From the moment of her birth, Maelys has been celebrated. Earena suffers from two significant problems: a sharp decline in the birth of females, and a strict matrilineal line of a ascention to the Throne. After the birth of three boys and two stillbirths, Carine III gave birth to a healthy raven-haired baby girl, Maelys Carine. This was cause for much celebration, for Maelys’s birth meant her claim to the throne was more direct than her cousin, the Lady Coralyn Vezina.
Maelys I has reigned Queensland for forty-three years, having ascended the throne two weeks after her blossoming. She married her cousin Edgar Vezina–who was twenty years her senior–and they produced six boys before an illness rendered her incapable of bearing children again. None of her sons produced girls, but her brother and his wife, the Lady Belleview, had a daughter named Ellinora Carine, to whom Maelys has pledged the throne upon her death.
Maelys is revered throughout the Continent and the Isles as a warrior Queen, having seen the continued growth of appropriated lands on the Continent, and more recently, in the Northern Archipelago of Nans. Her reign is defined by a new age of technology, as well, contributing greatly to the success of the knighting orders abroad. Maelys’s fleet of airships–including her own, the Arabella–are considered one of the greatest modern wonders of the era.
As deep as her love of technology runs, Maelys is also a staunch Dranist. She adheres firmly to the teachings of the philosopher, Drana, who taught that religion is but a figment of men’s minds, devised to control the weak and elevate the strong. In the last century, all queens have worked to eliminate any connection between the throne and the past religions of the Continent and Isles, but none so enthusiastically as Maelys. Though no official reports have ever surfaced, locals in the Territories and abroad attest to most unusual disappearances of priests, seidcraft, and even local herbwomen.
In spite of the advances and prosperity much of the kingdom has experienced, one issue Maelys has been unable to escape. As women have continued to decline, she makes a most unpopular decision and orders all Alderclass women between the ages of ten and twenty, or otherwise unmarried, to be sent north to Queensland for safekeeping. When the Aldermen do not agree to her terms, she sends the Order of the Oak to fetch the girls, instead.