Peter was all for torturing folks to get information out of them. It was the one bit of Old Russia he couldn't quite bring himself to give up. After watching his family's closest friends literally torn apart by the hands of an angry mob of Streltsy, he felt perfectly justified in taking whatever measures were available to stamp out future insurrections.

In addition to the Streltsy, Peter was also very much not a fan of the Orthodox priests. From the beginning, he found the official religious ceremonies tedious, eventually elevating one of his friends to the position of Mock Pope and holding fake devotional processions down the streets of Moscow just for the fun of it. Later, these priests were the most outspoken critics of his reforms, and not a few were executed as a result.

In other news, there's big things around the corner for the Frederick Faithful. Stay tuned for Revelations of the First Order!

- Count Dolby von Luckner

It has only been about 20 episodes since we last saw Franz von Sickingen. Out of all the livery he has swapped out to show his allegiance to Loyola, I can only imagine that finding the type of silly hat he wears in red was the trickiest bit.

Of course, since silly hats play a big role in our decisions of who to include in the comic it is probably good that he went to the trouble.

--Geoff