The Queen of the Black Isles
The Queen Regnant
The trolls of PÈRYL are eusocial. The current ruler of the various tribal units is the actual mother of all members of the nobility, workers, artisans, and the drone slave in her primary hive. Each daughter queendom is ruled by the first generation issue of the Queen Regnant and their hive is born from their queen. The title is used by both the progenitor of the nobles and those of her issue who have their own hives, which are legally and militarily bound to the Obsidian Court, over which the Queen Regnant is the ultimate authority. In the reckoning of humans, the Queen Regnant is an empress, high king, ancestor, dowager, matriarch, and mother all in one. The trollish term covers most of these nuances. The Queen Regnant's age and lifespan is unknown, but she her rank is a lifetime and abdication is not a concept that exists. The only way she leaves her post is through natural or unnatural death. Legally, only her female issue can challenge her and usurp her. This tumult would invariably fall into a bloody but brief civil war as the various daughters, sisters, granddaughters, and nieces vie for power until one is successful and her rivals are all dead, exiled, or cowed into submission and neutered. It is likely that entire generational cohorts of female trolls are slain by the time the conflict has ended: because every living member is now a threat. Only the sororicide is absolute. Polyzygotic sisters are occasionally allowed to co-/multi-rule, but this rarely lasts. Even the closest of sisters eventually are forced by societal pressure and their own baser drives to murder their sibling. The upside of this inborn drive to purge ones immediate family is that the preferred situation in the Obsidian Court is the continued health and longevity of the Queen Regnant to avoid the inevitable bloodshed should she die. Only the most blood-thirsty ambitious warrior would move against her mother/grandmother to assume the throne, because it would mean that every living sister, aunt, cousin of previous and her generation is now a blood sworn enemy, whose choices are death, sterilization or exile. However, sterilization has a low survivability rate and exile is rare. Occasionally, the conflict of succession can spill into the neighbouring hives and their queens—daughters of the Queen Regnant—are also considered potential rivals and marked for purging. Only through allegiances and offerings of fealty at great cost, are such externalizations of the conflict avoided. It is said that exile and flight from such conflicts are the causal etiology of two distinct effects. One: the troll species' diaspora throughout the world, and, Two: in the Gruthen context, the centuries where trolls were thought extinct, or perhaps even mythic: civil war had shattered the unity of the Black Isles and the h' BchBrche were divided into bloody factions. Only through the ascension of the current Queen Regnant, her daughters, and their daughters, was order restored and the hives could be rebuilt. The devastation of the Eun Plague compounded matters. It took hundreds of years for Bchrchens to recover.
Children
Ruled Locations
