| The Tragic Life of A.M. Donia | ||
| ||
| Author | Ygo August Donia | |
| Language |  English
| |
| Publisher | independent publication | |
| Publication date | 2010 | |
| Editions | One (1st) | |
| Genre | Biography | |
| Media type | Book | |
| Pages | 423 | |
| Rating(s) |  La Quotidienne The Noble City Times The Lovian News
| |
| Preceded by | None | |
| Followed by | Lovian Dialogues (with Y. Medvedev) | |
The Tragic Life of A.M. Donia is a biography written about the last years of the life and the eventual death of August Magnus Donia, known as the Baron of Donia. The book was written by his son Ygo August Donia in 2010, shortly after the death of his father. The novel is highly critical of many of the baron’s actions and does not in any way idealize him. A.M. Donia is portrayed as a tormented soul, a caged beast. A tragical anti-hero, hence the book’s title.
Content[]
Personality[]
- August Magnus Donia (February 12, 1946 - July 30, 2010) was a man of man many words, he said much but at the same time, he didn’t reveal much about himself. He remained a mystery for the remainder of his life and even more so in death, as he died rather suddenly and without an obvious reason. The self-styled baron was a rich and wealthy man who made his fortune in business. A deeply religious man, he was at the same time a communist politician and founder of the LCP in the 1980s. He built Castle Donia in the Emerald Highlands, his most ambitious project and his self-claimed “lifework”. He personally designed the entire building, made the blue prints and drew all the papers. It took him years to complete this and then he had the thing built in a record time of only nine months despite bad wheather conditions. The construction was finished sooner then anyone could ever expect, against all odds. Over the years, new additions such as larger towers, walls and a larger gate were added.
- The patriarch of the powerful and influential Donia Clan, August became a well known Lovian celebrity as he always had hoped to become. Donia is described by those who know him as a large, burly and powerful man, tall and heavy, yet elegant, energetic and classy. A true force of nature, who was considered highly attractive to the ladies and reportedly highly unloyal to his wife much younger wife, Dalia Muhammed (1965). He met her in the city of Antakya, Turkey, on a trip there and they married three weeks upon meeting each other. Dalia later told an interviewer it was "love on first sight".
- In her words: "as I looked into his piercing blue eyes, I knew he was the one I would be with forever. He was almost not a mortal man, he was an enigma, a deity, a magnificant specimen of a human being". Marriage "made me whole", in his words, it "completed me as a man".
Married life[]
- His infidelity lead to many tensions in his family, in which the family was divided into two sides; at one side the baron and the children that took his side, at the other side his wife and the children that sided with her. These two stubborn people were reportedly close to divorce, when daughter Dalia Donia revealed her pregnancy by the Baron’s political enemy Pierlot McCrooke. It was the year 2009, and in this new crisis brought the family together once more. For a short period of time, Donia and McCrooke were on closer terms, but the short-lived marriage of McCrooke and Dalia was reportedly unhappy because of the large age-difference (McCrooke was only 11 years younger then his own father-in-law and actually 8 years older then his mother-in-law Dalia Muhammed). Daughter Dalia divorced her husband and then lived with her infant son the household of her parents.
- The Baron was upset by the situation very much and could not deal with it very well, especially when he was denied visitation rights for a while, "just to annoy me", as he claimed. His eldest son Ygo did not have the most stable personal life either, and began to show signs of the same unpredictability that was so apparant in his father's life, which worried the elder Donia a great deal.
Reality bites[]
- Donia had always been an impressive figure. Whenever he entered a room, all air was sucked out of that room. He was unstoppable and irresistible, someone who could not be ignored or denied. On the outside, he was a happy man. Happily married, a semi-successful politician and even, for a short period of time, a Member of the Congress. He was the Deputy of Tourism and Leisure, elected as a congressman with 8.1% of Lovians voting for him. From the outside everything seemed to work out for A.M. Donia, he really had it going.
- Reality was entirely different. The baron was a very unhappy man, a man tormented by nightmares from his shady past which eventually got to him. Rumour has it he gained his tremendous wealth in an illegal way, some say by being involved with the mafia and other claim he got rich over the backs of others or even by committing a murder and inheriting a fortune from a distant relative. Throughout the last years of his life he regularly suffered from bouts of depression and melancholia along with periods of great euphoria. He could be kind and generous, compassionate and friendly to those dear to him, his friends, family and loved ones. He was usually in control of his emotions. However in the last year of his life he sometimes flew into a violent rage and turned into a monstrous caricature of his former self. His personal doctor, Francis Cavorchian, has told the press in an interview A.M. Donia was under heavy medication which may have caused side effects changing his mood.
- One of the side effects of his medications was occasional black-outs which left the Baron terrified as he feared the things he had done while under the influence of his pills. He washed away his pills with a vast ammount of alcohol which did not make the situation much better.
Father[]
- A.M. Donia was, by all accounts, a bad father, who tried his best but was unable to build a durable and sincere relation with any of his children. He made a horrible role model; he even boasted to his son Ygo about his many conquests out of marriage, when Ygo was only a teenager. He never really cared much for his family and children, even though they loved him and always were seeking for his approval in everything they did. He was a distant father who left home early, came back late if he returned home at all after work. He pushed his children to do their best, pushed them to the limit, hired personal trainers and teachers for them and had some of his more docile children home-schooled while he send away others to boarding schools abroad to teach them some much needed and absent discipline. He was never unreasonable or abusive, he simply set a bad example for his children and lacked essential parenting skills, since his own father was absent during his youth and his mother was an alcoholic. He tried to do better but tried so hard he failed. Considering his own upbringing, it was inevitable. Bound to go wrong.
- Plunged into depression by her husbands absence and aloofness, Dalia Muhammed also played in marginal role in the upbringing of the children. They were mostly raised by nannies and, as a result, learned to speak Spanish and French fluently aswell as some Chinese. After having two affairs with a nanny, Dalia made a rule to only hire unattractive women for the job.
Return and downfall[]
- Things went entirely wrong for the baron in December 2009 and as a result of this he was even exiled shortly. His return in January 2010 was just in time for him to be able to participate in the elections, in which his campaign proved to be successful. During his exile the baron had surrounded himself with trustworthy people from all layers of society and gathered quite a following. The LCP greatly grew in size but only had a single representative in congress, in the form of party leader Donia. Trouble in his own personal life, trouble within the party itself, fighting and conflicts among the communist party members, followed by yet another, final, exile. Nothing was spared from A.M. Donia. Among the Lovian society, he made enemies as well as friends wherever he went. He got in the clinch with socialists and conservatives alike and made many strange and illogical discussions. The baron won the McCrooke v. Donia Trial, yet was ordered to excuse to McCrooke, which he refused to do and never did. He boasted about his victory in the trial, to the annoyance and anger of many others.
Last months[]
- During the last months of A.M. Donia’s life he did a couple of strange things. He tried to reconcile with his former enemies, and set the record straight, as he put it. Always a healthy man, the red baron had been diagnosed with cancer and it quickly became known the form of cancer he suffered from was incurable. His personal doctor told him any treatment to cure the cancer would only prolong his suffering and increase his lifespan only with another six months at most. It was because of this, Donia decided not to be treated, against the wishes of his wife and children who begged him to undergo treatment by radiation or chemical treatment. He did not even take drugs to ease the pain, as he wanted to keep his mind clear for the completion of his memoirs, in which he would praise his political allies and burn down his enemies. Understanding and acknowledging the vital importance of a good health for Lovian youth, Donia started the Milk is good for everyone campaign. He advertised the consuming of dairy products and vegetables and a healthy, active lifestyle.
- In his last months he would also turn against smoking; his lifelong smoking since the age of twelve was one of the main reasons he eventually developed lung cancer. He also joined the NLS, after his LCP had fallen due to internal problems, and claimed he would “He hopes to stay alive long enough to see the NLS win the next elections and will work for the NLS until his very last breath”.
The end[]
- July 2010 was the last month of A.M. Donia’s life, and he began saying goodbye to his relatives, spending most of his time in his household with friends. The baron’s health had quickly detoriated since the diagnose of cancer was made public, and he was by now unable to walk and found trouble speaking. He would write down notes and pass these over to his guests, because his mind was still sharp and so this way he could still talk to his visitors. Dalia Muhammed came to him in tears on the 15th, begging her husband to undergo treatment and not to make her a widow yet, and the baron declined. On the 16th he refused to see his family and only allowed his eldest son, personal doctor and daughter-in-law into the room. His condition worsened and by the 20th he claimed he was being poisoned by his wife and had himself transferred to a local hospital, which he left the 25th, claiming he felt better. By this time the baron had finally accepted medication and was walking with a cane. He stayed with his son for two days, then got into an argument with him, on the 27th. He reportedly beat his son with his cane and then left the house for his castle, where his behaviour grew increasingly erratic. Refusing to see or speak to anyone, he locked himself in his room with a pile of food and was found the 30th of July, his skull crushed with a medieval weapon identified as a knight’s mace from the baron’s personal collection of historical weaponry.
Aftermath[]
- A.M. Donia’s cause of death was quickly determined to have been caused by a blow to the head with the mace, dealt with such terrible precision and strength suicide was immediately ruled out as the cause of death. The baron was buried the the 7th of August, 2010. The funeral was kept small and intimate, only attended by his close relatives, family members, children, grandchildren and good personal friends. When the casket was lowered into the ground, Dalia Muhammed, suffering a nervous breakdown, pulled out her hair and threw herself on the casket. At that exact moment a nearby tree was suddenly struck by lighting and it started raining heavily. The casket was quickly buried as the funeral could no longer be postponed and all this was considered to be a bad omen by insiders.
- The testament of A.M. Donia revealed the existence of 14 children born out of wedlock, most of which outlive him. The latest was born in 2008 to a female employee of the Donia Castle musuem. Another son born in 1979 was made curator of this museum in 2009, and others used to have high ranking positions in the former LCP-party. This revelation greatly shocked and surprised his relatives, especially his younger children who had, during his last months, idolized him for some reason. Only three people inherited from the baron: his grandson Ricky Donia-McCrooke, son Ygo August Donia and an unidentified, 51-year old man from Noble City. All fortune was divided equally among these three heirs, and no one else saw a dime, splitting the family and friends of A.M. Donia apart.
Reception[]
The biography was not to well received by The Noble City Times, who gave it a 2/5 rating:
- "Though an interesting approach, there's not much new information in it. Over and over, Donia stresses his father's torment and emotional trouble. An enjoyable book, it is in no way a "great biography". It lacks moderation and sources and hardly brings up intelligent insights."