with my infinite skills and aided by my loyal subjects, have struck, with a swiftness given only to the righteous, a blow that has corrected decades of injuries and slights to my family. I rule where the Camerons once called home. I control the Cradle of Humanity. All within the Hegemony have bowed before me; those who didn’t are dead. Join me, General Kerensky. Become my sword arm and help me impress my word and wisdom upon the other realms. I’ve no reason to hate you; I wish only peace between us. Join me and convince your men and women to follow you, and I will give you power second only to mine. But should you dare turn a blind eye to the wisdom of my offer and decide not to join, then heed my warning: I control everything the Hegemony has. All its defenses, all of its fortifications, are now manned by people loyal to me. Should you try to attack, every inch of Hegemony soil will be stained with the blood of the fallen, and every drop will be a burden upon your soul, which must already be heavy with guilt for allowing me to accomplish the complete control of your homelands. Communiqué to General Alexandr Kerensky from "Emperor" Stefan Ukris Amaris, 16 May 2767

”

However General Kerensky was neither foolish, greedy, or afraid; he refused the bribe and declared a cease-fire with all other Periphery realms. He declared Stefan Amaris an usurper, starting the 13-year Amaris Civil War.

Under Kerensky's command the Star League Defense Force overran the Stefan's native Rim Worlds Republic in August 2767 and regrouped. Both Amaris and Kerensky asked the Council Lords for support. While none would officially commit to either side most of the lords tacitly supported Kerensky while giving no support whatsoever to Amaris.

Takiro Kurita died and his son Minoru became Coordinator. Fearful to act against Amaris, Minoru denied Kerensky passage trough the Combine.

The civil war finally climaxed with the liberation of Terra on September 3, 2779. Drago Kurita and his family were killed around this time .

Fate

On September 30, Kerensky captured Amaris, who ordered the surrender of all his remaining troops. The civil war was finally over.

Charged with high treason and crimes against humanity; Amaris, his family, and his closest aides were found guilty after the barest sham of a trial .

By direct order of General Kerensky they were summarily executed by SLDF troops in November 2779.

“

AMARIS’S GRAVE Stefan Amaris’s death ended one problem and created another for Kerensky. The problem was that if he allowed Amaris to be buried in a marked grave, it would encourage his former followers to make pilgrimages to the gravesite to renew their devotion to his cause. If the grave were unmarked, on the other hand, it might create a myth that Amaris was still “out there somewhere,” and might someday be coming back. Kerensky and his staff did not want to encourage that most perverse trait of human nature, fascination with the deeds of a great monster. An anonymous soldier in Kerensky’s command made the suggestion that the General finally adopted. Kerensky ordered a detachment of his troops to deliver Amaris’s remains to the medical school of the University of New Samarkand, where they served undisclosed medical purposes. The remains were then cryogenically preserved until 2863, when it became too costly to maintain cryogenic chambers. Amaris’s remains were ultimately laid to rest in a university cemetery where Kuritan physicians bury the common criminals on whom they sometimes experiment. —From The End of Innocence: How the Star League Fell, by Seth Kim and Julie Howard-Ngiiyen, Commonwealth Historical Press, 2958

”

Legacy

“

AMARIS’ LEGACY The death of Stefan Amaris marked the beginning of the end for both the Rim Worlds Republic and most of the hard-won influence the Periphery powers had managed to garner during the Star League era. Descendants of the Rim Worlders have compared Amaris to the Terran dictator Hitler. The comparison is faulty, however, as there were many great Germans of pre-Exodus Terra, but no one else from the Rim Worlds ever gained eminence comparable to a Beethoven, a Goethe, or a Von Braun, for example. As a citizen of the Outworlds Alliance and a descendant of the Rim Worlders, I had hoped that in the course of our research on this volume I might find some mitigating factor to modify history’s judgement of my most famous countryman. I regret to say that I have found none. As far as Amaris is concerned, the ancient slogan applies: Ig fallou blaos, dem ressensu glottuo. (“What you see is what you get,” or, literally, “if you catch this, you will have to eat it.”) Amaris may have been worse than even past historians have claimed. Stefan Amaris was not a shrewd politician of the Maximilian Liao variety. In a letter to his wife written during the Civil War, he likened his quest to be dictator of the Human Sphere to a child’s game called “King of the Hill”. I find it significant that he chose a physical game, rather than a strategy game, for his analogy. While great gamers rarely make great leaders, any leader must understand the principles of strategy for his chosen field, be it political, military, or economic. It is with some embarrassment that I come to the subject of my own ancestry. When Kerensky’s troops slaughtered everyone in the Rim Worlds that bore the name Amaris, they overlooked maternal cousins with names like Siever, Wong, Chan, and Marcus. With the danger of being even distantly related to Amaris, people with those names fled the Rim Worlds. My own family settled in the Outworlds Alliance. I honestly do not know if I am a descendant of Stefan the Usurper. Genealogical records that might have cleared up my ancestry were destroyed in the aftermath of the war. It is a reflection of my parents’ macabre sense of humor that they named me Anastasia, after the Terran legend of Anastasia Romanov, daughter of the last Russian Czar. Our research has resolved one matter, however. No conclusive link can be found between Amaris and anyone still living. With such total lack of pedigree, anyone claiming relationship to Amaris, let alone claiming leadership to any of the Rim Worlds (now the Bandit Kingdoms) on the basis of such a claim, can be assumed to be a pretender or a usurper. We can hope that the shame that my putative kinsman brought to the Periphery will never be revived, and that the carnage he brought to the Inner Sphere will never be forgotten. —Anastasia Marcus, Historical Director, Davion Research Project, ComStar Research Archives, Terra, 3028

”

Unknown to all a concubine, pregnant with Stefan's child, had fled sometime before. A descendant of Amaris, Amaris VII, would shortly haunt the Inner Sphere.

Bibliography

• House Kurita (The Draconis Combine)
• Touring the Stars with Bertram Habeas - Volume XLIII: Living on the Edge — Origins of the Periphery
• House Davion (The Federated Suns)
• House Steiner (The Lyran Commonwealth)
• Star Lord