Éamon de Valera is an Irish political leader, currently serving as the president of Ireland.
Biography[]
A veteran of almost fifty years of service to the Irish state, Eamon de Valera has more than any other man come to personify the struggles of modern Ireland. When the young statesman was arrested and slated to be executed in 1917 following the disastrous Easter rising, few could have imagined the heights to which he would rise. Saved only by his American citizenship, de Valera did not shy away from the republican cause following this near death experience, becoming an MP that very year. Despite leading the ultimately unsuccessful anti-treaty faction of the Irish civil war, de Valera quickly rebounded, founding Fianna Fáil in 1926 and leading the party to a string of electoral victories.
By the mid 1950s, however, the toll of 30 years at the helm had finally begun to show. Threatened by the fascist Fine Gael party, De Valera and Fianna Fáil ruled with an increasingly heavy hand, tightening restrictions on the press and freedom of expression. In the paranoid atmosphere now suffocating Dublin, de Valera has surrounded himself with a cabal of old guard republicans, constantly devising plans to destroy their enemies while the economic and social situation in Ireland continues to deteriorate. Not content with the multitude of outside enemies surrounding the aging Taoiseach, de Valera's increasing paranoia and authoritarianism has alienated many within his own party, giving rise to a rival faction coalescing around the reformist Seán Francis Lemass.
With support for fascist parties continuing to grow and the much-anticipated Ulster conference casting its shadow over Dublin, de Valera will need to be at his sharpest to have a hope of guiding his nation through the coming storm, but with the statesman now approaching his 90th birthday and almost totally blind, fewer and fewer glimpses of that fiery young radical can be caught behind his tired eyes.
Trivia[]
In real life, de Valera was also leader of Ireland at the time, but unlike in the events of The New Order, he opted to remain neutral - while he did offer limited support to the British during the war, he did not officially join the war.