Marius Leitdorf

Marius Leitdorf, Elector Count of Averland, was the most gifted and most unstable ruler the Empire ever suffered — a man whose mind swung without warning from lucid brilliance to raving madness and back. In his clear moments he was a peerless general and duellist, a master of strategy who could read a battlefield at a glance and a swordsman feared across the provinces. In his other moments he held court with his beloved sword, wept over imagined slights, and issued commands so deranged his officers learned to quietly ignore them until the fit passed. His long-suffering subjects endured him because, mad or sane, he defended Averland with ferocious devotion, and because his lunatic courage was matched by genuine tactical genius. Leitdorf met his end as he had lived — sword in hand and raving of his lost love — cut down amid a rampaging greenskin Waaagh! that his lucid brilliance had come within a hair of breaking. Averland has never quite decided whether to mourn its Mad Count or count itself fortunate to be free of him.