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SYRAENA
A lady of the nobility, landed in Castea, Lady Syraena became a lover of Sephas when he was merely in his late teens and she in her late thirties. She bore him a daughter by the name of Merennis, but their relationship, although deep and long lasting, was unable to be extended further due at least to pressures of politics that directed them both into other avenues of fate and action.
She spoke out in favour of Sephas against the decrees of a paranoid King Emeris after Sephas had destroyed the Ithrayan attack directed against Eiom's colonies, and when Sephas lead out a large army to directly attack Ithraya itself, Lady Syraena was left in charge the third and rear-guard column, much to the chagrin of her troops, who begrudged a woman leading them, despite her close affiliation with Sephas.
However, Lady Syraena's column eventually discovered another Ithrayan army had passed unnoticed between those of Sephas and Thane Orrin, heading directly towards Eiom. Eventually gaining the respect of her troops after a series of successful raids and skirmishes, Lady Syraena later lead them on to a hard-fought victory in pitched battle, in which she herself was killed.
Sephas, upon his coronation as Emperor Sephis I, made bold tribute to her, not only as his lover and mother of his child, but of the way she had sacrificed her own life to save Eiom's colonies. It was, as Sephis was later claimed to have stated, due to her bravery, more than any other factor, that the Corianth Empire was ever able to fledge beyond its foundation and flourish, for the battle she had won with her troops but lost her life to was immeasurably critical, and was the deciding factor behind the otherwise surprise successes of Sephas main attacks. It was also the last battle in which the Ithrayans put up any real resistance to, the defeat on the field mixed with the death of their King Minan, shattering all most organised resistance in Ithraya, allowing Sephas to bring together a plan for empire. |
