Emperor Orx the Child-Snatcher

Emperor Orx, also known as Orx the Child-Snatcher, was one of the most reviled Emperors of the Ancient Viri Empire. However his crimes which history remembers him for, were not widely known among the general public at the time.   In Viri culture, twins were highly revered, and families who had twins had higher status in society. For some, the desire to have twins was an obsession, and Emperor Orx was one such individual. None of the children he sired were twins, but he went to great lengths to pass them off as such, and never gave up hope of having real twins one day.   By the time he died, Orx had twenty-three children by blood, but--save for one exception where one of his many mistresses gave birth to a child two days before his then-wife did--he had newborns removed from their families and passed off as the twins of his own children, totalling forty-four children officially. Each child he took was raised as a prince or princess in his palace alongside his own, and in his deathbed diaries he admitted he lost track long ago of which ones were actually his.   In order to produce the twenty-three that were his own, he had a long string of mistresses. When his wife gave birth to the only child that they had together, he removed the baby from her before they had a chance to bond, and didn't return it until a "twin" for it had been found. He never told her which was which so she couldn't play favourites.   During his reign, Emperor Orx's reputation was mixed. Among the nobility, behind his back, he was a bit of a joke. Orx could not see that nobody would believe all forty-four of his progeny were twins, and while none dared laugh at his face, the kings and lords beneath him made fun of his obvious inferiority complex. Whether any of them ever thought to question where all the additional children came from is unknown.   Some of the children which Orx adopted were orphans or abandoned, but many were taken from peasant families. He usually picked on parents which already had at least one other child, paying them off and/or making threats against their other child to get them to comply. The parents who refused, ended up in prison or executed.
Children

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