Noah Hallbjörnsson

Noah Hallbjörnsson

Full Name: Thorstein Noah Hallbjörnsson Esposito

Physical Description

Gender: Male

Species: Human

Race: Vanakarl

Hair Color and Style: Short wavy brown hair

Eye Color: Brown

Skin Color: White

Biographical Information

Father: Hallbjörn Haraldsson

Mother: Esther Ayreon-Kalirion

Date of Birth: 1616 AN

Place of Birth: Haraldsborg, Stormark

Date of Death:

Place of Death:

Current Residence(s): Uppland, Natopia

Nationality at Birth: Natopian • Storish (Shirithian before 1651)

Current Allegiance(s): Natopia

Occupation: Former king of Elwynn

Thorstein Noah Hallbjörnsson Esposito (born Ayreon-Kalirion af Ettlingum Freyu, in Haraldsborg, 1616) known as the "Absentee Pretender" in Natopia, is a Storish-born former ruler of Elwynn. From 1623 until 1626, he was (Prince, whereafter he reigned in Elwynn as its first king from 1626 until his forced exile in 1651.

He married Grand Duchess Noor of Goldshire in 1633, from her ascension to the Golden Mango Throne as Kaiseress Noor in 1644 until her death in 1650 imperial consort. The marriage was declared annulled in 1656, and since then there has been a significant reanalysis of Noah's relationship with Noor.

Exiled to Stormark after the Auspicious Occasion, which removed him from his rights and titles in Shireroth (though he continues to claim them in pretence). His parents' marriage was at the same time annulled.

Background

Noah was born from the annulled marriage between the Storjarl Hallbjörn Haraldsson and Lady Esther Maryam Amirdokhtar. He has two elder sisters, Fjǫrleif and Inga Hallbjörnsdóttir, both of whom were active with him in the government of Elwynn; a twin brother Kaiser Hjalmar Redquill who predeceased him.

He has two illegitimate children, both by Noor:

• Villy Esposito (born 1635)
• Esther Esposito (born 1638)

Biography

Noah was born in Haraldsborg two minutes before his brother Audun Joel. Three years later, in 1618, their mother was killed in an armed robbery of their Haraldsborg flat, and he and his brother were since then raised by their father Hallbjörn Haraldsson.

The same year as his mother died, his half-brother Jonathan ascended to the Elwynnese throne due to the death of Prince Nathaniel. In 1620, Jonathan became Kaiser after the death of Kaiseress Isa IV, putting a lot of strain and stress on Jonathan. He did not enjoy ruling in either Shireroth or Elwynn and abdicated the both thrones in 1623, leaving the Elwynnese one to Noah, who was next in line under the dynastic rules of succession (though informal sources suggest that Jonathan first offered the Elwynnese throne to Kaiser Verion I who succeeded him on the Golden Mango Throne).

As such, after Jonathan's abdication, Noah moved to Elwynn as Prince of Elwynn, along with his father Hallbjörn, who assumed the regency. During the regency (1623–1632), the new administration in Eliria brought along significant changes to Elwynnese customs, traditions, and societal harmony. Mass immigration from Stormark started (the so-called Froyalaners), with restrictions set one million Froyalaners per year to not unduly upset the Elwynnese society. Some years, immigration exceeded these restrictions.

Moreover, the regency began cultivating a cult, appropriated from Stormark as the "Froyalanish Ancient Ways" (though never a tradition nor ancient), whereby the Lady Elwynn was seen as a corporeal figure, similar to the Storish gods, in opposition to the Treesianoid view of gods and goddesses as anthropomorphic representations of powers. These changes were gradual.

A culmination of these changes occurred in 1629 when a constitutional amendment made Noah King of Elwynn and established a royal family, a nobility, and royal pageantry around Elwynn.

In 1631, Noah became an adult in Natopian law, and established for himself a presence in Natopia, too. He was a member of the Frenzy, and Emperor Naian nominated Noah to the Supreme Court of Natopia, to which Noah was confirmed by the Frenzy in mid 1631. In Natopia, he allied the houses of Ettlingar Freyu and Waffel-Paine in the Treaty of Storborg whereby patriarchs from one house would foster children of the other.

At this point, he also met Lady Noor for the first time, for whom he developed an infatuation. He sought out to bed her, and upon her denying him, he proposed to her, which she also denied – both by the apparent reason that he was far too young (he was 15) and that she remained married to Nathaniel.

Assumption of kingship

In 1632, Noah turned 16, and was deemed old enough by Elwynnese law to rule in his own right. He immediately went through the Konungstekja ceremony. The ceremony was a live-televised Froyalanish play where Noah was "married" to the "goddess Elwynn". Noah and "Elwynn" then engaged in a ritual bath where Noah suckled her breasts and drank her milk. Thereafter, to the tunes of a choir singing the Ballad of the Bed of Orchids (from where "Plow my vulva!" is a memorable line in the public consciousness), Noah and his bride consummated the "union" before the cameras. During the sexual act, Noah kept sucking the milk out of his "wife". Thereafter followed a grand ball in Eliria attended by dignitaries from all over the world.

Thereafter he kept a Royal Milker whose tasked involved preparing Noah for coitus, ensuring the constant ability of lactation for the "Divine Wife" (the prostitute calling herself Lady Elwynn) for King's pleasure, and collecting any remaining bodily fluids of the King for safekeeping, so that no person would find it and use it to fertilize another woman's egg and thereby give the King an unwanted heir. Such collection occurred at least once daily.

Noor

Noah continued pining for Noor, evidenced by a 1632 meeting in his privy council where he called for her to become Kaiseress of Shireroth upon Noor's divorce from Nathaniel. When Noor later the same year, ultimately, attained the throne of Goldshire as grand duchess, once more came Noah to her and asked for her hand. Noor was in a much stronger political position to agree to a marriage with Noah this time. Such a marriage would be between two equal spouses, both rulers of different states. Noah was now 16, and ruled Elwynn in his own right. He would soon be 17 and Noor found him more attractive. It would be a marriage she could endure, and perhaps, also find herself happy in. She sent a missive to Eliria agreeing to the proposal. Along came negotiators to decide on the contract of marriage.

On Laemill 20, 1633, Noah married Grand Duchess Noor of Goldshire in a Hurmudaic ceremony on Cashma Island in Craitland, which was officiated by Sir Vilhjálm Kormak, the Chairman of the Council of Elders of the Temple of the Lakes, at Haraldsborg.

In 1634, it was announced that Queen Noor was expectant with Noah's first — and her fifth — child, at which point she retired at the Palace at Goldshire Hamlet. Every thought had been given to her comfort, but not enough consideration had been given to her safety. Somehow, something as a blatant as an anonymous parcel addressed to the Grand-Duchess containing, of all things, a cake, managed to pass through the hands of a postal courier, the scullery maid, the butler, housekeeping supervisor, the correspondence officer, two footmen, another butler, the Steward, the Grand-Duchess' Press-Secretary, the correspondence officer again, another footman, a Leonid Guardsman, a pair of guards from the Order of the Golden Spear, finally ending up in the hands of another Leonid Guardsman. Here the parcel was held for an hour while the Ducal and Personal Guards argued over which guards detachment had the right to carry a parcel to the royal chambers. This question of protocol was resolved by amicable fisticuffs and it was the Leonid Guard who carried the box to the Grand-Duchess' private apartment.

After the guard had delivered the package and departed the glimmer of a doubt clouded his mind, and he made his way towards the kitchens to find one of the tasters who had been employed by the Dukes of Goldshire as a custom dating back to the days when you couldn't move for titled Yastreb's who had been poisoned by the over-mighty Avakair Mint. Regrettably, by the time the Guard had found a suitably sober food taster (most customarily branched out into wine sampling, as a precaution) and returned to the royal apartments, Noor had already tasted the delicious desert-berry cake laced with Misoprostol and suffered a miscarriage.

Hardly a day passed and yet in the time it took for King Noah to arrive and take charge of his wife's security and the investigation into the attack on her person, the postal courier, the scullery maid, the two butlers, the housekeeping supervisor, the correspondence officer, the three footmen, the Steward, the Grand-Duchess' Press-Secretary, the pair of Leonid Guardsmen, and both of the guards from the Order of the Golden Spear had all been impaled in the Palace courtyard for failing in their duty to the Queen. Although her strength had not yet recovered, Noor was sufficiently spirited to demand that her husband find her assailants, kill their children in front of their eyes and then cast them into gaol to rot for the rest of their lives. Instead, offered as a compromise, the King promised that justice would be served in accordance with Elwynnese Law.

Subsequently the finest minds of the Mango Rangers, the Leonid Guards, the Avakair Mint, the Union Defence Force, the Order of the Golden Spear, the Suthergold Defender's League and a couple of private detectives provided pro bono by the ESB-Jörmungandr Group, have met and, having examined the crime scene, agreed that the dark blue glass orchid delivered with the cake and engraved with the name of the Dark Orchid Society is possibly a clue. The assayers of the Avakair Mint however maintain that this is too blatant to be credible and are continuing in their process of testing members of the household for impurities in their own inimitable fashion, suspecting an insider job.

Aftermath and legacy

"And in King Noah's day there was only good law, and justice, and the only price we had to pay was watching him bang a cheap whore in a blonde wig on national television twice a year"

- By the 1660s nostalgia amongst the lower orders for the cloying stability of Vanic rule was becoming a major wellspring of dissent against Imperial misrule.

Titles and Styles

Titles

Name

In Shireroth, since the Auspicious Occasion, Noah holds no titles of royalty or nobility and is afforded a denizen name for official record keeping (despite his inability to return to Shireroth): Noah Thorstein Hallbjörnsson Esposito, with Noah Thorstein being his given names, Hallbjörnsson a patronymic, and Esposito ("exposed" in Tellian) the family name of all Froyalanish members from the Ayreon-Kalirion family after memberships in the family had been discovered to have been in error.

Present Titles

Hallbjörnsson's full titulary is: Imperial Chieftain of Thule, Arvjarl of the Twenty-Six Jarldoms, Storjarl of Stormark, Lord Imperial on All Continents, Prince of Natopia, Prince of the Storish Bilander of Anglethyr, Bondegard, Bosworth, Gascogne, Gascony, Guernsey, High Queen Asa Land, High Queen Hervör Isle, Humlebæk Island, Lady Gudrun Isle, Los Bananos, Lyngelan, Marthunia, Merlaide, the Old Sea Fortress, Østfold, Sicilia, the Suðreyjar, and Thydtwinnster, Lord Triumphant in All Four Quarters, Duke of Robland, Jarl of Bernicia, Lord in Jorvik, Baron of Running Bull, Count of Old Araxion, Count Shishin, Count of Storborg, Count of Hoheit Town, Graft-Avatar of the Storborg Graft, Scion of St. Harald, Prince among the Lakes, Scion of the King of Kings, Knight of the Black Hole, Chief, Head and Patriarch of the House of Orchids.

Former Titles

Due to the title sharing provsions of his matrimonial contract with Grand Duchess Noor, King Noah bore the following courtesy titles until her untimely death in the year 1650: King of Goldshire, Kaiser Consort of Shireroth, Kaiser in Kildare, Emperor of Kildare, Imperial Prince of Shireroth, Marquess of Zy-Rodun, Emir of Alalehzamin and Utasia, Duke of Istvanistan, Count of Cape Farewell, Lord Mayor of the City of Vladagrad, Count of Elsenar, Count of Istvan, King of Uppland.

Before his exile from Shireroth in 1651, his Elwynnese titulary read:

King of Elwynn, Imperial Chieftain of Thule, King of Uppland, King of Amokolia, Prince of Arietta, Arvjarl of the Twenty-Six Jarldoms, Storjarl of Stormark, Lord Imperial on All Continents, Prince of Natopia, Prince of Mishalan, Prince of the Storish Bilander of Anglethyr, Bondegard, Bosworth, Gascogne, Gascony, Guernsey, High Queen Asa Land, High Queen Hervör Isle, Humlebæk Island, Lady Gudrun Isle, Los Bananos, Lyngelan, Marthunia, Merlaide, the Old Sea Fortress, Østfold, Sicilia, the Suðreyjar, and Thydtwinnster, Lord of the Two Sacred Rivers and the Twelve Peoples, Lord Triumphant in All Four Quarters, Duke of Froyalan, Duke of Northshire, Duke of the Lady Esther Isles, Duke of Robland, Býurgreifi of Eliria, Jarl and Grand Elector of Jorvik, Jarl of Bernicia, Llængjarl of Elwynn, Lord in Jorvik, Baron of Fórntida Kærleikalanden, Baron of the Elw, Baron of Nordland, Baron of Opplysta Smørvirket, Baron of Running Bull, Count of Old Araxion, Count of Old Cimmeria, Count Shishin, Count of Storborg, Count of Hoheit Town, Count of Ancient Wintergleam, Warden of the Flower of the North, Blood-Unifier of the Jewel of Many Facets, Graft-Avatar of the Storborg Graft, Scion of St. Harald, Prince among the Lakes, Scion of the King of Kings, Knight of the Black Hole, Chief, Head and Patriarch of the House of Orchids.

Styles

Present Styles

He is also entitled to the following styles:

• His Imperial Highness (Natopia); and
• His Imperial and Royal Highness (Stormark).

Former Styles

During his marriage, Hallbjörnsson was also entitled to the styles of:

• His Imperial Magnificence and Radiant Majesty (Shireroth);
• His Viking Majesty (in Uppland);
• His Majesty (Goldshire).

Before the Auspicious Occasion, Hallbjörnsson also used the style *Riverine Majesty* in Elwynn.

Ancestry

Preceded by: Jonathan	Prince of Elwynn 1623–1629	Succeeded by: himself as King
Preceded by: himself as Prince	King of Elwynn 1629–1651	Succeeded by: Vilhjalm of Elwynn
Preceded by: None	King of Uppland 1633–present	Succeeded by: incumbent