Harbu of Uzda was the son of and successor to the Targhandist city-ruler Buan, and the first entirely post-imperial leader of Uzda. He and his three sisters were born relatively late in his father's career, making Harbu only seventeen when he took the Uzdan throne. His sisters, Rael, Tuu, and Ananina, were younger still. All had been raised by a series of Targhandic tutors and, it seems, local goatherds, chosen by their father to ensure that they would not stray too far from their roots. The identity and fate of their mother -- "the Buanina," as her populace affectionately called her -- is unknown. Almost certainly she disappeared or died not long after Ananina's birth, because we have records of the successful prosecution of several libels against Buan in that period, against various pamphleteers insinuating some sort of foul play.

This mode of upbringing was not, generally, a happy one. While the tutors and goatherds were by all reports genuinely devoted to Buan, none apparently dealt well with balancing the notion of the children as royals and the idea that they should be exposed to privation, especially in such tumultuous years. The social strata of the old Uzdumalian ways were overturned, but it was not entirely clear what would replace them. As a result, the four children were alternately spoiled and beaten, praised lavishly for insultingly small achievements (or even for errors, as the tutors were not always of the highest quality) and shunned for "excessive" insight or cleverness.

Still, Harbu's childhood did have some happy moments. He and his sisters spent much of their time at Fuulemuulu Palace, a castle-folly their father had built overlooking the small Wren Lake among the parks at the city center. Fuulemuulu was made entirely of white stucco, to evoke the sugar of the East and to signify both abundance and naive hope. It was stocked with an enormous complement of nightingales, kept in each of the palace's four towers as well as the considerable palace gardens. All of the children loved Fuulemuulu, and when Harbu took control of Uzda, he made it his primary residence, and invited all of his sisters to live there as well. Many remarked that the decadence of the palace seemed out of keeping with Harbu's rather prosaic appearance and public behavior, but Harbu did indeed have a romantic streak, as demonstrated by his relationship with his aide de camp, Magnus Lukach Viktori. The two young men became best friends and lovers in early adolescence, and loved to go riding together, to recite poetry to one another and to stage scenes from the Baroque operas of Unconquered Orin. By all accounts, Magnus and Harbu were faithful and contented partners until the end of Harbu's life. Harbu was indeed so resolutely devoted to Magnus that he could not be convinced to take a mistress for the purpose of creating an heir, nor even risking disturbing the balance of their relationship by adopting a ward, and so his sister Rael succeeded to the throne of Uzda after his death.

Harbu was a quiet and unremarkable leader, on the whole, for the twelve years of his reign. His devotion to Targhandism not as fervent as that of his father or most of the Uzdan court, but he gamely went along with its practice and even made some small study of its holy texts. His two greatest accomplishments as ruler of Uzda were the forging of the Twofold Alliance with Orin and the eradication of Borrit Burning. "If, in fact, we are all borrits," he pointed out in his legal brief on the subject, "it makes little sense to treat only Borrits, in the historical sense, in this way. And if there be no cosmic order from which misfortunes fall, it behooves us to consider the possibility that it is not a foregone conclusion that any man, woman, or child should end his or her life by fueling the funeral pyre of his or her 'better'. Therefore, if you must burn something under these circumstances, to give the proper smell of burning flesh -- and I do not deny that this is most aesthetically pleasing -- let it be a mule."

See also:

Borrits

Buan of Uzda

Sugar

Unconquered Orin