The Olearious family is a hereditary Provincial Governor line, or in simpler terms, a noble family. Their province resides in the southwest most part of the Kingdom of Falglor, and controls a moderate amount of territory consisting of farmland, mines, and a fair amount of towns and cities. The head of the province and where the family is based is the city of Sotramagus.
The family goes back to just after the Yunnaiteddo Independence War. After the defeat in the war, James was more unpopular than ever, and his program to shift from de-centralized nobility and a provincial government centralized around the throne was left dead in the water. All that seized territory from the nobles and their estates were simply left sitting, with not enough popular support to distribute them, but not enough consensus to agree on what to do with them. Daniel Olearious, the future patriarch of the Olearious Dynasty approached James, sensing opportunity. He was a powerful magnate at the time, a merchant kingpin with his hands dipped in the political honeypot. Daniel offered his support for the Provincial Governor idea in exchange for a position as a Provincial Governor. James, who was desperate, agreed to this. While Daniel's support was nowhere near as influential enough to get the idea to pass singlehandedly, it did get the ball rolling, causing more backings to fall into the hands of James, causing the Provincial Governor idea to eventually pop off.
Daniel Olearious at first wasn't the best governor, being no small amount of corrupt, using the resources at his disposal to pay off debts he incurred trying to get the position and its power in the first place. While his corruption was pretty blatant, James couldn't simply remove him from power because of how connected he was, and how influential the Olearious were to getting the idea of the Provincial Governor system to work at all, so all he could do was turn his head and pretend not to see it.
After the initial months of decadence and high living, Daniel was awakened to having to actually manage his province when the neighboring provincial governors decided to try and test the limits of the crown by sending their troops over into his territory. James, still too weak to do anything, and Parliament too divided to take any action, had no response, further emboldening the Provincial Governors. Foreseeing a potential second age of nobles fighting and raiding each other's land, Daniel realized that he needed to actually get off his ass and do something if he wanted to retain his territory, prestige and power.
The rest of his reign was mostly prosperous for the most part, prosperous in a more utilitarian motive to maximize the strength of his own province for his own benefit. He participated in various raids against his neighbors, sometimes seizing entire villages and towns. Daniel Olearious died in the year 130 A.S, succeeded by his son, Aethel Olearious. Aethel was raised on stories of the old nobles, and aspired to their level of power and influence. He pushed the legal limits of what he was allowed to do, escalating tensions between the various Provincial Governors with his bold attacks, while mostly neglecting his home provinces. While new Provincial Governors were supposed to be appointed by the King, Daniel disregarded that and just passed it down to Aethel, creating a new precedent of hereditary rule within the Provincial Governors that turned them into differently-named nobles over the years.
Nowadays the Olearious family is ruled by Mildred Olearious, temporary matriarch of the family since the death of Oswald. She's more open to diplomacy than open violence compared to the rest of Provincial Governors, and rules her province with a more eased back plan, not getting very invested in whatever issues might plague them and mostly being hands off (other than in the case of taxes).