The Talons & The Wings

The talons and the wings were two incipient factions that had been forming around the sister-wives of King Vaenarr Vakerian I, since wedding Queen Vaehna Vakerian I.  The half-sisters had sometimes maintained a rivalry in the past, but this proclivity was exacerbated after Vaenarr’s taking of a second bride Queen Visaenys Vakerian IV. Given their powerful and magnetic personalities, deep political divisions run through the royal court, with lords and courtiers lending their ears to one queen or another in the hopes that they might garner royal favor.
==Origins==
Queen Vaehna and Queen Visaenys’s rivalry had been an on again, off again affair since Visaenys' earliest years.  This however, for the most part, was a harmless affect of sisterhood. A true rift did not begin to grow between them until Vaehna’s brother and husband, Vaenarr, took Visaenys as a second wife.  Vaehna had, in the years since her marriage to her brother, experienced difficulties becoming pregnant after the birth of their firstborn son, and it was feared that she could well be barren after it. Visaenys, however, had fruitfully just bled and Vaenarr wanted more children so they wed each other when Visaenys was young.
Their rivalry, however, is not simply borne of personal dislike, the vagaries of romantic entanglement, and the ambition that comes along with it.  There are serious ideological differences between the two queens that can be traced back to their respective modes of advocacy during the many conflicts that plagued the realm.  This divide and counsel have continued since.  The king, and so the realm, has often found himself torn between the two viewpoints, compelling as both could sometimes be.
The titles derive from a remark made by Grand Maester Araphos shortly after the coronation of Visaenys as queen. If Vaenarr was the head of the dragon, he said, then Vaehna constituted its talons while Visaenys was as its wings.  Queen Vaehna, he reasoned, embodied all the terrible power that the great dragons curated by House Vakerian could bring to bear. Her methods were direct, and as her enemies during the War of Three Dragons learned, could be fatal to those who opposed the Dragon’s will. Visaenys, however, was a gentler soul, who often advocated more genteel methods such as diplomacy. Hers was an image of observation, preferring a complete view of a situation as a dragon might when aloft in the sky.
Vaenarr Vakerian's hand, Janik Pecerean was so amused by this that he commissioned a gilded brooch in the shape of a dragon’s claws and presented it to Queen Vaehna as a gift for her nameday that year. At a banquet held before a tournament to celebrate King Vaenarr’s nameday, Lady Vhaerla Vakerian VI followed suit by presenting a new gown to Queen Visaenys upon which the wings of a dragon were prominently featured.  These two scions of the court were not the only ones to embrace these images, as many began to align themselves with one sphere of influence or the other.
==Prominent Talons==
===The Royals===
===The Crownlands===
===The North===
===The Midlands===
===The Gilded Isles===
===The Marches===
===The Shield===
===The Stormcrown===
===The Qairan Deserts===
==Prominent Wings==
===The Royals===
===The Crownlands===
===The North===
===The Midlands===
===The Gilded Isles===
===The Marches===
===The Shield===
===The Stormcrown===
===The Qairan Deserts===