A score ago, the rebellion ended. Leopold the Lion, also called The Tyrant King, was overthrown by his brother Lav. Like his father Leonard, Lav is a gentle and enlightened monarch, versed in the sciences as well as the nuances of politics.
The rebellion was led by Lav, a lion, but it was a rebellion that included all castes of society. After years of war, a vast alliance of animals finally reached Blackbark, Leopold’s capital. The capital was well stocked and could endure many years of siege, giving it enough time to regroup and defeat the rebellion. When they were besieged, Leopold had sent all the citizens not in the armed forces out of the city to flee, knowing that Lav would have to take care of them and lose food and other precious resources. Lav decided to send them all to Pride, the hometown of the lions, and enter the city by force, thus ending the war then and there.
What isn’t common knowledge is that a famous scholar of the time, Herbert the Hedgehog (father of our protagonist Charles) was instrumental in ending the rebellion. It was he who devised a way to enter the city through a back entrance – researching old scripts on Blackbark’s architecture, he found a way to enter the city through the sewage system, and thus enter the cities defenses.
In the ensuing battle Blackbark burned to the ground, and Lav decided that all the animals who left for Pride could just stay there. He opened up these ancestral homelands of the lions to all the animals and declared Pride the new capital of the Animal Kingdom.
As King, Lav ushered in an age of freedom and reason. This had the adverse effect of making the divides of the kingdom more pronounced. The noble cats gained a political and economic foothold that they are now using to spread word of reform, and the lower castes are even speaking of anarchy. Will the rebel king’s rule end in rebellion as well, or will he find a way to placate unrest? This, and more, will be at stake in the game.