Allarian Rule

Allaria is a hereditary monarchy, with an uninterrupted dynasty of kings and queens that lasted through the Scarred Era, from Dragon King Zai Qan to the current Dragon Queen.

Overview
While the monarch’s power is supreme, all Allarian rulers have maintained a Senate to argue and decide the laws, which the sovereign may then approve or reject. Throughout the history of Allaria, the Senate has functioned mostly as a think tank, a diverse collection of advisors on every subject, to guide the monarch with wisdom and knowledge.

There is a distinct class difference between Allarian peoples, with Allai honor elves occupying most positions of privilege and purebred, or ‘Null-eyed’ elves making up the lowest caste. Other peoples, particularly human merchants and workers, fulfil the role of a middle class. Despite the Dragon Queen’s recent reforms, which state that all peoples are equal, millennia of prejudice and rooted castes are hard to remove in a single season or even a single decade. Nearly all government officials, from the nobility to senators to military commanders, are Allai, and most merchants and skilled workers are humans. Silver elves are usually unemployed, or servants of the other classes.

The kingdom is made up of several cities throughout Western Valerna, all of which pay taxes and fealty to Allaria City, the capital and site of the royal family. City governors are not nobility, but chosen by meritocratic appointment; still, they are almost exclusively Allai, like the ruling elite.

The Wilderlands - the grasslands and wet forests between Allarian cities - are considered outside the kingdom’s protection, and citizens are not advised to stray from marked routes and outposts.

Qan Yin Elyse I, Dragonbonded of Ferellon, The Dragon Queen
The current ruler of Allaria, both a daughter of the Royal Dynasty and a lowly silver elf, is the first Ellari to hold the position in the Realm’s history, and the first dragonbonded on the throne after Allaria’s founder, Zai Qan himself. The Dragon Queen is bonded to Ferellon Fulgen, the Royal Dragon of Allaria, who serves as the Queen’s counselor and is the first dragon behind the Allarian throne in a thousand years.

Queen Elyse is a wise and committed ruler, seeing it as her responsibility to protect not only Allaria but all of Valerna. She has made sure her every subject is protected under the law, although she fights an uphill battle against thousands of years of prejudice and archaic laws - particularly as regards the treatment of silver elves, her own kind. Elyse is trained in several different martial arts and well versed in the dreamshaping school of magic. Also, Elyse’s early years as a servant gave her a grit and discipline that no other Allarian noble has known - not even her own magic teachers, who she quickly surpassed in creativity and adaptability.

Elyse is a great warrior, an empathic sovereign and one of the greatest wizards of Valerna. While she is currently entering her fifties, she displays the ageless majesty of the Ellari at their heyday, and can seem as young or old as she needs to without changing her physical appearance one bit.

Laelle, First Dreamshaper of the Realm
The master of magic in Allaria is Laelle, a grave and resolute Allai woman with the power of an archmage and the demeanor of a librarian. Laelle is in charge of all arcane libraries and magic schools in the Kingdom. Although she is the same age as Elyse, and both studied together during their youth, Laelle’s middle-age is much more noticeable than the Queen’s, with her gray hairs only adding to the respect she commands among both the Realm’s spellcasters and its common people.

Alarn Eldai of Fion, First Warden of Allaria
Arn Eldai of Fion was a Fai hunter - a warden specialized in slaying or banishing fey pests from the Realm’s borders. During the Second Null War, he not only stood beside the Dragon Queen against the threat of the Null; he brought most of the realm’s wardens and fai hunters under her banner. His reward was the title of Alarn, or ‘True Warden’ - given only to a handful of Allarian wardens at any given time - and the position of First Warden of Allaria, which gives him command of all of the Realm’s warden orders and qirin rider battalions. He serves the Queen with fanatical loyalty, performing his duties with the same unassuming, down-to-business attitude that distinguished him in his Fai hunter days.

General Merkhana
Together with Alarn Eldai, Merkhana of the Bucentauri is the second half of Allaria City’s military command. A burly, muscular bucentaur from the Silver Reed tribes, she distinguished herself as a troop captain during the Second Null War, and later she led the charge that broke the Null Hordes at the Battle of the Eight Walls.

Merkhana is both the captain of the palace guard and the Queen’s bodyguard, and she remains in charge of all elite soldiers in the capital. While most of the Realm’s military look up and answer to Alarn Eldai, it is Merkhana’s battle-lust and fearless abandon which they fear - and admire - the most.

Senator Brendis
While the senate has no senior members, and many silver elves have recently joined the ruling body against the wishes of the most radical traditionalists, Elyse’s favorite senator, and one of her best friends, is a human - Senator Brendis of Chaen. The Lady Brendis used to be a commoner—a popular one, as she was a merchant guild spokeswoman, but a commoner nonetheless. Yet she and her followers earned the Queen’s respect when all humans from Allaria City joined the Allai guard against the Null.

Elyse kept Brendis as a senator not only because they like each other, but because Brendis is a shrewd negotiator, a ruthless diplomat, and her street-savvy is more than a match for the most devious members of the senate. When in session, Brendis fulfils several roles - she serves as a voice for Allaria’s human majority, as an advocate for the poor and dispossessed against the advice of her more elitist peers, and also as an adjutant schoolmaster, helping the Queen to keep an eye and a leash on troublemakers.

Senator Malin
An old and respected voice in the Senate even before the Queen’s father was born, Senator Lein Malin is an old guard politician and a stalwart follower of the Eliadu; he wants Allaria to maintain the righteous path of order, honor and duty, and some of the Queen’s reforms make him uneasy to say the least.

However, Malin is good at his job, and would never openly defy his monarch. He is content with the hard-line vote of the most conservative bases of the Senate, which look upon Malin as a moral figurehead, and with opposing Elyse’s most radical edicts on moral grounds. Other than some rather heated arguments, and a lot of yelling and bickering, so far there hasn’t been an actual fight between Malin’s party and the Queen, but their constant opposition is sure to escalate sooner than later.

Great Golden Ettano Dap
The Great Golden of the Allarian Grand Guild, Ettano Dap replaced his predecessor, the corrupt Onatella Pai, after what amounted to a coup, seizing power from Onatella in the midst of the Second Null War and claiming emergency powers to lend all the Guild’s weapons and assets to the Crown, as part of the war effort.

In return for his loyalty, Elyse gave Ettano a place at her side as a research and engineering advisor. While the appointment has been criticized on the grounds that Ettano works more for the Guild than for the Crown, and makes no secret of it, it’s true that there has never been a smarter advisor at the palace, and engineering research across the Realm is at an all-time high.

Ettano and Elyse remain very good friends, as Dap’s cousin, Ettano Dagao, was dragonbonded too, though he died at the onset of the Second Null War.