Alysia mer Malakhy

**Alysia mer Malakhy** is a Seelie mer-fae, Queen in Waiting to the merfolk, mother of Mera-Alane mer Malakhy, and served as Albion's polemarch during his war with the Unseelie Court.

## Appearance

#### Pronunciation

* Uh-lee-see-uh mer Mal-uh-KEE

When she first appears in *Game Theory*, Alysia has, 'fins protruding from ether side of her head, flashing a gunmetal grey with silvery green threads all the way through.' She has sharp teeth, and is described as 'comely' with 'the bearing of a warrior'. She has webbed fingers. While interrogating Gwyn ap Nudd, she wears 'a long, jewelled earring that hung from her left ear that indicated she might be merfolk royalty.' Augus Each Uisge describes her face as sharp, and her expression as canny. She has pale green hair.

On the battlefield by the Unseelie Court, she wears, 'a helm covering her expression, wicked sharp metal fins jutting from her head. In her hand, a huge spear spontoon, and in her other hand, some kind of weaponised glove that was covered in spikes' that are actually 'venom-filled barbs'.

## Personality

Alysia is sharp and sarcastic, even during diplomatic relations (at least with Unseelie fae). Augus notes that, 'Seelie or not, she was merfolk, and it was a more cut-throat world beneath the sea.' She seems to enjoy combat.

## Life

Alysia beats Gwyn up while interrogating him at the Seelie Court. She later joins Albion and Oura Selich during a meeting with the Unseelie Court on neutral ground after Gwyn's release. She is as insulting as Albion is during the meeting, and calls Augus a pony, which is a slur to a waterhorse.

Alysia, along with Albion, Oura Selich, Old Pete, and Davix, attend the meeting with the Unseelie Court after Gwyn's coronation as King of the Unseelie Court. At the meeting, Albion threatens to start war with the Unseelie Court if it doesn't abide by the Seelie Court's wishes. Gwyn demonstrates that the Unseelie Court is not cowed by biting back at Albion's venom, and destroying the area with his light, which frightened Alysia, before Gwyn turned his back on the Seelie Court representatives and left.

When Gwyn visits the Seelie Court to answer for the murder of Crielle ferch Fnwy and the other An Fnwy estate residents, Albion, Alysia, and Oura Selich all snub Gwyn by not appearing to meet with him, which forces him to meet with Old Pete instead.

Alysia serves as Albion's Polemarch or War General during the war with the Unseelie Court. During the war, she sends testing forces to Gwyn to see how strong his military is, and how he responds, and often observes more than fight herself. She personally interrogates Eran Iliakambar at the Seelie Court.

Gulvi Dubna Vajat attempts to assassinate Alysia during the Red Path strategy, but is fought off largely by Mera-Alane.

She accompanies Albion and Davix to the meeting with the Coalition of the Classless. After the Coalition's sanctions end the war, she asks for leave to remove herself from Albion's Inner Court, and return to ruling the sea, as she is, 'Queen-in-Waiting under the ocean', and the sea has no King, with Albion on land. Albion grants her request, and Alysia departs. Given the fracturing of the sea fae as the different alignments and groups vie for power in *The Ice Plague: Book 2 - The Seething Seas*, it's unclear how effective Alysia's rule was/is, or how in charge she was/is.

## Skills

**Strategy:** Gwyn states that Alysia is a brilliant general. Mikkel notes she is only easy to read when she was enraged.

**Teleportation:** Alysia can teleport: when she does so, she vanishes, 'in a spray of salt water and a lone piece of kelp on the ground'.

## Relationships

### Albion

It's unclear how close Alysia is with Albion, but the two seem to have some form of camaraderie, and she stays at his side almost to the end of his Inner Court.

### Gwyn ap Nudd

According to Mikkel, Alysia dislikes Gwyn. Gwyn still has some trauma from being interrogated by her while he was underfae.

### Mera-Alane mer Malakhy

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

## Memorable Quotes

* Mikkel to Gwyn: 'Alysia doesn’t like you. She’s the Polemarch. After Dogwill got defeated, she’s vowed never to underestimate you again. So be careful. Like…she thinks of militaries like shoals of fish, and she’ll attack that way.'
* ‘What a peaceful meeting this is turning out to be'
* To Albion: 'If you will not rule them,’ Alysia said, ‘I shall. You don’t need a Polemarch on land, but you need one in the sea.'

## 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 1.3 not\_poignant. “Game Theory.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 25 January 2014. https://archiveofourown.org/works/915296/chapters/2338138. Chapter 38: Underfae.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 not\_poignant. “Game Theory.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 31 January 2014. https://archiveofourown.org/works/915296/chapters/2363349. Chapter 39: Alone.
3. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 26 June 2015. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/9517437. Chapter 49: Battle.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 not\_poignant. “Game Theory.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 21 March 2014. https://archiveofourown.org/works/915296/chapters/2808781. Chapter 46: King.
5. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 20 June 2014. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/3901096. Chapter 2: Orphan.
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 26 December 2014. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/6404462. Chapter 23: Confrontation.
7. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 19 September 2014. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/5127665. Chapter 10: Battlefields.
8. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 20 February 2015. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/7438151. Chapter 31: Rupture.
9. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Ice Plague: Book 1 - The Forest of Fire.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 7 October 2017. https://archiveofourown.org/works/12036105/chapters/27929826. Chapter 4: Splendour.
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 16 January 2015. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/6910442. Chapter 26: Clarity.
11. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 7 August 2015. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/10279800. Chapter 55: Refuge.
12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 14 August 2015. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/10409742. Chapter 56: Islands.
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 17 October 2014. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/5474447. Chapter 14: Pearl.
14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 "Mermaid". Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mermaid. Accessed 19 May 2021.