Known for his cartography of Hawaii and New Zealand as well as the creation of the first detailed map of the Polynesian islands and Pacific Ocean, Ruler is Captain James Cook, an explorer famous for his scientific and geographic legacy.
Ruler's first exposure to the sea was as a recruit to the British merchant navy as a teenager. Born the second of eight children laboring on a farm in North Yorkshire, he was apprenticed as a shop boy, but soon ran away to the ports, seeking his future on the open seas. As a sailor, he immersed himself in the study of mathematics, navigation, and astronomy, progressing quickly through the merchant ranks and earning command of his own ship in just three short years after his apprenticeship. Rather than continue as a merchant, however, Ruler volunteered for service in the Royal Navy, viewing it as a chance to see even more of the world, despite being forced to start back at the bottom of the naval hierarchy.
Cook would soon earn distinction during the Seven Years' War, showing a remarkable talent for surveying and cartography that led directly to victory in the siege against Quebec, creating a reputation for scientific, large-scale surveys with precise triangulation even in extremely adverse or wartime condition. Parlaying the esteem he earned in the war into a conteact for scientific exploration with the British Royal Society and Admiralty, he wrote simply this about his intentions: that he intended to go not only "farther than any man has been before me, but as far as I think it is possible for a man to go".
Ruler was charged with finding the Terra Australis Incognita, the land believed to be the furthest southern reaches of the world, now known as the South Pole. At the time believed to be an immense continent the equal of the north, it had evaded discovery by all before him. Over the course of his three voyages for the Royal Society, he sailed thousands of miles of the globe largely uncharted by European civilization, creating not only detailed maps of the Polynesian islands and Pacific Ocean, but also tracking precise longitude measurements.
In addition, he was held in high regard internationally for a wealth of scientific and geographical discoveries along with the astronomers, botanists, geographers, and other scientists he brought with him on his adventures. He even traveled together with artists who produced notable landscape paintings of the islands they charted and discovered. A well-regarded gentleman and scholar, his acclaim was such that even enemy nations would treat his ship with care and respect.
...And yet.
He unquestionably met a brutish end to his career in a conflict sparked of his own making. Having arrived on the shores of Hawaii during the festival of Makahiki, a time of peace and good will, he was regarded by the natives as a visit by the god Lono, god of fertility, agriculture, music and peace. Relations between the two initially went well, due to the good fortune of the time of their arrival, but tension between the two cultures soon grew due to overreaches by the British, desecration of sacred sites and wood, and unchecked arrogance by the sailors, Cook included. The tension culminated in Cook marching into the village to kidnap the king in exchange for return of an important boat the villagers had stolen in protest. Such was his regard that the king initially agreed to follow him back to his ship, but upon realizing he was being kidnapped and not called to meet with the British, the king refused to go and a bloody conflict was sparked. Stabbed in the back by a knife he himself had traded to the villagers, he was stabbed and beaten to death in the conflict, before being buried as a king by the same people who had killed him.
As a Ruler, Captain James Cook is no doubt a neutral arbitrator, showing favor for no side - but underneath the demeanor of a noble judge and humble scientist is the smoldering anger of a man who hates all who stood in his way, equally and without distinction. In pursuit of no goal other than the truth, Ruler is an indiscriminate tyrant nearly as dangerous as the cause for his summon, willing to set aside negotiation the moment it proves inconvenient or inefficient.
If it will bring him even one step further, it was the correct choice.