Cecilia the Red Hope Champion Lore
‘What does Lumaya care for your factions, your politics? What prejudice does the light of the sun have for what it shines upon? Who among us has not sang and danced with innocent joy in the Yuletides of our youth? Why must war rip that joy from our hearts?! say to you, it need not be so!’ – Cecilia, proclaiming the Yuletide Abeyance.
Cecilia, Dame Baroness of the Free City of Redband, was always underestimated as a ruler because of her soft heart and generous spirit, despite proving herself a great leader time and again. Her first major triumph was the negotiation of a matrilineal marriage with a son of a prominent Frostheim family, establishing strong ties with her nearby northern neighbors without surrendering any of her personal authority and maintaining her dynastic lineage at the same time.
Soon after, a terrible war, born of treachery, misunderstanding, and land-lust, erupted between the Free Cities and her spouse’s people of Frostheim. Both sides expected her to join with them, but she deftly navigated the twists and turns of the war, sheltering her people, maintaining her neutrality, and appeasing both sides without being labeled a traitor. She corresponded regularly with another compassionate moderate, Sethallia of Landsrell, and the two of them helped perfect one another’s responses to the conflict.
One such response was the ‘Yuletide Abeyance’, Cecilia’s attempt to remind the warring factions of their common traditions and the spirit of peace. On one Yuletide day, a battle was about to erupt near Cecilia’s domain. Cecilia took a contingent of troops and marched them up and down the ranks of the two belligerents, singing hymns and distributing gifts. The dumbfounded soldiers could not maintain a warlike attitude in the face of this unexpected generosity, and the battle was postponed.
No sooner had Acelin the Stalwart brought a welcome end to the war than did the Red Crusade against Skinwalkers, Orcs, Lizardmen, and Ogryn break out. Cecilia was heartbroken and outraged by the accounts of atrocities her courtiers relayed to her. She declared Redband a sanctuary to all, and refused to participate in the Crusade, even expelling the Sacred Order from her city. For this defiance, the Order declared her a heretic and excommunicate.
Shortly thereafter, assassins attacked her palace, sent either by the Sacred Order, lay crusaders, or by any one of the various Banner Lords or Frostheimers who saw her as insufficiently loyal to their cause — the truth was never uncovered. Sir Nicholas, the Lightbringer of the Yule who had recently recanted the Sacred Order’s violence, saw in Cecilia a kindred spirit, and came that night to counsel with her. He arrived just in time to drive off the assassins.
Cecilia was shaken, and realized her city and her loved ones would not be safe for as long as she ruled – her tact and diplomacy were not enough to overcome the hatred of her adversaries. Sir Nicholas suggested that she stage her death, and come with him to serve the Arbiter’s noble cause. This she did, bidding a fond farewell to her family and accepting a place in a Shard. Teleria would surely need her diplomatic tact and deep sense of morality in the future.