The Silver Queen

Lucrecia sat in front of a desk, in one of the many rooms of the royal palace, with a pile of books of many different subjects right in front of her. Since she didn't have any kind of audience or event scheduled today, she chose to wear something simple and comfortable: A white cotton blouse, with leather pants and boots.

Her long, silver hair hanged over her back, barely brushed and somewhat messy. Her light grey eyes appeared to be glowing as though it were like a silver mirror. Her skin was of a pure, tense and bright white, similar to that of a pearl. She was tall for a woman, at 1.72 meters of height.

All of these features highlighted her beauty, hiding the fact that she had lived for over hundreds of years. Her physical appearance looked so white and pure, a common look for silver elementals, which she was the last of that race.

She didn't like ostentatious dresses, jewels, crone, thrones, nor any of the grandiose and pretentious things commonly associated to royalty. In fact, the exaggerated architectonic magnitude of the palace stressed her, with those unnecessary gigantic hallways, numerous spacious rooms and numerous paths. The place was too much of a labyrinth that she often felt that wouldn't be able to not get lost within the many hallways that littered this building.

Decades ago... Rather, more than a century, now that she thought about it, she would never imagine herself living in such a place. Despite how the history books told it, the great revolutionary war wasn't about her riding heroically at the front of a great army invading an evil empire.

Back then there was only her and a small group of rebels. They used to hide in the wilderness, surviving however they could by hunting or pillaging the imperial convoys.

They lived in tents that did nothing to help against the bitter cold of the night, forced to avoid the use of bonfires to prevent alerting the enemy of their position. Sleeping became something of a commodity, as many were too fear-ridden to be able to have a good night's rest.

Constantly, death's grip was always over them, threatening to bring them down with their desire for rest and food. Too many of her friends, death was there to snatch their legs and bring them down to the world beyond.

Now? Now, she had all the resources in the world to satisfy every last one of her needs if she pleased. She was in a stark contrast of that previous life, as she no longer had to try to sleep in the freezing cold, worry about her next meal, or wonder if there were enemies closing into her position.

She hated this luxury and comfort. She disliked dealing with the nobles and politicians. It didn't help that Swveider, the Golden King, shared her feelings on the matter, but failed to assist her at all, lacking the discipline and self-restraint to remain in the palace and do his job as a monarch.

All the responsibly to raise the kingdom devastated by the civil war and to ensure peace fell onto her shoulders. She had spent decades making alliances, deals, treaties, contracts, approving of numerous bureaucratic processes, and generally trying to keep the world together from crumbling under its own weight.

She tried her best to find some kind of stability to keep the world together, but the issue came with the stability that was granted upon her. This support was built from the old tradition of ruling noble metals and a highly trained army that would keep half of the world terrorized.

This wasn't why she chose to lead the revolutionary war, but the nobles that desired to fill their pockets and the increasing scale of violent crimes had left her with no choice but to take this bitter pill. She needed to maintain a peace, and this was the option she had to take temporarily.

But now? Things have changed, the world was much more quiet and stable, and opportunity was around the corner. Now was the time for her to enact the change that she desired, to bring upon a new Golden Age for the world to fully evolve.

However, the nobles currently held too much power over the royal arks and she, in her time of desperation, had granted the iron guard too much power and authority. Every change she could even dream of making was limited due to the two opposing factions in her kingdom, threatening to bring down everything she had built up if she didn't keep them happy or busy.

It had been years since she had made up her mind to find a solution to this issue. A century ago, this battle would have been fought and won by the silver sword inside her, on the battlefield where actions spoke louder than words.

Now, the battle would have to be fought with diplomacy and cunning. She would have to adapt to this new warzone, if she ever wanted to have a chance to defeat the nobles in their own game. And she knew exactly how to adapt to this situation.