Lyrynn the Bloody Queen
One of the dark myths associated with Malbrand, a cursed castle in western Revellia, the southernmost canton of Milos.
Lyrynn was a maiden whose face was as ghast as milk, her hair as red as blood. Yet her beauty was legendary, so men and princes and kings traveled from across the land to beg her hand in marriage. In the end, she accepted the offer of the king of Malbrand, who supposedly offered her gardens of flowers as red and white as her hair and face. Some versions speak of a third flower, gilt as her eyes.
Many of the suitors vowed revenge against the king for his victory, but one instead vowed revenge against Lyrynn herself. He was a small, hideous man who broke into Lyrynn's chambers that very night. He attempted to abduct her, and her cries brought no guards to her aid. The little man was fiercely strong, and many say he was one of the Aernigh that drank the blood of men to gain his strength. His hands were clamped over her mouth, and in desperation she bit him on the wrist. When his blood filled her mouth, a strange strength came over her, and she flung her assailant out the window to his death.
Yet the doom was already laid. From that night forth, Lyrynn was consumed with a hunger for blood that the rarest roasts could not sate. On the night of her marriage to the king of Malbrand, her hunger grew so strong that she bit and tore open his throat to consume his blood ("his golden blood," say those that make much of Lyrynn's gilt eyes). Horrified at her actions, Queen Lyrynn fled the castle that night.
She traveled for many turns until she found a secret village of the Aernigh, and asked their aid. Their chief explained that she was now half-Aernigh herself, and the thirst for blood would never abate. In some versions, she kills the chief in her fury.
When Lyrynn returned to Malbrand, the dead king's brother was ruling. Lyrynn was under heavy suspicion of the former king's death, yet such was her beauty that the new king promised to spare her if she would wed him. This she called a foul dishonoring of the former king's memory, yet the brother pressed his claim further, telling her the penalty for refusal would be her own execution. She consented, and on their wedding night she slew the brother and drank his blood.
This began the Bloody Queen's reign. Those who came to make her answer for her assumed crimes were the former suitors that had once begged her favor, and one by one they fell under her spell. One by one they were devoured. First came the kings, then the lords, then the knights, and at the end even the humblest cobblers who had begged her favor were consumed.
Some versions say Lyrynn withered, grew old, and died after the last of her suitors was consumed. Others say she had become fully Aernigh and left to be among her own kind. Still others say she flew into the sky on wings made of night, to terrorize foreign lands. There were even a few myths claiming she remained at Malbrand, reigning in fear, and that some local clans still have her blood in them.
Related Ethnicities
Related Locations