Senator Simeon Gabriel - OwenS

Player: OwenS
Faction: Orthodox, Byzantium
Email: simeon_gabriel@crusade.chaosdeathfish.com

A Byzantine diplomat and politician in his early 40s, Simeon is rich even in a city of affluence, and has earned the Emperor’s trust in the fields of trade and foreign affairs. Those who know him know he is a family man and quite the expert on Orthodox theology, despite being unordained, though more recently they have had cause for concern as he has lost a significant amount of weight, leaving him slim for a man of his assets. He is a likeable person and appears genuinely committed to peace, especially the peace of the covenant, for which he has great respect.

Was made a senator of the Roman Empire in 1188.

Excerpts from “Blackest Magic”, a compendium of tales of wicked magical acts, by Elizabeth Shackleton.

[…] returning from the Peace of the Covenant to find that the djinn of Shai'tan had reached his home before him, shadows flitting about the walls to watch him better and report to their dark mistress, Simeon ran from room to room frantic to check the safety of his family. His children slept soundly in their beds, undisturbed by the silent evil that filled the house.

In his bed his wife lay on the finest black silk sheets, laid there by the wicked djinn. Her eyes had been removed, replaced with flowers of the most brilliant blue. Her tongue was cut out and replaced with a golden honeycomb. Horrified Simeon drew back the covers to find his wife split down the middle of her torso and abdomen in a single terrible cut, her intestines gone, replaced by ripe fruits – cherries, grapes, pineapples, pomegranates, tangerines, melons, figs and dates – arranged as if she had split from having so much within.

Simeon Gabriel sank to his knees and wailed while the shadows looked on.

* * *

In the days that followed this murder Simeon's misfortunes only multiplied. Some horrors were tiny in comparison with the butchery of his wife; ink replaced with blood or even djinn that flowed from his pen to write obscenities. He grew paler and more worn as the hideous creatures of the shadow court howled outside his window to prevent him from sleeping.

On the day before the funeral the howling subsided and Simeon was permitted one night of sleep. When he awoke he found beside him on his pillow a beautiful red rose, its petals closed in a tight bud. Even as he picked it up though the flower bursts into bloom and within the nest of petals was his wife's eye. Scrambling up in panic, he fled the room.

Around his neck he found there hung a golden chain, speared through with his wife's other eye. He threw it from him and fled downstairs. In his kitchen the final part, her tongue, fell from the water ewer he poured over his head to wash himself clean.

From “Betrayals and Treachery in the Later Roman Empire”, Chapter 18, Volume LXIV published by Constantinople University Press (1926).

For a time the most infamous traitor to the Roman Empire was the Senator Simeon Gabriel, stripped of his rank and expelled from the city of Constantinople and the Roman Empire, upon Alexios' ascension to the throne. The emperor's suspicions were first aroused during the rescue of his wife from the city of Alexandria prompting his ally Father (then later Bishop and finally Patriarch) Panagiotis Giannopoulos to launch an investigation lasting years into Simeon Gabriel's affairs. […] Publicly denounced as a Jew and republican, and in private suspected of consorting with darker powers […]

[…] the letters of Simeon Gabriel portray a somewhat different picture, however, of a man trying to reconcile his secret faith with his duty to the Emperor, and failing to realise that his ally Nadia was not merely duplicitous but evil in a way which is difficult to express. That he was distracted by his deep devotion to the reconstruction of the Temple Mount and the safety of the Jewish faith seems to have been the real key to his downfall […]

[…] it seems likely that his exile from the city of Jerusalem, and the Temple there that he had played a major role in constructing, was a much heavier blow than the dramatic expulsion from Constantinople. Simeon Gabriel had witnessed the arrival of an angel of Yahweh and set forth to preach the word of the new covenant […]

Excerpts from “The Jews of Jerusalem - Medieval Lives” by Arion Goldberg, Vienna Publishing (1929).

[…] though the life of Simeon Gabriel in later years is, of course, unusually well-documented any scholar must be cautious in considering it typical. The constant flow of reports to the Patriarch of Constantinople about Gabriel's daily life, who he met and why, his business dealings and friends, his worship at the Temple of the Mount, taken together are the most detailed picture of a life in 12th Century Jerusalem available to us. But they're ordinariness is both true and at the same time a lie. Simeon Gabriel was not randomly chosen to be watched so closely; he had been a senior diplomat and illustrious Senator of the Roman Empire and briefly the chief advisor of a claimant to the Imperial throne. One of his patrons within the city was the wife of the Constable of Jerusalem and he retained much of his old influence. Simeon Gabriel should therefore be regarded as playing at being a normal unimportant citizen of the city as much as in truth being one.

[…] never opposed the Emperor Alexios or his successors, or in fact took more than a mercantile interest in the Roman Empire upon his return from Africa […]

[…] with the death (or ascension) of Joshua ben Isaac the Jewish community was thrown back into chaos; many feared that without the leadership of their prophet that the Catholics would soon forget the importance of a Jew in saving their lives and souls. It was into this chaos that the ship bearing Simeon Gabriel back from Africa sailed. The Emperor Alexios had, reluctantly it is true, kept his word and used his influence to have Gabriel's exile ended. So it was that Gabriel discarded the disguise he had prepared with his loyal confederates amongst the Masons and entered the city publicly.

[…] years to regain the trust of the privy council and royal family, and may never have been fully trusted again, for his lack of a shadow marked him to the end of his days. Nevertheless he became the leader of the Jews in Jerusalem and then the rest of the Crusader Kingdoms and tirelessly strove to live up to the ideals of the Fourth Covenant.

[…] his funeral procession stretched for miles, his coffin held aloft by his large and prosperous family and a dozen rabbis, to be buried alongside the wife he had loved […]