- Full Name: Duchas / Vicereine Anna Fiera Slate Kelley, of Hightower
- Gender: F
- Profession: Commander / Duchas, later Fleet Commander / Vicereine
- Age in 1554: 21 (1533-1601)
- Birthplace: Hightower Castle
- Residence in 1554: Hightower Castle
In 1554, Anna Hightower is just 21 years old and already working as a commander under her father Wilem. She is sixth in line for the throne of Marino.
Anna's Arc:
The Hightower family is a powerful branch of the Marino Royals, located in Hightower castle between Marino and Tapestry. Hightower is a literal high tower, a tiny city on a steep, lonely hill in an ocean of ancient fog.
When Anna was fourteen, she was present for a botched assassination attempt on her father, Gran Duch Wilem Loman Hightower, who was at that time second in line for the Marino throne. This terrifying event impressed upon young Anna the frailty of the family and her powerlessness to protect it. As she grew, Anna developed an acute paranoia, a fear of the unknown aggressor. She grows up believing that the power of the royal family is slowly slipping away.
Despite her fears, the truth is that no significant external or internal threat exists to the stability of Hightower, Marino, or even its distant territories. Except, perhaps, those which Anna imagines or creates. Through her machinations she manages to create more enemies throughout her life.
During the "After the Fog" Period. 1554-1571:
In her tenure as a Commander in the Hightower Navy, Anna tries various gambits to increase the strength of the Navy. Her ultimate goal is to unite DeVere under a single command, preferably her father's, and to make the people of the world more capable of reacting to what she believes is an inevitable attack on the sovereignty of the royals. She suspects nearly everyone who is not in her immediate family.
In 1567 Wilem Hightower dies from wounds suffered in a duel, and Anna, rejecting the customary title of Gran Duchas, names herself Vicereine of Hightower. She also becomes Fleet Commander in her father's place. Military ranks are not normally hereditary in the Royal Navy, but nothing is normal about the Hightower family.
At this point she is 34, and third in line for the throne. She has slowly been building a power base in anticipation of one day taking it by force. And in the meantime she continues to enthusiastically defend the royal family (mostly her branch, of course) from threats both real and imaginary.
After her father's death, Anna uses her Navy to squash dissent under the guise of keeping order. She recruits airmen from all over the Highlands, and also helps plant the seeds of misinformation that will lure inquisitive sailors like Galiard Gaspar-Ewen to seek her out, confront her, and ultimately join her inner circle.
Towards the end of this period, Anna begins to unravel the strange workings of the boom-and-bust ragweed economy, and sees it as a potential repeat of the Tapestry Berite find, but on a larger scale and within her control. This scheme becomes her perfect opportunity to weaken the truculent Highland cities, damaging their economies to the point that she can bring them under military rule.
Anna's Later Years, 1568-1601:
Towards the end of the Dearworth period, Anna Hightower digs deeper into controlling the ragweed market, as well as other more precious commodities, through her association with Corlan Ransom. Ransom enters Hightower's service as a clothier and aide to Viceroy Fernando St. Cloud of Littleton, a small port city southwest of Marino.
Ransom is another disruptor of world markets, having more or less invented the ragweed / lapis scheme in tandem with Anna. Lapis is the precious blue dye that colors the Royal Navy's uniforms, coming from the lapis butterfly, which thrives in ragweed fields. Ransom takes Anna's scheme a step further, buying bales of ragweed to control the price and often dumping them overboard into deep fog. Since the two commodities were of wildly different value, he gained more back in dye than he spent on ragweed.
With the aid of two powerful merchant families, the Ransom and Ver families, Anna manipulates the ragweed market and convinces insolvent farmers to grow ragweed and lapis butterflies as their sole industry. For those caught up in this game, it becomes impossible not to play. Stockpiles of ragweed feel like wealth. But very little money is actually entering the economy: just enough to fuel the delusion.
When the time is right, Anna lets the local market collapse. When the farmers realize that they are destitute, a good number of them (and their children) will be conscripted into the navy, their lands will be seized by the Crown, and the power of the royals will stretch across the world.
Anna’s tactics are costly for the royal family, with royal gold paid out to mercenary pirates, corrupt tradesmen, ragweed buys, and many other expenses. However, Anna believes it to be an investment in security, one which she feels is a righteous duty of the crown. She has also cleverly arranged the flow of money so that her coffers fill while King Sa's shrink.
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