Mera-Alane mer Malakhy

## Personality

Mera-Alane was known to 'offer succour' to Albion, though it is unclear in what form. As she was also able to defend her mother's life against Gulvi Dubna Vajat, it is likely that she is also protective and fierce.

## Life

Mera-Alane is a mermaid. After Albion declared war on the Unseelie Court and Gwyn ap Nudd and Gulvi implemented the Red Path strategy, whereby Gulvi eliminated many important Seelie elite to weaken Seelie forces, Gulvi returned to the Unseelie Court badly injured, after an attempt to get at the Polemarch, Alysia mer Malakhy. Gulvi claimed her injuries were largely due to Mera-Alane, and this seems to have ended the Red Path strategy, by and large. When Gwyn continued to track Alysia's movements, Mera-Alane was still with her.

After Alysia decided to return to the sea to rule over the fae there, Mera-Alane remained behind in Albion's company.

## Skills

Mera-Alane was able to fend off and survive an assassination attempt by Gulvi, and cause Gulvi great injury, so she seems to be quite strong.

## Relationships

#### Albion

Mera-Alane appears to be in a relationship with Albion, as the Spider Queen noted in a letter to Gwyn that, 'Mera-Alane remains aboveground and offers succour to the Seelie King.' It's possible that when Mikkel referenced a mermaid(s) whom Albion wanted to sleep with, that Albion was thinking of Mera-Alane.

#### Alysia mer Malakhy

Mera-Alane is Alysia's daughter. Not much is known of their relationship, but Mera-Alane accompanied Alysia in the latter's duties as Polemarch and defended her against threats, even managing to stop Gulvi from killing her.

## Folklore/Mythology

Merfolk are typically people who dwell underwater, and often are part animal (particularly fish or sea mammals).

'Depictions of entities with the tails of fish, but the upper bodies of human beings appear in Mesopotamian artwork from the Old Babylonian Period onwards. These figures are usually mermen, but mermaids do occasionally appear. The name for the mermaid figure may have been *kuliltu*, meaning "fish-woman". Such figures were used in Neo-Assyrian art as protective figures and were shown in both monumental sculpture and in small, protective figurines.

The first known mermaid stories appeared in Assyria c. 1000 BC. The goddess Atargatis, mother of the Assyrian queen Semiramis, loved a mortal (a shepherd) and unintentionally killed him. Ashamed, she jumped into a lake and took the form of a fish, but the waters would not conceal her divine beauty. Thereafter, she took the form of a mermaid—human above the waist, fish below—although the earliest representations of Atargatis showed her as a fish with a human head and arm, similar to the Babylonian god Ea. The Greeks recognized Atargatis under the name Derketo.'

Different kinds of merfolk include sea people in *One Thousand and One NIghts*, the merrow (an Irish mermaid), mermaids in English, Korean, and llocano folklore, water elementals, Melusine (a freshwater mermaid-like creature who is sometimes depicted with two fish tails, or the lower body of a serpent), the sirens (Byzantine and Ottoman Greece, though these depictions switched between avian and sea-dwelling creatures), russalkas (Slavic counterparts of sirens and naiads), the jiaoren or shark people of China, the Japanese ningyo, the mermaid princess Suvannamaccha in Thailand and Hinduism, or Sovanna Maccha, as she is known in Cambodia, Nyai Roro Kidul in Java (or Nyai Blorong in her mermaid form), the Binalatongan mermaid from the Pangasinense, the Magindara of the Bicolano, the Mambubuno of the Sambal, Mami Water in west, central, and southern Africa, the njuzu from Zimbabwe, the Aycayia from the Neo-Taino, the Haitian vodou loa called La Sirene, and the jengu of Cameroon.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 *The Court of Five Thrones*, Chapter 59: Epilogue: Futures. Accessed 06 May 2021.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 *The Court of Five Thrones*, Chapter 26: Clarity. Accessed 21 April 2021.
3. ↑ *The Court of Five Thrones*, Chapter 40: Intervention. Accessed 06 May 2021.
4. ↑ *The Court of Five Thrones*, Chapter 21: Fracture. Accessed 20 May 2021.
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Mermaid". Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mermaid. Accessed 19 May 2021.