Manzikert II ruled for 43 years and sired a son on his sickly wife Isobel when he was already a gray beard of 45 years. During his reign, he had managed the impossible task of both consolidating his position and preparing for future growth. If his religious fervor led him to bad decisions, then at least his gift for diplomacy saved him from the consequences of those decisions.

Following the death of Manzikert II, Manzikert III duly took his place as ruler of lands that now stretched some 40 miles south of Ambergris and 50 miles north. Manzikert III suffered from mild oliphauntitus that apparently affected his internal organs, yet oddly enough he died, after six tumultuous years, of jungle rot received while on a southern expedition to procure lemur eyelids and kidneys for an exotic meat pie. The Cappan’s condition was not immediately diagnosed, perhaps due to his oliphauntitus, and by the time doctors had discovered the nature of his condition, it was too late. Displaying a fine disregard for mercy, Manzikert III’s last order before he died was for every last member of the Institute of Medicine to be boiled alive in an eel broth; evidently, he had thought up a new recipe.

Manzikert III had not been a good cappan. During his reign, he had launched numerous futile assaults on the Menites, and although no one ever doubted his personal bravery, he had all of his grandfather’s impatience and impulsiveness, but none of that man’s charisma or shrewdness. A grotesque gastronome, he put on decadent banquets even during the famine that struck in the third year of his reign. About all that can be said in Manzikert III’s defense is that he provided monies for research that resulted in refinements of the mariner’s compass and the invention of the double-ruddered ship (useful for maneuvering in narrow tributaries). However, Manzikert III is best remembered for his poor treatment of the poet Maximillian Sharp. Sharp came to Ambergris as an emissary of the Menites, and when it came time for him to leave, Manzikert III would not allow him safe passage by the most convenient route. He was consequently obliged to make his way back through malarial swampland, as a result of which this greatest of all ancient masters caught a fever and died. Manzikert III, when brought news of Sharp’s death, is said to have joked, “Consider this my contribution to the Arts.” Another year and Manzikert III might have exhausted both the treasury and his people’s patience. As it was, he managed little permanent damage and all of this was put right by his successor: Manzikert II’s illegitimate son by a distant third cousin, the handsome and intelligent Michael Aquelus, arguably the greatest of the Manzikert cappans. If not for Aquelus’s firm hand, Ambergris, cappandom and city, might well have crumbled to dust within a generation.