Editing Draconis Combine (section)

== House Kurita ==
Since the Combine's founding, the Combine's Coordinators have largely come from House Kurita, aside from a two hundred year period where only tangentially related bloodlines got their turn, only to give up the Chrysanthemum Throne willingly as the Kuritas married themselves back onto the throne, to the delight of everybody.

Their general character is a bit hard to pin down aside from their imperious, expansionist rhetoric. While most have been perfectly competent and generally dull characters on the galactic stage, those Kurita Coordinators who have distinguished themselves to the larger Inner Sphere community did so in huge ways. This is largely because of the Combine's insistence on keeping the mystique of the position as the autocrat and more or less god figure and the raising of a nobility; meaning that if the Combine suffered any sort of setback, that all fell at their feet, and repeated failure often ended in assassination from the overeager military or aggrieved nobles, or seppuku from the shame of some especially great failure. As a result, much of the Coordinator's job is managing not just the armed forces, but the expectations and fall guys so that they can cover their own ass; often by ensuring that their actual spoken orders are exceptionally vague, to the point of being Haiku in certain circumstances. 

Chances are if you're seeing a Kurita's name more than once, it's because they're either exceptionally adept leaders and conquerors, or exceptionally insane dictators.

==== Notable Kurita Coordinators ====
* '''Shiro Kurita''' - Founder and creator of the Combine along with his brother Urizen. Usually considered one of the top 3 Coordinators if not the best one. Flew a dope custom ''Sabre'' AeroSpace Fighter as a hobby.
* '''The Von Rohrs Bloodline''' - An illegitimate child of one of the earlier Kuritas by the name of Nihongi came to hate his Kurita bloodline after the Coordinator at the time killed his dad, and hatched a plot to take over the Combine from within. Of course, thanks to the politics of the time, his dad got axed before he ever got a chance, and he decided to just execute Parker Kurita, the last mainline member of Shiro's line, and ended up the sole remaining heir. Naturally quite stunned and terrified by having accidentally painted the largest target on his back possible, Nihongi secluded himself and several of his successors, while never once trying to actually better the Combine in any way, causing much of it's major issues from the Rasalhague league at the time. The House was fully wiped out once McAllister took over.
* '''Martin McAllister''' -  A Rasalhague noble directly descended from Shiro Kurita, who married into the Sorenson family. Previously distinguished as a DCMS strategist and warrior, he inevitably was the man responsible for the deposement and annihilation of the Van Rohrs, and once again put the bloodline of the Kuritas back on the throne. Died young, however.
* '''Siriwan Kurita, the Dragon Lady''' - Martin's daughter, who lost her mother at a young age. While the Kurita's especially conservative ideas on whether or not women got to be on the throne was a bit of an obstacle, Martin suggested she find a distant cousin and marry up that way, and marry she did until her spouse died of "mysterious causes", and she became Regent while guiding her infant child who would inevitably become Coordinator when he became a man. She ended up being a fantastic and exceptionally smart Coordinator who kept the warfare to a minimum while reigning absolute for almost four decades, only giving up power to her kid who died under a similar set of "Mysterious causes" as well as his heir, causing her to end up Coordinator again. While she enjoyed the gig, the nobility was starting to get wise to the fact that she almost certainly had a hand in her spouse/child's deaths, and she at long last abdicated to her granddaughter after two years. She is the only person in the family to have been Coordinator three separate times thanks to the quirks in the line of succession.
* '''Urizen Kurita II''' - The Star League's ailing health needed to be nudged along by somebody, and that somebody was this guy, at least within the confines of the Combine.
* '''Takiro Kurita''' - Previously sort of a monk-like figure when he took the job, he dissuaded any doubt that he would be a capable leader of the Combine's armed forces by surviving an assassination attempt by the ISF, torturing the men to find out who paid them, then killing the two men who performed the act and their male heirs. Ruled through the twilight of the Star League, and begged his son, Minoru, to treat the situation carefully on his deathbed.
* '''Minoru Kurita''' - Minoru, Takiro's son, ignored his dying father's wishes and basically began the Succession Wars on his own, and as a result more or less created the first bad backslide of humanity into [[LosTech]]. Got boom-headshot'd by a Federated Suns Sniper during the First Succession War.
* '''Jinjiro Kurita''' - The son of Minoru. While starting off his childhood as a decent kid, the death of his mother who was a concubine caught up in political infighting traumatized him and made him… [[That Guy|off]] despite his tactical savviness. After hearing his dad had been killed, he made the very normal and obvious decision in that situation, and ordered a planet-wide scouring of Kentares IV, the planet he had died on, ending up killing '''52 Million people''' to the point that he was fed up with guns involvement, and just began hacking people down with Katanas himself. Surprisingly, he didn't turn out to be the most stable individual; as he started the Second Succession War based on terrible information, and was constantly plagued by psychotic episodes regarding the [[Clan Wolverine#Minnesota Tribe|Minnesota Tribe]] once they appeared, finally going straight over the edge when somebody sent him a doll of a Star League Officer past his security detail. This made him permanently lose his mind and he hung himself in solitary confinement. He's the main reason the Fedrats despise the Kuritas.
* '''Takashi Kurita''' - Coordinator during the Third Succession War. Unlike the previous two Coordinators, Takashi was not a complete raving lunatic and/or glory-hound...at first. While he had some diplomatic traits, he was still an expansionist and a brutal driver of his armies through his kid, and had a fierce rivalry with Wolf's Dragoons that continued up to his dying day. To his anger, his kid ended up being pretty non-traditional when it came to warfare but also wildly successful; and ultimately made Combine tactics look hilariously out of date. THEN he begins his spiral into being a complete raving lunatic and glory hound until he basically gets locked in place by his son who wanted to protect his grandmother, gets a medical treatment that cures him of being nuts, but it only came too late as he found out that he'd been played into weakening either the Combine or strengthening the legend of the Dragoons, and chose to commit seppuku with his son at his side. 
* '''Theodore Kurita''' - The greatest Coordinator-General of the Combine, bar none. His mother's only child, she lavished him with love and care and his family made good and goddamn sure he was set up for success in life, and he hit the ground running as the commander of a Penal legion that he turned into an incredible fighting force, making enormous changes to the way the Combine fought, and distinguished himself as able to defend and attack during both the War of 3039 and also the [[Clan Invasion]], using tactics almost counter to what Bushido demanded. His father hated that, but he was inevitably humbled by Teddy's genius and his own familial love. When he was crowned Coordinator, he immediately made getting rid of the Clans a #1 priority, and began recruiting from the ranks of Women and Criminals to bolster the Combine's ranks, and successfully convinced the Inner Sphere to help him go fuck up Clan Smoke Jaguar, then was named First Lord of the rebuilt Star League. Had plenty of enemies from the ''Kokuryu-Kai'', or Black Dragon Collective, who were hardliners who thought his reforms were detrimental to the Combine, and spent a lot of his downtime fighting them off, especially during the Jihad.
* '''Yori Kurita''' - The second woman to be Coordinator. She only ever got to the position in 32nd century because of a series of unrelated mishaps that got her promoted from "unimportant minor noble" to "Queen of the Dragon" in very short order. While there were some initial grumblings, what with her initial bringing to the court having been done by a Warlord who openly wasn't a fan of the last few guys to take the throne, she pretty quickly made herself a competent and ruthless Coordinator, including finally...''finally'' getting one over on the Federated Suns, to the point that the Combine took their capital under her watch. Granted, her ascension to the throne involved overthrowing the mainline Kurita's in a coup and crippling the Combine in a civil war that Flanderized them back to their pre-Theodore-era lunatic selves which pissed a lot of people the fuck off out of universe.