Jan I

Jan I Leuvaarden (Valoise: Jan Holden ar Leuvaarden-Hergenfurt, born 3902, died 3960 TC) also known as Jan the Silent (Valoise: Jan den Jalte) as well as Jon of Neuvalon in the South, was the 14th king of Neuvalon, reigning for 28 years between 3932 and his death.

The fifth child of Beren the Brave, Jan became the heir apparent to the throne following the death of his older siblings Arjan, Gerhau, and Loretta and the exile of his sister Lia, following the disastrous War of the Holeanderai (3927-3929 TC). Beginning in 3920, at the age of eight and ten, Jan had already begun to accompany his father and brothers on their campaigns to pacify the nordling tribes in the En-Oglaedd to the north. He was knighted in 3923 in a grand ceremony in Heavensgate Cathedral in Straud. In 3925, when Beren's health began to falter, Jan's oldest brother and heir to the throne, Arjan, had begun to subtly undermine the king's authority, aided by his siblings -- with the notable exception of Jan, who was kept in the dark.

In 3927, Arjan attempted to usurp the throne during the Festival of Masks in Straud by storming the palace and deposing his father; though the plot was foiled by Jan's swift actions, the resulting war saw the kingdom split itself in two, with a myriad of nobles supporting Arjan's cause. The war ended in 3929 with a Berenist victory, and the rebellion is quashed. Three years later, Beren, already infirm, died in his sleep, and Jan goes on to succeed him on the throne.

In 3935, he married Ellandae of Malenberc, the daughter of the powerful King Casimir of Istra, as part of a long-running effort to resolve tensions between the Avaline and Istran crowns. Four years later he annexed the free city of Allantra, creating a client state in its stead (Den Arhontat Antrijsar). His daughter, and heir by birth, Tamara, is born in 3941. By 3947, his military campaigns in the north would see little gain, and with the constant warring with the nordlings as well as the Ealingan colonies in the east and south draining the state treasury, he was forced to agree to a ten-year ceasefire with the nordling tribal coalition. This ceasefire would be broken in 3955 TC, when an army under several notable chieftain-kings sacked the border city of Danerwaard.

In response, Jan sent fifteen thousand men to face the nordlings, only to have almost the entire force be lost in ambush near the Three Peaks, a forested region several miles south of Danerwaard. Infuriated, he personally led twenty thousand men north, almost half of Neuvalon's remaining army, as well as twenty-seven Straudae Battle-Magi. In the ensuing battle, Jan saw victory, but the carnage and destruction comitted by the Avaline magi would sour their public image and relationship with the crown, forcing Jan to sign the Antressian Accords, effectively curtailing the political power of the magi as well as their influence across the kingdom, which had until then seen a steady but sure incline since the rule of Ahala-Elsanne, almost two centuries prior.

He died in 3960 TC of an unknown illness that had caused him to be bedridden for the final year of his reign. Tamara ascended to the throne at a young age of nineteen, though she proved to have inherited her mother's wit and political guile, which enabled a smooth transition of power.