NAME. Titania
AGE & BIRTH DATE. 8,000+ & Unknown
GENDER & PRONOUNS. Female & She/Her
SPECIES. Archfey
OCCUPATION. Queen of the Fey
FACE CLAIM. Morfydd Clark
( tw: war, death, mental health, loss ) By human expectations, princess Titania was a woman grown when she arrived in the mortal world thousands of years ago. Born to the promise of change, to rising flowers and crisp sunrises, the princess was a spring eladrin long before she was ever the queen of all seasons. In the eyes of the fey, she was only a child, just passed a century when she along with her kind arrived through the Otherworld as refugees - guided by her mother and leaving behind any other family she might have known. The cost of this voyage was great, Titania’s mother gave her life to ensure the safe passage of her people through the realm that ran in between all others. Though she was too young to carry the burden of rule, it was thrust upon Titania just the same as she accepted the mantle and took the gift that her mother left for her: a chance to start over.
The Earth was a bountiful realm, recently won before her people’s arrival, it was she with the combined magic of the God Ulthar that first breathed life into the human race. As other races would find when they arrived on mortal soil, this realm teemed with potential; fixed and prosperous, the future looked bright in the eyes of the fey. Humans were young, ignorant, naive, they barely mastered wheels, fires, and spears on their own when the fey took pity on their children and gifted them the knowledge of metallurgy and architecture. The future had been the final gift of Titania’s mother, the last words of wisdom to pass from her lips were uttered through the wind and lived in the heart of each surviving eladrin. It was this promise that Titania swore to uphold, she would build the future for them that her mother had dreamt of.
For years that wish was fulfilled, the fey lived within the mortal world alongside humans, witches, and druids alike, willfully sharing their arcane secrets with those that they’d come to think of as their children. To Titania, the lives of humans were short, a few blinks of treasured memories that she’d squirrel away and cherish until another came to take their place. Friends, companions, lovers, as queen Titania saw the union of the fey and mortal blood as a thing to be celebrated. The power that bloomed as a result was a testament to this and for a time, all was well. The permanence of any romantic situation was brief up to a point, Titania was queen, and she had to make her mother’s sacrifice matter, but there was one who managed to capture her heart. An eladrin of the Summer season, Titania’s warder, a woman named Nalwyn. Together they had a son, prince Aegnor.
Aegnor was the future that she’d worked so hard for. Happiness made Titania complacent, the normally watchful queen did not see the net that was slowly falling around them, and the treachery that had bloomed in the hearts of greedy humans. Influenced by things beyond her control, humans descended upon an eladrin settlement, plundering homes, sacred groves, taking whatever they could and slaughtering those that were left behind. Were the humans alone in this treason then Titania’s retaliation might have been swift, but they were aided by others who wanted what the fey had - for the power in their blood, for the wisdom in their tomes. Magic. In the end the eladrins’ abundance of it painted them the target by too many. While few in number, Titania was stubborn, too stubborn to heed the wisdom of her council, and admittedly still too young to feel the true cost of war until it fell upon her.
Titania was targeted, but it was Nalwyn who was found. The warder’s death was one that Titania felt as keenly as if the blade had pierced her own chest. Butchered and discovered by Titania and Aegnor, it was only then that the queen could see that this was a war they were losing - and even if they won the cost would be too great. The future that her mother had given so much for would not be lost here, Titania refused. So, from the mortal world the powerful all-seasons eladrin retreated and to the Otherworld she created a realm of her own. A pale mirror tied intrinsically to Titania’s magic, an ephemeral reflection of the mortal world she modelled it after. The queen’s placement of the faerie court was deliberate, it was here that she was closest to the power she drew from, and here that she was at her strongest. While Titania would have preferred her people remain within the court, she would never force them to do so, their lives were their own, but that did not mean she did not push them in small ways to value their own safety over the safety of mortals. Humans came and went, a few blinks of the eye and they were gone, the faimen were no different. Powerful though they were, Titania saw the union of humans and eladrins as simply another loss, another generation of children born absent the immortality they were owed.
Aegnor was perhaps her one saving grace, he was strong, willful, and one of the most capable warriors in their rank and fold. It was he who wanted to continue to fight for the mortal world they had left behind. To so many of her kind that had been born in the humans’ realm, that was their home first, not the domain that Titania had built for them with nothing but willpower and magic. Despite the heartache she had suffered, Titania too could not help but consort among the people she’d once nurtured in their infancy. In some ways they were still her children, though they’d long turned their backs on her there were some who were worth noting. Who were worth protecting, so often her hopes ended in disappointment, but humans were nothing if not entertaining. Still, Titania could no longer remain in the mortal realm for more than a few days, the faerie court depended upon her presence there. Her visits would be brief, fleeting, and then she would be gone. A few blinks, and any she met grew old and died; when she returned to visit them she’d find gravestones, monuments, and piles of stones where her friends had once been.
From her throne came the scratching at the door, a knock between worlds as another’s story who was not unlike her own beseeched the queen’s great power. Titania remembered what it was to navigate the Otherworld, to spend decades being pursued by a power so grim, and so dark, it would chill the hearts of the greatest warriors. She knew what it was to try and start over, to create a life for oneself and a future free of the past. This was how Titania and Venus became acquainted, though that was a name she came to carry later, sometimes Aphrodite, first she was Inanna. Third born original child, the word vampire did not yet exist but would come to pollute the known world as Inanna and her siblings descended into the mortal realm. Titania kept her involvement a secret, even from her closest advisors, even from her son Aegnor, but were they born into different circumstances then it may have been Inanna who was the first to come to the mortal world, not Titania.
It was a descendant of Inanna’s that fractured their relationship, one of the vampire’s progeny became curious, drawn into a frenzy by the insanely potent allure of eladrin blood, they bit into them and before they could be stopped drained the creature dry. Titania demanded retribution, and when the terms were returned she was unsatisfied. By then the vampires had grown, Inanna’s siblings had a foothold over the world and while they were still warring among themselves, Titania could not rise against them alone. Instead she resigned herself to her court, encouraging her people once more to abandon the mortal realm entirely, feigning ignorance at the pestilence she’d had a hand in stoking, the loss of each fey creature at the hands of the vampires was one that she felt personal responsibility for. Still, a few blinks away, and the opportunity to strike back would appear before her, all she needed was to be patient.
Patience was rewarded in the form of the young upstart, the future king Romulus. Titania willfully aligned with the vampire, if only to get revenge for those of her kind that had been killed at the hands of a rogue magistrate. The senate that followed was something that she cared little for, the affairs of the mortal world were beneath her now, but she had a number of fey in the mortal world that did concern her. Even then Titania could see the writing on the wall, to remain absent from this senate was to paint her people an enemy and an unprotected target. Though whatever accountability it was supposed to have, Titania came to understand that there was nothing that would protect her from tragedy.
Farenduil came at a time when Titania needed him most. Unlike other births, her autumn son did not come wailing and crying into the world. He was quiet until the moment when Titania first held him in her arms. To an eladrin, all life was a gift, and Farenduil was no exception. A cherished blessing that she promised the world, and that she promised a future. For a time that promise seemed possible, Titania was already ancient by the time Farenduil came into the world, but her capacity to love him had never waned in the slightest. At night she’d find him and tuck him safely in, while Aegnor would fight for the home that he’d once known, she was blessed that Farenduil had been born into the faerie court. This could be his home, and here, where Titania was at her most powerful, he would always be safe.
Still, just as the others, Titania would not keep him from venturing off when he chose. The faerie court would always be his home, so long as he returned she could not begrudge her son for frequenting the place that so many spoke about. That did not make it any easier when he left, the more she had, then the more there was to lose. Titania had enemies, and too many of them would see a young prince as the perfect opportunity to strike at the faerie queen’s heart.
Aegnor’s death came with the surge of Christ, with the insistence that angels were benevolent creatures, that the figure the humans came to refer to as God was a righteous one, and that fey were somehow equated to demons. Foolish notions brought forth by people who knew nothing of the truth of the Inferno, of the many hellike or angelic realms of the Otherworld. His passing shook Titania to her core, another death, another loss at the hands of the fools of Horus. Lost within the clashing of blades in a fight he had no place being in, it was too easy to blame his warder, to place the fault on the grieving fey who should have rightfully died in the prince’s place. But she couldn’t, because if there was anyone to blame it was her, she’d allowed Aegnor to throw himself into conflict after conflict. For thousands of years she’d fought at his side, and for thousands more he persisted after she retreated to the court.
This was the part where Titania would never truly recover, a mind so extensive, years so long, all her lives began to fracture at the edges as they slowly muddled with the source of her magic. The lines between realms blurred and Titania was left with memories that made even her begin to buckle. None remained that she had known in her youth, she was the oldest, she was the most powerful, and in this she felt truly and definitively alone. Titania distracted herself however she could, though she never left the court anymore. The mortals were to their own devices. So profound was her grief that the arrival of her third and final child, Meryasek was one that she could hardly celebrate. Pain echoed in her chest at every turn; wherever Titania looked she saw the son that had been taken from her, the countless fey that had been lost or hunted over the years.
She thought of the future her mother had given up everything for and wondered if this was what the former queen had aspired towards. Failure would be the defining notion of Titania’s reign, but she first had to prepare the sons who still lived to someday take her place. To her Mery she was sure to instil the importance of his own life, his survival was worth the death of every human in the mortal realm - even more. Fey life was too precious, too rare, she owed him the future that she’d failed to provide and drew a quiet hope from the circumstances that surrounded his birth. A spring eladrin, not unlike herself at one point, a new hope, a second chance at life. Meryasek still believed the human world was worth breaking into, so to the senate she appointed him, he would have to learn as she did that there was nothing for them there.
With Aegnor gone, someday soon Farenduil would take her place. He’d need to be ready for that day, she’d been young when she took the crown, too young to truly understand its weight, his mistakes could not be hers.
+ strategic, sincere, energetic
- dogmatic, aloof, jaded
