Background: Rayna Rumors

Continuing my series of background tidbits for the still in need of retitling "The Last Battle", I'm now going to delve into the mystery of Rayna's origins. This is a little bit tricky, because unlike the history of Sathyriel's founding, Rayna's parentage is something I haven't really decided on yet. So if you were hoping to get the real dirt on the favorite discussion topic of Sathyrian gossips, you will likely be disappointed. What I'm going to do instead is to go through every known theory of how Cyra ended up with a child who looks very little like her with no father in sight. This, of course, is the main reason why people like to speculate about Rayna so much. But the other is that Rayna always seems to fall short in comparison to what Cyra had accomplished at the same age. Given Cyra's reputation, of course, it would be hard for anyone to measure up, but the difference in both appearance and achievements helps many of the various rumors alive.

Aside from which - if any - of these stories is true, the thing about covering this piece f the story that is challenging is figuring out why Cyra doesn't simply put the controversy to rest by at least saying whether or not Rayna is her legitimate daughter. Right now, my best guess is that she doesn't see any good outcome from it. If Rayna is in fact her own flesh and blood, the unfavorable comparisons to Cyra will only continue. If Rayna is not Cyra's biological daughter, not only could it legitimize criticisms of Rayna ("Well, of course she's not like the queen; she's not he real daughter."), it could call into question her right to inherit the throne. (Though to be fair, I don't know if Sathyriel has a law of primogenature or not.)

So there are still a lot of unresolved questions around this issue. Heck, I don't even know if Cyra has told Rayna where she came from (though my gut feeling is that she has) or if what she told her was the truth (which it might not be if the real story is particularly painful). Still, I think it'll be useful to have the various theories down and I'm hoping you'll find it interesting.

Comments welcome as always.


The Wish

This theory is nearly identical to the start of numerous fairy tales: a queen wishing with all her heart for a child. After the initial wishing, this story branches off into numerous variations. Some follow the fairy tale tradition and bring in a benevolent magical creature who grants Cyra's wish out of gratitude for a good deed. People who see Cyra as having a close relationship with the land itself will say that her wish was granted by some spirit of the natural world. Often, the deed is attributed to a powerful mage of some kind. Centaurs are popular candidates since many people know very little about them, though in truth they are not known for practicing magic. Some people will tell you that the mage was from somewhere far away, possibly even outside of Sathyriel, while others claim the spellcaster was local to their particular town. The geography of where these two variations show up most frequently seems completely random however, so there is no way of telling where this mysterious mage may actually have come from, assuming that he or she even existed. Another variation on this theme is that Cyra's wish was granted by a dragon. Though dragons are not known to practice any true magic, Cyra's ties to the dragons make this a popular story. In all versions, Cyra is magically able to bear a child without a male partner.

The Wish story is mostly told to young children, as it is one of the most benign and gentle explanations of Rayna's origins. As they grow older, children usually start to question the story and eventually stop believing it. Though magic is a very real part of life in Sathyriel, there is no known spell that could cause a woman to bear a child on her own. Even if such a spell were possible, the skill of the mage who performed it would have to have been tremendous, which makes it difficult to believe that his or her name and deeds would have been lost to history and survive only in legend. Though a few people stick solidly by one version or another of this story throughout their lives, most tend to discount it as a children's tale.


The Orphan

Both during and after the Keltarian occupation, war orphans were not uncommon in Sathyriel, giving this theory some credibility. Though Rayna is too young to have been born before the liberation of Sathyriel, fighting between Keltaria and Sathyriel, sometime involving other countries as well, frequently broke out, especially near the border.

In this scenario, Rayna is an orphaned child who ends up in Cyra's care. Usually, the story has Cyra coming to a village or town on the border with Keltaria and discovering the child. In some versions, Rayna is the sole survivor of a village that has been completely wiped out, a direct parallel to Cyra's own history. Aside from being almost too much of a coincidence to be believed, attacks resulting in the destruction of an entire population were extremely rare after Sathyriel became a free kingdom. A more likely version has the child's parents among a much smaller number of victims of a Keltarian attack. The other villagers are either unable or unwilling to care for the baby themselves, so Cyra takes the child to raise as her own. Sometimes, the story takes place in another kingdom under attack by Keltaria, usually Baren Vol which has a largely human population. This is a particular popular setting for the version where no one in the town is willing to take the child in. Sad to say, some Sathyrians still harbor animosity towards neighboring countries, especially those citizens who remember the days of the Keltarian occupation when those countries stood aside and offered no help to Sathyriel until Cyra's campaign was well on its way to victory.


The Search

Though very similar to "The Orphan", "The Search" is a rather distinct tale with several iterations of its own. In this story, Cyra comes upon a dying or gravely injured parent. Sometimes it is a Sathyrian soldier, sometimes it's a civilian. The injuries come from a Keltarian attack, a local rampaging monster, or sometime a natural disaster. There s even a version in which Cyra and a group of knights liberate captives bound for slavery in Keltaria and discover the person in question among them. The gender of the parent is also variable. The common thread is that this person extracts a promise from Cyra to find a daughter - and sometimes a spouse as well that this person has become separated from. In some versions, the person dies after giving Cyra a clue as to where this lost daughter might be. Others claim that the worried parent survives long enough to insist on traveling with Cyra to find the missing child. In either case, Cyra embarks on a long journey to keep her word and find the girl. The search is, after a variety of adventures along the way, successful. The spouse - if the story mentioned one - has inevitably died, leaving the child alone in the world. In the versions where the one parent has survived, he or she is able to see the girl one last time, then dies after asking Cyra to watch over the child. In versions where the parent has already died, Cyra finds the daughter at an orphans' home or in the care of a wicked stepmother type relative, and, with varying degrees of difficulty, adopts the child as her own.

This story is a highly popular one, as it can be expanded into a lengthy epic and fits in with the almost worshipful regard Sathyrians have to their queen. Whether it's actually true is another matter. There are numerous legends about Cyra's heroic deeds which have little or no basis in reality, and confirming the veracity of this story is nearly impossible. Though a situation like this may have occurred at some time, the idea of Cyra pursuing the matter herself is somewhat improbable. While Cyra has a reputation for being honorable and showing great concern for her people, it seems unlikely that she would leave an active battlefront to see to the welfare of a missing child personally. Sending a group of knights to investigate would have been more feasible. Still, the story has great staying power and might in fact contain a grain of truth.


The God Father

Since Cyra's coronation, Sathyriel has been home to a number of diverse faiths. Several of them are polytheistic and followers of those faiths are more likely to embrace this particular idea. In this tale, Rayna is the daughter of Cyra and a deity. The god in question is usually one that devotees think of as a potentially suitable mate for Cyra. There are warrior gods, gods of protection, and gods though to have ties to Sathyriel. Some followers of Suto Teg claim that Rayna's father was a dragon turned human for a single night, or that Cyra became a dragon for a night.

It is interesting to note that this is the only theory of Rayna's parentage that Cyra actively denies. Cyra has long gone out of her way to keep any faith that she herself follows a secret to avoid the appearance of a state religion. She has tried to discourage any implications that she is associated with any divine forces or is anything other than an ordinary human (aside from being raised by dragons). This theory was highly popular when Rayna was very young, but has less of a following nowadays. Cyra's denial and the fact that Rayna has not shown any superhuman qualities have made it less of a favorite than other guesses.


The Lover

This story and the following one are thought to be the closest to what really happened. As it is often said, the simplest explanation is often the correct one.

Like many of these theories, this one is set during a time of battle. Between the fighting, Cyra develops a close friendship with a particular man. Sometimes he is an ally from another country, sometimes he is a knight of Sathyriel, but most often, he is an ordinary Sathyrian soldier. Some tellers say that their affair was only a single night's tryst, which did happen among soldiers seeking comfort the night before a battle, uncertain if they would ever return. But others insist that it was a lengthy romance that saw them through many battlefields. The fate of Cyra's lover is also a subject of dispute. Sometimes he dies in the fighting. In one version Cyra discovers that she is carrying his child before his death and tells him the night before the final battle. In another, she decides to wait to tell him, but she never sees him alive again. In still another, Cyra only discovers that she is pregnant after her lover dies, leaving he to raise the child alone. The other main variation spare the soldier. But when Cyra tells him he has fathered her child, she gives him a choice: he can marry her and raise their baby alongside her as king of Sathyriel, or he can return to the life he had before becoming a soldier and live out his days in relative anonymity. After much thought, he chooses to go back to the life he knew. Cyra agrees to keep his identity a secret and they part, never to see each other again. Some people say that he is now dead, a casualty of war or victim to some illness or accident in whatever occupation he went back to, But others say that he still lives, keeping the secret of his love affair with the queen and the daughter he has never met to this very day.


The Jerk

Our last story bears some similarities to "The Lover", but the tone is very different. Once again, Cyra falls in love, but this time, she is wronged by the object of her affections. Sometimes he is a foreign nobleman with designs on the throne, taking advantage of a rather young queen. Other times, he turns out to be a Keltarian spy, or even an assassin. There are even stories of Sathyrian lovers who turned on Cyra for various reasons. Understandably, Cyra has a number of easily visible battle scars, and people who tell these stories often claim that one particular scar or another is from a physical attack by this wicked lover. His fates are many: incarceration, exile, death in battle, death by Cyra's hand in self defense, death from a guard or a knight defending Cyra, and a few other suitable ends. But none of these happen before Cyra becomes pregnant with the man's child. This, proponents of this theory claim, is why Cyra never explains where Rayna came from: the story is too painful to her and would cause too much pain to Rayna.