August Magnus Donia



August Magnus Donia (February 12, 1946), born Derek Vandyke, is a Lovian socialite, businessman, communist politician, founder of the LCP and patriarch of the Donia clan. He considers himself a baron and some people tend to call him Baron A.M. Donia I. He is the father to famous model Dalia Donia. In the mid 1980s, he founded the Lovian Communist Party, of which he still is the leading figure. In 2010, he was elected Member of the Congress. He is also appointed head of the Department of Tourism and Leisure.

Lately, Donia has become a rather controversial person in Lovia. He won the 2009 McCrooke v. Donia Trial, and ended up bragging about it. Shortly after the trial, Donia was temporaly exiled for insulting Pierlot McCrooke. He was also accused of being involved in the failed IGP revolutionary plot but was later allowed to return to Lovia by King Dimitri I of Lovia.

Donia also is a film director. His first film WSFMA will premier in early 2010 and will star famous actors Rico Wasabi and Thomas R. Wang.

The newspaper Hurbanova Novine has declared the Donia Clan and August Magnus (the Red Baron) nearly bankrupt, based on an anonymous and mysterious letter. The baron denies this news.

Early life


Derek Vandyke was born in Alabama, USA, into a Southern working class family. He did well at school. It was in the year 1968, when Derek reached the age of twelve, that he discovered the truth about his ancestry, when he got a birthday present from his great-grandfather: a book containing a family tree. Derek Vandyke realized his family tree dated back centuries. One of his earliest known ancestors had been Gerlof Piers Donia, the son of the legendary Frisian freedom fighter Pier Gerlofs Donia. In 1715, the great-great-great-great-grandson of Pier Gerlofs Donia, Ivo Douwama-Jelckama had left the Netherlands for America, accompanied by his wife and six daughters. Back in the USA, Derek began calling himself 'Baron August Donia I'. His family ridiculed him, and his fiancée left him.

Business
After dropping out of high school, Derek Vandyke began working as a mechanic. He made a modest living, but saved out his money until he got enough to buy a store. He expanded this store and eventually owned a whole chain. He went into the real estate business and became the landlord of entire city blocks. He later purchased a taxi company. At the young age of 26, Derek was a millionaire, and by the time he was thirty, he already made three million dollars a year. In Libertas, he had invested in the business of Doctor Magnus since the 1970s.

As of 2010, A.M. Donia has promised to invest generously into TINA's SOS (Smart Operation System). The Baron firmly believes money is meant to be spent (geld moet rollen, in his own words).

Ancestry question
Derek Vandyke wanted to restore his noble title. After visiting his grandfather in Montréal, Canada, he discovered his family tree dated back further then he had thought at first: it dated back all the way up to the First Crusade.

His grandfather said he had traveled to Palestine once, with a fellow traveler by the name of Abdul Muhammed, a man from Mecca. On their way trough Europe and the Middle East, the two men had come across Turkey, and they where staying in the Turkish province of Hatay for the night. At the city of Antakya, they discovered a family of tall people, their hair was blonde, and their eyes were grey. According to the patriarch of this family, they were the decendents of Ygo Gales Galama, a Frisian knight who had fathered children with a Morish slave girl back in the 1100s. They kept an ancient shield and armor to prove this, the knight had given his shield to the Morish slave girl so she could buy back her freedom. He died in battle the next day.

Derek Vandyke reclaimed his noble titles at the age of 32, less then a year after having heard the story of Ygo Gales Galama from his grandfather. He traveled to Antakya, alone, and there he found Abdul Muhammed and his wife, Aise, who indeed had green eyes as Muhammed had described. The couple had grown old and Abdul ran a small hotel and Aise rented out rooms for guests at home.

Aise Muhammed took Derek Vandyke to her ancestral home nearby, the house of her grandfather in which she was born 71 years ago. The house was inhabited by her youngest uncle, the blind family patriarch. He showed Derek Vandyke the shield of Ygo Gales Galama, after Aise had insisted. Derek stayed for some time, but left two weeks later.

Life in Lovia
Baron August went to Lovia in the year 1983. He married Aise Muhammed's granddaughter, a grey-eyed Morish girl known for her wit and beauty and settled in Lovia. He had Castle Donia built in the Emerald Highlands in 1986 where he has lived ever since. He has become a rich soci.alite and businessman since. His noble titles however, are not accepted officially in Lovia and only few people seem to accept his titles in general.

On Christmas 2009, Donia was convicted of numerous offences. He was exiled from Lovia for almost a month but found a new home in Germany and stayed there quite comfortably until he was allowed to return by the king. Castle Donia is currently subject of a government debate concerning the legal limits of its size, to which Donia has responded angerly.

As the only LCP member running for MOTC, Donia was elected with 8.1% of the votes as congressman. He hopes to get more LCPers into the congress at the mid-term elections. A.M. Donia was appointed minister of tourism & leisure after the 2010 elections and was inaugurated in february.

Donia is befriended to IGP-member Brenda Young. Despite their differences from the past, Donia regards her as a personal friend. He admires her bravery and her daring exploits and he loves the novel The Insight into Lovia: The Despotic King, a novel the Baron describes as his "favourite Lovian novel ever written".

Family
Baron August I and his wife Dalia Muhammed (born 1965) have five children:
 * 1) 1984: Ygo August Donia - communist son, prominent celebrity
 * 2) 1986: Bernd Bernard Donia
 * 3) 1989: Ivo Carlton Donia
 * 4) 1991: Dalia II Donia - modeling daughter, shortly married to Pierlot McCrooke
 * 5) 1993: Linda Donia

The baron has two granddaughters, both from his eldest son Ygo August. His first and so far only grandson will be born in March 2010 and shall be named Ricky McCrooke. The baron is the lovable partriarch to a large and growing family. He describes himself as a family man who loves nothing more then to spend time with his family.

He does, however, have some very old fashion views on marriage which is considered rather controversial in Lovia. The baron, for example, is an advocate for arranged marriages, having arranged the (unhappy) marriage between his eldest daughter and McCrooke without her approval, and also arranged marriage between his son Ygo August and a rich heiress.