[A short Christabel piece I discovered in my drafts folder.]
Perhaps the best exemplar of this sea-change, if you’ll forgive the turn of phrase, is Lady Christabel Blackthorn. Best known in her time as the daughter of notorious pirate captain Kendra Blackthorn, she played a small but undeniable role in the turbulent events of those transitional years. The nation of Hise was, in those years, a culture on the rise. With their increasingly critical role in overseas trade, the Free Cities were poised to take their rightful place in the politics of the region, no longer a half-forgotten penal colony but a nation of standing. The fifteenth summit, taking place as it did in the midst of converging conflicts, would prove critical to this endeavor.
The alliances formed at the summits were traditionally considered with suspicion in the larger nations, Arland among them. While they provided vital trade benefits and political stability, without which the advances of that time would surely have been impossible, they leaned on the strength of cross-cultural understanding, which was always fraught. Hise’s role in these proceedings was central, less despite and more because of its small size as a nation. At that time, Hise had not yet achieved a self-sustaining size, and so was the only nation in the region which truly relied on out-marriage to maintain a viable renewing population. There were more mixed marriages in Hise, proportionally, than any of the other six kingdoms.
Blackthorn, despite having taken her mother’s appellation as a surname, had found her place in the summit on the strength of her paternal connections. Her parents being one of those mixed marriages that sustained the island kingdom at the time, she had rank and stature just enough to be considered an acceptable bride. Young Hisean women attended the summit only rarely, as the members of the older kingdoms were more apt to object to their sons bringing home foreign brides, rather than shipping out their daughters to uncertain circumstances, on uncertain terms.
