Author's Note: I wrote this because the value judgment implicit in the canonical representation of Tepet Fokuf gave me The Bad Vibes. An unmarried man, sexually active but seemingly uninterested in sexual partners(that as a dynast he should have ease acquiring if he were to desire any), and this apparently being portrayed as the punchline of a joke. In the context of the deeply natalist culture of the Realm, I think you can see this has rather unsavory implications.
Tepet Fokuf Revised
Tepet Fokuf, the Imperial Regent, his name accursed or scorned by dynast and peasant alike. Lambasted and lampooned for being a puppet, a mortal, and an unmarried man. His detractors in the Great Houses vacillate between accusations of grasping presumption and clueless pliability, even as they benefit from his lack of ambition. Puritans accuse him of depravity for acts of onanism that many pious immaculate monks also engage in. Cousins and matriarchs accuse him of selfishness for refusing to marry and sire children. Patricians thoughtlessly regurgitate rumors they hear from their social betters, laying blame or ridicule at the feet of a man who has no real power over them and has never presumed to claim otherwise. Peasants blame him for the ever increasing misrule of the imperial government, either too ignorant or too deluded to acknowledge the Heroes of the Dragonblooded Host as their true abusers. The marginally more informed assume Fokuf hapless nobody without past or future, plucked from the aether to serve the needs of greater names and destined to disappear once his purpose is served. Pathetic catspaw or grasping fool, the Scarlet Realm cannot decide what to make of its Imperial Regent, only that he should be looked down upon for whatever alleged character flaws that a given speaker decides to ascribe to him.
Tepet Fokuf takes this vitriol with practiced resignation, to hear him tell it, he is neither hero nor villain, he is only a mortal man. He has no delusions of grandeur nor ambitions of ascension, and it is these qualities that allowed him to survive for years in the viper's nest that is the Imperial Palace, even before the Empress' disappearance. Aging, unexalted, devoid of true authority, and bereft of genuine companionship, those who only know of him as the puppet regent would be surprised to know that he was once a lesser paramour of the Empress, and that he managed to stay in the Imperial Palace for years after her eye turned to younger and more beautiful consorts.
Son of the now dead Tepet Matriarch, Fokuf in his youth was a disappointment to his elders for his failure to exalt, piling resentment upon the young man until it exploded in an embarrassingly public tirade against his mother during a visit to the Imperial City. An outburst that would normally have earned him a living hell instead caught the eye of the Empress, and seeking to maneuver against the then powerful House Tepet, she offered him a place in her entourage. Though he was comely enough, the Empress' true reason for selecting him as a concubine was his estrangement from his family, allowing her to give the appearance of showing favor to House Tepet while in truth giving them no political victory at all. Fokuf, the disappointing black sheep of Tepet, would not lobby for his hated cousins and demanding mother, and instead he would allow the Empress insight into the workings of the Tepet Matriarch's inner circle.
And so it was that the young Tepet Fokuf found himself swept away into a whirlwind affair with the Queen of All Creation. For a span of seemingly dreamlike years he lived in luxury unknown even to most dynasts, sleeping on hellsilk sheets and drinking from hearthstone studded goblets. When the mood came upon her, the Empress called him to her bower, and what passed between them is known only to herself and Fokuf. Far from her sole or even most favored paramour, Fokuf spent those early years desperately vying for the Empress' affections, competing with love-addled outcastes, veterans, magistrates, and sorcerers in a vicious web of palace intrigues and petty conflicts. Time would pass, and these other paramours would lose the Empress' favor through either failure, betrayal, or simple happenstance; granted plum offices and sent away to pine from afar, or simply disappearing in the night without a trace. Yet when time came that the Empress no longer called upon him, when his face began to show the early signs of age and his information on House Tepet grew out of date, Fokuf received neither a notice of eviction nor a dagger in his sleep. Having neither betrayed her confidence nor displayed use as a potential agent, as so many other concubines did, it seemed that the Empress' reward for Fokuf was simply to allow him to exist in the Imperial Palace, recipient of neither favor nor punishment.
Fokuf made a few early abortive attempts to regain the Scarlet Empress' attention, but eventually came to accept his fall from grace, content to bask in the presence of that godlike woman who he remains a loyal devotee of even to this day. For a time, he settled into a role somewhere between courtier and servant, a quiet fixture of the Imperial Palace's gardens and salons, offering oft ignored advice to younger paramours of the Empress who believed themselves the ones to finally win the heart of that distant living goddess. These younger aspirants came and went, but the aging Fokuf remained. Experience taught him well the dangers of palace intrigue and its myriad trysts, so his only companions were a few servants and lesser functionaries. In time, he came to occupy a paradoxical existence of understanding greatly the Realm's halls of power, while simultaneously having absolutely no ability to affect them whatsoever. And it was for this reason that when the Council of the Empty Throne convened, that assembly of the most powerful women in the world chose Tepet Fokuf as imperial regent. Devoid of ambition and any true ties to his house, but still a longtime insider of the Imperial Palace, Fokuf was perfect for the role.
Today, Tepet Fokuf is the much put upon puppet of the Scarlet Dynasty, little more than a rubber stamp on corrupt decrees or a living piece of furniture at imperial functions. Evicted from his familiar apartments and small circle of friends, he resides in a luxurious and sterile wing of the Imperial Palace, watched over by the mute golems of the Silent Legion and attended by two faced servant-spies of the Great Houses. His meals are grand and delicious, before five different poison testers pick them apart searching for toxins. His colossal bedroom is fit for a king, and it is also drafty and tastelessly formal. Any carnal companions he might acquire see him only as the Imperial Regent, either reporting on him to the Great Houses or seeking to exploit his vulnerability, and this has grown so galling that he has come to abstain from amorous relationships altogether.
Having no illusions regarding his place in the Realm, Fokuf regards his term as Regent as merely a brief interval before an unceremonious death at the hand of one imperial claimant or another. He accepts this fate with quiet sorrow, and seeks to wring whatever fulfillment he can from what little actual privileges his position affords. He hides his cynical despondency behind a mask of addled pliability, living day to day by the whims of the Realm's true power brokers. Snake-eyed ministers come to him in his office and shove piles of paperwork and decrees in his face, and he signs and stamps these until they move on. Puritanical firebrands hurl invective at him in the halls of the palace, and he simply admits to his weaknesses until they move on. Old rivals from his time in the imperial harem accost him with veiled threats, and he makes mewling gestures of submission until they move on. Convinced of his role as a cosmic plaything, the only thing that would move him to test the limits of his power and the strength of his shackles is perhaps a small moment of genuine kindness from someone, anyone really. The true extent of his authority is miniscule in the grand scheme of things, but he has still spent years in one of the most fantastical and cutthroat environments in the known world, anybody who could genuinely earn his favor could find new doors open to them in the Imperial Palace, metaphorical or otherwise.
