The following excerpt is from a class assignment and notes by a history student at Imperial University. To her, Augustus the Great, founder of the Terran Empire, had been dead for over eighteen hundred years—a figure of myth, from an age when gods still walked among mortals.
Given that all her evidence and conclusions came from the vast official historical records of the Empire, and that they contained a great many personal opinions, preferences, and prejudices, readers would have to judge for themselves where truth lay, where falsehood lay, and where she contradicted herself:
When it came to Emperor Augustus I, he was undoubtedly an unavoidable figure in the modern history of the Terran Empire. Just as one could not discuss the Empire without Korhal, or humanity without Earth.
Ask a few people on any street in Augustgrad who Emperor Augustus was, and the first thing they would ask was, "Which one?" Once you told them you meant Augustus the Founder, then from little children who had just learned to read to eighty-year-old grandmothers, everyone would eagerly argue with you over why Augustus I was the greatest emperor.
In the Terran Empire, no one grew up without hearing the stories of Augustus the Great. Even the famous ministers and generals beneath him had been immortalized in biographies and poetry.
Of the hundreds of billions of Imperial citizens, six out of every ten shared names with these ancient heroes. Even emperors named their children after them.
Of course, there had always been plenty of people named Jim and Tom in the world.
Speaking of which, my favorite was Augusta Mengsk. Legend said she was Augustus the Great's older sister, and she shared my name.
Crossed out.
(This was a character from unofficial histories and the famous series of novels *Flowers of