The War King

The War King was a renegade Time Lord who became leader of the Great Houses shortly before the War in Heaven.

Early life
The future War King was one of four notable renegades born due to abnormalities in the breeding-engines one generation before the War in Heaven. He was born into House Dvora.

At an early age, the renegade left the Homeworld for unclear reasons. He became an amoral outlaw, dedicated to his own desires above all else. (PROSE: The Book of the War) He broke every Law of the Spiral Politic, (PROSE: Judy's War) often interfering with the affairs of lesser species for his own gratification or amusement. He regularly hired or manipulated the more mercenary and megalomaniac species. At some point, this brought him into contact with Carmen Yeh, although she later forgot the encounter.

Over his criminal career, his crimes filled two whole datacoils, and he was considered the second-most wanted criminal among the Great Houses. They captured him a number of times, but despite their attempts to imprison him, he always eventually escaped. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

When Judy Collins was seventeen, she met "Yardley James", and he convinced her to rob a bank so he could buy yellowcake. She then became his travelling cohort on trips around the universe. By this time, he was recognised everywhere as a dangerous criminal; Collins spent three weeks in jail on Altos III just for associating with him. However, when Yardley discovered a terrible truth about the history of the universe, he returned her to Earth so he could warn his people. (PROSE: Judy's War)

After becoming War King, the renegade kept twelve white squares of a hypercube stacked neatly on his desk. The dismantled cube represented his only concession to sentimentality and his last remaining link to his unfortunate past. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

Return to the Homeworld
Eighty years before the War in Heaven, the future War King broke into the presidential chambers on the Homeworld and killed three guards so he could speak with the Head of the Presidency. For fifteen minutes he told the President about the coming War, but this warning failed to convince the President to take any preventative action.

Five years later, the renegade surrendered himself to the Homeworld. He was sentenced to retro-annulment but first requested to address the ruling Houses in a Closed Session. Despite the President's dissent, this request was granted, and the renegade informed them about the enemy. In return, the ruling Houses granted him a pardon. He charged them with the mission of pursuing diplomatic negotiations with the enemy, while he himself would research and develop new defensive and offensive technologies to aid the Homeworld if it came to War.

When the renegade returned to the Homeworld four decades later to present his plans, he was immediately arrested by the Presidency, who had stonewalled any attempts at diplomatic negotiation in the renegade's absence. The head of the Presidency organised a public trial that resulted in the Faraway Declaration and, through the First Message from the Enemy, validation of the renegade's warnings. With Umbaste now President, the renegade became an important advisor, creating the Academicians for Game Logic and laying the groundwork for the House Military and the first Ships of War.

Over the next three decades, the ruling Houses tried several times to replace Umbaste and install the renegade as their new leader, but each time the renegade himself blocked the efforts, citing his chequered past. However, House Dvora expunged part of his criminal record, and after Umbaste's death six years before the War, the War King accepted the presidential responsibilities. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

As War King
In his acceptance speech, the War King coined the term "the enemy" before officially eschewing all titles and claims to the Presidency and promising not to address the assembled Houses until announcing their victory over the enemy. Due to the War King's preparations, when the War did ultimately begin in the Cataclysm, the Homeworld repelled the attempted enemy invasion and annulled the prophecies of devastation.

Two years before the Cataclysm, the War King identified that Compassion would be a valuable resource in the War and dispatched multiple House agents to capture her. However, these attempts uniformly failed until, twelve years later, the War King himself negotiated a temporary alliance with Compassion: she agreed to help the Homeworld's technicians create the first 103-forms in exchange for rescue from a null-probability field.

One evening when the King was at a banquet, Compassion materialised in the room and absorbed him into her interior to question him over the death of Percival. After some torture and a lengthy conversation, they agreed to give Compassion some Pilots and a breeding-engine in exchange for her opening a "second front" against the enemy. She warned him that when "House Lucia" emerged, the true threat to the Homeworld would be revealed. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

Even after his rise to power, the War King maintained a telepathic connection with his old companion Judy Collins. When she was imprisoned by the Jalaxian Empire during their invasion of Earth, he repeatedly ordered her guards to release her or face being unwritten from time, and this threat was carried out several times until Judy's rescue by Enigma Tree. A hologram of the War King projected from Violet's eyes to thank Enigma, with whom he was familiar. (PROSE: Judy's War)

When the Doctor tried ending the Rutan-Sontaran War by bringing General Sontar to Gallifrey for negotiations, Sontar remarked that the Capitol had once been a fortress, pointing out its thick walls, buttresses, and battlements; this surprised the Doctor, since Sontar was clearly right, but such history was never taught on Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors) The old, bearded Lord President during the War in Heaven recounted this conversation to Homunculette on Gallifrey Eight, saying he heard it from a friend of his. He condemned the Time Lords' past naiveté to the reality of the coming conflict, which indeed drove Gallifrey to turn its Capitol back into a fortress and to start breeding soldiers to be efficient killers, just like the old alien general. He then sent Homunculette to investigate the Elder Things. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5)

The War King later understood the true motive of Lolita, (AUDIO: Words from Nine Divinities) a sentient timeship who had evolved from an old model timeship stolen by a "dangerous-looking" renegade. (PROSE: Toy Story) Lolita planned to rewrite the Spiral Politic to suit her own ends. As a last resort, he allied with the last members of Faction Paradox against Lolita, but his alliances failed and Lolita consumed him. (AUDIO: Words from Nine Divinities)

Appearance
Before he became the War King, Judy Collins described him as a tall, confident man with a "real beard". (PROSE: Judy's War) During his time as a criminal he gained many scars, which he decided to keep after obtaining office.

In the second decade of the War, the War King retained a white goatee, but Carmen Yeh observed that it looked "pasted on". His hairline was thin and receding, and "parts of his anatomy" looked weathered and unused. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

He had a long, wispy white beard and thin wrinkled skin. He wore traditional Gallifreyan robes, albeit black instead of their usual colour. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5)

Behind the scenes

 * The Taking of Planet 5 implies that, before becoming War King, the renegade was the Magistrate, who in The Infinity Doctors played a similar role to that which The Book of the War says the War King played under Umbaste's administration. Both the War King and the Magistrate are hinted to be, but never explicitly identified as, incarnations of the Master.
 * The Book of the War also mentions an unfolded hypercube on the War King's desk as a relic of his past, hinting that he is also an incarnation of the War Chief. The War Chief has been suggested to be an early incarnation of the Master by several sources. According to Ian McIntire, a rejected entry for The Book of the War explained that the hypercube on the War King's desk was from a failed attempt to recruit "a medic" into the War.