Controversial: Kusari never had an Emperor

[jammi]

(...) Shogun Edo was enraged and shouted for vengeance. An Imperial taskforce has been called in to investigate what is left of the Governor's retreat.

After reading a lot about history of Japan, I can't fend off the feeling they were somehow... connected with each other (yaoi alert, ugh!)

The strong implication is that by that point Shogun Edo was also a Nomad. Tekagi was already infected through his meeting with Niemmen, and got the Shogun during his debriefing about the diplomatic meeting. He was actually due to meet with Jacobi just after that, but Trent and the Blood Dragons kill him in order to grab the Proteus Tome before he can depart.

The implication, again, was that Tekagi was being used as an infiltration vector due to his ability as a diplomat to set up high level meetings with other dignitaries. When Tekagi got burned and the Donau had already been toasted in the introduction, the infected military junta in Liberty had to take more direct measures (coup) in order to secure Jacobi. Trent, again, busts this up.

You can actually pick up an awful lot of clever details from the campaign news articles. Some quite dark details too. For example, the Foreign Minister of Bretonia (Lord Quigley) is very strongly implied to be infected, and is murdered by an Order operative before he can get Carina. The operative then commits suicide before he can be interrogated in Liberty (probably fearing Nomad influence in the LSF).

Well, that's one possibility, anyway. On second thoughts, Ozi does say that no-one had ever faced a Nomad and survived just before he goes and Rambos The Arch. The other option was that it was a Nomad agent, who killed Quigley in order to force Queen Carina to take his place at a diplomatic summit on Curacao that Niemman would be attending. For obvious reasons.

But on topic, the more I read, the more I feel that Shogun was just being used as lazy shorthand for the role that occupied the head of Kusari's Imperial state. I doubt there was an Emperor - ceremonial or otherwise - because there's pretty much nothing to indicate so.