Zora II Shiroko
Empress Zora II Shiroko
Zora II became baejan in 585 after her brother and husband, Ilya III Shiroko stepped down. Her witnessing of her husband's mental decline led her to research and produce several early treatments for instability. She took many of these into the empire and began the first charities geared toward assisting the citizenry who struggled as the royal family did. Through her work, she became known as Zora the Kind and her birthday is a national holiday for charitable works.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Zora II was the third child of Zora I Shiroko. Through her formative years, she was given the education of all royal children and taught that she would be supporting her eldest brother, Ilya III Shiroko, when he became the baejan (emperor), just as her other siblings would be. As the oldest of the royal sisters, she was also set to marry him and take the title of tsudaeba (royal consort). Through her very early years, she enjoyed peeking into the various departments of the government and following her mother around. However, it was due to this following that she was the first of the children to understand that something was wrong. Sadly, she was much too young to know the true issue.
During her Attunement Test, it was discovered that she was a pyr-esh. Immediately, her mother began teacher her how to use the family Stitching magic and to create the Ilyannoi. As the tsudaeba, she would need to be just as good as the baejan in order to eventually make her own and teach the future heirs. Both she and Ilya III had a duty to do so.
She and Ilya were married the same year he took the throne, in 583, and she settled into assisting him. However, she began to notice his issues with memory and his continual decline over the next two years. Two years after his ascension, this led to him voluntarily stepping down. As the tsudaeba, Zora II was the next person in line for the throne. For the first time, a baejan and tsudaeba switched titles and Zora officially became the empress of Eoion. As all baejan had before her, she created a Tsirin to show her right to rule. After this, she began working, with Ilya now in the supporting role.
Over the next few years, beginning in 601, the couple five children: Ilya IV, Kariin, Sava, Yakiv, and Taras. Zora split her time between teaching Ilya IV to prepare him for rule and ruling the empire herself. In 615, Ilya asked for permission to permanently move the Shiroko family manor in Parishi as his mental state had continued to decline. Zora agreed and he left the Gandenye for good. Over the years, she, along with her children, would periodically visit him and she was given monthly reports on his status.
Her brother's steady decline, along with the mental instability that had begun to plague the dynasty as a whole started her search for treatments and a possible cure. She worked closely with the medics of the empire to determine the root cause of the instability. However, at best, they could guess that it was inherited, like the family's hair color and magic, although why in manifested in such different ways was unclear.
Through her work with the doctors, whose treatments she sent to Ilya III for testing, she found a tea that could calm the voices her great aunt heard and a root that led to a sense of calm when chewed which helped her brother/husband with his frustrations. Every treatment she found was written down in a private diary that was subsequently passed down to every generation of rulers. Over the centuries, it has been added to as new treatments were discovered. It is now in the hands of Erasure, a gift from Inna I Shiroko.
Along with her work within the family, Zora II began looking outward. If the royals were plagued by these illnesses, surely there were common folk who were as well. While her brother/husband received the greatest care in the empire, those who were not of royal blood were left to suffer sub-par treatments or left to wander. She could not imagine what would have happened to her unstable family members had they not been born into their positions. As such, she started the first charities that sought to help those whose minds were starting to fail.
Her motives in this were both pure and not. While she did genuinely want to assist the common people, particularly the homeless population, she also used them to test treatments, searching for those that were efficient to produce and had strong therapeutic effects. The work performed in the charities led to sleeping supplements, calming pills, and a treatment that came to be known as Zora's Hug. In this treatment, the patient was wrapped in many layers of blankets until they resembled a cocoon. Some of the patients found that this reminded them of being hugged by their mothers and thus induced feelings of immense calm.
She also made a point to tour the charities around the empire and became a familiar face in many places because of it. Her work helping the poorest of the empire led to her moniker of Zora the Kind and she was said to be blessed by the social Dea. This gave her a great deal of clout among the Bolugama practitioners and the sect surrounding the royal family increased in size to its largest point to that date. Some of the sect went into medicine in order to please her and assist in her work, which led to a small medical school specializing in royal mental disorders to form within the group. This school is still operational and is charged with both continuing the charitable work Zora started and assisting any members of the royal family who exhibit signs of instability.
In 623, when her son, Ilya IV Shiroko was twenty two and she had married him to her only daughter, Kariin, she retired. Rather than remain in the Gandenye, she moved to Parishi to be with Ilya III. There, she helped care for her brother/husband and the two spent their final years together as a loving couple. However, this also meant that she saw him decline until he could no longer recognizer her or remember his own name. After his death in 635, she fell into a depression and refused to eat. Ilya IV invited her back to the Gandenye. There, she split her time between visiting the charities around Niuus as she was too old to travel the country, and assisting in the education of her grandchildren.
She died in 637 and was buried in the Shiroko family mausoleum. Her birthday was declared a national holiday and is celebrated through gifts to charity and local acts of goodwill.
Relationships
Life
564
637
73 years old
Birthplace
Place of Death
Spouses
Ilya III Shiroko
(brother/husband)
Siblings
Children
Gender
female
Eyes
pale violet
Hair
white, half braided
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
white, like paper
Aligned Organization
Other Affiliations
Comments