Regina Beesbury

Evelyn Beesbury

Regina Beesbury is the current Lady of Honeyholt and mistress of its apiaries. She's the eldest daughter of the late Lord Lyonel Beesbury and the older sister to her twin, Evelyn Beesbury.

## Appearance and Character

Regina is a woman in the summertime of her beauty. With supple fair skin and tantalizingly plump lips, she is blessed with a comely face that is marked by enchanting amber eyes and elegant high cheekbones. Her hair is spun honey gold that falls past her shoulders in a stream of curls that end in well-groomed ringlets. Tall for a woman, her figure is lithe but bosomy. Though her wardrobe is vast and diverse, she favors dazzling gowns of cloth-of-gold above all others.

Though not above using her beauty to get what she wants, it is by no means the only weapon in her toolkit. A sly operator, with a gift for witty remarks and clever wordplay, she is a charming woman who delights in using her words to win people over. Moreover, she has keen political instincts and a mind that can deftly maneuver through the cutthroat world of court and business. Driven by lofty ambitions, she would see her talents raise the fortunes of her House and smallfolk.

## History

Regina Beesbury would be born alongside her fraternal twin sister Ellyn to Lord Lyonel Beesbury and his wife Lady Joanna Woodwright on a spring evening in 362 AC. Though the day was pleasant, the birth of the twins flirted dangerously close with tragedy. While Regina came into the world first with relative ease, her sister’s journey was far more laborious and bloody. If not for the quick ministrations of Honeyholt’s maester both mother and daughter could have been lost that night. Fortunately, the Seven proved to be kinder than that. And so, a remarkably quiet and tranquility Regina and a red-faced and screaming Ellyn would join their older brothers as the newest scions of House Beesbury.

The early differences between the babes would prove to be prophetic of both sisters natures. Regina was a well-mannered but sly child, one seemingly blessed by the Maiden herself with a natural talent for charming others. It took her no time at all to learn that if she truly wanted something, be it another hour of play in the gardens or an extra treat from the kitchens, that she need not resort to childish tantrums. Instead, a simple smile, an affectionate plea, or the mere hint of watery eyes could just as easily do the trick, if not better than louder hysterics ever could.

That burgeoning talent would only be sharped when Regina started her formal education in 369 AC. While Honeyholt’s septa and maester played their expected parts in her learning, it would be her shrewd mother who would serve as her foremost mentor. From her, Regina was thoroughly instructed in the womanly disciplines that were expected of a lady of a prominent southron House.

Be it dancing, singing, reciting poetry, or table manners, Regina excelled and added those skills to her growing repertoire of talents that she loved to show off to her friends and admirers, doing so at the chagrin of her tomboyish sister. However, while she loved the attention her talents brought her, it was her mother’s lessons in business that truly ignited her young ambition. The matriarch of House Beesbury had longed served as her husband’s money-savvy treasurer and seneschal and saw that same potential in her mathematical gifted daughter. Regina took to these lessons like a fish to water, fascinated by the subtle interplay of courtly maneuvering and mercantile bantering.

With these collected skills in hand, Regina had much of Honeyholt eating out her hand at the ripe age of ten. From the seat’s septon and maester, to its castle servants and local smallfolk, she would walk across the seat with her fawning circle of ladies-in-waiting as its little queen bee, becoming more imperious and self-assured with each passing moon. Of course, not all were enchanted by her charms or blinded to her ostentatiousness. Her sister Ellyn was entirely immune. And why wouldn’t she be? Almost from infancy the two sisters fought and argued constantly, their differing personalities making them as discordant as water and oil.

While Regina was ofttimes duplicitous, Ellyn strived to be forthright. While Regina was elegantly feminine, Ellyn was unapologetically hoydenish. And while Regina planned on becoming one of the great ladies of Westeros akin to Alysanne Targaryen, Ellyn dreamed of being the next Brienne of Tarth.

Unsurprisingly, a dramatic war of sisterly rivalry reigned between them for years, with almost everyone in Honeyholt, from the servants to their parents, getting dragged into the feud at some point or another as the two tried to outdo and antagonize one another. The only one who proved consistently above it all was their eldest brother, Edmund, the young heir often playing diplomat and peacemaker between them whenever their parents were too busy to intervene.

Fair-minded for a youth, Edmund would just as often take Regina’s side as he would Ellyn’s, but she still loved him regardless and saw in her brother a potential that matched her own. In all likelihood, Edmund would have made a good and just future Lord of Beesbury, but it was not to be. An innocuous swimming trip in 372 AC with his sisters along the usually calm waters of the Honeywine turned disastrous when the river tides suddenly caught Edmund in a rapid that sent him perilously downriver. Regina rode back to Honeyholt as fast as she could to get help while Ellyn stayed behind to try to save Edmund herself, but in the end, both efforts would be for not.

All of House Beesbury would grieve his death, with Regina being racked with guilt for much of the year. However, if there was a silver lining, it would be Regina’s conciliation with her twin, the two grieving sisters finally finding common ground and even solace in the wake of Edmund’s death. Though Regina still could not understand her sister’s aspirations of knighthood, she now respected them enough to persuade their father to allow Honeyholt’s master-at-arms to formally train her.

Years would pass after Edmund’s death and though House Beesbury still mourned the loss of its firstborn heir, time still marched ahead. In 377 AC, Regina’s tutelage in merchantry became so advanced that her mother allowed her to take control of some of Honeyholt’s apiaries. Despite her age, she showed her worthy and talent as a beekeeper and trader by using her youth and charms to deceive some of the more gullible merchants that came Honeyholt’s way with deals that seemingly put them at an advantage but in truth enriched her House. Further still, she worked alongside Honeyholt’s maester to conceive all-new lucrative uses for her House’s bees. By the end of the year, Regina’s apiaries were producing more honey than they had in years and the House as a whole had become notably richer.

Unfortunately, those prosperous tidings would be quickly overshadowed by fire and blood when the Last Dragon and her Essosi mercenaries invaded Westeros in 378 AC. The southlands were one of the first regions hit by Queen Daena, and Honeyholt was not exempt from the carnage. Loyal to his king, Regina’s father would rally House Beesbury’s forces to join the great muster at Brightwater Keep, leaving her second brother Jayson to command the garrison that remained to protect Honeyholt itself.

Jayson was a kind and sharp boy, but he was more a scholar than a soldier. Even so, when a detachment of the Golden Company came to take Honeyholt, he managed to delay the sellswords just long enough that Regina, their mother, and their cousins were able to flee the besieged castle with some of the seat’s smallfolk and escape into the countryside.

After that, it was chaos. Information on how the war was going was sparse and often contradictory, and Regina spent much of it with her mother and cousins going from village to village evading the mercenaries that sought them out. They survived on the kindness of their smallfolk and their wits but never knew whether Lord Beesbury had survived the doomed Battle of the Roseroad. Nor did they know the fate of Ellyn, who had joined their father’s host in secret when it left for Brightwater Keep, a deception Regina begrudgingly assisted her in despite her fears for her safety.

That confusion would come to an end when the Last Dragon and the Golden Company were finally defeated in 381 AC. With that defeat came ravens with news about her father’s death in battle and her sister’s miraculous survival. Though Regina grieved for his death as much as she did her brothers, she did not allow that grief to blind her to the duty she had to her House. She returned to a ruined Honeyholt as its ruling lady, intent on seeing her seat and House brought back to their former wealth and glory.

Of course, there were those within her own family that doubted that one as young as herself -- let alone a woman -- could revive their House. Fortunately, Regina had the backing of her mother and sister, the latter having returned to Honeyholt a war hero in the aftermath of the war. In the end, it would not take her long to prove her distractors wrong.

Courting new friends and allies in Oldtown, Regina used her charms and financial savvy to negotiate pliable loans from the Bank of Oldtown that were then used to rebuild Honeyholt and its surrounding villages. The coin that remained was put to work to make risky but ultimately fruitful investments that saw Honeyholt’s recovery from the war accelerated in an enviable fashion. By 383 AC, the seat’s apiaries are once more abuzz with its House’s greatest resource and with them the dawn of a promising new age with Regina sitting comfortably as Honeyholt’s ambitious queen bee.

## Recent History

Though she has yet to be knighted, Ellyn serves as a member of her sister’s household guard, the warrior woman having earned the right after fighting in the War of the Last Dragon. While mostly satisfied with her new position, she still yearns to hone her skills and better herself as a true knight.

## Household

**Castellan:** Ser Benjen ‘Big Ben’ Beesbury

**Steward:** ‘Lame’ Denys Beesbury

**Seneschal:** Joanna Beesbury (née Woodwright)

**Master-at-Arms:** Ser Victor Beesbury

**Captain of the Guard:** Ser Paxter of Honeyholt

**Septon:** Runceford

**Septa:** Evaline

**Maester:** Warwyck

**Keeper of the Apiary:** Liam Combs

**Keeper of the Stables:** Maisy

**Keeper of the Kennels:** Pate

**Ladies-in-Waiting:** Donna Beesbury, Zoe Beesbury, Mina Beesbury, Betha Mead, Samantha Combs, Tilly Sweetflowers