Characters - King Azoth

King Azoth during the war

King Azoth is a legendary monarch who, according to the stories of the Mediterranean and Atlantic pistrix, defended his species' spawning grounds from merfolk invasions until the (historically uncertain) moment when he was killed while valiantly fighting alone against an army of over a thousand merfolk.

The details of Azoth's life are largely the product of folklore and literary invention, and his historical existence is debated and disputed by modern historians, both human and merfolk. For many pistrix, however, he remains a solid historical figure, believed in almost religiously.

He was the "husband" of Queen Serpent.

 

Debate on Historicity

Although the Azoth bloodline, with its hundreds of descendants (or so-called) scattered across the world's oceans, appears to be a historical reality, the truth of who this common ancestor "king" was is highly debated.

One school of thought sees the king as a true historical figure, a leader and inventor who united the entire pistrix people under one banner to fight back against the merfolk's abuses, and who paid for this boldness with his life.

Some scholars, however, maintain that Azoth was nothing more than a fictional hero of folklore, or even a partially forgotten ocean deity, later associated with real events, such as the destruction of the Vertical Castle, one of the most important gathering and burial sites for the pistrix. There appears to be no documentation attesting that the pistrix ever had a centralized government, much less a monarchy. Other mythological figures later "historicized" can be cited as examples of a similar process of mythologizing, such as Hengest of Kent, a legendary ruler, or the well-known King Arthur.

Even Azoth's supposed lifespan of over seven hundred years appears to be a completely invented detail, although the pistrix (none of whom, among those interviewed, have reached that age) swear that it is natural, and even common for their species, to live that long.

 

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