The history of the Princess of Yeld (Patreon)

Some of you have sent me some questions after the last strip about the Princess of Yeld. I've written a lot about her over the last few years for The Magical Land of Yeld RPG. But I know most of you don't have those books, so I thought I'd post some of that information here. 

The Princess, the  Last King of Yeld  and the Foreign Prince

The last King of Yeld was a kind and gentle man. His kingdom  was in decline, but his people led peaceful lives, and his  enemies were few and far away. He had one daughter, and  from a very early age the girl knew she would grow up to  rule a kingdom that had become small and quiet, and she  was quite content with this. 

Then one day a foreign prince appeared. 

The Prince was clad in black and wore a long cape that  twisted in the wind like a rabid animal. His helmet had  horns, which was the custom of their kingdom. He said he  was the Prince of Vampires, although the Princess did not  know if that was a people or place. Her father was taken by  this foreign prince, but she did not trust him at all. 

The Princess watched from her father’s side as this Prince  swore himself to the King and asked for a chance to prove  his worth. Their Kingdom was in decline, and its glory days  were behind them, but this Prince promised to drive the  Fairy tribes from the Angry Mountains far to the Kingdom’s  North, and retake that ancient mountain range. The King  was enthralled by promises of conquest and agreed to  lend the Prince soldiers, and even members of his personal  guard. When Prince Dragul rode off with 100 men toward  the Angry Mountains the Princess knew she would never see  him again. He would vanish into the North with her father’s  men. Slaughtered by Fairies, or starved in the cold, or lost in  the dark mountain passes. 

A year later the Prince returned. 

He had changed. He was darker. There was a gravity to him  that the Princess couldn’t describe. The horns of his helmet,  which she had never seen him remove, were longer. They  reached toward the vaulted ceiling of the throne room as he  knelt before her father and offered the enormous skull of a Fairy warlord, stained with blood. 

His men were different too. There was a darkness about them  as well, and their skin had a pallid quality that she couldn’t  describe as sickly, but was definitely not hale. They were men  she had known her entire life, but now their presence chilled her. She knew they no longer belonged to her father or to the  kingdom. These were the Prince’s men now. 

The word ‘Vampire’ began to circulate in the King’s court.  The Prince had a gift to bestow, a gift that would bring  strength and long life. The King’s lieutenants and nobles  were eager for this gift, and slowly the Prince’s influence  spread throughout the Kingdom. The Prince himself was a  loyal servant and quickly became the King’s most trusted  advisor.  

The Princess could see that Dragul was slowly expanding his power and influence, and she wasn’t sure why her  father seemed to be blind to this. By this time nearly all of  the King’s Guard were among Dragul’s Vampires, and the  Prince’s followers had taken up key positions all across the  Kingdom. 

The Princess warned her father that Dragul must be planning  to seize power, but the King would not hear her concerns.  After much pleading he finally agreed to send the Prince  away on another campaign. With 1000 men the Prince rode  toward the furthest borders of the Kingdom. With him went  half of the King’s Guard, Urano, Jonakund, Vargas, and the  young Kerrigor. The Princess was sad to see them go. Urano  had been a knight she admired since childhood, Jonakund  was a good friend and Vargas had always been the voice  of reason in the court and was one of the few who shared  her concerns over the Prince. She did not trust Kerrigor  at all, a dangerous Warrant Mage who dabbled in Witch  magic. They rode toward Loh Tabeth and the empire of the  Leviathan Queen, and the Princess knew she would never  see them again. There was no challenging the knights of the  Leviathan. The Prince would never return. 

But he did return. After 3 years. Bloodied and battered,  but not broken, his darkness was stronger. His horns were  sharper. His men were bonded to him in ways that were deep  and secret. The Prince presented the King with a Leviathan  Coil, a twisted rod that radiated magic, said to power the  unstoppable Leviathan Knights. The Prince’s campaign had  not been a victory, but it had also not been a defeat. He had  faced the Leviathan Queen and survived.

The Princess had secured her own victories. Over three years  she had traveled Yeld, speaking with the King’s People and  Animal Tribes and the cities that had once belonged to the  Kingdom but were proud of their independence. The people  of Yeld had never seen a king or queen or princess before, and  she saw their homes and fields and listened to their problems  and shared their joys. They fell in love with her, and she  with them. The Princess made friends and allies wherever  she went, and in three years she saw more of Yeld than her  father and grandfather ever had.

Too soon after her return to court and the Prince’s return  from battle, the King fell ill. He was an old man, and his  death came quickly. The Princess stayed by her father’s side  during his last few days, and they discussed her plans at  great length. She would be the Queen of Yeld, and her father  very much wanted the Prince to be her advisor and general.  Despite her mistrust, the Princess bowed to her father’s dying  wishes. She would rule Yeld with Dragul’s assistance. He  would serve her as he had served her father.

On the night of her father’s death the Prince called on the  Princess in her chambers. He was dressed in a fine black suit  and a dark cape. She had never seen him without his helmet,  and this night was no different. The Prince kneeled before  her and asked her the questions she had been dreading since  he first strode into her father’s court years ago.

“Will you marry me?” 

She would not, and she told him so. She would rule the  kingdom on her own, and he would serve as her advisor or  not at all. The Prince took her refusal politely and left her  chambers without another word. But the Princess was not  put at ease.

That night the Princess called her father’s King’s Guard to  her. In her private chamber she confided her fears to these  men and women that she had known since her childhood.  That Prince Dragul had come to conquer Yeld, and that his  plan was long and subtle. She believed that if the Prince  couldn’t legitimize his claim by marriage he would take it  by force, and she did not believe that she had the support to  safely stay in the castle.

The King’s Guard debated for hours. Some instantly agreed  with the Princess’s assessments, while others dismissed her  fears. Of the eight, all had received the Prince’s gift. All were  Vampires. The Princess was sure that some of them, maybe  all, would leave her chambers and go directly to the Prince.  In the end four of the eight agreed to go with her. Urano,  captain of the guard. Jonakund, mistress of arms. Vargas,  heir to the house of Fasteon and her own distant cousin.  And finally, the dishonored Kerrigor, much to the Princess’s  surprise. They rode from the castle before dawn.

The Prince was furious. Without the Princess he could not  take his place as the King of Yeld. Instead, he declared himself  regent and labeled the Princess and all who followed her as  Oathbreakers. Dragul assembled the remaining members of  the King’s Guard and set them on a quest. They would hunt  down the fleeing Princess no matter where she hid and bring  her back to marry the Prince. These were the first Hunters  of Yeld.

The Princess did not hide for long. She had spent years  building alliances and cultivating allies, and now that  her enemy had finally made himself plain to see she was  ready to strike. Even as the Hunters pursued her, the Princess  gathered her forces. All across the Kingdom King’s People  and Animal Tribes declared themselves Oathbreakers and  flocked to the Princess’ cause. At the head of an army of  surprising size, the Princess struck at Dragul, dealing a series  of humiliating blows. For a time it seemed as if the Prince’s  reign would be short-lived.

And then the Fairies returned to Yeld.  

A treaty had been reached with the Fairy Tribes, and at the  Prince’s invitation they marched across the Angry Mountains  to reclaim their ancient homeland as Dragul’s new army. The  Princess’ Oathbreakers could not stand against the enormous  and powerful Fairies, and quickly the people who had been  so ready to fight for her slipped away back to their cities and  villages, to their warrens and forests, to the families waiting  for them. The Princess could not blame them.

The Oathbreakers went into hiding as Dragul’s Fairy army  spread across Yeld, occupying every town and constructing  mighty fortresses. At the same time, the ranks of the Prince’s  Vampire lieutenants swelled. Young men and women  who were eager for glory, wealth and power flocked to the  Kingdom’s new ruler and offered themselves for service.  These young Vampires quickly became the backbone of  Dragul’s armies, leading Fairy soldiers, loyal King’s People  and members of the Serpent Tribe on a campaign within  their own Kingdom, rooting out supposed Oathbreakers in  every village.

The Princess and her Oathbreakers fought many skirmishes  with the Prince’s soldiers, but as decades drew on the people  of Yeld forgot what it was like to live under a fair and just  King, in a land where neighbors took care of each other. Yeld  became wilder and less safe, and the monsters hiding within  forests and caves began to reclaim their old territories. The  Animal Tribes vanished into the wilds and the days grew  darker and colder. And all the while the Hunters hounded  the Princess and her Oathbreakers, until they felt as if they  had nowhere left to turn.

It was then that the Seamstress of Sarensang offered the  Princess asylum. Sarensang was a Free City, a former territory  of the Kingdom that had bought its freedom long ago. The  Seamstress was its ruler, a creature of indeterminate age who  had been a friend to the Princess all her life. The Princess  took the invitation and led her Oathbreakers across Yeld to  the gates of Sarensang, pursued all the way by the Prince’s  Hunters. The Hunters clashed with Sarensang’s Dancers at  the edge of their border, and mighty, magic wielding Judges  turned back the Prince’s forces. Finally, for the first time in  years, the Oathbreakers were safe.

The decades that followed were a happy time for the Princess.  She wed the Seamstress and took on the duty of protector  of Sarensang. She was known affectionately as the “Pistol  Princess” for the fine firearm she carried at her side, and that  nickname became a title that the protector of Sarensang  bears even today.

During this time Urano and Vargas secretly journeyed across  Yeld, speaking with the King’s People and Animal Tribes in  the Princess’ name and building Oathbreaker cells to resist  the Prince. They found surprising allies among many of the  Fairies, some of whom were disgusted by the Prince’s cruelty  and were willing to live side by side in peace with the other  people of Yeld.

After years of waiting the Prince finally lost patience and led  an army of unprecedented size to Sarensang, where he laid  siege to the city and demanded the Princess be delivered to  him. The Princess would not plunge her adopted home into  war, so agreed to face the Prince. Not to surrender herself,  but in personal combat.

They met on Sarensang’s shores at dawn, the Princess  accompanied by her Oathbreaker Knights and the Prince  shadowed by his Hunters. The Princess was armed with gifts  from the Seamstress and a sword called Black Hope, and she  meant death for the Prince that day. They fought in the surf  and on the sand for hours, the Prince never tiring and the  Princess unwilling to falter. The Oathbreakers watched their  Princess and cheered her on, but they all knew the truth. The  Princess was a cunning and skilled warrior, but the Prince  was like an avalanche. He could not be stopped.

Luck saved the Princess that day. Dragul briefly lost his  footing on the loose sand and the Princess took advantage  of the moment, striking a strong blow. The attack was far  from fatal, but left the Prince staggered. In that moment,  seeing the Prince weakened and in danger, Kerrigor decided  to reveal his true loyalties. The magician screamed a spell  to life that melted the sand beneath his feet and sent a  magical inferno hurtling toward the Princess. But the other  Oathbreakers were too fast. Jonakund threw herself in front  of the Princess, absorbing the magic even as she was reduced  to a blackened skeleton before her friend’s eyes. Urano seized  the Princess and fled as Vargas faced Dragul and his Hunters  on his own.

The Princess and her lone knight managed to escape, but  her spirit was broken. She could not return to Sarensang or  her wife, and her last best hope to kill the Prince had failed.  Except for Urano, her closest allies were lost, dead or had  betrayed her.

The Princess went into hiding, and for many, many years  the people of Yeld did not know if she still lived, or what had  become of her. Some guessed that she had been wounded in  her duel with the Prince, and was now confined to a lonely  bed. Others swore she traveled Yeld disguised as a Postmaster,  watching over her subjects in the only way she still could.  There was a rumor that the Princess had crossed the Angry  Mountains and traveled through the Fairy lands and Loh  Tabeth to seek an audience with the Leviathan Queen. No  one knew for sure.

Decades passed, and although the Oathbreaker rebellion  faltered without its Princess, it still lived on. Warriors of  the Animal Tribes struck against the soldiers of the Prince  where they could, and denied the Kingdom access to their  forests and streams. Villages hid their taxes from royal tax  collectors, and saved food and wine for rebels. Fairies and  Vampires that saw the Prince’s cruelty joined King’s People  to fight the Prince where they could, and resist in more subtle  ways when fighting was not an option. The rebellion lived  on, even without its Princess.

The Hunters of Yeld remained ruthless in their search for  the Princess and her Oathbreakers, but with no sign of the  Princess they turned their attention to small bands of rebels  and protesters. Soon, anyone who defied the Prince or the  Kingdom was labeled Oathbreaker. Executions became  common across the land, and it wasn’t long before everyone  in Yeld knew someone who had been called an Oathbreaker  and killed.

News spread that the greatest Oathbreaker of all, the Princess’  own Knight Urano, had been captured and would be put  to death alongside 200 rebels in the city of Madris. People  came from across the Kingdom to watch the execution, and  Kerrigor himself stood ready to bring his great flaming axe  down on the neck of his former comrade. The night before  the execution there was great commotion in the city’s central  plaza, and a fire spread through Madris. As soldiers fought  the flames and panic spread through the citizens there were  sightings of an elderly woman in resplendent armor. Her  crown of horns arced toward the night sky and black wings  stretched from her shoulders. She carried a black sword with  a white blade, and thunder echoed from her hands. In the  morning the fires had been quelled, but Kerrigor discovered  that all two hundred and one of his prisoners had vanished.

The Princess had returned, and she led her Oathbreakers to  the Storm Mountains in the far East. Knowing that Kerrigor  and his Hunters would not be far behind, the Princess used  the last of her magic to hide the passes that led deep into the  mountain range. Safe from their hunters, the Oathbreakers  built a mighty fortress sanctuary, a place where rebels and  their families could find refuge. It was in the safety of those  walls, among her friends and loyal subjects that the Princess  finally passed away. One hundred and eleven years after the  day she had first fled her father’s castle in the company of  her knights.

Centuries later the Seamstress of Sarensang, who was a very  long-lived creature, was visited in a dream by the ghost of  the Princess. In her dream the Princess wore the armor of  her office as protector of Sarensang, as well as the horns that  were the crown of her lost kingdom. The Seamstress and the  ghost of her wife spoke for hours about many things that  were private, but later the Seamstress told Urano this:

“There will be a day when the Foreign Prince’s ruin comes at the hand of a Princess of his own design. At her side will  be a champion and an instrument of our revenge. You must  guide her and shape her. Yeld will have its Princess, and we will finally have justice.”