Yusuf II

Dates: 18??-1908.

Yusuf I leaves impossibly large shoes to fill on his death. For the next fifty years, those shoes aren't filled - at least not by anybody of the Umayyad line; the best claimant to that position would be Yusuf's former right-hand man, Don Musa Cordovero, who (along with his son, Don Ibrahim) oversees a succession of what's commonly called "the six weak caliphs" and steers the UCNA into being a more presidential monarchy.

After Don Musa's death, and the rise of Don Ibrahim, the UCNA encounters something it hasn't known since Yusuf I. For the first time in half a century, the Umayyad and the Cordovero at the top of the pecking order had a rapport - and ambition.

That Umayyad, not coincidentally, was named Yusuf II. This is his blog post.

Yusuf II as a young man

The man who would go down in history as Caliph Yusuf II was not, it should be noted, an Abdallah. I'm not entirely sure what he was relative to the Yusufid succession, but he certainly wasn't a direct-line heir.

• From a fairly early age, Yusuf's teachers remarked that he was a gifted child. After a few difficult early years which saw him regularly beaten by the teachers, he shaped himself up and learned to perform to everybody's expectations. The active word was perform - Yusuf studied not to learn but to please his teachers.
• Coming of age for the end of the Northern Wars, Yusuf dutifully enlisted and was attached to a Nova Toleto cavalry force. He was promoted to his level of incompetence; after some distinguished service in the field, he rose to be an officer proper, at which point he became at once a strict disciplinarian (one formation in particular was beaten into respectability) and a do-nothing boss who delegated most of the decisionmaking to his immediate subordinates.

A year or so after the end of the campaign, force reductions saw Yusuf honorably discharged from his post. He left gracefully and went home to spend time with his family, falcons, and backgammon buddies. And, but for the death of the Caliph, that would've been the life of Yusuf of the House of Umayya.

Yusuf's acclamation to the Caliphate

Reign: 189?-1908.
Preceded by: [who?]
Succeeded by: Basil II.

But the ninth Caliph [who?] did die, and it left Don Ibrahim in a bad position. The late caliph's oldest son [who?] clearly wasn't caliphal material; the twins [who?] were still children; and the youngest was an infant, whose dumbness was a telltale sign of madness later in life. The last regency regency [details?] had kicked off the Six Weak Caliphs - and, more importantly, Don Ibrahim wasn't his father.

• Yusuf Abdallah was going to be made, but it was too soon to say how mad (mind you Granada.) Directly bypassing him would be the perfect setup for blowback down the road, and Don Ibrahim decided that was unacceptable.
• Even if the Abdallah was hopelessly mad, abandoning the direct caliphal succession was also unacceptable. There were no rules specifying how to go about it, and Don Ibrahim wasn't desperate enough to face the drama that would come with combing the Sufyanids for a successor. [details?]
• A seventh weak caliph was also unacceptable. Picking a mad caliph [who?] would set a bad precedent for the UCNA. More importantly, though, it would also mean that the caliphate was clearly ruling instead of the caliph - and setting that precedent was terrifying.

After a failed acclamation, and a month of stalling that was tarnishing Don Ibrahim's already sketchy reputation, somebody [who?] dredged Yusuf up as a compromise candidate. The man had no connections other than a few friends from his brief military career, making him politically neutral. His accomplishments in the Northern Wars proved his mental competence; his unaccomplished life since, that he was no usurper.

To the surprise of many (including Yusuf himself, and possibly Don Ibrahim too) it met with the Maxaha's approval. With due celebration, Yusuf was appointed Regent, and received the Maxaha's acclamation.

Yusuf II: the first five years

If the Maxaha thought that Yusuf would be a pushover, however, they were very wrong, and discovered it less than a year later when the UCNA converted to smokeless powder. It was a clusterfuck - and Yusuf, to everybody's surprise, took a very active hand in resolving it. (As the only gun aficionado the House of Umayya has produced, he was uniquely competent to do so.)
By the time the offenders had tendered their resignations, Yusuf had established the leadership style that would see him through the rest of his political career: directly in charge during crises, and almost uninvolved otherwise.

• Yusuf's alternating approach to government worked rather nicely with Don Ibrahim. Because Yusuf relied so heavily on his subordinates' initiative, when things went wrong (by accident or design) it could usually be chalked up to the subordinates' failure to coordinate or properly interpret his broad, vague orders. When (not if) this vacated an office, it was trivially easy for Don Ibrahim to maneuver one of his handpicked favorites into the spot.
• Less than two years after the H11 crisis, New Toleto was rocked by a 6.5-magnitude earthquake. Yusuf dropped his hunt and hurried back to the city, handling the cleanup and recovery admirably.

The legacy of Yusuf II

Yusuf II was the first popular caliph since Yusuf I a century before.

• Yusuf II is remembered as being a fairly permissive caliph. He wasn't; he just didn't care.
• Although he didn't care much about the court pageantry, Yusuf II did make some significant additions to the Caliphal Household's custom. (In particular he standardized the kitchen, which was regularly almost purged [details?]; even a decade after his death, meals are now served at the times set down by him, and certain dishes have become traditional because they were the only things he cared about enough to specify.)
• While the undercurrents of the Believers trace back to the weak caliphs period, their emergence as a coherent force in New Andalusian politics only dates back to Yusuf II's reign. Coincidentally, the future Yusuf III became involved with them during the last years of his life.

This is a work in progress. It will be expanded upon.