Briseis

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Created for the Historical Ruler Character Contest.
Queen Briseis was an adult female SkyWing who ruled the tribe several generations prior to the events of Darkstalker. She was responsible for chartering the legislation that would result in the execution of all dragonets born with firescales. She was a logical, respected, and protective queen who sought to keep both her children and her tribe safe from bloodshed. 
== Appearance ==
Briseis stood tall and possessed a graceful build, maintaining excellent posture for most of her life. However, by the end of her reign, her neck had become bowed from a life spent looking down. With a massive wingspan and a sleek tail, she could cut through the skies faster than most. Her strength and power contributed to the narrative that she was a great beauty, but by modern standards, she would be considered rather plain.
Briseis’s scales were a dull russet with ember-like hints of fiery orange. The crested scales on her head and back matched her horns, spines, and claws, all in a dark, scorched brown. A touch of ethereal elegance came from her pale, pearly underbelly and wing membranes.
The events of the Infernal Night left lasting marks on Briseis, evident in the dark, blackened burn scars on her cheeks and palms. Despite these reminders of death and destruction, her solemn, lidded amber eyes held wisdom, framed by full eyelashes which emphasized grace, intelligence, and power. Attendees of her court likened her eyes to those of the more humble MudWings, a sharp contrast from the intense, slitted greens and yellows of previous SkyWing queens.
In her armor and jewelry, Briseis favored simplicity, donning a modest iron breastplate and crown. During her reign, most SkyWings, including royals, couldn't afford lavish gold and gemstones. Iron became a popular choice for the half-century following Briseis’s death, creating a common fashion among soldiers and nobility for the first time in SkyWing history. This trend eventually waned as the wealth gap widened between social classes.
Living to the remarkable age of 128, Briseis's size and grandeur peaked in the last years of her reign. Though the brilliance had faded from her eyes, and her scales had dulled and wrinkled, her sheer size ensured a regal presence in her throne room. Until her death in 2767 AS, she held the title of the largest queen in Pyrrhia.
== Personality ==
Brisies was known for her intelligence and logical sense. As a child, she was confined to the halls of the SkyWing palace due to the threat of Nesting Plague. This gave her ample time to study SkyWing culture, law, and military strategy. While other SkyWing queens engaged in deadly games for entertainment, Briseis prioritized her tribe's well-being over trivial activities that would cost lives. Unfazed by her isolation, Briseis demonstrated selflessness from a young age, consistently putting the needs of her tribe first. 
Briseis held faith in religion and never lost it, even after the Infernal Night. But she recognized that her tribe’s fate was in her talons rather than the talons of spirits long gone. Instead of waiting for ancestral guidance, Briseis took charge, leading based on her convictions and the counsel of her court.
Valuing peace, solidarity, and unity above all, Briseis swiftly quashed any threat of chaos. She was compassionate to all, but never empathetic. A mother, Briseis experienced cognitive dissonance since she viewed her tribe as her children, yet she could not care for all of them. She frowned upon her own behavior when she tried stepping into the talons of someone less fortunate, as it made her feel weak and small. Ultimately, Briseis decided she needed to separate herself from emotional entanglements to focus on the needs of her queendom, brushing aside small complaints and focusing on enforcing unity. Briseis was not perfect, her ignorance of individuals and minorities being a prime example of her cruel streak. 
Briseis was an isolationist and rarely interacted with the queens of other tribes. For the first few decades of her rule, no noble from any neighboring queendom stepped foot within SkyWing territory. Outsiders feared the Nesting Plague, and when it had passed, chose to view the SkyWings as weak. Briseis and Gryphon trained their military to not only control the barbarism within the Sky queendom, but to be prepared for war from other tribes as well. This tactic of isolation from other tribes proved to be a clever move, because no outside tribe dared to declare war on the SkyWings despite their weakened state. The only incidents occurring being border skirmishes with the IceWings and SandWings. 
Though Briseis's solitariness benefitted the SkyWings politically, wealthy nobles were quick to gossip about her antisocial tendencies. Similar to her dismissal of complaints from minorities, Briseis paid these nobles no mind, and their contributions to history were seen as insubstantial. Again, this contributed to the modest legacy of Briseis's reign as hard work and strength were celebrated over petty upper-class squabbles.
Briseis's pursuit of peace and solidarity, along with her army reorganization, served as a catalyst for creating a homogeneous SkyWing society. After the Infernal Night, she became extremely wary of differences within her queendom. Briseis believed that obscurities could disrupt internal peace, and therefore for the safety of the general public should be removed. The practice of killing Animus dragons upon hatching, existing for centuries, intensified during Briseis's rule. She enacted laws mandating the execution of firescales dragonets, leading to the eventual demise of fireless dragonets. Although hybrids were never officially outlawed, law enforcement harshly displaced multi-tribe families, deeming them a threat to SkyWing unity. The notion that differences posed an internal threat took root in the tribe's culture and folklore, persisting into modern day.
== History ==
Briseis hatched in 2639 AS. She was the third-born dragonet and second-born daughter of Queen Idalia of the SkyWings.
Idalia was a soft queen who ruled with kindness and preferred spending her time socializing with the nobility. The militant SkyWings learned not to fear her, and therefore did not respect her. Still, she maintained some level of control over her tribe due to her diplomatic relations with the SandWing queen, leading to an alliance which kept soldiers and common folk from perishing in skirmishes along the border.
Briseis hatched when the Nesting Plague first began to take root in the Sky Queendom. Brought along by nesting birds, as the name implies, Nesting Plague was an infectious disease that caused fever and headache initially, followed by a painful loss of scales as infected nodes grew under the skin. Its airborne nature and high fatality rate were cause for concern and it began to spread quickly through peasant populations who lived in cliffside caves.
It was not long before the SandWings cut contact with the SkyWings out of fear of disease, and Pyrrhia began to view the SkyWings as weak. Queen Idalia and Briseis’s eldest sister, Siege, perished due to the plague.
With none of Idalia’s sisters left alive, it was Briseis’s older brother, Dominion, who would warm the throne as regent until Briseis came of age. A succession crisis would occur if Briseis died, since she was the last daughter of Idalia, and therefore she was kept protected via isolation from the world.
During that time, Briseis became well-learned in politics and historical crises in the event that a tribe would attack the SkyWings in their weakened state. 
Briseis was crowned Queen of the SkyWings at age seven. Her coronation was one of the smallest in SkyWing history and became symbolic of the modest nature of the queendom during the time of the Nesting Plague. The SkyWings had remained intact due to Dominion’s humble and honorary rule, Briseis’s older brother proudly stepping down to work instead as Briseis’s advisor.
Fortunately, the Nesting Plague failed to wipe out the SkyWings (though nearly a third of the population was lost), and the pandemic drew to a close only a few months after Briseis came to power. It would take many years for the other tribes to warm up to the SkyWings again, since the pandemic had lasted nearly a decade. This meant that inter-tribal conflict was at the forefront of Briseis’s mind.
The high death rate of Nesting Plague had encouraged parts of SkyWing society to descend into barbaric violence. Though Dominion had managed to hold the tribe together, he was not a queen and would never have the power of one, causing him to struggle to enforce law amongst common folk.
Briseis’s solution to this problem was to install a draft program that would train young adult dragons as soldiers for the army from the age of seven to fourteen, specifically the firstborn dragonet of any married couple. The benefits of being in the army included elevation of family status and compensation in the form of livestock or grain, so many soldiers chose to stay with the army years after their required time ceased.
Briseis gained the respect of the common folk through this militant enforcement which rebuilt the strength and bulk of the SkyWing army and ensured that starvation would not be an issue. 
Under Dominion’s advice, Briseis placed the son of a noble family in charge of overseeing the SkyWing army draft. His name was Gryphon and he proved to be an excellent warden and strategist, so Briseis gave him the title of general of the army.
Growing slightly older, Briseis and Gryphon were married to soothe any political unrest that may arise because of a lack of heirs. Their marriage was entirely strategic as neither dragon loved each other, but Briseis knew the importance of ensuring the survival of the royal family and began having eggs.
Throughout the following decades, Briseis would become a revered icon by both the peasantry and noble families, with many of her traits becoming fashionable amongst the middle and lower classes. Briseis laid many eggs in order to inspire the rest of the tribe to repopulate. It was a successful cultural movement and there was a boom in population following the end of the Nesting Plague.
By age 30, Briseis had re-established the SkyWing tribe as a powerhouse, with the largest army in Pyrrhia and continuously booming population numbers. Briseis’s last egg of twelve was unnaturally large and hatched twin SkyWing daughters, a firescales and a fireless.
Briseis named the princesses Inferna and Forsythia. Due to their conditions, Briseis made the decision to isolate each one of them within palace walls. There was already significant stigma surrounding firescales and fireless dragonets, and Briseis refused to compromise her rule by revealing dangerous or weak heirs.
Inferna was intense to begin with, enjoying pulling ‘harmless’ pranks on palace staff that would become increasingly problematic as she aged. Forsythia, meanwhile, was timid and strange. During her hatching process, she had been severely burned by Inferna, with ugly patches of dead skin hanging from her wrinkled scales. It made her look a hundred years older than she was and she was off-putting to most.
The children could not be kept a secret forever, and the public grew uneasy with the idea of a firescales princess. Inferna began sneaking out, craving praise from her queendom, but found instead that they all feared her. It made her feel entitled and powerful.
None of Briseis’s daughters had thought of challenging her yet. The eldest was only twenty and had vast respect for her mother, recognizing that she had brought about an era of strength and advancement that could be troubled by the coronation of a new queen.
The night before Inferna and Forsythia’s seventh hatching day, Inferna wandered the palace halls, sneaking into her sisters’ bedrooms and murdering each and every one of them (except for the powerless Forsythia) with her firescales. She choked and burned their throats so that they couldn’t scream for help and alert the guards.
Inferna would then challenge her mother for the throne. Briseis was enraged at herself for not having seen this coming, and upon learning almost all her daughters were dead, vowed to kill Inferna without fear of her firescales. Briseis and Inferna dueled atop the highest peak in the Sky Queendom. Inferna was able to grab Briseis by the sides of her head, burning her cheeks.
Before Inferna could kill Briseis, the queen latched her talons into Inferna’s wing membranes, ripping them into shreds and burning her palms in the process. Unable to fly, Inferna fell to her death and Briseis remained Queen of the SkyWings.
Briseis would never quite be the same after that night, referred to as the Infernal Night by the press. She still ruled the SkyWings with an iron fist, but rarely appeared in public. She gained an intolerance for differences in SkyWing society, including animi, hybrids, and firescales.
Briseis’s first course of action following the Infernal Night was to write the Firescale Decree, stating that dragonets born with firescales must be executed by being thrown from cliffs. Due to Briseis’s love for Forsythia, her fireless daughter, no law was ever written stating that fireless twins must be executed. However, due to general intolerance in SkyWing society, it would become common practice for fireless dragonets to be killed.
Briseis would never have another heir out of fear that she could have another firescales. The throne was safe due to Forsythia’s survival and the birth of several granddaughters from Briseis’s sons. Due to her ability to slay a firescales, no princess ever challenged Briseis for the throne throughout her rule out of fear. Briseis willed that Forsythia inherit the crown upon her death.
Briseis passed away peacefully in her room with her husband Gryphon and Forsythia at her side in 2767 AS, and Forsythia was crowned Queen of the SkyWings.
Forsythia was middle-aged when she had her coronation. She had already dedicated the majority of her life to the study of SkyWing religion and the belief in reincarnation, hoping to find some way to confirm that her sisters had ‘gone on’ in after their murders. She was experienced in the affairs of state as well, so it was not difficult for her to step into her role as queen.
Though Forsythia remained cryptic to the common folk, she would bring about an era of religious awakening in the Sky Queendom that coincided with the continual expansion of the army and growth of the population brought about by Briseis’s rule. These events would be permanently embedded in SkyWing culture and continue to shape the way of life for the next several thousand years. 
== Relationships ==
=== Inferna ===
Briseis’s power-hungry firescales daughter who killed all of her sisters and challenged Briseis for the throne at age seven. She had ruby red scales, slitted, intense blue eyes, and was large for her age. She was killed in a duel with her mother. Briseis was ashamed of her daughter and grew to fear her as Inferna's power intensified. After Inferna murdered the rest of Briseis's daughters, with the exception of Forsythia, Briseis became regretful that she hadn't killed Inferna upon her hatching.
=== Forsythia ===
Briseis’s peaceful and quiet fireless daughter. She had sulfur-yellow, wrinkled scales and watery, baby blue eyes. Various black burns stained her body, and half her face was 'melted'. Though timid, Forsythia would inherit the throne and rule as a powerful queen through her focus on reorganizing religion in the Sky Queendom. Briseis was embarrassed by Forsythia at hatching, but after the Infernal Night, she became her favorite child. She was proud to pass the crown to Forsythia upon her death. 
=== Gryphon ===
Briseis’s husband and king. He was smaller than Briseis, with ruby red scales and wise green eyes. He was employed as general for a number of years and was responsible for overseeing the SkyWing army draft. Briseis never romantically loved Gryphon, and he respected this boundary. Still, the two maintained a powerful partnership that improved the queendom. Briseis appreciated Gryphon's sacrifice via exclusive loyalty to her, since he could never marry for love. 
=== Idalia ===
Briseis’s mother and former queen of the SkyWings. A social butterfly whose disinterest in political conflicts cost the SkyWings respect from other tribes. She was described as very beautiful with elegant scarlet scales and bright gold eyes. She died of Nesting Plague. Wore gaudy golden jewelry that quickly went out of fashion upon her death. Briseis was too young to know her mother well, but would grow to resent her as she aged for letting the queendom nearly fall into ruin.
=== Dominion ===
Briseis’s brother and advisor. He was thin and had vermillion scales, deep brown eyes, and wore brass spectacles. Sat the throne as regent for six years until Briseis came of age, and was a humble dragon with the tribe’s best interests in mind. Briseis knew she could always trust Dominion and confessed secrets to him which he took to the grave.
=== Siege ===
Briseis’s eldest sister and original heir to the SkyWing Queendom. She was mature, lawful, and well-spoken, and would have made for a good queen. She resembled Briseis closely, but inherited her mother's golden eyes. She died of Nesting Plague. Briseis was too young to know Siege well, but respected and honored her legacy.
== Trivia ==
* Her nickname was Bri.
* Briseis was one of the longest reigning queens in SkyWing history, her rule lasting 121 years.
* A portrait of Briseis and Forsythia once hung in the SkyWing Palace, however it was painted over by a portrait of Queen Scarlet and Peril.
* Briseis never wore piercings or embedded gemstones. They went out of fashion during her reign due to fear of contracting Nesting Plague from contact with infected nodes.
* The SkyWing arena had not been constructed during Briseis's rule, as the tribe's population had not yet reached the size required to normalize deadly battles for entertainment.
* Briseis refused to eat fowl and would be overcome with feelings of sickness if it was served at a table.
* Her voice claim is Olivia Cooke.
== Gallery ==
Briseisref.png|Base by Joy Ang & relined by K9Pestilence
 
Category:SkyWings
Category:Characters
Category:Females
Category:Occupation (Government)
Category:Status (Royalty)
Category:Deceased
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Category:Content (Frayfae)