Empress Leah

Empress Leah I was the sixth sovereign of the First American Empire and the second consecutive female sovereign. Her mother and predecessor were Charlotte the Magnificent, though her reign was far less significant. Ascending to the throne in 1948, following her mother's early passing, she was already married. Her reign ended a mere seventeen years later in 1965 when she assassinated by Islamic terrorists

Early Childhood
Princess Leah was born on January 23, 1921, in New York, America. She was the only child of Empress Charlotte and Emperor Heinrich. She had a genetic makeup similar to her mother. Leah was a wild and unpredictable girl, often running off to engage in troublesome acts with other children of the court. She did not like rules and all the stuffy nobles. This concerned her parents to the point where another child was considered to take Leah's place as heir presumptive. When she heard this she swore to take her duties as heir more seriously. After her eleventh birthday, she met with nobles and was tutored by some of the world's most famous scholars about royal etiquette and how to act around other famous leaders. This relaxed her parent's belief that she wasn't fit to rule. When she was eleven, her father Emperor Heinrich died from complications of polio. Though she was closer with her father than her mother, she was still devastated. This was part of her motivation to improve her behavior, though she was already maturing.

Teenage years
Leah became remarkably skilled in negotiation to the point where if two nations were disagreeing over something, they would bring the issue to Leah and she would resolve a deal to keep the peace. She gained her mother's looks and many dozens of suitors competed for her hand. Though she was often repulsed by their rude immature nature. She had her mother's defiance and pickiness, which made it difficult to find a suitor. In 1935, her mother sent her to crush a rebellion in Madagascar. She developed a sick love of war during the campaign, often ordering her soldiers to torch rebelling villages and slaughter women and children in mass graves. Madagascar would never attempt to revolt again. When she was 19 however, she met 28-year-old Austrian Emperor Otto Von Habsburg. The pair fell in love, as the emperor was unmarried after his previous wife's death in 1937.

Marriage to Otto
The couple was married in 1940, the same year Austrian and American troops pulled out of France and allowed the former empire to reunite. Their marriage briefly led to the formation of the First Austro-American Empire, a union between the two countries. She became the stepmother of Otto's son, Konrad Von Habsburg, whom she was very close with. In 1943, Austria dissolved and Konrad left after his father had abdicated the throne of Austria. He began a decade and a half campaign to recapture the empire, but this attempt generally succeeded. He, however, remained King of Austria and Moravia. Otto and Leah's marriage was unusually happy and the couple remained the power couple of court. By 1946, Otto and Leah quickly became worried about Charlotte, her mother, as she became older. Several nobles began training them to take the reigns of the empire, after the inevitable passing of her mother.

Death of Charlotte
On May 19, 1948, while at dinner, Otto whispered to her about her mother's sickly frail appearance. Leah tried to convince her mother to go to sleep and rest, but minutes later, Charlotte collapsed from an inevitable fatal stroke. This made Leah the new sovereign, whether she liked it or not. On May 26, this was made official, when Leah was 27, Otto 36.

Early Reign
Leah and Otto had a lot on their plates early on. Charlotte's very untimely death came at a time when the tension in the world was rising again. The Ottomans' stability was falling, and Greece was looking for a moment right to take advantage of it. Otto's son Konrad was waging a bloody campaign across Central Europe, fruitlessly trying to reunite the Austrian Empire. In 1949, he reconquered Bohemia, Moravia, and Venetia. Leah and Otto openly opposed the campaign, raging since 1943, for the lack of progress, but the number of lives lost to that point. Between 1949 and 1950, Leah and Otto tried desperately to negotiate a peace settlement, but Konrad had one demand: All territory formerly under Habsburg Austria be returned to him. But this included Bavaria, Milano, Napoli, and Wallachia. Negotiations failed and Konrad continued his war.

Birth of Josephine
On April 04, 1950, Princess Josephine was born to the couple. She was deemed one of the healthiest baby girls, despite the fact that Otto was raised by incest. (The Habsburgs were notorious for keeping their bloodline pure, this led to many incestual relationships.) She had brown hair and brown eyes like her mother and gained facial structure from her father. Leah however, despised the little girl and often wished to kill her. She desired a male heir and began making plans to replace her daughter.

Middle Reign
In 1955, China's president Liu Shaoqi, a notorious communist, tried his hand to free Chinese lands under the rule of the Japanese and Americans. They attacked with tanks and aircraft and made astonishing gains, capturing Shanghai and Guangzhou in two weeks. Leah declared war on China along with Japan to protect American interests overseas. The Imperial Army arrived in Hong Kong in June of 1955 and pushed the Chinese back all the way to Chongqing and Yunnan before being stalled out. Japanese Kwantung forces repelled Chinese advances in Manchukuo and pillaged Peking in November. In December, on an unrelated note, Leah ended Native segregation with the Civil Rights Act. However, systemic racism remained a plague on life in the Southern Districts. Leah would secretly order her troops to commit heinous crimes, including the Sack of Wuhan, in which 40,000 Chinese women and children were massacred with the help of the Japanese. The Yunnan Killing Fields became a place of horrors. All POWs and refugees were put to death in horrific concentration camps nestled deep in the Yunnanese jungles and snowy peaks. It is estimated that 3 million people were killed here, making it one of the worst genocides in modern times.

In 1956, Ottoman Sultan Abdulmejid IV committed suicide without a defined heir. The Ottoman Empire descended into civil war. Turkish Republicans fought the Ottomans with the support of the Bulgarian Rebels. Leah issued an order for 3000 troops to support the Ottoman Empire. They landed just south of Izmir and fought bravely, briefly holding Ankara before being beaten back. At the battle of Konya in 1957, the expeditioners were soundly defeated. Leah ordered them to leave Turkey, as Constantinople had fallen to the Greeks the prior month. As with China, over 1 million Greeks and Armenians were put to death in ships in the Black Sea that were sunk without liferafts.

In 1959, Leah began pulling American troops out of her African colonies and helping to build stable monarchies in these new nations. This was very unpopular among Americans and the colonies themselves. The Philippines were granted independence in 1960 and Guanxi was returned to China in exchange for peace after the Imperial Army suffered over 3 million casualties. Kalkutta was returned to India.

Later Reign
In 1963, Japan and China signed a white peace. Over 22 million soldiers and civilians died... for nothing. In 1964, The West-East Powers, officially the Ameroeuroasiatic Coalition dissolves, though the member states remain close economically and diplomatically. Leah grew very paranoid in the last years of her reign, having another son in 1963, John Francis to replace Josephine as heir. She grew fearful of her young daughter, believing she would lead the nation into ruin and tried forcing her to marry her nephew Konrad II of the Holy Roman Empire so she would be required to leave America, though this failed. She lost much popularity and in some aspects her mind when she laced Josephine's dinner with cyanide, nearly killing her. Otto, her husband, secretly had the marriage annulled, finding her insane.

Assassination
On July 4, the distant royal family rode together in an open-top motorcade. Josephine and John Francis had no idea of their mother's deeds as it had been censored from them. An Islamic terror group sponsored by Palestine and Syria sought to weaken America. Three terrorists melted into the crowd. One sprinted towards the motorcade while being chased down by guards. He launched himself into the car and suicide bombed the motorcade. Leah was killed instantly.

Josephine, who was the only survivor, is throned a week later. In Leah's desk, she finds admittance letters of her poisoning and vile war crimes committed in Anatolia and China.

Leah is today viewed as evil and a monster and has become America's most notorious sovereign.

Josephine
Leah is the main antagonist of the first season of Josephine, often trying to force Josephine to conform to a radical way of life. She tries to marry Josephine off to her cousin Konrad Junior and lies to her about her pregnancy with John Francis for close to a month before the princess learns the truth.

She later tried to assassinate Josephine by using cyanide chloride which leads to her daughter holding a permanant state of suspicion of her and leading to a hefty strain on the royal family. She divorced Otto in 1964, presumably after he discovered that John Francis wasn't actually his son.

Leah has a minor cameo appearance in season five, after Josephine attempts suicide and is in the weigh station between life and death, Leah visits her to ridicule her and shame her.