Crown Prince Edric

Crown Prince Edric was the designated heir to the throne of the Kingdom-Of-Valoria and elder brother of the current ruler, King-Alaric-Iii. His death during a hunting expedition in the Ironspine-Mountains set in motion a chain of events that reshaped the political landscape of western Aethelgard — ultimately placing Alaric on the throne under circumstances that remain controversial to this day.

Background

Edric was born approximately 35 years ago to King Aldric II and his queen, making him the second son of the royal family — and the expected heir, since his elder brother had died in infancy. From childhood, Edric was groomed for kingship, receiving the most rigorous education available in the Kingdom-Of-Valoria — military training, arcane theory, diplomacy, and statecraft.

Unlike his younger brother Alaric, who was described as scholarly and unremarkable, Edric was charismatic, physically impressive, and politically astute. He was universally expected to succeed his father and continue the Valorian dynasty’s centuries of rule. Several court observers noted that Edric possessed something Alaric lacked — the ability to command loyalty from both the military and the Council-Of-Seven.

The Hunting Expedition

The circumstances of Edric’s death remain one of the Kingdom-Of-Valoria’s most closely guarded secrets. Approximately 15 years ago, Edric was on a routine hunting expedition in the Ironspine-Mountains, accompanied by a small retinue of guards, hunt servants, and two court physicians. The expedition was officially recorded as a weekend trip to test the quality of the autumn hunt — a common activity for Valorian royalty.

The expedition never returned.

According to the official account, Edric’s party was caught in a sudden mountain storm while attempting to descend from a hunting ground near Mount Cinderfall. Edric fell from a rocky ledge and was killed instantly. His body was recovered three days later by search parties, and he was given a royal burial in the Valorian royal crypts beneath the Sun-Temple in Valoria-City.

However, several details of the official account have been questioned:

The storm: Multiple members of Edric’s retinue who survived the incident claimed that the weather was clear when the party began their descent. The storm arrived suddenly and with unusual intensity, unlike any natural storm documented in the region’s history
The guards: Of the twelve guards assigned to Edric’s protection, only four survived. The official report attributes their deaths to the storm and the rocky terrain, but several witnesses described what appeared to be deliberate attacks on the surviving guards
The physicians: Both court physicians survived unharmed, despite the chaos described by the guards. Their accounts were remarkably consistent — perhaps suspiciously so — and they were never questioned separately

The Shadow Council Theory

Within weeks of Edric’s death, whispers began circulating in the Valorian court that the Shadow-Council was responsible for the hunting expedition’s demise. The theory gained traction for several reasons:

Political benefit: Edric’s death removed the most capable heir to the Valorian throne, allowing his less experienced brother Alaric to ascend — a king who was more easily influenced by various factions, including the Shadow Council
Mountain access: The Ironspine-Mountains are home to the Dwarven-Holds, and the Shadow Council has historically maintained contacts with dwarven factions who might facilitate covert operations in the region
Previous incidents: Several other royal family members had died under questionable circumstances in the decades preceding Edric’s death, creating a pattern that the Shadow Council theory helped explain

Despite these suspicions, no evidence was ever found to support the Shadow Council theory, and the claim has never been pursued by any official investigation. King Aldric II, grief-stricken and possibly manipulated, accepted the official account without further inquiry.

Aftermath

Edric’s death had profound consequences for the Kingdom-Of-Valoria:

The succession crisis: With Edric gone and his elder brother long dead, the throne passed to Alaric — a younger son who had been raised as a scholarly backup rather than a ruler. Alaric’s inexperience created an immediate power vacuum that various factions rushed to fill
King Aldric II’s decline: The king, already in poor health, appears to have deteriorated rapidly after his son’s death. He died under mysterious circumstances approximately six months after Edric, leaving Alaric to claim the throne at age 23
House Thorne’s rise: Edric’s death coincided with the rise of House Thorne in Valorian politics. The Thorne family, which had been relatively obscure, gained significant influence through their alliance with Edric and continued to wield power after his death — at least until Lady Elyra’s death severed that connection

The Red Stag Investigation

Approximately ten years ago — five years after the official account of Crown Prince Edric’s death — an independent investigation was launched under the codename “Red Stag,” named after Edric’s preferred hunting weapon. The investigation was initiated by a small group of Council-Of-Seven members who were increasingly concerned about the circumstances surrounding both Edric’s death and their own father’s subsequent death six months later.

The Red Stag investigation was covert and highly classified, operating outside the normal legal framework of the Kingdom-Of-Valoria. Its primary activities included:

The Surviving Witnesses

The Red Stag team identified six surviving members of Edric’s hunting party who had not been included in the original investigation. Of these six, three were willing to be interviewed under oath:

“The Stable Boy” (identity classified): A teenager who was not part of the official hunting party but had smuggled himself onto the expedition to attend the royal hunt. He reported seeing “three men in dark clothing” at the hunting ground before the storm arrived — men who he claimed were not dwarven, not elven, and not human in their movements.
“The Hunt Master” (identity classified): The expedition’s master of the hunt, who testified that the storm was accompanied by unusual lightning that struck in a pattern consistent with deliberate magical targeting rather than natural weather.
“The Second Guard” (identity classified): A senior guard who testified that two of the twelve guards were killed by crossbow bolts before the storm arrived, and that the crossbow bolts were made of a material he could not identify — “not metal, not bone, something in between.”

The Red Stag investigation concluded that the official account was a cover story constructed after the fact, and that Edric was deliberately targeted by an organized group operating in the Ironspine-Mountains.

The Mountain Storm Theory

The Red Stag investigation’s most controversial finding was that the storm which killed Edric’s party was not a natural weather event but a evocation spell of exceptional power — a spell designed to simulate a mountain storm while providing cover for an assassination. The spell’s characteristics (lightning pattern, wind direction, timing) are consistent with the work of a highly skilled evocation practitioner operating in conjunction with the local terrain.

This finding has significant implications: it means that Edric was not killed by an accident or by conventional means, but by a deliberate magical assassination executed by someone with advanced knowledge of evocation and local mountain geography.

The Alaric Question

The Red Stag investigation’s most explosive finding — one that was never made public — was the circumstantial evidence suggesting that King-Alaric-Iii may have had knowledge of, and possibly indirect involvement in, the conspiracy against his brother Edric.

The evidence cited by the Red Stag investigators included:

The Intelligence Gap: King Aldric II, Edric and Alaric’s father, was reported to have received intelligence from the The-Gardener’s network in the three months preceding the hunting expedition, indicating that a group of Shadow-Council agents had been observed operating in the Ironspine-Mountains. This intelligence was never passed to Edric. The Gardener’s records show that the intelligence was received by a senior court official — one who was later discovered to be on the payroll of a faction opposed to Edric.
The Guard Arrangement: The twelve guards assigned to Edric’s protection were known to be poorly trained and inadequately equipped. Several of them had been recently transferred from the Rift-Watch for disciplinary reasons. The Red Stag investigators concluded that this was a deliberate arrangement — Edric was given guards who would be ineffective in a crisis.
The Timeline: King Aldric II died six months after Edric, under circumstances that the Red Stag investigation found highly suspicious. The king’s personal physician was the same physician who had served Edric’s hunting party and whose testimony was remarkably consistent with the official account. The Red Stag team concluded that the physician was responsible for the king’s accelerated decline.
The Succession Advantage: Edric’s death immediately placed Alaric on the path to the throne. Alaric, who had been described as “scholarly and unremarkable,” was unprepared for kingship and would require advisors and counselors — many of whom were aligned with the faction that opposed Edric’s Expansionist policies.

The Red Stag investigators never made a formal accusation against Alaric. They concluded that Alaric was “at minimum complicit through negligence and at maximum a willing participant in the conspiracy,” but they lacked the evidence needed for a formal charge. The investigation was quietly terminated when King Aldric II’s death made any formal proceedings politically impossible.

The Widow’s Silence

Crown Prince Edric’s widow — a noblewoman from the minor Silver-Coast house of Vaelorn — has never publicly spoken about the hunting expedition. She lives in seclusion at Vaelorn Estate, a country residence approximately 50 miles outside Valoria-City. Several theories about her silence exist:

The Protection Theory: The widow is being protected by the Crown or by a powerful faction that benefits from her silence. She may have been promised security and status in exchange for her cooperation.
The Guilt Theory: The widow may have witnessed something during the hunting expedition that implicates the Crown or the Shadow-Council in Edric’s death. Her silence may be the result of fear, not loyalty.
The Complicity Theory: Some conspiracy theorists believe that the widow was involved in the plot against Edric — either as a willing participant or as someone who was coerced into silence. This theory is based on the widow’s family’s historical relationship with the Shadow-Council, which has connections to the Silver-Coast through the The-Collector’s artifact pipeline.
The Truth Theory: The widow knows the truth about what happened in the Ironspine-Mountains — a truth so dangerous that speaking it would endanger the entire kingdom. In this view, her silence is an act of patriotism, not cowardice.

The widow’s silence remains one of the Kingdom-Of-Valoria’s most closely guarded secrets. The-Gardener’s intelligence division monitors her activities closely, and several attempts have been made to extract information from her through both diplomatic and coercive means. All attempts have failed.

Legacy

Crown Prince Edric is remembered in Valorian history as a “what if” — the king who might have been. Contemporary accounts describe him as a charismatic and capable leader who would have likely pursued more aggressive policies toward the Great-Rift than his brother Alaric. Military historians speculate that Edric would have launched a crossing expedition decades earlier, potentially altering the course of Aethelgard’s history.

Edric’s death remains the single most consequential event in modern Valorian history. The succession crisis, the Shadow-Council’s increased influence, the House-Thorne’s rise and fall, and the ongoing Deepdark crisis all trace their origins to that hunting expedition in the Ironspine-Mountains fifteen years ago.

The question that haunts Valorian political discourse is: was Crown Prince Edric killed by the Shadow-Council, by a faction within the Valorian court, or by both working in tandem?

The answer remains unknown, and the Red Stag Investigation’s findings remain classified. But the evidence — the storm that was not a storm, the guards who were not guards, the physicians who were too consistent — suggests that the truth is far more complex than the official account allows.

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Crown-Prince-Edric