Amaranta

Amaranta is a noble herbalist during the Final Empire on Scadrial. She is one of Straff Venture's many mistresses and his chief herbalist.
== Appearance and Personality ==
She is in her late twenties, and some wrinkles are beginning to show on her face. She is an attractive woman, although Straff's preference for very young mistresses causes him to focus on the effects that aging and childbirth have had on her body. She is the mother of some of Straff's many children.
She is highly skilled with herbs, although it is unclear how she became educated in the subject. She has spent nearly her entire adult life as a concubine, and knows how to appear docile and submissive. However, she becomes devious and vengeful after being abandoned.
== History ==
Amaranta became one of Straff's mistresses circa , when she was in her late teens. Straff notes on several occasions that she was beautiful in her youth, but after she had children and reached her mid-twenties, he no longer found her physically attractive. He stopped having sex with her around and considered her to be "old". Amaranta had been warned this would happen, although she did not want to believe it. She became one of a few mistresses that Straff kept around for their usefulness even though he did not invite them to his bed. He had several herbalists, but he considered Amaranta to be the most skilled. Straff feared being poisoned, and Amaranta's specialty was a brewed concoction that could cure or identify a variety of common toxins.
Amaranta felt spurned by Straff and began an affair with Zane. Although Zane sometimes cut her with a knife, as he often did to himself due to his wavering sanity, he made her feel desirable again. However, Zane suddenly became distant from Amaranta; although this was likely due to several factors, she blamed Straff. 
She then devised a complex plan to bring Straff under her control. She and Zane worked together to play on Straff's paranoia of being poisoned. Straff believed that Zane was trying to kill him, and assumed that poison was one one of the methods that he was using. Any time he believed that Zane had poisoned him, he summoned Amaranta and had her brew her general antidote. In fact, Amaranta and Zane were not actually attempting to poison Straff. Instead, they were playing on his paranoia; her "antidote" concoction actually dosed him with an addictive drug, Black Frayn. What he thought were effects from poisons such as birchbane or tompher were actually withdrawal symptoms, and Amaranta's concoction simply relieved him of those symptoms by dosing him with more Black Frayn.
As Amaranta's plan progressed, she became slightly sloppy at maintaining the illusion that she was ignorant of when the "poisonings" would occur. Initially, she acted like she believed that Straff wanted to have sex with her until he asked her to make the antidote. However, on a subsequent occasion she arrived with "surprising speed" and immediately began brewing her potion. This culminated in a major mistake after Zane disappeared from Straff's camp. Straff summoned Amaranta believing he was poisoned, but as she began to brew the antidote he could tell that she was using different ingredients, possibly in an attempt to kill him. Straff confronted her and found cut marks on her breast that he correctly attributed to Zane. Amaranta was chagrined, but she began to tell Straff that she could still control him since he did not know which drug he was addicted to. However, Straff used the last of his strength to throttle her to death. He did not intend to kill her (since doing so put his own life in danger), but the anger and panic took over. He then haphazardly brewed a concoction of his own, which ultimately saved his life. He determined that the drug Amaranta was used was Black Frayn, and felt much better as he weaned himself off of it.
== Trivia ==
*Amaranta told Straff that withdrawal from Black Frayn could kill him, but this was a lie.
*The revenge subplot between Amaranta, Zane, and Straff was added late in the revision process to add another dimension to Zane and Straff's relationship. Brandon did not want to remove this subplot when he was asked to reduce the length of The Well of Ascension by his publisher. Although it is not very relevant to the overall story, he thinks the scenes work well and add depth to the characters.
== Notes ==