Greymane/DeshaneHistory

= As told by Jessan Barief

To be born the first son of a king is a huge responsibility. You are the next in line. The crown prince. The hopes and expectations of your entire nation hang over you. How you are raised, what you see in your life; these are the things that will determine the way you rule. Will you be a good king? A man who cares and loves his people? Or will you be a tyrant who takes after the Iselis who once ruled us, brought into this world only to brutalize those below you? The Batief line has offered the people of Sain-Wanno it's share of both. Kings both good and bad and the saving grace of our family has always been that it seemed the dragons, in their wisdom, never granted their blessing to the worst.

But what of the second born sons and daughters? Where are the expectations for them? The watchful concern of the people? I can tell you, for I know from experience, they are no where. You live as a pawn for political marriage, or mate like mad to pop out children to ensure the bloodline preserves, or take up a petty office in court and live like any other hanger-on. Or you abandon your place and hope to find more glory in the world on your own. But for some of us, this is not a choice we can bare to make.

I am Jessan Batief, the Royal Brother. The Shadow of the Throne. Those are titles in all but an official capacity. Constant reminders of my place in this world as second to my brother Deshane. Doomed to live and die within his shadow, tossed away into a place of obscurity by history once our time has passed. I live every day knowing that I will only achieve some state of notice should my brother abdicate his throne or, may all of Heaven above forbid it happen, he perish upon it.

It is important you understand me now, chronicler and reader alike. Whatever history may say of me in times to come and however my bitterness may color the words I am to now speak; I love my brother. He is a good man. A fine man who loves his people and his nation and would, I have seen, risk his life to protect them. But bravery and love alone do not make a man fit to rule. Deshane is a good man, but he is no king. He never was and never should have been. I do not speak from jealousy or ego or petty desire to say this: I should wear the crown. I should sit on the throne. Because it I was I who was truly groomed for the part.

I blame my father for this. He was too distant and stern a man on the outside. A fine king, but intimidating for a trio of small children. I alone of my siblings made a connection with him, born out of a stormy night when I dared to sneak into his bed chambers and seek him out as any child would their father for comfort against fears in the night. After this, I became his favorite, and I alone saw behind the face of a king was a man as warm as any. But for my siblings, he remained so distant and imposing that they sought their affection elsewhere. For Nyesha, our mother and for Deshane, our uncle. It was our uncle who despoiled him. Uncle Jimarcus shared my fate, Shadow of the Throne to my father. But he was not bitter for it, for he was a man of low ambition and simple pleasures. Ones he unfortunately taught to my brother. So wasted a life, when I realize what things should have been like. It should have been me who spent his days laughing on the beach with him, learning jaoreia and watching the peasant girls dance to the songs of the roda. And it should have been Deshane who my father took into his confidence, taught the ways of a ruler, to walk and speak with dignity, to rule just and fair.

But this was not so. Those who influenced us most are those who should have influenced us the least. For my brother came a want to live an idyllic life free from worry or responsibility. For myself, came the need to sit upon the throne as a just king in my fathers image. My sister alone achieved any semblance of wisdom, but then she has ever been the smartest of the three of us. She learned from our mother what her place would be and how to enjoy it without chafing in it. For the way our lives seemed ready to split apart, we still clung to one another as siblings do. Fighting, most certainly, but there is not child in the world who does not fight with his siblings from time to time. Playing and enjoying one another's company, far more often.

It was during such a game that my brother was Chosen. I remember it well. We were playing jaoreia, much to the cheering of onlookers who loved nothing more than to see the royal family playing the game. Deshane and I danced back and forth, constantly attempting to outmaneuver one another and laughing and praising each new feat of acrobatics the other achieved. Neither of us were willing to yield the floor however. Deshane, poor fool, still seemed to think it was nothing but a game. My bitterness had already begun that early in life however and I was intent on beating him. The cheering of the crowd grew louder as we threw ourselves into ever more dangerous moves, some that not even masters would try. But then, as Deshane finished the flip of a particularly difficult motion, fire suddenly blossomed around him. I remember how fast my heart beat and I think I may have burned in his light had Nyesha not pulled me away.

From then on, it seemed as though the world had become all about Deshane. Even my own Exaltation, achieved during mediation on the Stone of Nieces Nail, or Nyesha's, occurring in grand fashion during a swim with the dolphins off the coast, were scarcely given notice. In fact, it was Deshane alone who seemed to notice and goaded our parents into throwing grand celebrations in our honor. Holidays across the entire nation to commemorate so wonderful a thing. But though the parties were in our name, it was not we who the people honored. No, it was the Burning Prince who they came to see. He was cheered in the streets and strutted about in a ridiculous fashion, displaying the Dragon's gifts to any who so much as asked. It should have been a disgrace, to see a man who would be king act like a fool, but our people loved him for it instead. Praised him. And we were all but forgotten. Nyesha cared little about this, but it grated upon me every day. I begged my father constantly to make Deshane show restraint, but he never acted.

I never had chance to ask for permission to restrain Deshane myself. It was not long after our Exaltation that Pelmia, greatest of all the volcano goddesses, went mad. After so long slumbering and growing contentedly fat on our offerings, she awoke and billowed forth a cloud of ash that blotted out the sky. She declared to us that we had failed to meet the agreement promised to her in offerings, a bold faced lie. She threatened to bury our land in flows of lava if our father did not throw himself to her flame in remuneration. And this, he did. Without hesitation or negotiation, mistakes by themselves, but well intentioned ones. For the sake of our people, he walked proudly and alone to the top of Pelmia's mountain and threw himself into her belly.

And the gluttonous bitch, having devoured our father crown and all, then demanded our mother as well. We would have no more. As siblings united in grief and rage, though all for our own reasons, we came together and moved as one. We fought up Pelmia's mountain, aiding one another as we battled through her fiery minions. And then, at the summit, we faced the dreaded goddess herself. I am told our battle is legendary even beyond our shores. We fought in a hell that has no words in any language to describe. Through flame so hot that it turned the rock bellow us to molten slag or fused it into slippery glass. Through air so thick with ash it became a wall that could not be passed and so hot that to breath was to be melted from the inside out. I thought myself consumed and unmade by the fire many times, yet always they were there. Always my siblings came to save me and I in turn to them. So much blood we spilled upon that mountain top. So many tears as Pelmia taunted us with our fathers blackened bones. To the Sains, the volcano goddesses are as the storm-mothers are to the rest of the west and Pelmia was one of the most powerful in all Creation. Yet, against all odds, we won. As our ancestors had dared to defy the dragons and defeated them. Together, we struck her. Deshane consumed her fire, I threw her ash into the wind, and Nyesha called forth the waves of the sea to engulf her fist in a blow that made the goddess scream so loud, it tore the mountain asunder.

We laid the goddess low and ripped her hard hot heart from her chest. Heroes, legends, we went back home to the adoration of our people. I felt closer to my siblings than I had in years. It made what would come to follow so much harder. Osha, the two-natured water goddess, came newly appointed as the master of the spirits of our island and forged a new crown for our people. We each gave our blood to it and with it the passion that had carried us to do so great a thing. Deshane took the throne and Nyesha and I our placed in his shadow.

And then, the stupidity began.

Deshane, my beloved bother, did not know what it meant to be a king. To him, life was as it was for our uncle. Something to be enjoyed without worry or fear of consequence. Jade flowed from my bothers hands into the waiting mouths of merchants and entertainers. He turned our ancestral home into a gaudy display of wealth, it's halls filled with musicians and strange beasts and imported rugs. He brought in musicians and dancers by the cartful. He ordered the honored uniforms of the royal guard cast aside and let them play jaoreia and chase dancing girls shirtless across the halls. At whim, he packed them all up and boarded hired vessels to pay visits to our neighbors and far away trading allies that had no political or diplomatic necessity. They were merely excuses to explore or go on shopping trips for new women for his dance hall or new beasts for his trainers. When I attempted to speak to him for the need of minding his spending habits, his answer was to hired a mealy mouthed Dynastic bookkeeper too meek to stand up to his rampant spending.

And as if this grand joke had not been played badly enough, no one truly seemed to care. The people still love him. Love to see him parade through the towns. The ministers and aristocracy who had so strongly supported my fathers rule laugh along with them, doing so as they use his excesses to hide their own thievery. Even my own beloved sister simply smiles and shakes her head at me, bids me "Do not worry. He will learn." But he will never learn. He will never be able to bleed this nation dry, but he will bring to it a new era of waste and excess and laziness that will last for mortal generations. Our potential for greatness, so clearly seen when we defeated Pelmia, will be abandoned to keep the king entertained on his "grand adventures."

So as the lone voice of reason in this madness, it has to fall to me to stop him. I do not know how just yet. Killing Deshane is beyond consideration. But I will find someone to break this euphoric hold his stupid smile seems to have upon this land. To slap them all in the face and show them that it would be for the good and happiness of us all that he become the Shadow of the Throne and I, as the only one truly bred for it, ascend to wear the crown.