Her mother died first.
Frail and lovely, the Lady Van Gaale withered like a savannah blossom in spring. Both husband and chevalier stayed on another dozen or so years, but they, like the lords and ladies of her youth, fell to the realms of the dead. Her children budded and blossomed into darling half-elven princes and princesses before the iced hand reached to her companions. Those who remained loyal and present in Aramuth fell in service of the King and his sword. This, and her youngest son's death in his father's battlefields, sent her from the island nation and back to the river and city of Valin.
Even among those gifted with long life, the Queen retained her youth long into other winters. But Valin knows stranger enchantments and welcomed her regency. Her eldest daughter wed into the ruling family and began the half-elven strain of aristocracy there, fancied so much among the elite that fashionable spas offered ear-pointing services. The youngest daughter, holding no such interest in family, studied at the library of Althune and brought back correspondence to her mother until a fight with a desert serpent left her crippled. Together, they established a University in Valin, where daughter lectures and naught is seen of the Queen.
Her living sons remained with their father and his most loyal companions, making war and pledging honor and might. Mordecai came to Valin only once during her exile, and winter chased his footsteps with snow. He served his king only another decade before Altheras reclaimed him to her bosom. The Queen mourned him and faded from view for a year to serve the silver dragon in his name. Upon returning, she found her days full up of the twilight of her generation. Her own order of knights waned and repopulated with devout sons and daughters. Her grandchildren, great-grandchildren, swarmed in the streets and redefined the fashions she couldn't bother to keep up with.
Her husband the King died and fetched her back to Aramuth for her son's coronation, but even he wore a dusting of snowy old age. The Queen asked if he would continue the wars his father waged in all places of the world. The newly minted regent considered his counselors and could not be sure what the future would bring.
Smyrna Van Gaale de Damondred understood, then, that the wages of her sins of ambition and primal power was death. Very little defined her life anymore but the failing of it.
The Queen of Ice took her place along the long-abandoned chessboard of the realm and began to set her pieces into play. It would take time, lifetimes, to make her position ready. But Smyrna's death would only come at the hands of one other, and the prospect of checkmate proved intoxicating no matter who it was to fall.
