Elaine

It’s been five hundred years since the unified nations denounced superstition. In this age of reason, Elaine, the recent Queen of Vallis, has become the most celebrated ruler. So beloved by her people to be dubbed the ‘Millenium Queen’, the ‘Sun Queen’.

Diane

It is this love that makes it all the more unfortunate that she has met an untimely demise. To her only daughter, Crown Princess Diane, she leaves behind a kingdom in mourning. And though the rising sun dries her subjects’ tears, a growing shadow still lurks behind them.

You

It is up to Diane to protect her people from this looming threat. It is up to you to decide how she does so.

For Country

My mother was chosen.

I’m sure if I said that our subjects would agree. They’ve always had such a romanticized vision of her. She was the Sun Queen. The Millennium Queen. A daughter of the sun born to herald dawn and bring an end to Vallis’s darkest time.

Five hundred years into the Age of Reason, and yet the people still make legends. I suppose the entertainment is too much for the masses to resist. I wonder if the story would change if they’d seen how she’d act towards me.

Putting aggrandizement aside, as a queen, my mother was worthy of praise. She was a reformer, a ruler who brought Vallis towards tomorrow when it was most broken. The sun’s light upon the valley that I strove to reflect. And though that light shone coldly upon this ‘Maiden of the Moon’, I still longed for its warmth.

But now that longing will never be fulfilled. I inherited her talent and worked hard to make best use of it and for my achievements, all who have known me have given recognition with the exception of her. That now permanent failure is disappointing, but a child’s dream dead with the mother isn’t the most pressing issue at the moment.

“Your Highness?” Eliza freed me from my trance. She had accompanied me atop the old castle’s walls so I could watch the funeral procession return to the valley below. But before I had even realized, the procession’s carriages had already grown small in the distance. Well, coming to watch them was just to distract myself anyway.

“What is it, Eliza?”

She pulled out the letter included in my mother’s will. “Perhaps you should read your mother’s letter.”

I stayed facing the valley. “I’ll save it for later.” A letter consisting of instructions could be left to wait and considering this was my mother, that’s likely all it was.

Eliza tucked away the letter. “Then what will you do now?”

“I’m not sure.” I said. I hadn’t been sure since first hearing of Mother’s death. Talk of me taking the throne shouldn’t have started until I was as old as Mother is—was—now. Yet here I stood, fifteen, just of age, and soon to be Queen of Vallis. What a mess.

My eyes shifted from the procession onto Vallisia. The last time I gazed upon the twin halves of the capital from these walls had been ages ago. With an overcast covering the valley, the capital was covered in grey. The warm light that had shined upon it was gone. But there it still stood, beautiful as I had remembered it.

I had to protect it. With all the uncertainty of tomorrow and what after, at least I could be certain of that.