One of My Imaginary Country's Founders

Voledads is the imaginary country I have created in class. One of the country's founders is Emilio Iodeco van Sprawitz, more commonly referred to as Emilio van Sprawitz. Like many Voledadians, he was born in Maintana, but his father, Franklin van Sprawitz, was from Carmellan. Emilio van Sprawitz was born in 1698, the middle child of a middle-class merchant’s sprawling family of seventeen. Emilio's grandmother observed from the beginning that he was strangely calm, cautious, and observant for a small child.

Emilio van Sprawitz attended the College of Hull and Brownstone-Morris, famous for the study of psychology and law, on a scholarship for law at the age of thirteen. Contrasting sharply with his young childhood and later adulthood, Emilio was a rather rowdy sort in college, carousing about with the higher class and accumulating large debts. He studied law very seriously, however.

Emilio van Sprawitz was the main author of the constitution, which was drafted in 1738, after the deposal of Voledads’ most powerful monarch, Otto IV.

Emilio van Sprawitz wrote propaganda papers for the revolutionary cause, headed diplomacy missions for foreign aid, and helped install the first constitutionally-ruled oligarchy. Emilio van Sprawitz served as an advisor to the oligarchy for three terms (each term equaling one year), and was nominated to the oligarchy. He agreed (somewhat reluctantly, and after a great deal of prodding) to run for a seat in the oligarchy and won a winning vote, but died before he could assume his post.

Emilio van Sprawitz led educational reform and helped lower crime ratings, but he was often criticized for his Draconian ways—he notoriously made repeated misdemeanors punishable by death.

One hot June day, Emilio van Sprawitz set out on a recreational fishing trip in his yacht with a number of other political figures. Van Sprawitz was chatting with a number of people in the cigar lounge when someone lit a gunpowder fuse. It exploded in the West Wing of the boat, the site of the cigar lounge. Van Sprawitz and those in the cigar lounge died instantly. Van Sprawitz’s assassinator was never found, and it is still up in the air whether the assassinator intended to kill him or another person.

One interesting fact was that was only revealed after his death was that Van Sprawitz was very scared of cats, and had two pit bulls stationed at the back door of his immense country house to guard specially against his neighbor’s tomcats.