William II

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William II
NzardWilliamII.jpg
William II in 1892
Nzard of Gandoor
Reign5 September 1889 – 9 September 1902
Coronation11 September 1889
PredecessorAlexander III
BornWilliam Percival Walsh
6 March 1839
Royal Palace, Rulookia, Nzardom of Gandoor
Died25 June 1917 (aged 78)
Eaton, Yontan Yon, Gandoor
Burial30 June 1917
Palace of the Nzards, Nzardgrad, Yanot Yon, Gandoor
SpouseAlexandria Walsh
IssueSusanne Wash (daughter)
Michael Walsh (son)
HouseHouse of Jacobson
FatherAlexander III
MotherVictoria, High-Princess of Gandoor

William II (William Percival Walsh; 6 March 1839 - 25 June 1917) was Nzard of Gandoor from 5 September 1889 until he abdicated and formally dissolved the throne of Gandoor on 9 September 1902.

While his reign of 13 years was the second shortest out of all Gandoorese monarchs, it was marked by him being the first, and only, Nzard of Gandoor to reign entirely under the Gandoorese Royal Constitution, which was enacted during his predecessor's reign, as well as being the Nzard of Gandoor during the Gandoor Revolution which led to his abdication and the dissolution of the 299 year old monarchy.

Views of him following his abdication have varied throughout the years. Post-abdication, he was viewed by revolutionaries as merely the unfortunate person who was ruler of Gandoor at the time; during the era of Prime Minister Alexei Petrikov from 1940 to 1951, he was considered a tyrant and the fact that he was permitted to continue to live after the revolution was considered to have been a grave mistake; post-Petrikov, in contemporary Gandoor, William II is generally viewed in a similar manner to how he was viewed soon after his abdication, with it being believed that, even if he hadn't been Nzard in 1900, the Gandoor Revolution would have still occurred, as the revolutionaries targeted the Gandoorese monarchy itself and not specifically William II.

Biography

William II was born William Percival Walsh on 6 March 1839 in the Royal Palace in Rulookia (now Gandoor City). He was named after his great-grandfather, William I, who was Nzard of Gandoor at the time. He, along with his family, would move to the newly constructed Palace of the Nzards in Great Palace City in 1841, at the age of two.

At the age of 18, he would begin his mandatory five years of military service, during which he would achieve the rank of Sergeant.

He officially became Prince of Gandoor in 1871, at the age of 32, following the death of his grandmother Rebecca II. Later that same year, he married his second-cousin Alexandria Primmons.

Reign

Following the death of his father Alexander III on 5 September 1889, Prince William of Gandoor became Nzard William II.

As his father had established the Gandoorese Parliament in 1885, he was the first Nzard to entirely rule under constitutional authority and was unofficially regarded as Nzard of the Gandoorese.

Despite attempts to reform Gandoorese society, his reign generally continued the policies followed by his predecessors. The vast majority of MPs in the Gandoorese Parliament either represented the upper-class or were members of the upper-class themselves, resulting in most government policies maintaining the status quo.

Gandoor Revolution and Abdication

The Gandoor Revolution is considered to have begun on 28 July 1900, when Chiba Masato delivered his Declaration on a State of Rebellion Against the Nzardom of Gandoor speech to a crowd of 15,000 in the City of Government. The next day, the 13 MPs from the Gandoor Communist Party and the 54 MPs from the New Democratic Party declared that they would would refuse to vote on new legislation passed by Parliament. As these two parties held the majority of seats in Parliament, this resulted in parliamentary functions coming to a complete standstill.

Within two weeks of the start of the revolution, William II ordered the remaining MPs to continue operating as normal and threatened to order the disbanding of the Communist and New Democratic Parties if they continued to impede parliamentary procedures.

In early 1901, he officially announced the enforcement of the Royal Authority Act of 1885, which permitted the Nzard to assume complete authority of the government in the event that Parliament refused to perform their duties. This event is regarded by most historians as the point where his fate, and the fate of the monarchy as a whole, was sealed.

After almost a year of attempting to govern Gandoor without the consent of Parliament, William II announced, on 23 November 1901, that he had begun negotiations with Masato and other revolutionaries, later revealed to be due to the encouragement of his personal advisers.

At the start of negotiations, he was adamant about the preservation of the monarchy, declaring it to be 'a symbol and unifier for all people within Gandoor', although he also admitted that he would be willing to have the monarchy stripped of any political power and having it become an entirely symbolic one. Despite this, growing support of the revolution during the negotiations, which culminated in the Conservative Royalist Party of Gandoor, the only political party in Parliament that supported the monarchy, declaring its dissolution in May 1902, led to it becoming clear that the people of Gandoor wanted nothing less than the complete abolition of the monarchy.

On 5 July 1902, in a public appearance with Chiba Masato, William II announced that he had decided to abdicate and dissolve the throne of Gandoor within the coming months. This came to fruition on 9 September 1902, when he signed documents officially declaring that the House of Jacobson was dissolved and all government institutions were to be placed under the control of Masato and the revolutionaries. While popular culture has Masato referring to William II as 'your majesty' prior to the signing of documents and 'Sergeant Walsh' afterwards, there is no evidence this actually occurred.

Post-Abdication

Following abdication, William II (now using his personal name of William Walsh) and his family moved from the Palace of the Nzards to their summer home in Eaton, which would remain their property even as all other buildings owned by the former royal family came under control of the revolutionary government.

William II died on 25 June 1917 at the age of 78, eight months after suffering from a stroke. After his death, he was granted a state funeral and was buried in the Royal Cemetery in Nzardgrad alongside his predecessors, as an agreement had been reached between William II and the revolutionaries where he and his immediate family members would be buried at the former Palace of the Nzards, now the Museum of the Nzardom of Gandoor, following their deaths.