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====== Twardin Kopn ======

**Twardin Kopn** was an Ahldoraean painter who lived in the 5th and 6th centuries somewhere in the Loodon Empire. He was the protege of Anarien Tonrne and had himself created a school that taught many painters throughout the 6th and 7th centuries.

His works were notable for their grandeur and panoramic scale, which appealed to the court. He was frequently commissioned to do important work, which made him famous and respected. He did not, however, become wealthy, as he rejected monetary rewards and considered wealth to be a primary human vice. He, therefore, lived on the streets with the common folk, and his clothing was typically ragged and dirty.

He was also notorious for both despising realism and insisting on making paintings of famous people and existing landmarks. His works would take unparalleled creative liberty, up to the point that a painting called "The Tower of Upland" shows a deep hole in the ground. His portrait of the Duke of Villpeh is a handsome young man. The Duke was also said to have been good looking, but the person on the portrait bore little resemblance. The Duke, however, famously accepted the portrait and displayed it on a wall facing the main entrance of his house, with the inscription "Portrait of a young man".

Eventually, Twardin ran into trouble with the [[Emperor of Loodon|Last Emperor]] who had commissioned him to create a mural of the [[Neutral Palace]]. Painted on a 4x6 meter canvas, the mural garnered high praise for its artistic qualities, but was noted to be depicting a building completely different from the actual Neutral Palace.

[{{:wiki:neutral_palace.png?nolink&200 |The infamous mural of the Neutral Palace}}]

Since the real Neutral Palace was such a grand and impressive structure, a feat of architecture and a great source of pride for the Loodonians, while the palace on the mural looked ordinary and uninteresting, this had angered the emperor, who then imprisoned Twardin in the Palace, with the intent of punishing him after the Congress was over. Twardin was let go by the emperor's courtiers after the emperor was murdered in the Long Corridor of the Palace by [[twin_kings_of_astauand|Rhadr]].

Unfortunately, this turned out to be the last verified detail of Twardin's biography, and his ultimate fate remains unknown. Some information was fished out of the vast body of memoirs, written by the participants of the Peace Congress, which involved hundreds of courtiers and servants. According to some accounts, Twardin was seen loitering about the Palace as everyone was hastily leaving. In the memoir of Loid Stebn, Twardin is quoted to have said that he will set for a journey back to Loodon and that he has a project a year from now in the capital. The quote is merely a brief mention of Stebn meeting the famous artist, and there was no evidence found of a project in the capital commissioned to Twardin at around 511 AC. However, as War started, it is entirely possible that plans changed and the project was canceled. There are also no records of Twardin ever being seen in the capital after the start of War or of him producing more paintings.

Historical research has also surfaced some mentions of Twardin here and there, seemingly in contexts after the start of War, but none of it is verifiable and none of it sheds light on what happened to the then already old painter.
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