Arafed painting of a man in a yellow outfit standing on a balcony

(Person) portrait of His Esteemed Grace Duke Maximilian ‘Straits’ Monroe IV presides over the Cheboygan domain encompassing Lake Huron nearshore waters teeming with whitefish and sturgeon, densely forested interior acreage ripe for timber harvest rush fortune, and his handsomely appointed Harbor Hall stone manor house overlooking the strategic Mackinac Straits passageway linking upper and lower Great Lakes shipping lanes. The Monroe dynasty claim privileged descent from elite Palatinate Reformed Protestant nobility holding hereditary Electoral Prince Governor imperial state posts answerable only to the Holy Roman Emperor back in splintered 16th century western Germanic borderland fiefdoms continually overrun by warring French Valois and Hapsburg dynastic armies fighting counter Reformation Catholic reactionary wars stoked by Papist fanaticism in league with manipulative Venice banking houses and Florence monied merchants guilds. Ongoing loyal service defending middle realm division of powers granted extensive land rights in the fertile Rhine Valley bestowinggenerations of tranquil wealth rendered by tenant farmer harvest tributes and river barge conveyed trade goods shipped through Hanseatic League member ports. As era dynastic religious wars shifted toward competition colonialism stoked by advances harnessing oceangoing powered sail technologies enabling reliable transoceanic trading opportunities, a 1704 family naval alliance saw Monroe heir apparent Maxwell I dispatched across the Atlantic oversee New France Gulf of Saint Lawrence cod commodity export back to European consumers while importing grain harvest yield, premium furs and first harvest indigenous corn, squash and bean delicacies from Acadian settlements bordering Colonial Massachusetts Bay and Nova Scotia charter company land claims on behalf of investors in London and Amsterdam commodity produce wholesale markets. Now entering his sixth decade overseeing the Cheboygan Straits passage strategic