Born in 308 to
Ilya Shiroko and the daughter of his longtime friend and sometime co-ruler, Osk Uenement, at the old Shiroko manner in
Parishi, Sava was only a young child when his father was solidifying the empire. His formative years were spent in Parishi with his extended family while Ilya traveled around the country. In 310, Sava was brought, along with his mother, to
Niuus and began living in the royal palace there.
His education was split between governmental work and military affairs, although both his father and grandfather wanted him to lean more into military work. His mother taught him to harness his abilities as a
lu-esh after his
Attunement Test and he became a moderately good essence user. His only magical education with his father was his teachings on how to create the
Ilyannoi.
With Ilya at the helm of all governmental departments, Sava found it difficult to enter into the world of politics and administration. Instead, he focused on the military and magic, trying to live up to the standard his father had set. Not being an aliq-esh disappointed him and he felt constantly in Ilya's shadow. For the first twelve years of his life he barely saw his father as Ilya was ruling the former Bracan territory after the failure of Osk's governorship there.
When his father did return, Sava followed him and tried to learn what was necessary to rule. However, Ilya often brushed his son off and Sava was thus left to learn what he felt he needed to by visiting various government officials himself, but they were loathe to assist the prince given Ilya's controlling behavior. This resulted in Sava having only a basic understanding of the empire's inner workings at the time of his ascension at 42 after his father's death.
Suddenly in charge of a vast empire with very little formal training, he had to fight for his position against both Osk's brothers and his own extended family. Ilya's will specified that Sava was to rule and yet his inexperience made using any of his authority difficult. Sava spent most of is life resenting Ilya for never educating him further despite the fact that it was clear his father wanted him to inherit the throne.
Throughout his reign, he fought with the various departments in order to wrestle them under control. Ilya's micromanaging was not within Sava's personality and he found everything Ilya had done to be counterproductive to efficiently running a country. A strong, hyper-controlling personality was needed for that system to work. Instead of forcing that sort of rule onto himself, Sava instead began the complete reorganization of the Eoin government, setting the beginnings of the modern 12 departments, although in his time there were only six.
At the age of 57, he had his first child,
Ilya II Shiroko. The late birth was a combination of his busy schedule in attempting to make the empire something that could function without Ilya at the center and his own lack of drive toward sexual relations. He married the daughter of the former royal family of Ulena, a woman fifteen years younger, in order to further solidify Eoion's control over the territory. It was an initially only practical marriage, but the two did grow to care for one another. Three years after Ilya II's birth, his second son,
Vasyl I Shiroko, was born.
Sava's most famous accomplishment, aside from the beginning of the department structure of government, was the construction and expansion of the royal palace of Eoion into the Gandenye. He began purchasing property around the base palace and destroyed it, rebuilding sites for imperial residences, government offices, and other structures on the sites. The entire construction took seventeen years to complete. Sava's purpose was to soldify the idea of an empire and imperial rule through architecture. A new dynasty, he proposed, needed a new, grander seat of power.
The materials and motifs of the Gandenye were carefully selected to show power around the empire. Wood was brought in from rare trees found in the former Faren territory and gold was mined from Ulena to be used both inside and outside of each building. Tapestries and upholstery for the furniture were made in what was once Braca, an area famous for textiles. Marble for the flooring and various columns was selected from Metray, while Eoion itself produced the decorative glass and jewels. Sava chose motifs of
tsirin as an homage to his father, thus making the tsirin both a national symbol of the empire and the symbol of the imperial family.
He chose to begin actively training his sons to rule when Ilya II was 20, determined not to make the same mistake as his father. Before this, he had giving them lessons in politics, international affairs, military stragegy, and the creation of the Ilyannoi, but had not begun much leadership education. While he worked with them both, Vasyl was meant to act as support for his older brother. At 82, he retired fully, handing over control of the empire to Ilya II. This began the tradition of rulers training their successor before retiring rather than a succession coming after the previous monarch's death. Sadly, Ilya II died from illness two years into his reign and Sava returned from his retirement in Parishi in order to quickly train Vasyl in the art of active rule. He died in 396 just after he had decided Vasyl was ready to run the empire alone.
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