His Imperial Majesty!

Question: Do you good people know about Emperor Joshua Norton, Emperor of these United States and Protector of Mexico? I have recently found out about this man, and I rather like what I've read. I'm thinking of incorporating him into a Scion game at some point in the future, but am unsure of how to go about it. Any suggestions?

Indeed we do! For those who don't, check out this miracle of a human being:

That gloriously bewhiskered gentleman is His Imperial Majesty Joshua Norton the First, Emperor of These United States and Protector of Mexico. He was Emperor of the United States for twenty-one golden years... if you ask him, anyway, although the democratically elected government of the U.S. continued blithely on in spite of his imperial decrees.

Emperor Norton I is one of the most beloved quirky personalities of American history; he simply declared himself Emperor one day, out of the blue and with no warning, claiming that the country had fallen into disrepair and he would just have to take on the responsibility to sort it out. He went on to call meetings of important politicians, issue imperial edicts of government - including an order for Congress to disband, which they ignored, and then one for the army to mobilize and forcibly disband Congress, which they ignored, and then one to abolish the Democratic and Republican parties, which they ignored, and then one to command the Protestant and Catholic churches to formally recognize his authority, which they ignored, too - invent his own currency, levy his own taxes, and generally take the job of being emperor of the vast commonwealth of states very seriously indeed. And despite being a little old man in somewhat threadbare imperial garb, he still managed to actually meet others of his royal ilk, most famously the Emperor of Brazil.

It's usually taken for granted that he was completely bonkers insane, due to his mad campaign to assume imperial regnancy over the United States and his utterly serious approach to the whole thing, but that didn't stop San Francisco, his home city, or the country at large from falling in love with him. In his later years, he became a tourist attraction that people came from all over the country to meet and shake hands with, and many San Francisco businesses accepted his personal currency instead of real money, while locals would be happy to give him a few dollars - their "taxes" for the year - if he needed them. He died totally penniless and destitute on a public street, but thousands upon thousands of people came to his funeral.

Our one and only United States Emperor's been immortalized in a lot of subsequent fiction; those who have read Neil Gaiman's Sandman will of course have recognized an entire issue devoted to him, in which his behavior is explained as a sort of metaphysical competition between Dream and Desire, and both Robert Louis Stevenson and Mark Twain met him during their lives and based characters in their stories on him. And now here we are with Scion, and the question of who - or what - the venerable imperial majesty might have been in that setting!

There are tons of options, all of them fun. Joshua Norton might be an excellent example of a Legendary Mortal; only Legend 1, true enough, but obviously touched by the divine and able to pull off things that by rights shouldn't have worked for anyone, as well as leaving his permanent mark upon the world. He also could have been a Scion (and of whom? One of the kingly gods, who later disowned him thanks to his obvious madness? One of the gods renowned for insanity, who looked down on his antics with fondness?), although his generally quiet life - other than his attempted political upheavals - would suggest that he must have been Visited late in life and never risen very high in Legend. He also could have been some lesser immortal or even god enjoying hobnobbing with humanity, taking on a ridiculous role to enjoy himself as if attending a costume ball. Or it's also entirely possible that Norton was simply a normal mortal, but that he was Fatebound to some god or Scion in a role that called for him to become the emperor - perhaps the Nemesis of some Scion who was currently in governmental power, or a Beggar whose Scion was forced to set up the entire imperial structure to make sure he was taken care of, or even a Foil, showing nobility and political savviness to emphasize how much a Scion that wasn't doing well with those still had to learn.

I'm personally fondest of the first and last options - a Legendary Mortal or a Fatebound Mortal, or maybe even both, with some god using one of the powers that can create Legendary Mortals on him to escape his Fatebond and sparking his sudden decline into the most regal insanity. He might even still be alive, in spite of his publicized death, in some Terra Incognita somewhere; or perhaps the Protector of Mexico is a prize soul in one of the Aztec Underworlds, or watched over by the guardian gods of the Pacific Native American peoples. He could be anything you want him to be.

Except unimperial. He can't be that.