Mankho Arner is probably only exceeded by Tars Tukas in importance in Christotan culture. The legends around him and the values he represents have far outgrown his actual achievements – and these were impressive enough. Tukas and Mankho are personifications of two very different epochs. Tukas was a man of the old era, a warrior king whose forte was battles and rousing speeches, a ruler hard, ruthless and morally impeccable. He is almost universally respected, but kept at a distance. Mankho, though, is a product of modernity and is loved. Note, incidentally, the affectionate use of his first name when referring to him – nobody calls Tukas 'Tars.'
Mankho has come to embody all the characteristics seen as ideal in a Christotan – or at least which central Christoté sees as ideal. He was learned, proficient in four language and adept at economics and political science. He was garrulous, charming, self-depreciating, witty and a superb orator He was interestingly flawed yet just about able to rise above his failings; hugely effective without ever quite knowing what he was doing; morally dubious but basically on the side of the angles. The extent to which Mankho really contained all these qualities, rather than being gifted them by later generations, is hard to say. Fact and fiction, like everything else in Mankho's tale, are rather mixed.
Mankho Arner was definitely born in Mellers Eye in 1005. His family were wealthy landowners, his father holder of the then-hereditary post of Emissary for the Ward. When Mankho was nineteen, his father retired through ill-health and passed the job to his son. Mankho held it until 1029. Exactly why he quit then is debatable. Mankho and his supporters claimed he resigned it in protest at the corruptions and inequalities of political life. His enemies countered that he was censured after some gross corruption of his own was uncovered. (Interestingly, the posterity which reveres Mankho tends to believe the second account). Mankho retired into private life for a time and set up one of the 'model farms' which were mildly fashionable – estates experimenting with novel concepts like paying tenants a decent wage for a decent day's work.
At around this time he first met Helden Gorric. The event has attracted several different mythologies. One legend holds that Mankho swindled Gorric over the sale of a horse and Gorric stormed back to break his head. They somehow got talking and Mankho first introduced Gorric to the Labourer's Brotherhood, a secret left-wing agrarian society. More likely is that both were already members of the Brotherhood and that was how they met. The relationship between the genteel, conciliatory Mankho and the irascible, radical Gorric was famously difficult and foundered shortly after the Garreday Uprisings ended. Initially, though, each recognised the other's capabilities and they became allies. The Brotherhood itself began as a simple literacy club but quickly grew and radicalised as rural conditions worsened in the 1030's. It was outlawed in 1032 and rigorously persecuted. Meetings were broken up, members locked away, and Mankho only evaded capture on several occasions. Despite drifting further left he continued trying to work for reform within the system, lobbying his formidable network of well-connected friends. Events, though, soon forced his hand.
On 1037 workers on the Central Dorlafan Plains burnt their Garreday harvests rather than surrender them to their lords. The mass protests which followed this gestures, and the subsequent repression, split the Brotherhood. Mankho first argued for moderation before agreeing to Gorric's demands for open rebellion. It's generally believed that Huwdone House pushed him to the extreme course. As the most public face of the reformers, he was convicted in his absence of treason in January 1038. His possessions were seized and his first wife, Csaba, divorced him.
Mankho hid for a while in Gorric's considerably more modest farm. He then helped found the Brown Hills communes which became his nominal base of operations. In truth, he spent most of the Uprisings frantically tearing about the country, rallying support and co-ordinating armies. He fought in all the major pitched battles in Dorlaf – Green Bridge and Elker-Lewis in 1039, Stourbiss in 1040, Kirkleas in 1043. This was despite his peaceful inclinations and his physical cowardice. Some of his most famous speeches, given to his troops just before the battles, make use of this contradiction and conclude that only his conviction of the rightness of his cause make him fight. (Being Mankho, he would frequently point out that he was so scared before each fight that he soiled himself.) In between he exercised his superb diplomatic skills, setting up a network of spies and agents, persuading Emissaries to either defect or step back from the conflict. One account claims that his messengers persuaded Erenland not to assist Huwdone House, though pro-government authors argue that Erenland wasn't asked to anyway. But it was the persistence of the revolt, rather than Mankho's brilliance, which led the Chancellor to open negotiations with him in 1049. After much to-ing and fro-ing, and some furious rows amongst the rebels' leadership, Mankho and Gorric went to Huwdone House in 1052. There they signed a treaty agreeing to end the rebellion in return for universal franchise and various reforms. What followed was the most famous single event in the Garreday Uprisings. The very next day the Barons rejected the treaty and arrested the Chancellor; Mankho and Gorric had to go to ground in the Triple Cities before finally managing to flee. That they disguised themselves as women is another typical Mankho touch.
His role in the final, furious stage of the Uprisings is rather blurred. Some claim he knew the 1052 treaty would never be accepted and had even planned his escape from the Cities in advance. This, though, doesn't explain why after finally getting back to the Brown Hills, he shut himself in his cottage and spent the next five years drinking and fornicating. More likely is that his faith had been destroyed and he saw the whole country ending up in ruins. (A few writers claim this disillusionment first drove him to drink, which is laughable if some of his earlier antics are examined.) Finally, though, the Barons backed down. Mankho emerged from his semi-retirement and met them at Linden to sign what was essentially the 1052 agreement. He then toured Dorlaf again, this time persuading the workers to lay down their arms.
Mankho's treason conviction was annulled and his property eventually returned. As with the rest of the rebel leadership, though, he was kept from the power he had fought for. Huwdone House's device in his instance was his resignation of his Emissarial post in 1029; an old edict held that if such a position is left voluntarily, it can never be resumed. He never managed to get the edict repealed and it's been convincingly argued that it was retained specifically to keep Mankho out of power. (It was finally abolished not long after his death.) But he seemed to have rediscovered his zest for life and wouldn't slip into the background.
He became involved in the embryonic campaign by Emissaries to get the right to vote for the Barons. In this he was able to employ the methods he always preferred; lobbying, speech-making, a certain amount of blackmail and bribery. His work took him to the Cities a lot where he became a celebrity; he was also frequently in town for divorce or slander cases as both plaintiff and defendant. He also re-established his model farm, albeit on new lines. Extravagant claims sometimes credit Mankho with sowing the seeds for the 'Amber Revolution' on the Central Plains in the 1200's. He was, however, no farmer; if he helped in any way it was simply in allowing his tenants to introduce new farming methods. A more concrete achievement was helping establish a forerunner of the communal political system which would later dominate the Central Plains.
It was also in his later years that Mankho's colourful political life became famous. Many of the details were exaggerated and some outright fabrications of his enemies. But there were certainly five wives. After Csaba came Geshrick, who left him after eleven years, Lobossel, who stuck with him for all of six months, Gellina, who he tried to abandon and ended up paying a record-breaking divorce settlement to, and finally Teresa. There were also any number of mistresses, married women and underage girls who, together with his drinking bouts, were why his marriages were so transient. ('Reforming Mankho' is a popular phrase today, describing the wildly optimistic hopes of a bride about to wed an unsuitable man). The reason why he was able to start so many affairs was that he was immensely handsome when young, and always charming, charismatic, recklessly generous and, despite everything, very warm hearted. He had a long life for one so hedonistic but his health declined irreversibly after a bout of pneumonia in 1074. Teresa nursed him in his final years before he died in 1077.