Baldwin de Bar

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Holy Ser Baldwin de Bar (22nd of Snow's Maiden, 1510 – 4th of the Amber Cold, 1538), was a Savoyard Imperial soldier, knight and a close confidante of Charles Henry Horen and his son, John I. He was the product of Frederique de Bar and Otto Rovin's matrilineal marriage, a particularly cold union which had been arranged by her brother, Guy de Bar, during his time as Lord Chancellor for Olivier de Savoie.

Despite his relatively high birth and privileged position, the young Baldwin often found himself at odds with his kin, whom considered him culturally a Highlander in the mold of his father. These feelings of inadequacy would cause him to diverge from his uncle Guy de Bar's prophecy of a 'Savoyard century'. Though he was not directly involved in the Dukes' War, the abject cruelty of that conflict led Baldwin to reject the excesses of his own family, whom he would ultimately reject in favor of service to the Church of the Canon. In the service of Daniel II and accompanied by the idealistic priest Edmond de Montfort, he would participate in the Tarchary Crusade, where he would earn in battle his holy knighthood. There, he would be introduced by de Montfort to a mysterious contact known only as Brother Polycarp, who he began to serve as a agent.

The knighted Baldwin would eventually become a member of a cabal of prominent figures from Oren and Aeldin alike who desired to see the Savoyard dynasty cast down and the Horens of yore restored, thereby reforming the Holy Orenian Empire and returning the direly mismanaged state of humanity to one of glory and prosperity. Including such notable figures as Titus de Sola and Helton Chivay, the conspirators, led by Polycarp himself, devised a plan to assassinate the king, Guy de Bar, in 1526. Having seen the realm atrophy under his uncle and having contemplated the dilemma for some weeks, Baldwin devised a plan of his own, luring him out towards the chess table where he would be stabbed to death by the cabal's assassin.

Baldwin would later be appointed John I's personal chamberlain, however in 1528 he was killed in a duel with his uncle Adrian and cousin Adelric (Who were wounded and slain by him respectively) in retribution for what the Savoyards perceived as his treason against them. Though not remembered fondly by his own kin, being posthumously disenfranchised and disowned, many stalwart Imperials lamented his death. The historian Logan Macdonough writes that 'his support for the Imperials against his own family's decadence showed that there was a place in Emperor John's new world order for any human, great or small,' and that 'his service to the Horen restoration hastened the slow death of the clannish mentality of the Savoyards and Adrians, replacing it with a new national identity by which they were indivisibly one'.

During the turmoil of the Taxman's Conspiracy, a much older Emperor John cited Baldwin as an example of a Savoyard who was also a model Imperial when denigrating Elias of Savoy.