Augustin Bourbon

Lord Augustin Bourbon is the Minister of War of the Sollan Empire, a senior member of House Bourbon and a cousin of Prince Charles. Corpulent and gimlet-eyed, he carries a reputation for treachery and venality. His family descends from the ancient kings of France, exiled when the Mericanii took Old Earth, and House Bourbon's reach extends into Legion Intelligence.

Bourbon is a persistent antagonist to Hadrian throughout Hadrian's return to the Empire. He is suspected of engineering the Gododdin mission to fail as a means of political exile, of pushing the Tamerlane's impoundment in the Imperial Council through a strategy pre-arranged with Synarch Vergilian, and of directing the Colosseum assassination attempt against Hadrian using Breathnach and Chantry resources -- having supplied the highmatter sword later used by the assassin Irshan. After the attempt, he claims personal charge of the investigation while brazenly confronting Hadrian on the colonnade. Hadrian delivers a veiled threat by gripping Bourbon's hand with his highmatter false bones and later gives him the evil eye across the palace hall; Bourbon flees.

Three years after the Tamerlane's departure from the Eternal City, Bourbon boards a private shuttle at the Sun King's Hall for a ride to his family's apartments. He finds his pilot dead, the shuttle locked and jammed, and the same highmatter sword he supplied to the assassin -- now rendered useless with its core removed -- planted aboard. A bomb destroys the shuttle on the landing pad, killing him and leaving nothing for burial. No one is ever officially blamed for his death.